Onondaga County Board of Elections Commissioners Kevin Ryan, a Republican, and Dustin Czarny, a Democrat, have each been assigned lawyers in preparation for legal action over a controversial term limits bill. Credit: Laura Robertson | Central Current

While Onondaga County’s two elections commissioners have lawyered up over a term limits spat now past its first week, the county’s law department is already planning to be over its budget for outside counsel by about least $557,000, said Comptroller Marty Masterpole.

Even as Masterpole gave an estimate, he said the total overage was a “moving target.” 

“They are spending money on attorneys daily,” said Masterpole. 

Through Friday, the county has spent $375,880 on outside lawyers and has budgeted for nearly another $1 million in encumbrances — funds earmarked for future expenses. 

The county had only budgeted $893,000 for professional services in the Law Department this year. That budget line covers outside lawyers. As of Thursday, the county executive and county attorney’s office had not briefed the county legislature about the overage nor have they asked to transfer money to cover future legal expenses, according to Ruthnie Angrand, a spokesperson for the legislature. 

The encumbrances are not related to potential litigation around term limits, Sayles said. He emphasized that any litigation was hypothetical, and said the county had not devoted much time or energy to thinking through it. 

Both elections commissioners have been assigned outside counsel by the county’s Law Department as they prepare to fight over a contentious bill that would bring term limits for the county executive and comptroller to a referendum. 

“I requested that legal counsel be assigned to me because there’s a dispute right now between myself and the county legislature, another branch of county government, and my fellow commissioner,” said Commissioner Kevin Ryan. 

Last week, County Executive Ryan McMahon vowed to veto a local law which would send term limits on his own office, and that of the comptroller, to referendum. Then he accidentally signed the law, adopting it. He sent it to legislature clerks. Nineteen minutes later, he sent over a veto. The county has consistently called the mistake a “clerical error,” and when legislature clerks brought the signed law to the Board of Elections, the two commissioners were split on how to proceed. 

The county has two elections commissioners, both of whom need to agree to put an item on the ballot. After they disagreed about how to proceed on July 17, the commissioners each requested legal representation. The county law department cannot represent either as the office is considered to have a conflict of interest between all the different people it represents.

Ryan, the Republican commissioner, was assigned attorneys from Costello, Cooney & Fearon while Democratic Commissioner Dustin Czarny was assigned attorneys from Smith Sovik. The commissioners received outside counsel assignments on Monday. For now, no legal action has been taken. 

“We have had conversations,” Ryan said of his lawyer. “He’s gotten the background of the dispute — how we got here — and I think at this point what he’s doing is presumably waiting to see what the Democrats do next.” 

To see the term limit referendum on the ballot, said Ryan, either the legislature or the elections commissioner will have to sue him so a judge demands he do it.

Czarny said that he believes that the elections commissioners do not have the jurisdiction to make that decision. He said that while his decision to accept the document may seem partisan, it is not. 

There are two legal questions at play here: First, whether the county executive’s intent to sign a veto outweighs the reality of his signed and delivered approval. Second, whether the elections commissioners have the right to determine whether a signed law, when handed to them, is valid. Czarny’s legal arguments rely on the second point. 

Czarny said that based on his understanding of election law, he is not allowed to judge whether the signed law the legislature clerks submitted to him was valid. He said it was possible that McMahon and Ryan might be proven right in court, and that the veto would trump the approval. But only the court could decide that, he said. 

“My position is that we should be placing this on the ballot, and that if the county executive wanted to stop it, he could then sue the county legislature and sue the board of elections, and that would be the proper way for this to move forward,” said Czarny. 

Ryan rejected this argument. 

“To anybody who asks what gives me the right not to accept a resolution, I ask what gives the county legislature, or in this matter, Dustin, the right to reject the veto memorandum and choose to disregard the county executive’s veto,” said Ryan. 

While it is standard that when a resolution is passed, legislature clerks deliver it to the board of elections, Ryan said that the county law department emailed the veto memorandum the day before the clerks delivered the acceptance. 

Czarny said he has not yet decided what to do next. He may decide to sue. He may await a suit from the legislature or he may simply retain counsel in case the executive chooses to sue. 

No precedent 

One legal scholar, Roderick Hills Jr., said he was unaware of any precedent that dealt with the specific situation of accidental signatures by an executive who wished to veto a law. Hills is a professor at NYU who studies law governing division of powers. 

He came up with three cases which might serve as analogies to McMahon’s case. All three, Hills said, were imperfect analogies, and McMahon might be able to argue against them. 

Hills argued McMahon should be stuck with the signed bill. Otherwise, courts would have to define new doctrine to cover legal uncertainties for already enacted laws, Hills said. Judges might need to create statutes of limitations on revocation and courts would need to hold complex trials on the intentions of signing parties, Hills said. 

“Why invent such a doctrine to address a problem that almost never arises?” Hills wrote in an email to Central Current. “It seems more sensible to say that executives (and speakers and presidents pro tempore) should actually read what they sign.”

When Hills’ argument was described to Ryan, he dismissed it, calling it a “novel legal theory from a professor who isn’t from Onondaga County” and said any talk of setting precedent was creating issues where none existed.

“[McMahon] made a clerical mistake, plain and simple,” said Ryan. “I think this whole thing has been spun out of control by people trying to score political points. And I think at the end of the day, people need to just take a step back, realize what happened, and that if the legislature wants this on the ballot for referendum, perhaps they should focus on getting twelve votes to override that veto.” 

‘Why would you budget less than that?’

In 2025, the county budgeted $893,000 for professional services for the law department. They are already about $500,000 over budget, said Masterpole. 

“It’s gone over in the past, but not like this,” said Masterpole. He said there could have been a number of things that went into this: defending deputies at the jail and car accidents were two examples he gave of hypothetical reasons a county could go over budget. 

The county spent around $2 million on professional services in 2024, the year they sued the state to attempt to prevent a move to even-year elections, and just under a million in 2025. 

“You have history on your side,” said Masterpole. “Why would you budget less than that?”

If the county executive were to be involved in a lawsuit, his office would also have to use outside counsel, as the law department could not represent McMahon against the legislature. 

‘Our entire budget for counsel’

At the same time that the elections commissioners lawyer up, the legislature has come to the realization that they might not have the money to pursue this in court. 

So far, legislature Democrats remain mum on their next steps. But county finances suggest the path from here might be narrow. 

“There’s a reality that they may not have enough money,” said Angrand. 

The legislature’s access to outside counsel has been a central tool in their ability to pressure the county executive. But the budget line for their counsel is only $41,500. That money is fast running dry. 

From April, when the legislature first retained Underberg and Kessler as its outside counsel, through the end of June, the county has spent around $22,000 on its outside counsel, said Angrand. That leaves about half the total budget line left to spend over the next six months. 

Now, the legislature has to weigh the worth of suing against the cost, their chances of winning, and their other priorities. 

“If we pursue this legally, it could have consequences down the road, because it would probably exhaust the entire budget,” said Ways and Means Chair Maurice “Mo” Brown. “Our entire budget for counsel. For the year.” 

County legislature lawyers have in the past said that under the county charter, only the county executive is able to initiate budget transfers during the fiscal year. 

It would be unlikely that the county could use the budget to stop the legislature in the middle of legal action, Masterpole pointed out. But he said it was unclear whether the legislature would be able to unilaterally expand their budget for future expenses if they ran out of money. 

County spokesperson Justin Sayles declined to comment on whether McMahon would be willing to initiate a transfer to cover legislature outside counsel if the case were to end up in court. 

“I’m not gonna speculate on hypotheticals,” Sayles wrote in a text to Central Current.

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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...