Editor’s note: Laura Lavine has been a member of Central Current’s board of directors. She is currently on leave because of her candidacy and has not been involved in board operations since the beginning of March 2026. Lavine said she used ChatGPT to respond to a question about AI use in the county government.

Laura Lavine is running to represent District 17 in the Onondaga County Legislature. Her opponent, incumbent Nodesia Hernandez, currently serves as the body’s majority leader. Lavine is running on the Republican line. 

Central Current sent Lavine 11 questions about housing, immigration, data centers, agriculture, and more. Here are her responses. 

Central Current: With Micron moving in, politicians from every part of the political spectrum have emphasized the importance of building more housing. What is your vision for increasing housing in Onondaga County, and what role (if any) should the county play in doing so?

Laura Lavine: The County needed to—and did—push back on NYS’s obstructive bureaucratic red tape when it comes to creating more housing, and is dialing back mandates and requirements that stymie development. The County Executive’s six-point policy accelerator plan is a perfect example of how Republicans remove obstacles instead of creating them. 

Fortunately, Kathy Hochul dropped her misguided New York Housing Compact, so the decision-making is where it belongs which is at the local level. The beauty of the six-point plan is that it relies on local funding and control. Working with the local municipalities to ensure that necessary infrastructure and other town/village needs are met has to be an essential part of the plan. 

CC: Transparency has been a major talking point in the legislature this year – from donor transparency around the aquarium to concerns that each caucus brings things to the floor without giving the other advance notice. Where would you like to see more transparency in county government, and what can the legislature do to enforce it? 

LL: It all depends on how you define “transparency.” Some people claim a lack of it when they don’t get what they want. The legislature must comply with NYS’s Open Meetings Law and any other relevant laws for governing bodies. As a retired school superintendent, I am well-versed and experienced in topics like this, including compliance with the rules for executive sessions and similar processes. 

CC: As thousands of Onondaga County refugees and residents lose their access to SNAP benefits, what should the county’s role be in ensuring access to food? 

LL: Government’s prime responsibility is the safety and security of its residents which includes ensuring that they do not go hungry. We especially need to provide adequate nutrition to children so they grow and develop to their maximum potential, and fully participate in and benefit from their education. There are thousands of non-profits in our region. Several hundred are classified as Human Services or Housing and Social Services. My observation over the years is that they aren’t always held accountable for results, and they need improved coordination. For those reasons, I support the legislature’s creation of its New Americans Affairs council which should ensure that county government, nonprofits and affected families are communicating effectively to prevent widespread food insecurity but the legislature must hold the non-profits accountable. They need to measure and publicly report their results, and seek continuous improvement. Credit also goes to the County Executive for conducting an assessment by having county representatives meet with food pantries to see what the best response would be to the reduction in SNAP benefits, then providing a $500,000 investment to strengthen food pantry infrastructure.

CC: Roughly one-third of Onondaga County’s land is used for agriculture. What, if anything, can the county do to support farmers, farmworkers, and other people involved in agriculture in the county? 

LL: Stop Kathy Hochul from chipping away at farmland so she can plant China-produced panels on solar farms.

CC: As Micron prepares to move into Onondaga County, some county residents have raised concerns about PFAS and other emissions. How do you plan to mitigate the environmental concerns of county residents? 

LL: The county legislature has an Environmental Protection Committee to oversee the county’s infrastructure and public utilities. The members’ responsibilities include oversight of WEP, sewer districts and compliance with state laws. Their work is especially important now considering the increasing demands due to the CHIPS Act and Micron because it gives residents a vehicle for communicating with county officials and the key principals involved in those projects. Unfortunately, the committee’s performance has been criticized by some members of the public for not being transparent or effective enough. It took Republican Legislator Cody Kelly to get the DEC to confirm that the industrial treatment plant being built for Micron’s discharge would have to meet enforceable limits. Looks like it’s time to return the committee—and the legislature– to a Republican majority. 

