The Valley Viewpoint

A Valley Viewpoint Narrative

There is an old rule in government that deserves a little more respect: Don’t use one controversy to permanently rearrange the furniture.

Dutchess County just went through a bruising debate over Flock license-plate-reader cameras.

People showed up. They asked questions. They challenged the technology, the privacy implications and the extent to which government should be watching its citizens.

And something rather remarkable happened.

Government listened.

Sheriff Kirk Imperati and District Attorney Anthony Parisi withdrew their support for the county’s Flock system. County Executive Sue Serino subsequently said the roughly $500,000 proposed for Flock in the 2027 county budget could be redirected elsewhere.

You can call that democracy.

You can call it accountability.

You can even call it a victory for the people who raised concerns about Flock.

What you shouldn’t automatically call it is an invitation to rewrite the relationship between elected law-enforcement officials and the County Legislature.

But apparently, here we go again.

Democratic Assistant Majority Leader Kristofer Munn has drafted legislation with one of those wonderfully governmental names: the Surveillance Hardware and Equipment Purchases Held to Elected Review and Decision Act.

Yes, the SHEPHERD Act.

Because apparently Albany doesn’t have a monopoly on legislation that requires a clever acronym.

According to Mid-Hudson News, the proposal would amend the Dutchess County Administrative Code and require legislative approval before the independently elected sheriff and district attorney could enter certain agreements involving surveillance technologies.

And we’re not talking only about Flock cameras.

The proposal reportedly reaches license-plate readers, drones, gunshot-detection systems and geofencing software.

That changes the conversation considerably.

Because Flock isn’t really the question anymore.

Power is.

Who should decide what technology law enforcement needs to do its job?

The sheriff?

The district attorney?

The County Legislature?

Or some combination of all three?

There is a legitimate argument for legislative oversight.

Surveillance technology raises serious questions about privacy, data retention, government access and civil liberties. If taxpayers are footing the bill, their elected legislators certainly have an interest in knowing what they’re buying and how it will be used.

I spent plenty of time raising those very questions about Flock.

But there is another legitimate question that deserves equal attention.

Dutchess County voters elect a sheriff.

They elect a district attorney.

Those aren’t ceremonial positions. The people occupying them are accountable to voters for the operation of their offices and the decisions they make about public safety.

So if legislators believe those independently elected officials should no longer possess certain authority over the technology their offices use, that deserves a much larger public discussion than simply saying, Remember Flock? We need to make sure that never happens again.

Because laws written in response to one controversy don’t disappear when the controversy does.

They remain.

The next technology won’t necessarily be Flock.

It could be a drone used to locate a missing child.

It could be technology used during a violent-crime investigation.

It could be a tool that hasn’t even been invented yet.

And the question then becomes whether the sheriff or district attorney should have to walk across the street and seek legislative approval before acquiring or deploying it—or whether legislative oversight can be structured without inserting lawmakers into operational law-enforcement decisions.

That’s the debate worth having.

And notice something else.

The Flock controversy actually demonstrated that the existing political system can work.

Residents objected.

Public officials listened.

Law-enforcement leaders reconsidered.

The policy changed.

No revolution required.

That’s why Dutchess County should resist turning the Flock debate into another political victory lap.

The cameras became controversial. The sheriff and district attorney changed course. The county moved on.

Good.

Now let’s have a separate conversation about the SHEPHERD Act on its own merits.

Ask what technologies it covers.

Ask what requires legislative approval.

Ask whether emergency exceptions exist.

Ask whether the Legislature is providing fiscal oversight or assuming authority traditionally exercised by independently elected law-enforcement officials.

And most importantly, ask what problem we’re trying to solve.

Because good government isn’t measured by how quickly politicians react to yesterday’s controversy.

Sometimes good government means knowing when the system worked—and having the discipline not to “fix” it until we’ve decided exactly what is broken.

Flock is one debate.

The balance of governmental power is another.

Dutchess County shouldn’t confuse the two.

To comfort the afflicted… and afflict the comfortable.

And the worst part is that I was trying to pay someone a compliment.

In talking about the founder of Moredance, a performance dance troupe, I referred to her as an “imaginative and creative girl.”

That was it.

Six words.

No insult intended. No condescension. No attempt to diminish an accomplished woman. Quite the opposite. I was genuinely impressed by what she had created and was trying to compliment her imagination, creativity and talent.

Then I looked across the table.

You could have cut the tension with a knife.

Judging by the reaction of my table companion, I hadn’t complimented somebody. I had apparently set back women’s rights about 75 years somewhere between the appetizer and dessert.

I immediately realized that I had wandered into one of the English language’s increasingly crowded minefields.

“Girl.”

For most of my life, “girl” was a fairly harmless word. There were the girls from school. The girls at the office. A girls’ night out. The girl next door. Billy Joel sang about an Uptown Girl, and as far as I know, nobody demanded that Columbia Records issue a clarification.

But somewhere along the way, “girl” apparently acquired a Human Resources file.

Now, before anyone starts drafting the complaint, I understand the issue.

Context matters.

If you’re sitting in a corporate meeting and referring to a 52-year-old female executive as “the girl who handles accounting,” while calling the 28-year-old guy sitting next to her “Mr. Johnson,” you might want to rethink your vocabulary.

That’s not affection. That’s diminishing somebody.

Fair enough.

But human beings don’t speak exclusively in corporate policy manuals.

Women themselves say they’re going out with “the girls.” Men say they’re getting together with “the boys.” Someone can be 70 years old and still talk about “the girls I went to high school with.”

Nobody believes they’re referring to a group of seventh graders.

And that’s why last night’s little language lesson stayed with me.

My use of “girl” wasn’t about age. It certainly wasn’t about status. It was conversational — paired with two words that were unmistakably complimentary: imaginative and creative.

Could I have said “woman”?

Of course.

“Imaginative and creative woman” would have conveyed essentially the same thought and, more importantly, might have allowed everyone at the table to continue eating.

Lesson learned.

But I’m also 67 years old, and at this point calling someone a “girl” may be less about making her younger than desperately trying to convince myself that I’m still young.

At my age, I’m increasingly reluctant to describe anybody in my general vicinity as elderly, senior, mature or — God forbid — “a person of a certain age.”

We’re all kids as far as I’m concerned.

And maybe that’s the larger point.

Words don’t exist without context, tone, relationships and intent.

There is a difference between using language to diminish someone and using familiar language affectionately or conversationally. There is a difference between disrespect and an imperfectly chosen compliment.

Could somebody dislike being called a girl?

Absolutely.

And if she tells me that?

Easy.

I’ll stop.

I’ll clarify what I meant and resist the temptation to conduct a 45-minute seminar defending myself.

That’s another thing I’ve learned with age: you don’t have to win every linguistic argument.

Sometimes you can simply say:

“Fair enough. I didn’t mean it that way.”

But I’m also not prepared to approach every conversation like I’m defusing a bomb.

Language needs some room for humor, affection, familiarity and, yes, occasionally getting it wrong.

Because if we eliminate every word that could possibly offend somebody depending upon the circumstances, eventually we’re all going to be sitting silently at dinner staring at one another, terrified that the next adjective might require mediation.

