With the health care vote and domestic terrorism on the rise, I’ve been distracted from an issue I wanted to address at the beginning of the week. It’s local and it has to do with the Collins administration.

Over the weekend, someone shared with me two emails that went out to all County Department Heads as well as County Legislators and their staff members. Here they are:

Email #1

Hello Everyone,

I’d like to take a moment to send a quick reminder to all of you about the proper protocol for interaction between the Legislative and Executive branches of government. Any and all requests for information, meetings, etc., no matter the issue, must first come through the County Executive’s office.

If a Legislator or a Legislative Aide interacts directly with you or one of your employees, without first talking to someone in the County Executive’s office, do not move forward with any requests. Please respond, asking them to email or call Chris Grant or myself with their request. We will no longer be granting any meetings or requests for information if our office is not the first point of contact.

Please forward this message to any employees in your department that might interact with the Legislative Branch.

Thank you,
Cooper Hawley

Email #2

Hello Everyone,

The email I sent out yesterday proved to be too ambiguous to state our policy clearly. Let me try to refine the message and say specifically what we are looking to achieve.

If one were to break down interaction between the Legislature and the Executive branch, there are basically two types of correspondence.

1. Normal, constituent relations work.
a. This includes every day, routine maintenance issues such as filling a pothole, mowing a lawn, replacing a manhole cover, responding to a question about food stamps etc.
b. All departments and County employees should work with the Legislators and their aides to accomplish these tasks. These are not issues that need to be first cleared with the County Executive’s office.
c. However, I would like to know about all such requests, no matter how trivial. While our office does not need to be involved to give the go ahead, we do need to know about these requests as they occur. Please send me an email detailing the requests made whenever they occur.

2. Meeting requests from commissioners, special concerns
a. These are the issues I was talking about in the first email.
b. Legislators and Legislative Aides should not be calling commissioners, directors, deputy commissioners, etc. to be scheduling meetings or working on community outreach event type programs. These types of requests need to be made through our office.
c. This also applies to any questions Legislators or Legislative Aides might have about County policy. Any questions on our policy need to be directed to this office.
d. We are more than willing to work with our partners at the Erie County Legislature to fulfill these types of requests, but the County Executive’s Office must be the first point of contact for all of these issues.

I hope this clears up any confusion my first email created. Please notify the applicable people in your departments.

Thank you, and again if there are any questions please call me.

S. Cooper Hawley | Director Of Constituent Relations
Erie County | Office of the County Executive
95 Franklin, | Buffalo, NY 14202
P:(716) 858-4749 | F:(716) 858-8411
Cooper.Hawley@erie.gov

As you may know, I work in government as an aide to a member of a Legislative Branch. Before my current job I worked as an aide to a member of the Erie County Legislature. In total, I’ve been doing this work for almost four years, and I feel that I’m pretty qualified to state the following: the above policies are way out of line, and the people of Erie County will suffer for them.

When I worked for the County Legislature, do you know how many times I contacted the Department of Social Services or the HEAP office or Parks Department? Countless times. Do you know how often my “normal, constituent relations” work blurred with what Hawley describes as questions about County policies? Most of the time.

These policies are going to drastically slow down service to Erie County residents, many of whom are in dire situations and need immediate assistance.

These policies are going to force extremely burdened County employees (particularly Department of Social Services caseworkers) to write numerous emails detailing every conversation they have with a Legislator or Legislature staff member, “no matter how trivial.” Or worse, they are going to force County employees to push a big, pause button on their work while the guys on the 16th ruminate over the political repercussions of letting a certain County Legislator host a HEAP outreach site at a god-damned community center.

These policies are going to waste time. They are yet another stupid, bureaucratic layer that only serves to protect the political interest of the County Executive, and they suck.

Let’s change this:

To this: