Newsbriefs

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Ambulance Blues
Shandaken will continue to pressure Belleayre Mountain officials to take responsibility for ambulance coverage of the mountain on winter weekends.
That’s the result of internal discussions between the town board and ambulance department staff, which will be on call in larger numbers starting this weekend until a long term solution can be reached.
At a town board session Monday, it was clear that not all is well with the ambulance issue. Last month Squad leader Jerry Pearlman announced that his crew could no longer take care of both the Ski Center and the Shandaken Community when Belleayre doubles the local population on weekends with out of town skiers that engage in high risk activity. He also said that from now on the Shandaken Community would be the squad’s priority, not Belleayre.
This stance caused friction between the town and Belleayre Superintendent Tony Lanza, who has said to Pearlman that it is Shandaken’s responsibility to serve the Ski Center because it lies within the town. Last month Lanza said he would enter into an agreement with the nearby Margaretville Ambulance Service, which operates out the Margaretville Hospital in the Delaware County Town of Middletown, but the plan never came to pass.
According to Pearlman, there is no change yet in the positions of either Lanza or himself, but as a stopgap measure Pearlman has found a way to increase coverage on the weekends. He did so, he said, as part of a compromise plan between himself and town Supervisor Robert Cross Jr., who successfully pushed for the hiring of one part time paramedic to full time status. Pearlman opposed the hiring.
Monday night Pearlman told the audience that he thought the hiring of Big Indian resident Craig Apolito was a bad idea. Furthermore, he said, the hiring does nothing to increase the size of the squad because last week another full time paramedic had resigned for reasons unrelated to the current ambulance crisis.
But for now, the coverage of the town is better on the weekends.
“I talked to the crew,” Pearlman said.
Pearlman also said that part of the compromise between he and Cross was that the town board would consider options to restructure the ambulance squad, such as creating an ambulance district in town that would provide funding for the squad independent of the towns general budget, much the way local fire departments are funded. Also, Pearlman said, Cross would work to convince Lanza of the need for Belleayre to accept some responsibility to provide ambulance service at his facility.
“I owe it to the taxpayers to try and make that happen,” Cross said.
Cross admitted that he was ducking press calls all last week about the ambulance issue because he feared that reporters wanted to take the story “where it didn’t need to go,” but he did not elaborate on what that meant. When asked to explain the status of the ambulance issue at Monday’s meeting he refused and said that reporters could meet with him privately to get information after the meeting. At just such a session Cross told a reporter that he hoped the town board got credit for doing something to resolve the ambulance issues by hiring Apolito.

Assessor Resigns
Brian Grant, one of Shandaken’s three elected tax assessors, has resigned. Grant sent his letter of resignation to the town board, which received it Monday, citing personal reasons for his departure. It remains unclear how or when his vacancy will be filled.

