Serving the Towns of Wawarsing, Crawford, Mamakating, Rochester and Shawangunk, and everything in between
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Editorial
Home Rule: On Like-Mindedness & Local Governance Issues

Sometimes it seems that home rule is the most natural of all common laws. We can control what we see better than others from outside our homes, be they literal houses or compact municipalities such as villages, towns, school districts, and even counties and states. But then greater concerns raise their heads: movement between such home jurisdiction, in terms of trade or ethical (and accompanying legal) concerns. Or the establishment of a national identity instead of one based on states or counties that do not provide means of keeping citizens moving towards areas where they feel more welcome.

Remember all those history lessons about the ways in which our states were founded in reflection of different levels of religious or other freedoms our people were searching for? Think of New England, or Utah for that matter. But also the battles we've fought to build a sense of consensus, at least to the outside world, which eventually gave us more power than any of the weapons and military skills we built for ourselves.

How we became a United States of America is a massive, inspiring, yet constantly embattled set of narratives and issues. But so are the ways in which we've grown to become New York State in difference from Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio or New Jersey. Or how Ulster County has grown different from Sullivan, Orange, Dutchess or other counties. Or, increasingly, the manner by which we've learned, more recently, to trumpet ourselves as parts of regions — Hudson Valley, say, or Catskills — which outsiders, particularly tourists with money, are more likely to identify with than counties or towns.

Simultaneously, all of us have started noticing how political divides seem to be growing within all of this. People started talking about blue and red states over a decade ago; now the focus is on rural versus urban splits, and which suburbs are battlegrounds. Racial and economic divides are all the rage, especially for those seeking to figure better ways of predicting and even controlling the ways in which people vote.

We've long noted, quietly, how this breaks out in an area like ours, where some towns are traditionally Republican, others Democratic, and some constantly wavering between the two. We applaud, and even work to accommodate, when those traditional splits start to unravel via new party caucus appearing, or candidate slates forming for local elections. Often these are simply reflecting the underlying patterns of mixed voting records ALL our communities demonstrate.

But then there is a drift against this grain seen in places where the GOP can't get candidates anymore, as seems to be happening in Mamakating, or a call for more Democratic action in Crawford gets a grumbling reaction from the party in power, as if a request for partisan debate is unpatriotic, and not the basis for the way politics begets government that results in actual community action.

Yes, this all reflects larger trends... but it also supports older ideas of home rule, albeit in a way that signals dangerous shoals ahead. Will people start moving town to town to find places where they feel unchallenged, we wonder, or will the outside immigration into our region from urban areas such as the new, enriched Brooklyn, end up taking precedence on a greater regional basis?

Meanwhile, such questions get reflected in our towns, via new battlelines over property uses and the accommodations we allow as a means of attracting new economic elements into our communities; and in our counties, where the ways in which village debts get picked up by the larger entity have come under question lately (talk about a push from afar on behalf of Ellenville's dissolution decision), along with piles of social politics getting played out loudly with little effect.

In the end, it seems the only place home rule will truly have its effect may be in terms of a burgeoning if still quiet backlash keeps building against the state's tax caps and their relentless figures, which a recent move upwards has provoked like a stick into a hornet's nest. Why the up and down, many are asking. Is there really rhyme or reason behind the figures our villages, towns and school districts must squeeze their spending plans into, or is it all just some conspiracy... against home rule?



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