CC: Could the county be doing anything more to mitigate and combat its lead problem? If so, what? 

LL: Accountability and results—the public expects and has the right to those but here’s a perfect example of where textbook bureaucratic redundancy, wasteful spending, and lack of accountability resulted in terrible outcomes. For years, the city and the county each ran a grant program for lead paint. Nine years ago, I interviewed employees from each program asking why we had such a confusing, fragmented approach with two different local governments chasing the same federal money to do the same job in the same neighborhoods. Instead of pooling resources, we had two entirely separate administrative offices, different application forms and eligibility lists, etc.  Eventually, HUD pulled the city’s funding due to severe mismanagement and poor oversight. Syracuse was put on probation and disqualified from seeking additional money. Since then, Onondaga County’s Lead Hazard Reduction Program has been filling the gap and scaled up major initiatives such as increasing the number of lead-safe contractors and running the lead poisoning prevention program. 

Then there was the city’s water testing fiasco that triggered federal investigation and revealed that Syracuse’s lead infrastructure problem was much worse and more expensive than previously thought. That destroyed the community’s trust and resulted in the EPA issuing an official order under the Safe Drinking Water Act, forcing the city to overhaul its corrosion control, public education, and water sampling protocols.  Going from bad to worse, this year, the EPA issued formal federal violations against Syracuse, explicitly faulting the city for multiple concurrent ongoing infractions, including moving too slowly to replace its lines and failing to protect residents, for Water Quality Parameter sampling deficits, pH sampling and reporting violations, tap sample collection deviations, and lead consumer notice deficiencies.

As for mitigating the problem, see the answer to Question 11 below. 

CC: Over the last two years, USCIS has rolled back protected status for many groups of immigrants and has begun to target people for detainment who might not have been targeted in the past (i.e.: asylum seekers). Do you believe the county needs to do anything more to protect its large immigrant and refugee populations? If so, what? 

LL: Immigration enforcement is not and should not be the focus of local law enforcement but to the extent that the law requires cooperation, they should follow the law. 

CC: What – if any – role should AI have in county operations? Should the county develop rules and policies to regulate its use? 

LL: In your email listing these questions, you said you would be “be running all the answers …. through AI detection software.”  

In the interest of full disclosure, it must be acknowledged here that I am on the board of Central Current, currently on leave. 

I asked AI what it thought of your statement. 

Google said:  

“Arguments Criticizing AI Detection in Journalism

  • High False Positive Rates: A primary concern among technical experts is that AI detectors are notoriously unreliable. They frequently generate false positives—flagging human-written text as AI-generated—particularly when analyzing formal, structured, or highly polished language, which is common in political position statements.
  • Disadvantage for Non-Native Speakers: Linguistic studies have shown that AI detectors disproportionately flag text written by non-native English speakers, as their writing style may rely on more predictable grammatical patterns that software mistakes for machine-generated text.
  • Chilling Effect on Modern Campaigning: Critics note that generative AI is frequently used by staff for legitimate tasks like basic proofreading, structural editing, or brainstorming. Punishing candidates based on automated software scans might penalize campaigns for using standard digital tools to refine their messaging.

Alternative Approaches to Verifying Statements

To avoid the pitfalls of unreliable software, some media outlets and political analysts suggest alternative verification methods:

  • On-the-Record Interviews: Conducting live, video-recorded, or in-person interviews where candidates must answer questions on the spot, removing the opportunity for pre-generated text altogether.
  • Sourcing and Fact-Checking: Focusing editorial resources on cross-referencing the claims made in a statement against the candidate’s voting record, public speeches, and past policy proposals.
  • Mandatory Disclosure Policies: Instead of relying on automated detection, some news organizations require campaigns to sign a disclosure stating whether generative tools were used to draft the submission.”

My favorite go-to AI source, Chat GPT, wrote:

“I think asking candidates for their own positions is reasonable; treating an AI detector’s verdict as proof of authorship is questionable.

