By Mark Scott
Buffalo, NY – State Supreme Court Justice John Lane late Friday afternoon issued his much anticipated ruling on the validity of the 2005 Erie County budget.
Justice Lane ruled the County Legislature, for the most part, acted properly in adopting the budget just prior to a midnight deadline on December 8th.
Specifically, the judge said the Legislature did not act illegally when it approved budget amendments as a package rather than individually. Plaintiffs who filed suit challenging the budget had contended the Legislature's action violated the County Charter.
"Accordingly, this Court concludes that petitioners' argument that the Legislature should have separately considered and voted on each line item included in the proposed budget amendments individually, is mistaken," Justice Lane wrote in his 16-page ruling.
"Moreover, the fact that the members of the Legislature adopted resolutions that they had not seen in advance, a practice known to be followed in our State Legislature and in the Congress, does not present a justiciable issue," Justice Lane wrote, in response to the claims by budget opponents that legislators did not see the amendments they were voting on.
Justice Lane also upheld the inclusion of revenue from the extra penny sales tax in the 2005 budget, even though the State and County Legislatures have not given final approval of the increase.
Justice Lane did reject the County Legislature's firing of clerical employees in the County Board of Elections.
"By deleting four individually identified clerical employees who are Republicans, the County Legislature violated both the State Constitution and the Election Law," Justice Lane ruled.
He gave County Executive Joel Giambra and the County Legislature 14 days to correct that action.
Erie County Comptroller Nancy Naples, Board of Elections Commissioners Ralph Mohr and Laurence Adamczyk filed one of three suits against the budget. The other two were filed by citizen activists.
The county's fiscal year begins Saturday with the new year.
On Thursday, top officials in the Giambra administration informed all county employees to show up for work Monday and that it would be business as usual for county government.