BUFFALO (WBEN) - Republican members of the Erie County Legislature's minority conference have announced a resolution to revoke County Executive Poloncarz's emergency powers.
"We're not alleging that the county executive abused his authority in any way, but we're saying that right now we need to get back to the table and allow people to have their representative voice, which is the legislature, make determinations on how their money is being spent," said Legislator Joe Lorigo.
The emergency powers were granted in March of last year at the start of the pandemic, and the call for this legislation comes just before Erie County is set to receive nearly $180 million in COVID relief funding from the federal government.
After seeing other levels of government take similar actions, Lorigo thinks Erie County should now follow suit.
"It's time," said Lorigo. "The positivity rates are going down; we've had eight straight weeks of a decrease in positivity. We can get back to work, and we don't need the emergency response that we needed a year ago - what we need is to get back to the business of governing and doing things in a way that the people of Erie County elected us to do."
Lorigo is hoping that there can be a vote on the resolution as early as this Thursday.
In response to their call, Poloncarz said the Erie County Legislature simply has no authority to make that decision.
"This is not like the governor's office where the assembly and the senate gave him some extraordinary powers above and beyond what he had," said Poloncarz during Tuesday's weekly COVID briefing. "Almost all of my powers to declare a state of emergency and to implement a state of emergency are not based on county law - they're not based on an action by the county legislature.
"What they are based on is New York State's Executive Law and Public Officers Law," he continued. "The legislature has no power to affect that."
