| It's been a very up and down week for Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton.
On the bright side, she announced $2 million for dredging Cayuga Inlet, addressing an expensive problem that had been getting worse for a long long time.
On the other, she generated headlines like "Assemblywoman Lifton irritates garbage truck task force, others" because of an event she held where she was would be "facilitating a meeting with the Upstate New York Safety Coalition Task Force to discuss the ongoing issue of trucks hauling solid waste on two-lane state highways".
It sounds like the meeting didn't quite go as planned. Her Republican fellow legislators asked why she wasn't joining them in sponsoring legislation that would "designate the state Department of Transportation as the truck-routing agency that would have the authority to designate what routes trucks can travel."
Lifton protested that the DOT was opposed, and that the bill wouldn't pass constitutional muster. Democratic U.S. Senator Schumer's representative at the meeting, however, disagreed:
"I do have to respectfully disagree in terms of the constitutionality component," she said. "We've done a lot of vetting and truck agencies absolutely can be created. There are states where they exist. The key element is that reasonable access is afforded because that is where we get into some of those interferences with clauses. As long as that's done we have every assurance that there is precedent constitutionally to do so."
The DOT doesn't seem so clear in its opposition, either:
Skip Carrier, a public information officer at the DOT, said the department has not taken a position yet. Carrier was not at the meeting.
"We're looking at the legislation and are reviewing it," he said. "We haven't taken a position on these bills yet."
Lifton's current position seems to be that a "blue-ribbon commission" is needed to further study the issue.
So, what do you think? Is this a case of a Democratic Assemblywoman doing a properly cautious job, or a case where a legislator doesn't want to push on a Democratic conference (and maybe the Governor) who'd prefer to keep trash rates down?
[Sorry, Robinia - this was just too richly conflicted a story to pass up.] |
