"The Oneida County Board of Legislators approved to keep funding fixes to the county's sewer district on Wednesday."
The legislators may approve the funding, but they do not provide the funding, which ultimately comes only from the sewer rate payers in the Greater Utica area.
"The decision did not require much debate, as the county is under a consent order from the state's Department of Environmental Conservation to fix the sewer infrastructure."
This decision is the latest reflection of a 50-year-old flawed "regional" set-up, relatively recent Suburban/County law violations, a rushed 2007 signing of the consent order, and, maybe the wrong solution.
Half of the legislators who oversee the district and set sewer rates are unaffected by it. Because it costs their constituents nothing, there is no incentive for them to understand sewer district issues. Almost half of the other half represent the suburbs which were able to expand their tax base more cheaply due to the law violations. These folk will not be inclined to place the true cost of a solution entirely on the jurisdictions that benefited. The remainder are the outnumbered Utica legislators who would have to make an extra effort to study and understand that their constituents are the ones getting screwed.
In a nutshell, owing to the make up of the BoL, there has been no accountability for the bad decisions that led to the consent order, and no accountability for the bad decisions that followed. Expect more of the same.
