Buffalo, NY (WBEN) In a politically aligned 7 to 4 vote, Erie County Legislators on Thursday rejected a pair of resolutions by the minority caucus to end Erie County's COVID 19 state of emergency. The minority leader says politics won out, while the majority had a couple of concerns.
Democrats like Howard Johnson and John Bargnesi expressed concerns about specifics and money. "When the questions were presented to the sponsors, and what powers they were looking to strip. they couldn't answer. There are too many generalities," says Johnson. "My main concern is whether or not by voting this through we would be cutting off any future funding coming our way, whether on the state or federal level," says Bargnesi.
John Gilmour says the legislature didn't have the power. "Both are misleading and politically motivated. That implies to the citizens of Erie County we have authority that we don't," says Gilmour.
After the meeting, legislator Joe Lorigo reacted to the vote, saying, "I think it's a shame that the Democratic legislature majority believes that Mark Poloncarz should maintain sole control over the counties COVID response."
"They basically took a vote today and said that they don't want to have a seat at the table, that they don't want to do their their elected duties as county legislators, and that they have no problem with abdicating their roles in the legislative process," says Lorigo. He also disagrees with those who say the legislature doesn't have the authority to lift the emergency. "We do have powers in the charter to direct the county executive to do things via legislative resolution. That's what these resolutions did. Alternatively, I said I was even willing to amend the resolutions to include the language of requesting the county executive to end the emergency declaration. They still didn't want to do that. So their their reasoning that we don't have the authority to do that is wrong."
Lorigo also disputed concerns about losing out on federal or state money. "There were two rounds of federal funding for COVID response and COVID Relief. Both of those were passed by Congress, and specifically stated that if a disaster declaration or emergency declaration did not need to be in place in any of those municipalities. Furthermore, this is a national disaster, not a regional disaster, such as a snow storm or tornado, were FEMA would make those decisions," explains Lorigo.
Legislator Jeanne Vinal voted no because of misrepresenting matters. "There's three branches, obviously legislative, executive, and judicial. So the executive branch has the authority to, like for mass mandates, and those types of things, those are authorities that the executive branch gets as part of their ability to control public health and disease spread. So everybody is sick of cool the this pandemic, it's coming on two years, Everyone is sick of wearing masks, but it's up to these decisions are made, you know, with the Health Department, the executive, the legislature has no right to say yea, or need to amass mandate, the executive powers that the legislator is limited to, on contracting agencies as well," explains Vinal.
Vinal compares the debate in the legislature to one at the dinner table. "I think that there's people who have sincere beliefs and both sides of it. Like for it's sort of like I'm ahead of it's like, I'm usually like there's certain people that are more law and order that think like you should always follow the law. And now those people are the ones that saying, but don't follow the mask law," notes Vinal. "My one relative, my one nephew, he said it best I think when he said that you've got certain like health department people, sometimes they will go over on the safety issue and then meanwhile, that sometimes, you know, free market business might just go over on that area. So you're trying to have a balance."
