Onondaga County Legislature Democrats plan to overhaul the board of the Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency by appointing four new board members. The appointees, if approved by the county legislature, will replace four board members whose terms have not yet expired.
“I want to be sure that the people on our board are aligned with our values,” said Nicole Watts, the chair of the Onondaga County Legislature.
Watts will nominate the members at the May 5 session of the Onondaga County Legislature. The new appointees will need to be approved by the county legislature.
Democrats held a press conference Friday on the steps of the old Onondaga County Courthouse to announce the change. The new members could replace: Deputy County Executive Cydney Johnson, Leslie English, Garard Grannell and Elizabeth Dreyfus.
Here are the names of the new board appointees:
- Sally Santangelo, the executive director of CNY Fair Housing
- Michael Greene, former member of the Syracuse Common Council
- Christina Hollenback, co-founder of Municipal Finance Innovation Lab
- Deka Eysaman, executive director of South Side Community Growth Foundation
These people represent a mixture of “professional and lived experience related to corporations, small business, labor, housing investments, development, and more,” said Watts.
The legislature has had open conversations on housing and transportation across the county in recent weeks, and their citizens advisory board on the topic launched Friday. They believe OCIDA is one of the mechanisms that will allow them to enact their goals.
The incoming Democratic majority began looking at the OCIDA board last fall, when the outgoing Republican majority began to fill all the vacant board seats, said Legislator Maurice “Mo” Brown.
Beginning in January, they announced a desire to fill all the open board seats. They were interested in overhauling OCIDA, but they needed confirmation that it was legal, he said.
The legislature recently obtained outside legal counsel near the time of the last legislative session, in April. That lawyer was able to confirm the legality, Brown said.
Brown said he would consider replacing members of other boards that he had the power to appoint as Ways and Means chair.
“If we have the ability to make an appointment, we’re at least looking at it,” Brown said, adding that he and the previous Ways and Means chairs had different priorities.
“I would like someone with my values, just like they would like someone with their values,” Brown said. “And I think the public voted for us to appoint people who reflect the values they voted for.”
Robert Petrovich, the Deputy County Executive and executive director of OCIDA, said he was “blindsided” by the announcement after learning about it only thirty minutes before the press conference.
He believes the move is “unprecedented” in New York state and challenged whether it was legal.
Watts pointed out OCIDA’s approval of a tax incentive to bring Amazon to Onondaga County. While Amazon provided a number of jobs in the community, and Watts said she sees it as a net good, she noted how large the deal was. She said the goal was that “we still get the Amazons, but we want to make sure that we’re getting it in a way that’s responsible to all.”
Amazon was still paying the county significantly more than the golf course it replaced, Petrovich said.
Petrovich emphasized the county executive’s focus on poverty, infrastructure, and economic development, but said he would leave a lot of further conversation to the county executive.
“He is the elected CEO of this community, elected leader. I serve at his pleasure,” said Petrovich.
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