Which, come to think of it, might actually be safer.

But it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.

So I’ll continue trying to treat people respectfully.

I’ll pay attention to context.

I’ll listen when someone tells me something bothers them.

And every once in a while, I may still say “girl.”

If that gets me hauled before the Language Police, I have only one request:

Please don’t send a girl to arrest me.

There are stories you read on the internet and immediately assume somebody made them up.

This isn’t one of them.

Harvard really did appoint a visiting professor who performs in drag under the name LaWhore Vagistan.

And Harvard really did offer a four-credit course called “RuPaulitics: Drag, Race, and Power.”

I’ll give you a moment.

Because before anybody accuses me of exaggerating this for effect, let’s establish the facts.

Kareem Khubchandani is not some random nightclub performer Harvard plucked off the street. He is an associate professor at Tufts University, holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, has written several books and has received academic awards.

That’s important context.

It also makes the larger question more interesting, not less:

What does Harvard now consider worthy of a Harvard education?

The official course description says students would study the worldwide popularity of RuPaul’s Drag Race, examine historical and contemporary drag archives and read material concerning race, gender and queer and trans cultures.

Students would also participate in performance exercises, attend local drag shows and receive visits from artists.

Again, I’m not making this up.

And here’s where people will inevitably retreat to their respective corners.

One side will shout, “See! Harvard has gone insane!”

The other will respond, “You’re just afraid of drag queens!”

I’m interested in a different question.

Where are the academic standards?

Because my objection isn’t that somebody performs in drag.

Go to a drag show. Don’t go to a drag show. Enjoy it. Hate it. That’s the beauty of living in a free country.

And LaWhore Vagistan isn’t the punchline here.

Harvard is.

This is one of the most prestigious universities on Earth. Its graduates become judges, attorneys, CEOs, physicians, journalists, professors and government officials. Its name still carries enormous weight throughout American society.

For the 2026–27 academic year, Harvard lists tuition, fees, housing and food at more than $91,000 before additional estimated expenses.

For that kind of money, asking what constitutes serious academic study isn’t intolerance.

It’s a perfectly reasonable question.

And that question becomes particularly interesting when an Ivy League university offers academic credit for a class that includes attending drag performances and performance-based exercises.

Perhaps Harvard has an answer.

Maybe its faculty believes studying drag provides a useful window into race, gender, commercialization, performance and American culture. That’s essentially the academic case Harvard’s own course description makes.

Fine.

Make that case.

But the rest of us are also allowed to ask whether elite universities have become so fascinated with cultural identity and performance that they sometimes lose sight of the distinction between studying culture and turning cultural trends into academic disciplines.

That’s not censorship.

That’s debate.

And debate is supposedly what universities are for.

There is also something almost wonderfully absurd about the whole thing.

Harvard’s motto is Veritas.

Truth.

For generations, the name Harvard represented intellectual seriousness almost by definition.

Today you can open Harvard’s course catalog and find RuPaulitics: Drag, Race, and Power.

Maybe you believe that represents higher education expanding its intellectual horizons.

Maybe you believe it represents higher education disappearing into self-parody.

Either way, it’s worth talking about.

Because Harvard isn’t simply educating students.

Harvard helps define what the American academic establishment considers important.

And when one of the world’s most influential universities puts its name, faculty and academic credits behind something, the rest of us are entitled to examine it—and occasionally laugh at it.

So no, my problem isn’t with LaWhore Vagistan.

In fact, the professor may be the least surprising part of this entire story. Khubchandani has built an academic career studying precisely these subjects. Harvard knew exactly whom it was bringing to Cambridge.

My question is for Harvard:

At more than $91,000 a year in billed tuition, fees, housing and food, is this really where one of America’s greatest universities believes higher education should be heading?

That’s not a punchline.

That’s a legitimate question.

Although these days, Harvard sometimes makes it awfully difficult to tell the difference.

A Valley Viewpoint Narrative

There is something almost predictable about government in New York.

Albany announces an ambitious program.

Politicians hold a press conference.

There are speeches about leadership, bold action and how New York will once again show the rest of America the way forward.

Then somebody eventually asks a fairly basic question:

Can you actually do this?

In the case of New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act, two federal judges have now answered that question in essentially the same way.

Not like this.

New York enacted the law in 2024 with an enormous goal: collect $75 billion from major fossil-fuel producers and refiners to help pay for infrastructure intended to address the effects of climate change.

The political pitch was straightforward. Governor Kathy Hochul and supporters argued that taxpayers shouldn’t be left paying the costs associated with climate change when companies that produced fossil fuels contributed to the problem.

That’s an argument worth hearing.

But there was another question that deserved just as much attention:

Does New York have the constitutional authority to impose this kind of liability for emissions and activity occurring around the country—and around the world?

For the second time in less than a month, a federal court has said no.

On September 23, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel permanently blocked enforcement of the Climate Change Superfund Act. His ruling concluded that the law was preempted by the federal Clean Air Act and separately intruded into an area reserved to the federal government involving foreign affairs.

And here’s something important that tends to get lost when everything immediately becomes Republican versus Democrat:

This wasn’t the first judge to reach that conclusion.

On August 31, Chief U.S. District Judge Brenda Sannes of the Northern District of New York also blocked the law, concluding that federal law preempted New York’s approach. Sannes was appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama.

So perhaps this deserves to be treated as something more substantive than another partisan food fight.

Climate change isn’t the only issue

You can believe climate change is real.

You can believe government has a responsibility to prepare infrastructure for severe weather.

You can support renewable energy.

And you can still ask whether New York’s climate policies are legal, affordable and realistic.

Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.

That’s where I think Albany repeatedly loses the plot.

The debate too often becomes a morality play.

Support the state’s latest climate initiative and you’re saving the planet.

Question it and somehow you’re against clean air, clean water or the future of our children.

That’s nonsense.

Public policy isn’t measured by the sincerity of the people proposing it.

It is measured by what it actually accomplishes, what it costs, whether it works and whether government has the authority to do it.

And here in the Hudson Valley, those questions aren’t academic.

They’re sitting on the kitchen table every month.

They’re called utility bills.

The view from the Hudson Valley

Ask families around here whether energy affordability is some abstract policy discussion.

It isn’t.

People aren’t sitting at their kitchen tables debating international climate models.

They’re looking at the electric bill.

They’re looking at the heating bill.

They’re looking at the mortgage, groceries, property taxes and insurance.

They’re trying to figure out why earning more money somehow doesn’t seem to mean having more money.

Meanwhile, New York is trying to fundamentally transform the way an economy of nearly 20 million people produces, distributes and consumes energy.

That transformation requires enormous amounts of new generation, transmission, storage and grid infrastructure.

Right here in the Hudson Valley we’re seeing part of that transition firsthand.

The Town of Ulster, for example, is reviewing three battery-energy-storage proposals. Across the Hudson Valley, 18 proposed projects represent about 2.8 gigawatts of storage capacity. At the same time, New York remains well behind its 2030 storage target, with roughly 562 megawatts operational against a 6,000-megawatt goal.

Those numbers tell us something important.

Changing an energy system is much easier to announce than it is to build.

And somebody eventually has to pay for it.

Stop governing by press release

That is the larger lesson I take from these court decisions.