{Editor’s note: When responses appeared to have used AI, Central Current used that to open conversations with candidates and then publish a disclaimer at the top of the story.}

There’s evidence for that concern: a Stanford study found that detectors falsely labeled human writing as AI-generated, with particular problems for nonnative English writers. That doesn’t establish the accuracy of whichever tool this agency uses, but it does show why a detector score shouldn’t establish misconduct by itself.

The agency should clearly explain what it prohibits: AI drafting? Editing? Spell-checking? Using AI to count words? That doesn’t make your statements AI-written. You supply the language and make the revisions yourself.

If they plan to reject or publicly flag an answer, I’d expect them to identify the detector, explain its limitations, and give the candidate an opportunity to respond. A reporter can also ask follow-up questions to establish whether a candidate understands and stands behind the position.

My view: the goal of authenticity is sound, but announcing ‘we’ll run it through AI detection software’ without explaining those safeguards puts too much authority in the software.”

I don’t know one remotely tech-savvy person who doesn’t use AI, and the number of users will continue to grow exponentially. As I stated above, my job as a public official would be to protect Onondaga County residents. Before bringing any AI tools into county operations, we would need an explanation as to what tasks would be accomplished by AI just as Central Current would need to do the same—creating content or spell-checking? drafting proposals or counting words?  We would need a plan for countering the drawbacks listed above and numerous others, and we would need technology and ethics experts to verify that its use is safe, unbiased, and cost-effective. 

CC: County Executive Ryan McMahon has announced a plan to study the feasibility and potential impacts of building a data center in Onondaga County. What would be the ideal outcome of that study? Depending on the outcome, how do you plan to respond? 

LL: We want AI but are experiencing a significant NIMBY backlash about the physical infrastructure needed to power it. We need to see exactly how much strain data centers would cause on energy, water and other resources, and weigh possible benefits against any harm to our neighborhoods or utility grids. The ideal outcome of the study would be objective, evidence-based data upon which to make further decisions. 

CC: Syracuse consistently has one of the highest rates of childhood poverty in the nation. Do you believe the county should be doing anything more than it is currently to address childhood poverty? If so, what?

LL: The county has reopened its Child Care Assistance Program, started 2Gen Onondaga, and is investing millions of anti-poverty fund dollars right inside the city. We’ve addressed the housing question in a previous answer which is going to make a marked improvement but we need an increased effort to connect people with jobs and make transportation more available. Those will go a long way toward reducing Syracuse’s worst concentrated poverty in the country. 

CC: What county issues and concerns have an outsize impact in your district specifically? How do you plan to address those concerns and bring them to the forefront of the legislative agenda? 

LL: The 17th legislative district is one of three that cover city and county so the legislators for those districts have some unique responsibilities. The city should not be in the water business. It has mismanaged its department, it puts bandaids on the problem of water main breaks —we still have wooden pipes–, and is wholly unequipped to deal with the inevitable challenge it will face when the federal government requires treatment of Skaneateles lake water which the city will be incapable of managing or financing. What is worse is that the city’s water commissioner just announced that Syracuse may need to replace nearly 30,000 lead pipes at a cost of $700 million. 

The department should be consolidated with OCWA, an authority controlled by the county, which would result in proper investment in, and management of these problems. The city simply can not get it right, and not only does the county have a plan with OCWA, it also has a higher credit rating than the city so it can better finance the work.  

I would engage the committee chairs, seek community feedback at public hearings, sponsor a formal resolution to fund a feasibility study and ensure that federal infrastructure grants and city-specific water rate structures insulate suburban taxpayers from absorbing the city’s legacy structural deficits.

My opponent Nodesia Hernandez is completing her third year as a legislator and has chosen to waste taxpayer dollars picking political fights instead of addressing these very serious problems. The 17th county legislative district deserves someone who knows what needs to be accomplished and will get the job done. 

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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...