Gregory Eriksen is challenging 6th District Legislator Julie Abbott to represent Skaneateles in the Onondaga County Legislature. Credit: Courtesy of Gregory Eriksen

Editor’s Note: Gregory Eriksen is a partner at Bousquet Holstein PLLC. Larry Bousquet is a founding board member at Central Current and currently sits on its Board of Directors. If you’d like to read about Eriksen’s opponent, Julie Abbott, you can read more here. Central Current’s election coverage is supported in part by a grant from the Health Foundation for Western and Central New York.

Gregory Eriksen, a partner at Bousquet Holstein, is challenging Julie Abbott, the Republican incumbent, to represent the 6th District in the Onondaga County Legislature.

Eriksen is a Democrat running on an affordability agenda to lower energy costs, invest in housing, and direct county funds toward essential services like infrastructure improvements and welfare. His opponent, Abbott, has served in the Legislature since 2018, when County Executive Ryan McMahon appointed her to fill the seat he vacated. Abbott, who chairs the legislature’s Environmental Protection Committee and serves on the Ways & Means Committee, is seeking a fourth term in the Legislature.

Originally from the Hudson Valley region, Eriksen moved to Central New York in 2007. His prior experience includes a stint as a law clerk in federal court at the Northern District of New York, almost two decades of legal practice, and seven years as a village trustee on the Skaneateles Village Board.

Eriksen believes that experience positions him to effectively oversee the county’s infrastructure, as well as take funding from what he thinks are wasteful projects and redirect the funds into critical constituent services.

“I see the feds shredding the social safety net, at the same time as we’re burning money on an aquarium,” Eriksen said. “And our funds need to go toward things that help people get through the week, get through the month. So I would fight for money to be directed to Medicaid.”

Early voting begins Oct. 25, which is also the deadline for voters to register to vote. Election Day is Nov. 4.

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?

Gregory Eriksen: Honestly, funding the aquarium is not my priority. That’s Ryan McMahon’s problem. The aquarium is Ryan McMahon’s project. He’s about the only person in the county who wants the stupid thing. It’s a vanity project. It’s his midlife crisis. And I don’t think any taxpayers should have to give another nickel to it. 

I think it’s outrageous and offensive, and it’s, frankly, one of the reasons why I’m running. Because it’s burning $100 million that should have been used on programs that improve people’s day to day lives, that should have been used to fund services that that improve our quality of life, that should have been used to fund programs that can reduce our cost of living and that can give people access to the dignified life that they all deserve here.

If you really want to know about funding it, I think the legislature finally did the right thing when they cut off public funds to it. I think it’s an abomination that they voted for it in the first place,  but I think cutting off funds to it is the appropriate thing to do. I think raising the money privately is the only way that it should happen, because this was Ryan’s idea. Ryan brow beat people into doing this. He cut deals to make this happen. No one wants this thing other than Ryan McMahon, and maybe my opponent, and maybe a couple of other people. 

So, it’s their mess. They should clean it up with private funds, and with their time. One more thing on that – any private funds, the donor must be disclosed. And I have a real problem with the fact that donations to the aquarium foundation are anonymous right now. My opponent is front and center on wanting those donations to be anonymous. That is the biggest opportunity for corruption in this county in years, because that aquarium is Ryan McMahon’s baby. He’s tied to it personally. So if you’re writing a big check to the aquarium Foundation, you’re not just funding an aquarium. You’re bailing out his future, you’re bailing out his career, you’re bailing out his name, and he owes you big-time. 

So I want to know who’s writing five-figure checks and six-figure checks for that thing, because I want to be able to, and every everyone in the county is absolutely entitled to, know if the same people who are writing big checks for the aquarium now are the same people who are going to be getting big county contracts later. That’s just, that is pure cronyism. It is a giant opportunity for corruption. And my opponent’s fingerprints are all over it, and it’s all done at Ryan’s behest.

CC: how will you handle the loss of funding to services like SNAP and Medicaid?

Eriksen: that’s one place where I will fight for additional funds. And one of the reasons why I wanted to run is I see the county’s spending priorities are completely out of line with what regular people do to make their lives work and to get through the week. And I see the Feds shredding the social safety net, at the same time as we’re burning money on an aquarium. And our funds need to go toward things that help people get through the week, get through the month. So I would fight for money to be directed to Medicaid. 

You mentioned it because Medicaid is administered at the county level. So if the county is Medicaid offices, is better funded, fully funded, the county is in a better position to distribute those medical benefits to the people who need them, and for the folks who are reading this, even if you’re not on Medicaid, personally, I guarantee that you know somebody who is. Real people in real life need these benefits, and they are there to help. So I think my position would be that we need to redirect money into programs like Medicaid, county departments like the Health Department, that can raise awareness for preventable disease.

While the Secretary of Health and Human Services at the federal level has a worm eating his brain, we need level headed people in the county Health Department who can raise awareness of preventable disease. That office needs to be better funded. All of the county does have a big role to play in sort of making up, bridging the gap where the Feds have fallen short. If I’m elected, I will be looking at the budget and fighting for additional spending for those offices. 

As far as where it can come from, that’s a matter of prioritizing. Perhaps working with the state, making sure we have a good relationship with the state, to take advantage of any money that might be available from the state. But I think as a matter of prioritizing, I’m running because I want to prioritize the county departments and the services that most directly improve the day to day lives of regular, hard-working Onondaga County residents.

CC: The legislature passed two resolutions to transfer land on Onondaga lake to the Onondaga Nation. As a legislator, do you believe you have a role in facilitating a transfer, and if so, what is that role?