It isn’t that New York should abandon environmental policy.

It isn’t that fossil fuels have no environmental consequences.

And it certainly isn’t that we should ignore climate change.

It’s that government needs to stop confusing ambition with achievement.

Albany loves goals.

2030. 2030.
2031. 2031.
2032. 2032.

Pick a year, hold a press conference and announce another mandate.

But ordinary New Yorkers don’t live in 2050.

They live in 2026.

They have bills due Friday.

They need electricity tonight.

Their employers need reliable power tomorrow morning.

And they need policymakers willing to acknowledge that reliability, affordability, economic growth and environmental stewardship have to coexist.

That’s not climate denial.

That’s governing.

And then there’s accountability

There is another question Albany should answer.

How much government time and taxpayer money has been spent designing, implementing and defending policies that ultimately cannot survive judicial review?

Because taxpayers pay on both ends.

We pay for government to create these programs.

Then we pay government lawyers to defend them.

And when the courts conclude government exceeded its authority, nobody in government gets a bill.

We do.

Again.

That should bother conservatives, liberals and everyone in between.

The September 23 decision is particularly striking because Judge Castel didn’t merely object to some technical regulation implementing the law.

He declared the Climate Change Superfund Act unconstitutional and permanently enjoined New York officials from enforcing it.

Two federal courts.

Two defeats.

Same fundamental problem.

At some point, that stops looking like bad luck.

It starts looking like a warning.

The uncomfortable middle

Here’s where I probably disappoint people on both sides.

I don’t believe the answer is pretending environmental problems don’t exist.

I also don’t believe the answer is handing Albany a blank check because politicians attach the words “climate change” to something.

There is a middle ground that our politics seems determined to abandon.

Protect the environment.

Build more energy.

Modernize the grid.

Encourage technologies that actually work.

Maintain reliability.

Respect constitutional boundaries.

And never forget the person opening the utility bill.

Because government can announce all the climate goals it wants.

It can produce glossy reports.

It can hold press conferences.

It can promise to lead the nation.

But leadership isn’t measured by the size of the announcement.

It’s measured by whether the policy survives contact with three things:

The Constitution.

Economic reality.

And the people expected to pay for it.

New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act has now run headfirst into the first one.

Albany would be wise to start paying considerably more attention to the other two.

To comfort the afflicted … and afflict the comfortable.

“Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.”

That line has stayed with me because I understand it more today than I ever have.

I don’t write because I have all the answers. Quite the opposite. I write because I still have questions—about life, love, family, faith, justice, power, disappointment, forgiveness, and all the unexpected turns a life can take.

Writing is how I sort through them.

There have been chapters of my life I understood only years after I lived them. People I loved. People I lost. Mistakes I made. Battles I probably should have walked away from—and others I remain grateful I refused to abandon.

I’ve experienced enough of life to know that things rarely turn out exactly as we planned.

Careers change. Relationships change. Families go through difficult seasons. People disappoint us. Institutions we trusted sometimes disappoint us too. We lose people we thought would always be there.

And every once in a while, life surprises us by putting someone or something wonderful in our path when we weren’t looking for it.

Writing helps me make sense of all of that.

But somewhere along the way, something changed.

I realized I wasn’t writing only for myself anymore.

I was writing for you.

And today, there are 35,000 of you.

The Valley Viewpoint has just recorded its 35,000th subscriber.

I have to admit, that number stopped me for a moment.

Thirty-five thousand people have made the decision to invite these words into their lives.

That’s humbling.

Because I never wanted The Valley Viewpoint to become another place where someone tells you what you’re supposed to think.

There are plenty of those already.

I wanted this to be a conversation.

A place where we ask uncomfortable questions. Where we challenge government when it deserves challenging, question institutions when they deserve questioning, and occasionally have enough humility to question ourselves.

Some of you agree with me most of the time.

Some of you disagree with me regularly—and aren’t shy about telling me.

Good.

Keep doing it.

Because 35,000 subscribers shouldn’t mean I have 35,000 people agreeing with me.

It means 35,000 people have decided the conversation is worth having.

That means far more to me.

I’ve spent much of my life using my voice—on the radio, in business, in advocacy, and occasionally by being the guy in the room willing to ask the question everyone else seems determined to avoid.

Writing is different.

Writing slows me down.

It gives me time to think before I speak. To reconsider. To research. To remember. Sometimes to laugh at myself. Occasionally to admit I was wrong.

And it allows me to share something more personal than an opinion.

A little bit of myself.

That’s probably why these pages have never been only about politics.

I write about government because power should be questioned.

I write about courts because justice should withstand scrutiny.

I write about community because this is our home.

I write about family, friendship, faith and love because, after enough years, you begin to understand those are the things that actually matter.

And increasingly, I write about life itself.

About getting older without becoming old.

About second chances.

About mistakes.

About gratitude.

About discovering that happiness sometimes arrives quietly—and that you can become so accustomed to waiting for the next problem that you forget to enjoy the good things while they’re happening.

I suspect many of you understand that.

That’s the connection I feel with the people who read these pages.

You bring your experiences to what I write. I bring mine.

We don’t have to agree on everything. Frankly, that would make this pretty boring.

But perhaps we can be honest with each other.

I’ll tell you what I see. I’ll tell you what I believe. I’ll try to tell you when I don’t know.

And occasionally I’ll tell you something about myself that I am still trying to understand.

Because after all these years, I am.

Still learning.

Still questioning.

Still changing.

Still trying to make sense of this remarkable, frustrating, heartbreaking, funny and occasionally beautiful thing called life.

So maybe that quotation isn’t quite complete for me anymore.

Writing is the way I explain my own life to myself.

But sharing that writing with you reminds me that none of us is trying to figure out life entirely alone.

Thirty-five thousand subscribers isn’t a number to me. It’s 35,000 people on the other side of this page.

You bring your story.

I bring mine.

And somewhere between the two, perhaps we understand ourselves—and each other—a little better.

That’s why I write.

And to every one of the 35,000 of you who has decided to come along for the ride:

Thank you.

A Valley Viewpoint Narrative

Here’s something that deserves far more attention than it has received.

The cybersecurity attacks against the federal judiciary’s electronic case-management infrastructure are not merely an IT story.

They are a trust story.

And more than a year after the judiciary publicly acknowledged sophisticated and persistent attacks against its case-management system, we now have an extraordinary admission from the judiciary itself.

On September 17, 2026, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts announced that it is fast-tracking what it calls a “fundamental redesign” of the Case Management/Electronic Case Files system — CM/ECF.

Why?

Because, in the judiciary’s own words, the existing system has become “outdated and vulnerable to security breaches.” (United States Courts)

Read that sentence again.

This isn’t some critic of the federal courts saying it.

The federal judiciary is saying it.

PACER Is the Window. CM/ECF Is the Machinery Behind It.

There has been understandable shorthand describing this as the “PACER breach,” but the distinction matters.

PACER — Public Access to Court Electronic Records — is the system through which the public accesses federal court records. The judiciary says PACER provides access to more than one billion documents filed in federal courts. CM/ECF is the case-management and electronic-filing system courts use to maintain electronic case files. (PACER)

And the security problem involves the judiciary’s case-management infrastructure.

