Dan Romeo, the Democratic incumbent candidate running to keep his seat as the Onondaga County Legislature's 7th District representative. Credit: Courtesy of Dan Romeo

Dan Romeo is the incumbent representative for the Onondaga County Legislature’s 7th District. He is running unopposed.

Romeo is a longtime firefighter and a former member of the Syracuse City Schools Board of Education. 

He serves on the Environmental Protection committee and the Ways and Means Committee. 

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Central Current: How will you make up for the potential lack of funding for the aquarium?

Dan Romeo: That’s, to me, not the legislature’s problem to solve. The legislature, prior to me, allocated the funds that they thought were appropriate for it. The costs increased, and if the county executive can find more money to do it, then it’s on him. 

Central Current: How will you handle the loss of funding to services like SNAP and Medicaid?

Romeo: Well, we don’t really know what that’s going to look like yet, right, but we know that something’s coming. 

I think that’s something that we should do as a legislature, is come together and find out what the potential change is, or what is going to change is, and then find ways to make sure that we can work with the administration and the county executive’s office to prepare for whatever those changes are. 

We need to know what the problem is in order to address it, and we should get ahead of it as soon as we can. So once we have solid information, it would be nice to start working on it then. 

Central Current: The Legislature passed two resolutions to transfer a parcel of land along Onondaga Lake to the Onondaga Nation. As a legislator, do you believe you have a role in facilitating a transfer? If so, what is that role?

Romeo: Yeah, so they’ve come to us for other land transfers to private entities, just small pieces of land that we didn’t have a real purpose to own. 

So when I think of land transfers in general, I think that we should be a part of that process. It should be presented to us, why or why not? You know, those transfers are going to happen, and then we can have a discussion based on what that information is. 

Central Current: In a hypothetical scenario where federal funding for Onondaga County is conditioned on the basis of the County Sheriff’s Office cooperating with ICE operations, would you be in favor of supporting that collaboration? Why or why not?

Romeo: Yeah, so I think that Sheriff Shelley had a conference where he explained how he’s going to operate. And I think he did a great job of explaining the rules associated with warrants and how his department operates in general, and how the current political environment isn’t going to change that, because he is focused on following the law and doing what it is the Sheriff’s job to be doing. And I appreciate that and I support that. I think he has had a good approach to it. 

And you know, if something were to change, I would want to know about it, but I think that the current way he has presented their involvement is one that I support. 

Central Current: As Micron ramps up, how do you plan to monitor and ensure that Micron lives up to its lofty promises to protect Central New York’s bountiful natural life?

Romeo: A couple of things with that. 

Like I mentioned earlier, there may be things that we don’t have to vote on but we should be made aware of. So as this process goes along, everybody should be as informed as possible about the current status and what’s happening. 

The other piece is, as things come up that do need to be done, I hope that as a legislature we’re able to work collaboratively to make sure that it’s in the best interest of everybody. Micron is coming and I support that and I wanna support Micron.

I also wanna make sure that we’re getting the benefits locally, for the people that are here locally, that we would expect putting — I’ll call them systems — in place to make sure that we realize those so we’re getting the things that we want. 

You know, Micron can have a desire to help as much as they want. They just might not know the things that we’re looking for, you know? So I want to make sure that we’re able to express those and kind of get those things. 

Central Current: If ICE approaches Onondaga County and requests sensitive information to aid in what it says is a “criminal investigation” – and refuses to provide more details – should Onondaga County furnish sensitive data from a department like DSS to federal authorities with unclear motives?

Romeo: I am not qualified to answer a question of what information needs to be shared. I think that we should only share information that we are legally obligated to share.

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Laura Robertson is a staff reporter covering Onondaga County. Prior to joining Central Current, she lived on the edge of the Bering Strait in Nome, Alaska, where she worked as a reporter for a year. She...