Close Or Merge?
A state panel has recommended that Kingston and Benedictine hospitals should merge by the end of next year or face the shut down of one of them. The directive has spurred legislative action and has brought up past rifts that resulted when the two hospitals tried to merge about a decade ago, but broke off talks because of Kingston Hospital’s agreement that it would abide by Benedictine’s Catholic health-care directives, which would include a ban on birth control and abortions. A second round of merger talks failed six years later, in 2004, when Benedictine again refused to abandon its Catholic health-care rules, although the two hospitals did agree to seek some cooperative agreements and eliminate the duplication of services.
The new state Commission on Healthcare Facilities in the 21st Century took note of the abortion disagreement in making its recommendation and suggested that reproductive services be handled at a separate facility.
“If Kingston and Benedictine Hospital fail to execute such an agreement by Dec. 31, 2007, it is recommended that the state commissioner of health close one of the facilities and expand the other to accommodate the patient volume of the closed facility,” the report continues. The commission’s recommendations now go to the Legislature, which must then reject or accept them in their entirety by the end of the year.
Kingston and Benedictine’s current memorandum of agreement is unsigned, but would establish a parent corporation for the two hospitals if agreed upon. David Sandman, executive director of the Commission on Healthcare Facilities in the 21st Century, has said he doubts either hospital will be forced to close “because we are very optimistic” the merger will take place.
In its report, the commission said there are too many hospital beds in the city (222 at Benedictine and 145 at Kingston), neither hospital is fully occupied, and there is a duplication of the services (including medical, surgical, emergency, obstetrics and perinatal care). The report also says both hospitals are in “precarious” financial situations.
The two hospitals have a similar number of inpatient discharges and emergency visits, but Kingston had significantly more outpatient visits than Benedictine. Kingston is affiliated with Margaretville Hospital, a federally designated critical access hospital in Delaware County. Each of the hospitals has approximately 750 full-time equivalent employees. In 2003, Kingston Hospital had a minus-10.4 percent operating margin; Benedictine’s operating margin was minus-2.1 percent. Each of the hospitals has long-term debt of approximately $25 million.
In light of the report, Ulster County legislators Robert Parete, Chairman of the Health Committee, Peter Kraft, Chairman of the Human Development Committee and Joseph Stoeckeler and Mary Sheeley, who both serve on the Health Committee, have started urging Legislatove Chairman David B. Donaldson to form a Blue Ribbon Commission to carefully review the recommendations and offer a long term vision for Ulster County. The members of the Blue Ribbon Commission will consist of various healthcare professionals and interested parties. At the same time, they will urge the Governor and State Legislature to hold public hearings throughout the State before any decisions are final with respect to the report.

At Onteora…
Four members of the middle school steering committee gave a presentation at the Onteora School District’s November 28 school board meeting in Phoenicia on the importance of a five-through-eight grade configuration smiddle chool and why Onteora should go in that direction. Chief among the reasons for heading in this direction were that it would help align OCS with State standards, inspire better team teaching, help age appropriate social development with less peer pressure, and promote both grade flexibility for special needs student and parental involvement.
It was furter proposed that ideally, such a school would involve a separate gymnasium, cafeteria, separate library from the high school. Right now, Onteora’s Senior and Middle schools are not completely separate.

ATV Not
The state Department of Environmental Conservation reports that Region 3 Forest Rangers cited two people for incidents involving unlawful ATV use during the opening weekend of hunting season Nov 19. Both incidents took place on or near Silver Hollow Road close to the Shandaken-Woodstock town line and within the Mt.Tobias Wild Forest.
According to DEC spokesperson Wendy Rosenbach, Edward O’Brien of Pelham Manor was charged with operating a motor vehicle in the forest preserve, a violation carrying a possible fine up to $250, and was issued a second ticket for an unregistered 1995 Jeep which was impounded. Susan Van Exel of Palenville was charged with a more serious offense, a misdemeanor count of carrying a loaded firearm on a vehicle. Tickets written are all returnable in Woodstock Town Court.

Youth Program
32 seventh and eight graders from the Onteora School District are the first to sign up for a new pilot program called AWARENESS (Assisting With Adolescents to Resolve, Empower and Nurture through Enriching Senior Social events), an initiative started by Marie Shultis, wife of Hurley supervisor Mike Shultis. Utilizing two older twelfth grade coordinators and a dozen or so trained teenage mentors, the program’s goal is to “begin to impact the substance abusing aspects of our school culture by providing as many mentoring groups as possible,” according to Shultis.
Through the program, which was launched at the Paul corn maze on Hurley Mountain Road Sunday, at least 12 high school students and 35 middle school students representing a diverse economic, ethnic, and social mix of young people and their families will come together to participate in a variety of activities that are intended to provide enjoyable alternatives to alcohol and substance abuse and are aimed at building self-confidence and tolerance, Shultis explained. In preparation, the student mentors and parents associated with the program received two training sessions earlier this month from the Mental Health Association of Ulster County (MHAUC).
“What drives this program is the genuine enjoyment the older students get working with the younger students and visa versa,” said Pam Perkins, family support coordinator with the MHAUC. “The parents see this mutual enthusiasm and they are motivated to get involved and stay involved.”
A key aspect of the new program, according to Shultis, is that the young people will help plan the activities rather than become involved in a program planned for them by adults, she said. Future plans include movie outings and participation with the Little Monster record label owned by Hurley councilwoman Kate Hyman and her husband, Kevin Salem.
Little Monster recently released its first CD, “All Together Now,” a collaboration of local young people and adult guests singing Beatles music that is available exclusively at Barnes and Noble and the label expects to release six more CDs next year.
Area businesses and residents interested in donating to the AWARENESS program can call Schultis at 845 417-1483 for more information. The program’s web site is www.townofhurley.org/awareness.