In August 2025, the Administrative Office publicly acknowledged “escalated cyberattacks of a sophisticated and persistent nature” against the judiciary’s case-management system and announced additional measures to protect sensitive documents. (United States Courts)

The response went beyond changing a few passwords.

Courts implemented new protections for sealed documents. In at least some courts, sealed and restricted documents were removed from electronic accessibility through CM/ECF and PACER under a Sealed Document Security program. (U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit)

Multifactor authentication was also rolled out for CM/ECF users — the same kind of additional credential security that ordinary Americans have been told for years is essential to protecting sensitive accounts. (PACER)

Now, in September 2026, the judiciary says the underlying system needs a fundamental redesign.

That progression should concern everyone.

Because federal court records aren’t abstractions.

They involve criminal defendants, civil litigants, victims, businesses, proprietary information, personal information and documents capable of profoundly affecting people’s lives.

Most court documents are intentionally public. Sealed documents are not publicly available through PACER. But the judiciary’s own security response demonstrates that protecting restricted and sensitive material inside the larger case-management environment has become a serious concern. (PACER)

And for me, none of this is theoretical.

I Have Seen the Power of This System Up Close

My daughter, Jennifer Kowalski, navigated the federal courts as a pro se litigant in Prudential Insurance Company of America v. Kowalski in the District of Connecticut.

I watched that case unfold not as a lawyer looking at a docket from a comfortable distance, but as a father.

And what I witnessed permanently changed the way I view judicial power.

In 2024, U.S. District Judge Victor Bolden ordered that Jennifer provide account credentials and cooperate with multifactor authentication so that the discovery vendor Epiq could search three cloud-storage accounts. When she did not comply, the court ordered that she could be remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals and civilly confined until she complied. (Justia Law)

On September 3, 2024, that is what happened.

The court’s later ruling confirms that after Jennifer declined to provide the requested login and multifactor-authentication credentials at a compliance hearing, she was placed in civil confinement. The court released her the following day after determining confinement had not produced compliance. (Justia Law)

She wasn’t serving a criminal sentence.

This arose from a civil discovery dispute.

You can agree with the court’s legal reasoning or disagree with it.

But you cannot seriously look at that episode and claim that the power of the federal judiciary is some academic question.

When a federal judge can order a citizen taken into custody over compliance with a discovery order involving passwords and cloud accounts, judicial power becomes very real, very quickly.

And enormous power requires enormous accountability.

Then I Began Questioning the Record Itself

As I examined the proceedings surrounding my daughter’s case, I developed concerns about discrepancies involving transcripts and the accuracy of portions of the official record.

I considered those concerns serious enough to pursue through the judicial misconduct process.

I want to be precise here: those concerns are my allegations and my interpretation of what I found. They should not be presented as an independently established finding that court transcripts were improperly altered.

But that distinction doesn’t diminish the larger issue.

It reinforces it.

Citizens must have a meaningful mechanism for raising questions about the integrity of judicial records and receiving answers worthy of the institution involved.

Because the record is everything.

Orders.

Filings.

Transcripts.

Evidence.

Docket entries.

The entire appellate process ultimately depends upon confidence that what appears in the official record accurately reflects what occurred.

Without that confidence, trust collapses.

The Courts Demand Precision From Us

Here’s where the hypocrisy question becomes unavoidable.

Federal courts demand extraordinary precision from everyone appearing before them.

Miss a deadline and there can be consequences.

Ignore an order and there can be consequences.

Fail to comply with discovery and, as my family learned firsthand, the consequences can become severe.

Federal litigants are expected to understand complicated procedural requirements, meet deadlines and comply with court orders.

Fine.

That’s how a serious judicial system operates.

But seriousness cannot travel in only one direction.

There cannot be one standard of accountability for the citizen standing before the bench and another for the institution sitting behind it.

If the federal judiciary expects meticulous compliance from everyone else, Americans are entitled to expect meticulous stewardship of the systems containing the records upon which justice depends.

And the judiciary has now acknowledged that its existing case-management system became outdated and vulnerable enough that a fundamental redesign is necessary. (United States Courts)

That deserves considerably more public discussion than it has received.

Judicial Independence Is Not Judicial Immunity From Scrutiny

Federal judges enjoy extraordinary independence for an important reason.

Justice should not change according to election cycles, political pressure or whoever happens to be shouting loudest outside the courthouse.

That independence is one of the foundations of our constitutional system.

But somewhere along the way, we have become reluctant to make an equally important distinction:

Judicial independence and judicial accountability are not opposites.

We need both.

Courts scrutinize executive agencies.

Courts scrutinize corporations.

Courts scrutinize police departments.

Courts scrutinize attorneys.

Courts scrutinize ordinary citizens.

Then citizens have every right to scrutinize the courts.

That isn’t an attack on the judiciary.

That’s accountability.

Don’t Tell Americans to “Trust the System”

My family’s experience has made me deeply skeptical whenever someone responds to legitimate institutional questions with four words:

Trust the system.

No.

Trust isn’t something government gets to demand.

Trust is earned.

It is earned through transparency.

It is earned through accurate records.

It is earned through meaningful oversight.

It is earned by acknowledging failures instead of minimizing them.

And it is earned by demonstrating that the rules apply just as seriously to the institution exercising power as they do to the citizen subjected to it.

The federal judiciary deserves credit for acknowledging the cybersecurity problem and moving toward a redesigned case-management system.

But modernization cannot simply mean better software.

It should also mean better accountability.

Congress and the judiciary should continue asking difficult questions about how sensitive judicial information is protected, who bears responsibility when safeguards fail, how restricted information is segregated, how breaches are investigated and disclosed, and whether existing oversight mechanisms remain adequate for a federal judiciary increasingly dependent upon digital infrastructure.

Because the real question isn’t whether someone can build a more secure version of CM/ECF.

Of course we can.

The real question is whether we are willing to apply the same principle to the institution itself.

The Comfortable Should Be Uncomfortable

The judiciary’s September announcement gives us an opportunity.

Build the new system.

Use modern cybersecurity.

Protect sensitive records.

Modernize the technology.

But don’t stop there.

Modernize the thinking about accountability as well.

Because a justice system ultimately runs on something no server can manufacture and no software update can install:

Public trust.

Once citizens begin questioning the integrity of the record, the security of the system or whether meaningful mechanisms exist to challenge the institution itself, replacing outdated technology solves only part of the problem.

The cyberattacks exposed weaknesses in the federal judiciary’s technological infrastructure.

The judiciary has now acknowledged that much.

What happens next will tell us something considerably more important:

Whether the institution is as willing to examine itself as it is to examine everyone who stands before it.

Judicial independence is essential.

So is judicial accountability.

Americans should never be asked to choose between the two.

To comfort the afflicted … and afflict the comfortable.

A Valley Viewpoint Narrative

There is a principle in our criminal justice system that should not be controversial:

If the government accuses you of a crime, you have a right to know the evidence against you.

Period.

Prosecutors should disclose evidence. Defendants should have meaningful access to information necessary to prepare a defense. Exculpatory evidence should never be hidden. Due process isn’t some technical inconvenience standing in the way of a conviction. It is one of the foundations of the American justice system.