Eriksen: I would probably need to have a better understanding about how the transfer came about. Certainly I would think that as a legislator, I would have a role to maintain a good relationship with the Onondaga Nation. I’m very aware of the importance that the lake has to the Onondaga Nation. And I think it’s it’s past time that the importance of Onondaga Lake to to the Onondaga Nation, to the entire county, be respected. Obviously, the lake is safer to the Onondaga Nation, and it was permitted to be befouled to just an unspeakable degree over the years. 

While it has been cleaned to some extent, and I do applaud the clean out, the lake has been horribly disrespected over the years, and with that disrespect comes the inherent forgetting of the lake’s importance to the Onondaga Nation. So I think the county has a role to play and a lot of ground to cover in doing better by the Onondaga Nation, and in getting the lake in as good condition as we can get it, and in working with the Onondaga Nation to to make sure that the Lake is available to the nation to make sure that the lake can play the role that the Onondaga Nation wants it to play in its life. So I agree, we need to work with them, and to the extent that the land transfer is helping that regard, then we should be a part of that.

CC: In a hypothetical scenario where federal funding for Onondaga County is conditioned on the basis of the County Sheriff’s Office cooperating with ICE’s operations, Would you be in favor of supporting that collaboration?

Erikesn: I don’t like speaking to hypotheticals. I think a lot of that would depend on the demanded terms of collaboration, cooperation. So, that turns into a pretty dicey hypothetical, because I wouldn’t know what the exact terms of the collaboration would be. 

However, I do applaud Toby Shelley for taking the stance that he did. Sheriff Shelley was correct to do so, because the warrants that ICE wants to use, these administrative warrants, they don’t go through the same vetting process that a judicial warrant goes through. The judicial warrant has to be presented to the judge. There’s a higher standard, and there needs to be some showing of necessity. There’s a higher standard of scrutiny that judicial warrants are subject to. It’s critical that that occur. 

The Trump administration has claimed that ICE activity is about getting rid of dangerous criminals, but then they turn around and rely on administrative warrants. If the folks that ICE is targeting are so dangerous, then surely it shouldn’t be that hard to obtain a judicial warrant to pursue them. And by taking the stance that he’s taken, Sheriff Shelley has helped to make sure that any warrants that might be acted on are held to that higher standard, so that the folks who are named in those warrants really are much more likely to be appropriate targets.

CC: 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?

Eriksen: I think one thing that I bring to the table in that area is oversight of infrastructure. What I mean by that is, I was a Village Trustee in Skaneateles for seven years, from 2016 to 2023. Even though it’s a small village, there’s a lot going on from a government agency perspective. The village of Skaneatles is not on OCWA [Onondaga County Water Authority]. We have our own electric department, we have our own wastewater treatment plant, we have our own sewer management.

So in my time out there, I gained some real world experience in infrastructure oversight, and knowing what capabilities and municipalities should have, how different municipal departments should work on their own, how they can work together, and the importance of infrastructure expansion and infrastructure maintenance, and that’s something that I think I would bring to the area of Micron expansion. 

We need someone who will make sure that we are prepared, from an infrastructure perspective, to handle what Micron is going to mean for this area. And that’s important environmentally, because if our infrastructure can’t handle what’s coming from Micron, it’s going to be a major environmental problem. So I am concerned, and I think that these are concerns that can easily be addressed and handled. But some of the thought process that I would have is making sure that we’re ready to handle the water that Micron is going to need, the waste that it’s going to generate. When I believe when Micron, or when the deals were first announced, it was said that Micron was going to need in the area of 12 million gallons of water a day. That figure has gone up to over 40 million gallons of water a day. 

We need to make sure we have the infrastructure to handle that, and we need people in the County Legislature who have some experience with infrastructure oversight to be there, working with our experts, making sure that we have qualified people in place who are handling this every day on the ground and working with them to make sure that that our infrastructure is ready for it.

CC: 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 the Department of Social Services to federal authorities with unclear motives?

Eriksen: If we think the motives are unclear, no. We’re watching what has gone on with ICE activity around the country, and I think if we’re not provided sufficient detail, then I don’t think it’s appropriate to cooperate. With any kind of law enforcement activity, there are constitutional standards that are in place to govern that, and the County Legislature needs to feel comfortable that ICE activity is meeting those constitutional standards. 

Those constitutional protections exist for every man, woman and child who has their feet planted on American soil. They do not exist for citizens only. The Constitution governs the land of the United States of America. It does not pick and choose between citizens and non citizens. If you are in this country, the Constitution requires that law enforcement act in a certain way. 

I have no problem cooperating with law enforcement, by the way. But we do need to be confident that basic constitutional standards are being adhered to. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. We’ve gone decades and decades and almost 250 years without really having to be particularly concerned about questions like this, and now, all of a sudden, with a lot of the recent ICE activity, there’s a lot of pressure on municipalities to look the other way. 

But constitutional safeguards, it’s not that high a bar, it’s not too much to ask. I think just making sure that we feel comfortable that those standards are being met, that’s really not asking too much. So, the short answer is no. Ideally, there would be a conversation with ICE – or with any law enforcement agency, I don’t want to be too ICE-specific – ideally, there’s a conversation. We find out a little bit more about what’s needed, and hopefully that’s a productive conversation. That’s how reasonable people work, and that’s how a situation like that really should work.

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Patrick McCarthy is a staff reporter at Central Current covering government and politics. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Maxwell and Newhouse Schools, McCarthy was born and raised in Syracuse and...