Ah… The Jail!
Officials at the state Commission of Correction informed county officials last week they were pushing the opening date of the long-promised Ulster County jail to early next year. And to make matters worse, some county legislators are concerned that, given the variety of problems now being found at the $100 million facility, Ulster County will continue to face decades of repairs and other woes while the 402-bed jail and sheriff’s headquarters is occupied.
The sheriff’s department moved into the administrative section of the building this summer, but despite optimism expressed as recently as two weeks ago that the jail would open this year, officials have now conceded that won’t happen.
The facility was originally scheduled to open in April 2004 and cost about $53 million. Delays have continued to push back the opening date for the jail and increase the price. The current estimate of about $100 million does not include tens of millions of dollars of additional costs to taxpayers for interest on the money borrowed to finance the project.
Sheriff-elect Paul Van Blarcum said that although he laments the additional expense that will arise from more delays, he sees a silver lining. “From the start, I wanted to be there right as it’s opening, and not get there when it is already over with,” said Van Blarcum, who takes office Jan. 1. He opposed building the new jail, as early as 1998, in his first and unsuccessful bid for county sheriff, but the problematic jail helped propel him into office this past November.

Killer Storm
One person in the Ellenville area was killed and 25,000 Central Hudson customers lost power on December 1 when a line of powerful thunderstorms raced across the region, leaving tornado warnings in the Kingston and Saugerties areas.
The death occurred in Warwarsing when a tree uprooted and fell on a house on Route 209 near Hang Glider Road, not far from the former site of HITS.
Parts of Kingston, Stone Ridge, High Falls and Rhinebeck all lost power as a result of the storm, and Woodstock’s 25th annual Open House holiday event resulted in much lower than expected attendance.
George Maglaris, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albany, said the storms - which brought thunder, lightning, torrential rain and strong winds - were associated with a fast-moving cold front that tracked from west to east. Wind speeds in Ulster County reached about 65 mph .
To improve the reliability of electric service throughout the Mid-Hudson Valley and better meet the growing energy needs of its customers, Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation said this week that it has implemented a more comprehensive vegetation management program for its electric transmission and distribution system.
Central Hudson is studying tree species and vegetation growth rates along its electric distribution lines, together with other factors such as circuit performance histories, in determining the optimum maintenance schedules and trimming strategies to improve service reliability. Electric circuits are analyzed individually so that a customized maintenance plan can be developed for each.
“Putting the results of this study to use will help us better-address reliability of the electric system,” said utility President Carl Meyer. “Crews work under the direction of trained and certified arborists to determine how trees can be safely and effectively trimmed. In addition, we work with municipal officials to identify and trim or cut diseased or dying trees that may fall onto power lines, and will assist them in determining the appropriate tree species for planting near utility lines.”


BOCES Granted
Ulster BOCES has been awarded more than $734,000 in federal grant funds to be used to support its Projects with Industry program, which serves individuals with severe disabilities. The funding, part of the Federal government’s 1968 Rehabilitation Act, will be used over a three-year period to support the program.
The program provides job development, job placement, and to the extent appropriate, training services to assist individuals with mental or physical disabilities overcome their specific health challenges and obtain or advance in employment in the competitive labor market. This includes developmental, emotional, as well as physiological disorders or conditions that in some way hampers or hinders a person in their ability to carry out day-to-day activities.
There are currently 28 students participating in the Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals with Disabilities program at Ulster BOCES with nine currently receiving assistance through the federally-funded PWI program. There are also three students enrolled in PWI classes who will be entering the program soon. Courses offered include Administrative Office Practice, Basic Business Bookkeeping, Administrative Medical Assistant, Registered Medical Assistant, Dental Assistant, HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning), and Manufacturing Technology.