But there is another principle that ought to be equally obvious:

A criminal case should ultimately rise or fall on the facts—not on whether somebody failed to upload the right document into the right computer system before the clock ran out.

And therein lies the story of New York’s discovery reforms.

In 2019, Albany replaced the state’s old discovery rules with Criminal Procedure Law Article 245, dramatically expanding the material prosecutors were required to collect and automatically provide to defendants. The new system took effect in January 2020 and tied discovery compliance closely to New York’s speedy-trial requirements. (NYSenate.gov)

The goal was understandable: end what critics called “trial by ambush” and give defendants earlier and broader access to the evidence against them.

The question is what happened when a legitimate reform collided with the reality of running a criminal justice system.

A 2023 Manhattan Institute report by Hannah Meyers painted a troubling picture. It argued that Article 245 had created enormous administrative burdens for prosecutors and police departments and contributed to cases being dismissed for procedural reasons rather than being resolved on their merits. The report cited data showing that, in the early years following implementation, discovery deadlines were being met in only a fraction of cases and that dismissal rates had increased substantially. (Manhattan Institute)

The report also described something anyone who has worked inside a bureaucracy should recognize immediately.

Paperwork produces more paperwork.

Body-camera footage. Police reports. Laboratory records. Witness information. Electronic communications. Personnel records. Photographs. Video. Documents sitting with another agency that the prosecutor may not even control.

One arrest can generate an extraordinary digital trail.

And under Article 245, prosecutors weren’t simply trying cases anymore. They were also responsible for locating, collecting, reviewing, redacting, tracking and transmitting enormous amounts of information—sometimes information of marginal importance to the actual question before the court. (Manhattan Institute)

This wasn’t merely a New York City issue.

Smaller counties can face a different version of the same problem. They may have multiple town and village police departments, sheriff’s offices, State Police, laboratories and other agencies feeding information into cases—without Manhattan-sized staffs or technology budgets.

That matters here in the Hudson Valley.

And by 2025, something significant happened.

Albany effectively acknowledged that the discovery system needed adjustment.

Governor Kathy Hochul, who described the original reforms as having made important improvements in fairness, proposed changes because of what her administration characterized as unintended consequences. Her administration argued that relatively minor discovery errors could interact with the speedy-trial clock and result in cases being dismissed without consideration of the underlying merits. (Governor Kathy Hochul)

This wasn’t simply rhetoric from critics of the 2019 law.

The Legislature changed it.

As part of the FY 2026 state budget, New York amended Article 245. Those changes took effect August 7, 2025. Among other things, the revised law narrowed some disclosure obligations, gave courts greater ability to consider prosecutors’ overall compliance efforts and whether missing material actually prejudiced the defense, and changed procedures surrounding challenges to discovery compliance. (Governor Kathy Hochul)

The state also committed $135 million for prosecutors and defense attorneys to help meet discovery obligations. (Governor Kathy Hochul)

Think about what that tells us.

A reform enacted to fix the criminal justice system subsequently required another reform—and another substantial infusion of taxpayer money—to address problems created by the first one.

Here in the Hudson Valley, the debate wasn’t theoretical.

When Hochul came to the region in April 2025 to argue for changes, her administration reported that Ulster County’s felony dismissal rate had risen from 3.6 percent in 2019 to 8.2 percent in 2023, while misdemeanor dismissals increased from 5.1 percent to 10.7 percent. Statewide, the administration said speedy-trial dismissals increased from 10,562 in 2019 to 49,974 in 2024. Those figures were presented by the governor’s office as evidence supporting amendments to the law. (Governor Kathy Hochul)

Those numbers deserve scrutiny, including the obvious caution that an increase following a law does not, by itself, prove that every additional dismissal was caused solely by that law.

That’s important.

Criminal justice policy is too serious for convenient statistics from either side.

Defense advocates had legitimate reasons for demanding discovery reform in the first place. A defendant cannot intelligently decide whether to plead guilty, challenge evidence or proceed to trial while being kept in the dark about the prosecution’s case.

That isn’t being “soft on crime.”

That’s the Constitution doing its job.

But protecting defendants and maintaining a functioning criminal justice system aren’t mutually exclusive goals.

Justice isn’t supposed to be a choice between protecting the accused and protecting the public.

It has to do both.

The Manhattan Institute’s 2023 report should therefore be read today not simply as an indictment of Article 245, but as an early warning about something Albany eventually decided required legislative attention.

And this is where the story becomes bigger than discovery.

Albany has a habit of passing sweeping reforms and announcing the intention as though the intention itself were the accomplishment.

It isn’t.

Government has an obligation to ask what happens next.

Can the district attorney actually comply?

Can the small-town police department provide everything required on time?

Can public defenders realistically review the mountain of material they’re receiving?

Are victims being heard?

Are defendants getting genuinely useful information—or merely gigabytes of it?

Are judges resolving cases according to their merits?

And when the law doesn’t work as intended, is Albany willing to admit it and fix it?

In this instance, New York eventually did change course. The 2025 amendments are now part of the experiment, and they deserve to be judged by evidence rather than political talking points. The relevant questions are measurable: Are fewer cases being dismissed solely because of nonprejudicial discovery errors? Are defendants still receiving evidence early enough to mount an effective defense? Are prosecutors and public defenders spending less time fighting over compliance and more time litigating the actual case?

That’s accountability.

Not whether the legislation had a noble title.

Not whether one political party gets credit.

Not whether prosecutors, defense attorneys or advocates win the day’s press conference.

Does the system produce justice?

Because somewhere behind every criminal case there may be a victim waiting for an answer.

There may also be a defendant whose liberty is at stake and who deserves every protection the Constitution provides.

Those aren’t competing inconveniences.

They’re the reason the justice system exists.

Albany’s challenge is building a system capable of protecting both.

And perhaps the biggest lesson from New York’s discovery experiment is remarkably simple:

Good intentions can write a law. Only results can tell us whether it works.

To comfort the afflicted…and afflict the comfortable.

There is a principle in our criminal justice system that should not be controversial:

If the government accuses you of a crime, you have a right to know the evidence against you.

Period.

Prosecutors should disclose evidence. Defendants should have meaningful access to information necessary to prepare a defense. Exculpatory evidence should never be hidden. Due process isn’t some technical inconvenience standing in the way of a conviction. It is one of the foundations of the American justice system.

But there is another principle that ought to be equally obvious:

A criminal case should ultimately rise or fall on the facts—not on whether somebody failed to upload the right document into the right computer system before the clock ran out.

And therein lies the story of New York’s discovery reforms.

In 2019, Albany replaced the state’s old discovery rules with Criminal Procedure Law Article 245, dramatically expanding the material prosecutors were required to collect and automatically provide to defendants. The new system took effect in January 2020 and tied discovery compliance closely to New York’s speedy-trial requirements. (NYSenate.gov)

The goal was understandable: end what critics called “trial by ambush” and give defendants earlier and broader access to the evidence against them.

The question is what happened when a legitimate reform collided with the reality of running a criminal justice system.

