KINGSTON - The chairman of the Ulster County committee overseeing construction of the county's new Law Enforcement Center says three Democrats should resign from the committee because their actions led to the removal of two state auditors who were examining the much-delayed, over-budget project.
Republican Michael Stock of Woodstock, who heads the committee and also is the Legislature's majority leader, says Democrats Richard Parete of Accord, Peter Kraft of Glenford and Tracey Bartels of Gardiner should "voluntarily remove" themselves from the Law Enforcement Center Project Committee.
Stock says he would replace the three with other Democrats.
Parete, Kraft and Bartels have refused to step down, calling Stock's request a political maneuver designed to divert attention away from further delays in the project that they say will push the opening past the most recently announced target date, Sept. 21.
The Law Enforcement Center, which will house the county jail and sheriff's office, originally was to open in April 2004.
"How long can you make a whole lot of noise over here to deflect from what is really going on?" Bartels said. "I would be very happy to be humbled and wrong if it's done on time."
The three Democrats, along with a former county employee and county Democratic Chairman John Parete, Richard's father, met with the two auditors from the state Comptroller's Office last Tuesday at county Democratic headquarters in Uptown Kingston to discuss the office's audit of the Law Enforcement Center project.
The Comptroller's Office subsequently pulled the auditors off the job saying, "We don't want any appearance that this audit is anything but impartial" and calling the meeting an "error in judgment."
"I think if they (the Democrats) had said in the beginning that 'this was a mistake on our part, and we want to apologize to the Comptroller's Office, fellow legislators and the public,' this would have been as simple as that," Stock said. "But Mr. (Richard) Parete is defending it as perfectly OK, and I think he's wrong, and I think members of his own caucus think he's wrong."
Both Stock and Parete are accusing each other of diversionary tactics on the issue. Parete says Stock is using the meeting at Democratic headquarters to divert attention from the fact that the completion date of the jail is going to be pushed back again, while Stock says Parete is using the opening date to divert attention away from a "secret meeting" with auditors.
Stock says he wants the three Democrats off the committee to restore the public trust in the committee and the audit, and he has asked that any information Democrats may be privy to regarding an additional delay should be made public. Stock said he doesn't know whether he'll take any action against the three Democrats for refusing to step down.
The state Comptroller's Office began an audit of the Ulster County Law Enforcement Center, the county's largest and costliest construction project to date, at the end of June. The project currently about 17 months behind schedule and roughly $12.6 million over budget