Gang Warfare?
Increased gang infiltration and violence in the Hudson Valley means traditional and new means of addressing the issue head on. Ulster County District Attorney Donald Williams said the entire region is now facing those problems.
“The Mid-Hudson Region, Poughkeepsie, Orange County, Newburgh, Kingston, and other areas, are no longer immune from the type of situation such as gang violence that has only been experienced to a large extent in larger metropolitan areas such as New York City,” he said. “We most certainly are not anywhere near the same level of some of these other jurisdictions, but it an emerging issue that must be addressed and now.”
Williams said law enforcement is taking an aggressive response to the problems, which also require action from parents and schools.
The state-funding Operation IMPACT program was formed a couple of years ago to provide some funding to areas with high gang presence to combat that scourge.

Acid Memories?
Bethel Woods Center for the Arts is developing a new museum that will explore the 1969 Woodstock Festival experience and its significance to American culture. Museum organizers are accepting donations and loans of artifacts from the most famous rock concert in history as well as the equally famous decade that produced it. The museum is seeking items of significance that will help to chronicle the era that began with JFK and ended with Woodstock… and included this area’s being home to the likes of Jimi Hendrix, The Band, and others…
The museum will explore the meaning and importance of the Woodstock event to the local community and the nation through personal stories and profiles, immersive multi-media exhibit displays and experiences, engaging programs and educational events. The goal of the Museum is to create an inter-generational dialogue and evolving understanding of the 1960’s and to preserve the historic site on which the 1969 Woodstock Music and Arts Fair took place.
Bethel Woods is set within nearly 1,700 acres at the site of the 1969 Woodstock Festival. Bethel Woods presented a variety of artists and performances in its inaugural season, including classical, pop, rock, country and jazz.

Age & Autism
Men who become fathers in their 40s or older are much more likely to have autistic children than younger dads, a new study shows, bolstering evidence that genetics contributes to the mental disorder. The research involved about 130,000 Israeli Jews born in the 1980s. Those fathered by older men were almost six times more likely to have autism or related disorders than those fathered by men younger than 30, and more than one-and-a-half times more likely than children fathered by men ages 30-39.
The mothers’ age at childbirth appeared to have little impact on autism, although the researchers said they couldn’t rule out “a possible small effect” from the oldest mothers.
Autism experts called the study intriguing but not definitive, and the authors said the results need to be tested in a broader population to see if similar findings would occur in other ethnic groups. The researchers also said their results may not apply to Asperger’s or other autism-like disorders.
Previous research linked advanced paternal age with lower intelligence scores and with schizophrenia. Other studies have shown that sperm mutate more often in older men, potentially leading to increased risk for brain abnormalities in their children.
Autism is a developmental disorder that involves an impaired ability to socialize and communicate. Symptoms can include repetitive behaviors such as head-banging; avoidance of physical or eye contact with others, and communicating with gestures rather than words. It is more common in boys than in girls and typically is diagnosed in the first few years of life.
Many researchers believe impaired genes are a cause or trigger of autism. Most studies have failed to find evidence to support a persistent belief among some parents that mercury-containing childhood vaccines are to blame.

Hit With A Pan
A Hurley woman is in the Ulster County Jail on a charge of second-degree assault for allegedly attacking another person during a domestic incident on Friday night, December 1, Ulster County Sheriff’s deputies reported Saturday.
Mirosalva Alberto, 50, of Route 373 in West Hurley allegedly beat the other person, her husband, in the face and head with a metal pan. The victim was transported to Benedictine Hospital in Kingston where he remains hospitalized with several fractures to the face.
Mrs. Alberto was arraigned and sent to the county jail in lieu of $1,000 cash bail.