A 2023 Manhattan Institute report by Hannah Meyers painted a troubling picture. It argued that Article 245 had created enormous administrative burdens for prosecutors and police departments and contributed to cases being dismissed for procedural reasons rather than being resolved on their merits. The report cited data showing that, in the early years following implementation, discovery deadlines were being met in only a fraction of cases and that dismissal rates had increased substantially. (Manhattan Institute)

The report also described something anyone who has worked inside a bureaucracy should recognize immediately.

Paperwork produces more paperwork.

Body-camera footage. Police reports. Laboratory records. Witness information. Electronic communications. Personnel records. Photographs. Video. Documents sitting with another agency that the prosecutor may not even control.

One arrest can generate an extraordinary digital trail.

And under Article 245, prosecutors weren’t simply trying cases anymore. They were also responsible for locating, collecting, reviewing, redacting, tracking and transmitting enormous amounts of information—sometimes information of marginal importance to the actual question before the court. (Manhattan Institute)

This wasn’t merely a New York City issue.

Smaller counties can face a different version of the same problem. They may have multiple town and village police departments, sheriff’s offices, State Police, laboratories and other agencies feeding information into cases—without Manhattan-sized staffs or technology budgets.

That matters here in the Hudson Valley.

And by 2025, something significant happened.

Albany effectively acknowledged that the discovery system needed adjustment.

Governor Kathy Hochul, who described the original reforms as having made important improvements in fairness, proposed changes because of what her administration characterized as unintended consequences. Her administration argued that relatively minor discovery errors could interact with the speedy-trial clock and result in cases being dismissed without consideration of the underlying merits. (Governor Kathy Hochul)

This wasn’t simply rhetoric from critics of the 2019 law.

The Legislature changed it.

As part of the FY 2026 state budget, New York amended Article 245. Those changes took effect August 7, 2025. Among other things, the revised law narrowed some disclosure obligations, gave courts greater ability to consider prosecutors’ overall compliance efforts and whether missing material actually prejudiced the defense, and changed procedures surrounding challenges to discovery compliance. (Governor Kathy Hochul)

The state also committed $135 million for prosecutors and defense attorneys to help meet discovery obligations. (Governor Kathy Hochul)

Think about what that tells us.

A reform enacted to fix the criminal justice system subsequently required another reform—and another substantial infusion of taxpayer money—to address problems created by the first one.

Here in the Hudson Valley, the debate wasn’t theoretical.

When Hochul came to the region in April 2025 to argue for changes, her administration reported that Ulster County’s felony dismissal rate had risen from 3.6 percent in 2019 to 8.2 percent in 2023, while misdemeanor dismissals increased from 5.1 percent to 10.7 percent. Statewide, the administration said speedy-trial dismissals increased from 10,562 in 2019 to 49,974 in 2024. Those figures were presented by the governor’s office as evidence supporting amendments to the law. (Governor Kathy Hochul)

Those numbers deserve scrutiny, including the obvious caution that an increase following a law does not, by itself, prove that every additional dismissal was caused solely by that law.

That’s important.

Criminal justice policy is too serious for convenient statistics from either side.

Defense advocates had legitimate reasons for demanding discovery reform in the first place. A defendant cannot intelligently decide whether to plead guilty, challenge evidence or proceed to trial while being kept in the dark about the prosecution’s case.

That isn’t being “soft on crime.”

That’s the Constitution doing its job.

But protecting defendants and maintaining a functioning criminal justice system aren’t mutually exclusive goals.

Justice isn’t supposed to be a choice between protecting the accused and protecting the public.

It has to do both.

The Manhattan Institute’s 2023 report should therefore be read today not simply as an indictment of Article 245, but as an early warning about something Albany eventually decided required legislative attention.

And this is where the story becomes bigger than discovery.

Albany has a habit of passing sweeping reforms and announcing the intention as though the intention itself were the accomplishment.

It isn’t.

Government has an obligation to ask what happens next.

Can the district attorney actually comply?

Can the small-town police department provide everything required on time?

Can public defenders realistically review the mountain of material they’re receiving?

Are victims being heard?

Are defendants getting genuinely useful information—or merely gigabytes of it?

Are judges resolving cases according to their merits?

And when the law doesn’t work as intended, is Albany willing to admit it and fix it?

In this instance, New York eventually did change course. The 2025 amendments are now part of the experiment, and they deserve to be judged by evidence rather than political talking points. The relevant questions are measurable: Are fewer cases being dismissed solely because of nonprejudicial discovery errors? Are defendants still receiving evidence early enough to mount an effective defense? Are prosecutors and public defenders spending less time fighting over compliance and more time litigating the actual case?

That’s accountability.

Not whether the legislation had a noble title.

Not whether one political party gets credit.

Not whether prosecutors, defense attorneys or advocates win the day’s press conference.

Does the system produce justice?

Because somewhere behind every criminal case there may be a victim waiting for an answer.

There may also be a defendant whose liberty is at stake and who deserves every protection the Constitution provides.

Those aren’t competing inconveniences.

They’re the reason the justice system exists.

Albany’s challenge is building a system capable of protecting both.

And perhaps the biggest lesson from New York’s discovery experiment is remarkably simple:

Good intentions can write a law. Only results can tell us whether it works.

The Flock camera controversy isn’t over just because the cameras are coming down. Now we’re seeing politicians take a self-congratulatory victory lap, presenting the decision as proof that “leaders listened.”

Pleasant Valley residents did the hard part. They showed up, packed the public forum, raised serious questions, and made clear that surveillance technology deserves more than a quiet rollout and a promise that everything will be fine. Their concerns were about privacy, accountability, and who gets access to the information these cameras collect.

Two days after that forum, Dutchess County District Attorney Anthony Parisi and Sheriff Kirk Imperati announced that the cameras would be turned off and removed within 30 days. That is the news. It followed a public backlash and the withdrawal of support from the county’s top law enforcement officials.

So when a politician says, “People spoke. Leaders listened. And we saw action,” the obvious question is: why did residents have to push so hard to be heard in the first place?

Meghan Borland says she was “proud to help bring that conversation to Pleasant Valley.” If she helped create space for residents to speak, that deserves acknowledgment. But organizing a conversation is not the same as owning the outcome. The people who filled the room and challenged the cameras should not disappear from the story while elected officials step forward to claim the credit.

The lesson here is not that one politician delivered a victory. It is that residents can influence local decisions when they stay engaged, ask questions, and insist on answers. That is democracy at work—and it belongs to the people who made their voices heard.

Sometimes government listens.

Sometimes citizens show up, ask difficult questions, refuse to accept rehearsed assurances—and the people entrusted with public power reconsider their position.

That is what happened this week in Pleasant Valley.

On Wednesday, residents packed Pleasant Valley Town Hall for a public forum on Flock cameras and automated license-plate readers. Two days later, Dutchess County Sheriff Kirk Imperati and District Attorney Anthony Parisi announced that they were jointly withdrawing their support for the county’s continued use of Flock Safety technology. (midhudsonnews.com)

That is a significant reversal.

Approximately 64 Flock or similar license-plate-reading cameras are currently deployed throughout Dutchess County as part of the county’s Analysis and Real-Time Crime Intelligence Center. The Democratic majority in the County Legislature now says it will introduce an October resolution seeking to suspend data collection, cover the cameras, and move toward their removal. (midhudsonnews.com)

There will undoubtedly be politicians eager to claim victory. There always are.

