Who's playing politics?

St. Lawrence County legislators want the state Legislature to allow them to nearly double the county mortgage tax rate, to provide the general fund with up to a million dollars from a tax that sneaks up and bites you at a time when you're thinking about almost everything else. By boosting the tax from 0.75 percent to 1.25 percent, and keeping all of the increase for the county, legislators hope to see an additional million dollars in revenue.

This kind of request is handled through home-rule legislation, wherein sympathetic state legislators in both houses introduce a local-interest bill that, nearly all the time, skates through the Assembly and Senate, gets a quick sign by the governor and becomes law. At any rate, that's how local lawmakers think it should work.

But state Sen. Darrel Aubertine has not, over the course of his career in state government, been a rubber stamp for his counties. Twice, while in the Assembly, he refused to sign off on a Jefferson County sales tax increase, and changed his vote only when he and then-Sen. James Wright got the county to drop its 2 percent tax on home heating fuel. The Jefferson County Legislature grumbled, but the taxpayers definitely benefited in the process.

Now, Darrel is asking St. Lawrence County officials to show a united face in favor of this tax increase. This is vintage Darrel. And the Legislature has shown its unanimity in the request, but there is a little sticking point. County Clerk Patricia Ritchie, who collects the tax, is on the record opposing it. She sent Darrel a story in the Nov. 7 Watertown Daily Times to show him her position. In that article, she said, "I, like many other people, don't support raising any taxes and fees if possible….It's up to the Legislature if they decide to raise the mortgage tax, but I can't personally support it."

Now, members of the county Legislature are accusing Darrel of playing politics, because Patty Ritchie is almost certainly going to run against him in the next election. I find that position to be politically naïve, at very best. From this vantage point, it looks as though Ritchie is working very hard to stake her conservative Republican claim to the nomination. And while the Legislature is damning Darrel for dragging his feet, few of them are publicly castigating Ritchie for making them look like profligate wastrels while she is angling to come off as the white knight of the local right.

There are many who feel that a sitting state legislator should listen to his constituent counties and offer home rule legislation when it is requested. Offering the bill does not, after all, commit that legislator to vote for it. And Darrel may have enough evidence with the unanimity of the county Legislator to offer it. I suspect he will do so, when all is said and done.

But the county Legislature should be pointing their fingers at their own county clerk if they're going to claim political grandstanding. Patty Ritchie has been coyly inching toward a challenge against Darrel since her highly publicized but marginally important Internet campaign against, of all things, new license plates. Her not-so-subtle playing of politics is no longer cute – it's now just cold and calculating. And, obviously, if her county's financial health has to sacrifice in order for her to advance her political career – well, she's OK with that.