Energy Crisis?
Thirty-one percent of U.S. teenagers say they drink energy drinks, according to Simmons Research. That represents 7.6 million teens, a jump of almost 3 million in three years.
Nutritionists warn that the drinks, laden with caffeine and sugar, can hook kids on an unhealthy jolt-and-crash cycle. The caffeine comes from multiple sources, making it hard to tell how much the drinks contain. Some have B vitamins, which when taken in megadoses can cause rapid heartbeat, and numbness and tingling in the hands and feet.
But the biggest worry is how some teens use the drinks. Some report downing several cans in a row to get a buzz, and a new study found a surprising number of poison-center calls from young people getting sick from too much caffeine.
Most brands target male teens and 20-somethings. Experts say the fierce competition among hundreds of new drinks, with Austria-based Red Bull guarding the biggest market share, leads to a “ratcheting up” of taboo names as companies try to break out from the crowd.
Cocaine Energy Drink, which launched in September and now sells in convenience stores and nightclubs in six states, is the latest example, following a twisted logic set by drinks named Pimpjuice and Bawls. Anheuser-Busch and Miller Brewing now produce several “energy beers” - beer containing caffeine.
How much caffeine do energy drinks contain? A University of Florida study found that some products, although served in cans two-thirds the size of a standard can of Coke, contain two to four times the amount of caffeine as that Coke. Energy drinks are unregulated in the United States, but the authors of the University of Florida paper suggest warning labels for them.
“How much of your favorite energy drink or soda would it take to kill you? Take this quick test and find out.” - From a “Death by Caffeine” calculator on the Web site, www.energyfiend.com. Fill in your weight and click the button marked “Kill Me.”

Literary Hoax
A Catskill woman was sentenced in federal court recently to 65 months in prison for engaging in a scheme to defraud prospective authors of monies paid to have their books published. Martha Ivery, 57, also known as Kelly O’Donnell, previously pleaded guilty to 15 counts of mail fraud and one count of bankruptcy fraud.
Ivery presented two separate persona to prospective authors: Martha Ivery, publisher, Press-TIGE Publishing Company, Inc., and Kelly O’Donnell, literary agent, Kelly O’Donnell Literary Agency, Inc. She obtained payments in advance of publishing from a given prospective author both in her persona as Martha Ivery and in her separate persona as Kelly O’Donnell, without disclosing to the prospective author that they were one and the same person.
She received fee payments prior to publication of a given book, including initial payments to publish, separate fees for representation by a literary agent, separate fees for editing, separate fees for illustrations, separate fees for a Special Markets Program, and separate fees for a prospective author to purchase copies of her own book prior to publication, and offered a variety of excuses for non-publication years following the initial payment.

