No lobbyist for the legislature, but one for Spano
The Democratic leadership of the Westchester Board of Legislators again this week postponed a move to hire a lobbyist to represent the board’s interests in Albany.
A proposed $55,000 contract with the lobbying form of Davidoff Malito & Hutcher was pulled from the agenda of the county’s Board of Acquisition and Contract just before Thursday’s meeting. It marked the second week in a row that the contract was pulled.
A spokeswoman for the legislature, Betsy DeSoye, said Majority Leader Martin Rogowsky was still negotiating with the firm.
Meanwhile, the contracts board did approve a new contract between County Executive Andrew Spano’s administration and the lobbying form of Patricia Lynch Associates. That contract is for $25,000, less than half of what the legislature was willing to pay for its lobbyist.
In recent years, the legislature has joined with Spano in hiring Lynch’s firm. This year, however, the BOL decided it needed to hire its own firm.
A check of state Board of Election records showed that Davidoff Malito & Hutcher donated $1,000 in October to the Democratic Majority Action Committee  a committee created by the legislature’s Democratic leadership to help elect more Democratic legislators.
The firm also donated $250 to BOL Chairman Bill Ryan, a White Plains Democrat, in November of 2006.
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why does the county exec, an elected democrat in a democratic county, need a lobbyist to lobby an elected
democratic governor and an elected democratic
majority in the assembly?....unless the county exec
really has no clout…and unless the governor won’t
take a call…in which case the best lobbyist the
county could hire would be nick spano in his capacity
as deputy majority leader of the republican state
senate…and that is exactly what will happen next year
To God’s ear, consultant.
I believe the County Executive has good clout with the Governer and the Assembly. You also need to have support
the Senate where they are lead by the Republicans. I think the minimal fee that the county is paying for their lobbyist is money well spent. Even though you have good relationships in Albany you still need someone up their who has their ear to the ground looking out for you and your county to assure everything moves along smoothly.
gotcha there..I believe if you check you will find that
Patricia Lynch’s firm is the lobbyist with whom nikc spano
has a professional relationship…so why wouldn’t we just
send nick back to do his job as only he can do it
I agree with that, Nick is the best person to help secure legislation and $$$$ for all of Westchester County.
No argument from me, I still think keeping a reasonable priced lobbyist from the inner circle working for you is a good thing.
Are you kidding me? Why do they need a lobbyist? Why don’t a few of the 17 legislators actually put in some work (since they want all these raises) and take a drive up to Albany (just over 2 hours) and do some lobbying? The county legislators make almost $50,000 annually for a few days of work each week, so they have plenty of time to lobby for the county as well. A few of them are recently claiming that the job is getting closer to full-time, while I doubt this is true, they can at least do the lobbying in-house and save the taxpayers $55,000.
When will this group of legislators stop embarassing themselves?
Lynch+Spano=0
Consultant-couldnt have said it better myself-bring Nick Spano back to the Senate