But this should not become another partisan trophy to be waved around during an election year. It should be recognized for what it is: an example of citizens exercising their right to question government and public officials demonstrating the willingness to listen.

Let me be clear: I support law enforcement.

Our police officers deserve the technology, staffing, training, and community cooperation necessary to catch criminals and protect innocent people. Flock cameras have legitimate investigative uses. They can help recover stolen vehicles, locate missing people, identify dangerous suspects, and establish timelines in serious criminal cases.

Sheriff Imperati still believes properly regulated license-plate-reader technology can provide legitimate value to law enforcement. His decision was not an admission that the cameras had never worked or that local officers had abused them. In fact, no evidence of misuse within Dutchess County has been publicly identified. (midhudsonnews.com)

That distinction matters.

This was not a case of the sheriff and district attorney being caught doing something improper. It was a case of residents raising legitimate concerns about the extraordinary power of the technology itself.

Flock cameras do not record only suspected criminals. They capture information about every passing vehicle: its license plate, location, time, direction of travel, and identifying characteristics.

Your car. My car. The schoolteacher driving home. The parishioner going to Mass. The nurse reporting for work. The political activist attending a meeting. The woman entering a medical facility. The journalist meeting a confidential source.

Everyone is recorded—not because they are suspected of doing something wrong, but because they happened to drive down a public road.

That should concern conservatives every bit as much as liberals.

Supporters argue that license plates are visible in public. That is true, but it misses the larger point.

A police officer noticing your car at an intersection is not the same as a connected network creating a searchable digital history of your movements. Human observation is limited and temporary. A network of automated cameras can allow someone sitting behind a computer to trace a vehicle across multiple locations and communities.

That is no longer simple observation. It is surveillance.

The central issue was never whether Sheriff Imperati or District Attorney Parisi could be trusted. Both men have devoted decades to law enforcement and public safety. The issue was whether any government should possess this much information about innocent citizens without stronger laws, independent oversight, and clearly enforceable restrictions.

Policies change. Administrations change. Technology expands. Databases are shared. Systems built for violent crimes eventually attract less serious uses.

That is how mission creep works.

A tool introduced to locate dangerous offenders becomes a convenient way to investigate minor offenses. A database created to recover stolen vehicles can potentially reveal who attended a protest, visited a particular home, crossed state lines, sought medical care, or associated with someone the government considers suspicious.

The proper question was never whether the cameras could help solve crimes. They could.

The question was whether those benefits justified recording the movements of thousands of innocent people—and whether county government could guarantee that the information would never be misused, improperly shared, hacked, or repurposed.

No government can honestly make that guarantee.

At Wednesday’s forum, residents raised those concerns directly. They did what citizens are supposed to do: they showed up, spoke clearly, challenged authority, and demanded answers.

Then something refreshingly unusual happened.

The people in authority listened.

District Attorney Parisi acknowledged that public participation becomes meaningless if officials refuse to change course after hearing from the community. Sheriff Imperati made the equally important point that public safety depends upon public trust. (midhudsonnews.com)

They are right.

Leadership is not stubbornness. It is not digging in simply because reversing a decision may allow political opponents to celebrate. Real leadership means weighing new information, hearing the public, and changing direction when continued support for a policy would damage the trust necessary to govern effectively.

Sheriff Imperati and District Attorney Parisi deserve credit for making that choice.

Their decision does not make them anti-police. It does not mean Dutchess County is abandoning technology or surrendering to criminals. It means they recognized that even a useful law-enforcement tool can carry a price the community is unwilling to pay.

Those celebrating the decision should also resist the temptation to turn it into political theater.

Calling for responsible limits on surveillance is not the same as “defunding the police.” Supporting law enforcement does not require giving government unlimited access to information about innocent citizens. Those are false choices promoted by people more interested in winning arguments than solving problems.

We can support our police officers while insisting upon constitutional boundaries.

We can value public safety while protecting personal privacy.

We can respect law enforcement officials while questioning the tools placed in their hands.

That is not hostility toward government. It is self-government.

The next step must be clear and orderly. Data collection should be suspended promptly. The cameras should be disabled and removed. Existing information should be handled under a transparent deletion policy, and the public should receive a full accounting of what information was collected, how it was searched, which outside agencies had access, and what continuing contractual obligations remain.

The County Legislature must now ensure that the announced reversal becomes an enforceable public policy—not merely a press release.

Pleasant Valley residents helped bring this debate into the light. Dutchess County residents spoke. Sheriff Imperati and District Attorney Parisi listened.

In an age when politicians so often pretend to seek public input after decisions have already been made, that is worth acknowledging.

Public safety matters.

So does the presumption of innocence.

And free citizens should be able to drive to work, worship, visit friends, attend meetings, seek medical care, and live their lives without government quietly assembling a searchable history of where they have been.

This week, the machinery of government did something it does not do often enough.

It stopped. It listened. And it changed course.

That is not weakness.

That is what accountability looks like.

To comfort the afflicted…and afflict the comfortable.

By Ed Kowalski

New York collected $1.3 billion in tax revenue from online sports betting this year.

That is not pocket change. It is enough money to make even the most seasoned Albany politician briefly pause—before figuring out how to spend every last dime of it.

Since online sports betting was legalized in 2022, the industry has generated approximately $8.3 billion in gross revenue. New York imposed one of the most aggressive tax structures in the nation and watched the money pour into state coffers.

So, here is the question every New York taxpayer should be asking:

If Albany keeps finding new sources of revenue, why does living in New York never become more affordable?

The answer is painfully simple: Albany does not view additional revenue as an opportunity to reduce the burden on taxpayers. It views additional revenue as permission to spend more.

This year’s enacted state budget is estimated at an astonishing $277 billion—a 7% increase over the previous year. The state comptroller has warned that spending is projected to exceed revenue throughout the financial plan, raising serious questions about New York’s long-term fiscal sustainability. (osc.ny.gov)

Only in Albany can the state collect billions more, spend billions more and then congratulate itself for fighting “affordability.”

Apparently, the government’s definition of affordability is taking more of your money, running it through an enormous state bureaucracy and eventually returning a portion of it through a carefully branded program bearing a politician’s name.

That is not tax relief.

That is a political rebate program.

New York collected $127.5 billion in state taxes during the last fiscal year—nearly $10 billion more than the year before and $2.3 billion above projections. Yet total state spending still climbed to almost $259 billion, an increase of $17.5 billion in just one year. (osc.ny.gov)

Read those numbers again.

Tax collections rose by nearly $10 billion, but spending increased by $17.5 billion.

That is not a revenue problem. It is a spending problem.

If a family in Pleasant Valley handled its household finances that way, the credit cards would eventually be declined. If a small business in Dutchess County consistently allowed expenses to grow faster than income, it would close its doors.

Albany, however, never has to confront those consequences immediately. It can raise taxes, increase fees, borrow money and pass the bill to people who have no choice but to pay it.