Torture Flights
Eleven European Union governments - including Britain, Poland and Germany - knew about secret CIA prisons operating in Europe, a draft European Parliament report concluded recently.
The report presented to the EU assembly’s special committee investigating allegations about the detention centers and CIA kidnappings in Europe called on governments to launch their own inquiries to determine whether human rights laws were violated. It criticized top EU officials of “omissions and denials” during testimony to the committee.
No EU governments have admitted that the claimed anti-terror operations were carried out on their territory. Governments have been warned by EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini that if they knew about the CIA renditions and secret flights they could be found in violation of EU law.
While thin on proof to back up the allegations, the committee report claimed it got information from secret documents and information from several sources in the United States and from national authorities in the 25-nation bloc.
“At least 1,245 flights operated by the CIA have flown into the European airspace or stopped over at European airports,” the draft said.
The report said 11 EU nations - Britain, Poland, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Cyprus - had knowledge of the alleged U.S. secret anti-terrorism measures taking place on European soil.
It said the committee had obtained “serious circumstantial evidence” showing that Poland may have hosted a temporary secret detention center for the CIA.
The draft report will be voted upon by the special committee after the EU assembly’s Christmas break, officials said.
In September, President Bush acknowledged for the first time that terrorism suspects have been held in CIA-run prisons overseas, but did not specify where.
Several governments around the world have meanwhile tried to rebut criticism of how they handle detainees by claiming they are only following the U.S. example in the war on terror, the U.N. anti-torture chief said recently.
Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture, said that when he criticizes governments for their questionable treatment of detainees, they respond by telling him that if the United States does something, it must be all right. He would not name any countries except for Jordan.
“The United States has been the pioneer, if you wish, of human rights and is a country that has a high reputation in the world,” Nowak told a news conference. “Today, many other governments are kind of saying, ‘But why are you criticizing us, we are not doing something different than what the United States is doing?”’
Nowak said that because of its prominence, the United States has a greater responsibility to uphold international standards for its prisoners so other nations do not use it as an excuse to justify their own behavior. The remarks were the latest in a tense back-and-forth between Nowak and the United States. He has been an outspoken critic of U.S. detainee policy, chastising the United States for maintaining secret prisons. He has also been skeptical about new legislation that would protect detainees from blatant abuse - such as rape and torture - but does not require automatic legal counsel and specifically bars detainees from protesting their detentions in federal courts.

Warming Update
The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments on the questions of whether the federal government, particularly the Environmental Protection Agency, is authorized and obligated to take action to ease global warming. New York and Massachusetts, which have been joined by 10 other states, 3 cities and 13 environmental groups, will argue that the federal agency has shirked its legal responsibility to protect the public and ignored the requirements of the Clean Air Act.
Federal lawyers, in tandem with those of the automobile industry, are arguing that existing law is inadequate to support far-reaching regulation and that Congress or the foreign policy arena, or both, are the appropriate places to produce new global warming policies. But, lawyers on both sides of the issue agree, the justices’ answers to a more basic question — whether the plaintiffs have a right to bring the case — may have the greatest ramifications.
In deciding that issue, known legally as a question of standing, the justices may determine whether Massachusetts and its fellow petitioners have made a good enough case that the atmosphere and oceans are warming at a dangerous rate, fueled in part by human actions like burning fossil fuels, and that the petitioners have been harmed in the process. Second, the court may decide whether any person or state injured by a worldwide phenomenon may seek legal redress even though it would only partly deal with any damage.
The question of standing was not decided by the appeals court. That panel rejected Massachusetts’s claim that the federal environmental agency was obligated to regulate the emission of heat-trapping chemicals from the tailpipes of new passenger vehicles. One judge said the harm the state had suffered was too generalized to give it standing. A second said the potential loss of coastal land was enough to give it automatic standing, and the third judge did not address the issue.
The case originally stemmed from a 1999 application by 19 environmental groups asking the E.P.A. to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions in new passenger vehicles.
Meanwhile, three Democratic senators poised to head committees grappling with global warming have pressed President Bush for mandatory U.S. limits on greenhouse gases. In a letter to Bush, Sens. Barbara Boxer of California, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut said voters in the recent election demanded that the government reduce the nation’s heat-trapping greenhouse gases that are contributing to the Earth’s warming.
“The recent elections have signaled a need to change direction in many areas, including global warming,” the senators wrote.
Boxer, Bingaman and Lieberman will, respectively, head the Senate ‘s environment, energy and homeland security committees when Democrats take control in January.
The White House, however, sent signals that the new Democratic Congress should not expect Bush to budge from his opposition to regulating industrial carbon dioxide. That position he took in March 2001 was a reversal of his campaign stance.
The departing chairman of the Senate environment committee, Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma, promised to lead the opposition to climate bills that pose big economic costs in next year’s Senate. Democrats will enjoy a 51-49 majority, but 60 votes are often needed to overcome minority opposition.
“Many of you might be thinking that the Democrats’ razor-thin majority means that global warming-inspired carbon cap legislation is somehow now going to sail through the next Congress,” said Inhofe, who has called global warming an hysteria-driven hoax. “Well, I can assure you that will not happen.”
Departing United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan simultaneously put the blame for global warming on “a frightening lack of leadership,” saying the poorest people in the world, who do not even create much pollution, bear the brunt of rising temperatures.
“The impact of climate change will fall disproportionately on the world’s poorest countries, many of them here in Africa,” Mr. Annan said in a speech to a major climate conference. “Poor people already live on the front lines of pollution, disaster and the degradation of resources and land. For them, adaptation is a matter of sheer survival.”
When pressed at a news conference afterward about his comments on poor leadership, Mr. Annan denied that he was singling out the United States, the world’s biggest source of the smokestack and tailpipe gases that are linked by most scientists to rising temperatures. The United States is also one of the few countries that has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the first treaty setting limits on the heat-trapping pollutants.
Malaria, one of Africa’s leading killers, is spreading to higher altitudes because of rising temperatures. The Sahara is expanding, turning farmland into desert and contributing to conflicts like the one in the Darfur region of Sudan. And animal and plant species have begun dying off or changing sooner than predicted.

