TIMES UNION
Albany, NY
December 21, 2004

Column by Fred LeBrun

Reforms around next bend?

A month ago, state Comptroller Alan Hevesi issued a scathing audit of the Hudson River-Black River Regulating District, the poster child in the past for arrogant, abusive state authorities.

Hevesi found what many comptrollers and state overseers have noted before: a pattern of a gross lack of accountability, of political patronage and no-show jobs gone amok, of self-serving transactions shrouded in darkness.

During Democratic administrations, this little authority -- that by rights shouldn't exist -- has been the luxurious dumping ground for loyal Democrats. Republicans have done the same.

Hevesi singled out the district's secretary-treasurer, George Scaringe, for special notice. Scaringe, you may recall, used to be chairman of the Albany County Republican Committee. The regulating district paid him $62,000 a year, plus ample benefits, for what Hevesi found to be an average of about four hours of work a week.

But this is nothing new. I've been at this newspaper since 1967, eight years after this boondoggle was created. Every three or four years, some overseer like Hevesi becomes totally outraged at some arrogance by the regulating district and tries to hammer it.

It gets a few headlines, and that's all. Why? Because it would take an act of the Legislature to park it for good. But whatever party is in charge doesn't want to lose the plum pudding.

In 1978, then-Comptroller Arthur Leavitt proposed shutting it down as unnecessary. In 1993, state Inspector General Joseph Spinelli blasted the authority for providing no-bid contracts to former colleagues, taking friends and relatives to resorts at public expense, and more. That was during as bleak a fiscal time for the state as, well, now.

On the heels of Spinelli's report, Langdon Marsh, then commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation, said that his agency was looking for a way to fold the Hudson River-Black River's very limited mandate into the DEC. After all, the DEC regulates the flow of just about every other river and rivulet in the state. Why have a $6.8 million authority for flood control of the Sacandaga, which flows into the Hudson at Lake Luzerne, and of the Black River, flowing from the western Adirondacks to Lake Ontario right by Watertown?

Marsh said he was going to look hard for a way to get that done. Eleven years later, we're still looking.

Now, one reason there hasn't been a huge public outcry over the years is that the funds that support the regulating district come mostly from the hydro producer on Sacandaga and, to a far lesser degree, from recreational permit-holders around the reservoir. Also, the authority paid $2.3 million in taxes to the nine local communities around Sacandaga this year, making it the largest taxpayer in the area.

A few years ago, permit holders protested loudly when the greedy regulating district tried to increase fees by some astronomical amount. The attempt boomeranged and cost the chairman at the time his job.

But here's the irony. This agency has been a stinker for 45 years, but this confrontation forced a change.

Since January, highly respected former Adirondack Park Agency director Richard Lefebvre has been running the agency. He promised Hevesi every finding would be corrected within 90 days, and he plans to meet that promise.

Which raises the question: Can a good man save a rotten authority? Or is it just too darned late?