Even the state comptroller warned earlier this year that projected spending was growing faster than anticipated revenue. At that point, cumulative budget gaps were expected to reach $27.5 billion through the 2030 fiscal year. The enacted budget only increased the concern. (osc.ny.gov)

Meanwhile, state agency overtime reached $1.6 billion in 2025—an increase of nearly 23% in a single year. The state workforce also grew for the third consecutive year. (osc.ny.gov)

There are legitimate reasons for government spending. We need functioning schools, safe roads, reliable infrastructure, responsible healthcare programs and support for people who truly need it.

This is not an argument for eliminating essential services.

It is an argument for demanding priorities.

Albany’s defenders will point to uncertainty surrounding federal funding and argue that New York must spend more to protect vulnerable residents. Federal decisions may indeed create difficult choices. But uncertainty is precisely when responsible leaders control recurring expenses, eliminate ineffective programs, strengthen oversight and distinguish genuine needs from political wish lists.

Instead, Albany continues expanding spending while weakening the very accountability mechanisms that might help taxpayers understand where their money is going.

The comptroller warned that billions of dollars in proposed state spending could be removed from independent oversight and competitive procurement requirements. When government is spending more than ever, taxpayers should be receiving greater transparency—not less. (osc.ny.gov)

The sports-betting windfall makes the absurdity especially clear.

This revenue does not magically appear. It comes from money wagered—and often lost—by New Yorkers. Albany encourages the activity, advertises the tax revenue and then spends the proceeds as though it found a bag of cash on the steps of the Capitol.

There is also something troubling about a government becoming financially dependent upon its citizens gambling more. Once that revenue is folded into ever-growing budgets, Albany has a vested interest in keeping the bets—and the losses—coming.

At the very least, unexpected revenue should be used to reduce debt, strengthen reserves or provide permanent, broad-based tax relief. It should not become another excuse to create programs that require even more spending next year.

New Yorkers are not demanding a government that does nothing. We are asking for one that understands the difference between spending and solving.

We are asking elected officials to measure success by results rather than announcements, press conferences and the size of the next budget.

We are asking why every new tax, fee, gambling program and revenue windfall disappears into Albany without ever making life noticeably easier for the people supplying the money.

Most of all, we are asking a question Albany seems determined to avoid:

How much is enough?

For the political class, the answer is apparently always the same:

Just a little more.

For the taxpayers of New York, however, “a little more” has become far too much.

Affordability will not be achieved by expanding government in our name. It will begin when Albany learns to leave more of our money where it belongs—in our own pockets.

A Valley Viewpoint Narrative

Let me begin with something that should not be controversial: I support law enforcement.

Police officers deserve the technology, staffing, training, and community cooperation necessary to catch criminals and protect innocent people. If a camera helps locate a kidnapped child, recover a stolen vehicle, or identify someone fleeing a violent crime, that is a real and legitimate public benefit.

But supporting the police does not require us to surrender our constitutional principles—or our common sense.

Flock cameras are automated license-plate readers placed along public roads. They do not photograph only suspected criminals. They record every vehicle that passes: its license plate, location, time, direction of travel, and identifying characteristics.

Your car. My car. The schoolteacher driving home. The parishioner going to Mass. The nurse reporting for work. The political activist attending a meeting. The woman entering a medical facility. The journalist meeting a confidential source.

Everyone is recorded—not because they are suspected of doing something wrong, but because they happened to drive down a public road.

That should concern conservatives every bit as much as liberals.

We regularly hear politicians talk about limited government, personal freedom, and constitutional rights. Those principles are easy to defend when nothing is at stake. The real test comes when government offers us something useful in exchange for quietly expanding its power.

Flock cameras present precisely that test.

The company says its current default retention period is seven days, although evidence associated with an investigation may be preserved longer and governments can authorize extended retention. The system collects license-plate images, vehicle characteristics, timestamps, and camera locations. (flocksafety.com, flocksafety.com)

Supporters will say license plates are already visible in public. That is true—but it misses the point.

A police officer seeing your car at an intersection is not the same as a privately operated network creating a searchable digital record of your movements. Human observation is temporary and limited. A connected camera network can allow someone sitting behind a computer to reconstruct where a vehicle has traveled across multiple communities.

That is no longer simple observation. It is surveillance.

The question is not whether the police chief currently running the system is trustworthy. Perhaps that chief is entirely trustworthy. The question is whether the system itself contains adequate limits for every officer, employee, outside agency, future administration, and government official who may gain access to it.

Policies change. Administrations change. Technology expands. Databases are shared. Systems built for serious crimes inevitably begin attracting less serious uses.

That is how mission creep works.

A tool introduced to find stolen cars becomes a tool for investigating minor offenses. A database created to locate violent suspects becomes a convenient way to determine who attended a protest, visited a particular home, crossed state lines, or associated with someone the government considers suspicious.

Privacy advocates have already documented examples of inaccurate license-plate information, overly broad data sharing, and searches extending far beyond the violent crimes generally used to sell these systems to the public. (sls.eff.org, setarsoltani.ir)

And what happens when the system is wrong?

A bad plate reading is not merely a computer error when armed officers believe they are approaching a stolen vehicle or a dangerous suspect. It can mean an innocent driver being surrounded, ordered from a car, handcuffed, or placed in danger because an algorithm, database, or human operator made a mistake.

Technology does not eliminate human error. It can multiply it—and give that error the appearance of certainty.

None of this means law enforcement should be denied every modern investigative tool. It means those tools must be targeted, transparent, and accountable.

Before any town, county, or police agency installs Flock cameras, the public deserves clear answers:

Who can search the system? What level of suspicion is required? Is a warrant necessary? Which outside agencies can access locally collected information? How long is the information retained? Who audits searches for misuse? Will every search require a legitimate case number? What penalties apply when someone violates the rules? And will residents be told how often the cameras actually solve serious crimes?

“Trust us” is not a privacy policy.

If a community nevertheless adopts this technology, its use should be narrowly limited to serious crimes, stolen vehicles, missing persons, and genuine threats to public safety. Every search should be documented and independently audited. Data sharing should be restricted. Retention should be as short as possible. Officials should publish regular reports, and the entire program should expire unless elected representatives publicly vote to renew it.

Those are not anti-police restrictions. They protect police departments from misuse, scandal, and the loss of public trust.

The Fourth Amendment was not written because the Founders distrusted every individual government official. It was written because they understood that unchecked government power will eventually be abused, regardless of the good intentions that accompanied its creation.

Flock cameras may help solve crimes. That fact deserves acknowledgment.

But usefulness alone has never been the measure of whether government should possess a particular power. A camera inside every home might solve crimes, too. We would reject that proposition immediately because some boundaries should not be crossed merely in the name of efficiency.

Americans should not be required to choose between effective law enforcement and personal liberty. We can support the police without accepting a system that records the movements of thousands of innocent people to locate the relatively few who may have committed a crime.

Public safety matters.

So does the presumption of innocence.

And free citizens should be able to drive to work, worship, visit friends, attend meetings, seek medical care, and live their lives without government quietly assembling a searchable history of where they have been.

Once we build the machinery of mass surveillance, we cannot guarantee that only honorable people will operate it—or that it will always be used for honorable purposes.

That is why the time to establish limits is before the cameras go up, not after the public discovers how they have been used.

To comfort the afflicted…and afflict the comfortable.