In Jail Now…
A record 7 million people - or one in every 32 American adults - were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, according to the Justice Department. Of those, 2.2 million were in prison or jail, an increase of 2.7 percent over the previous year, according to a report released last week.
More than 4.1 million people were on probation and 784,208 were on parole at the end of 2005. Prison releases are increasing, but admissions are increasing more.
Men still far outnumber women in prisons and jails, but the female population is growing faster. Over the past year, the female population in state or federal prison increased 2.6 percent while the number of male inmates rose 1.9 percent. By year’s end, 7 percent of all inmates were women. The gender figures do not include inmates in local jails.
From 1995 to 2003, inmates in federal prison for drug offenses have accounted for 49 percent of total prison population growth. The numbers are from the Justice Department’s annual report breaking down inmate populations for state and federal prisons and local jails.
Racial disparities among prisoners persist. In the 25-29 age group, 8.1 percent of black men - about one in 13 - are incarcerated, compared with 2.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.1 percent of white men. And it’s not much different among women. By the end of 2005, black women were more than twice as likely as Hispanics and over three times as likely as white women to be in prison.

Judging Moves
The recent death of state Supreme Court Justice Vincent Bradley and the appointment of Justice Michael Kavanagh to the court’s Appellate Division in New York City will lead to some adjustments in New York’s Third Judicial District, which is comprised of Ulster, Greene, Columbia, Sullivan, Albany, Rensselaer and Schoharie counties. State Supreme Court justices handle primarily civil matters, and each county has judges assigned to it. Currently, Ulster County has four justices assigned to it, including Bradley and Kavanagh, and one acting justice.
Kavanagh will serve at both the county and the appellate level and will split his time between Kingston and New York City. But the Bradley seat will need to be filled by appointment by the governor, subject to confirmation by the state Senate. That seat then will be up for election in November 2007 and the winner will serve a 14-year term.
Phil Sinagra, executive director of the Ulster County Republican Committee, and John Parete, chairman of the Ulster County Democratic Committee, can recommend potential appointees to the governor, though both said they have not yet considered possible candidates. Bradley’s successor does not have to come from Ulster County.

FBI Lists All
The FBI wants to start including “non-serious offenses” on criminal-history reports to employers – a move some say could unduly taint people’s job prospects and spread misinformation. If the proposal goes into effect, many employers using the FBI’s system could discover a job applicant had been convicted for drinking in public, or had been arrested for vagrancy as a teenager, among other offenses.
Under the proposal, which has not yet been finalized, the FBI would report minor offenses on “rap sheets” – records used by employers for screening job and licensing applicants and employees. These offenses – which can range from traffic violations to urinating in public – would be reported through the FBI’s nationwide fingerprint databank.
Currently, the Bureau essentially tracks only information on “severe and/or significant” offenses, mainly major misdemeanors and felonies. Now, the FBI proposes to include virtually all “finger-printable offenses” in the database, which feeds into a national crime-information system that is available to more than 90,000 law-enforcement agencies and other authorized users. States set their own policies on what offenses warrant fingerprinting.
Under the proposal, offenses ranging from traffic violations to urinating in public could be reported through the FBI’s nationwide fingerprint databank.
In joint comments filed with the FBI, labor and civil-liberties groups warned that the plan, coupled with other efforts to expand the criminal-data system, would foreclose employment opportunities for an untold number of people, disproportionately impact people of color, and invite the abuse of sensitive information. Workers’ and privacy-rights advocates say that the expansion of rap sheets fits into a widening scheme to promote “security” – by exposing people’s personal histories to private interests.
Groups opposed to the proposal say it would also push many people of color further away from the mainstream employment market. According to the FBI’s report on crime in 2005, for low-level offenses like “disorderly conduct” and “loitering,” blacks made up more than 30 percent of arrests in 2005, but only about 13 percent of the general population.
The FBI refused to comment about the plan, pending the analysis of input submitted during the public-comment period, which ended earlier this month.

FCC Watchdogs
Approximately 250 people assembled at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library’s Wallace Center in Hyde Park on Tuesday, November 21 for a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hearing to exert their ownership.
With FCC rules up for review, speaker after speaker told Michael Copps, the lone FCC commissioner present at the hearing, that they want both the local and national media to reflect the news accurately and completely, choose the issues that are covered without bias or self-interest, and portray minorities responsibly.
“The corporate monopolization of the public airwaves and other media outlets is one of the most critical issues facing our country today…There is no other issue as central to the health of our democracy,” said Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-Hurley), who jointly sponsored the hearing with Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media, a Rhinebeck-based grass roots media reform organization. “If you allow any small number of people to control the information the vast public has access to, ultimately you are going to allow them to control the ideas that people hold. And we need to understand [media consolidation] is being done intentionally and purposefully in order to corrupt the political process in our country.” Hinchey is also the founder of the Future of American Media Caucus in the House of Representatives and chief sponsor of the Media Ownership Reform Act of 2005.
At issue are potential rule changes allowing for further media consolidation that would enable one corporation to theoretically own all of the media outlets — radio, television and newspapers — within the same community. Two large corporations, Clear Channel Communications and Cumulus Media, already own about half of the radio stations in the Hudson Valley.
Current FCC rules prohibit a single company from owning a television or radio station and a major daily newspaper in the same city but the FCC attempted in 2003 to eliminate this ban in all but the smallest markets. Public outcry and a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals’ Third Circuit circumvented the revisions. The federal agency is believed to be planning a similar relaxation of the rules again although it hasn’t specified how it intends to change them. The Republican-dominated FCC — the agency has three Republican members and two Democrats (including Copps) — announced its upcoming review of its ownership regulations in June and is taking testimony through December, although it has only scheduled one official public hearing in the country.
Copps maintained the FCC is in the midst of a “hugely important proceeding that will decide what the nature of our media — our radio, TV, newspapers, cable, even the Internet — will look like for years to come.” The commissioner will take the public testimony given at last week’s hearing back to Washington for inclusion into the official record as he has done with the testimony from more than 30 similar events around the country in recent months. “Will our media help us to expand democracy or will it primarily serve the financial interests of a few players?” he posed.

First Strokes!
A launch event will be held at Belleayre Mountain Ski Center’s Discovery Lodge on Friday, December 15, from 2-4pm to kick off “First Strokes,” a new marketing program for the region spearheaded by the Roxbury Arts Group (RAG) and the M-ARK Project. Thanks to a partnership effort between RAG and M-ARK to secure a Cultural Tourism Initiative Grant, the “First Strokes” program will match local artists, hotels, and visitor venues with tourists looking to learn to paint, write, sculpt or create fiber art. Wine and hors d’oeuvres will be served, and participation materials will be distributed.
Information on local artists and classes can be found at www.firststrokes.org, or by calling the M-ARK Project, Inc. at (845) 586-3500.