HILLTOWNS — When Berne’s representative government collapsed in August following the sudden resignation of most of its board members, all eyes turned to the godparent government — New York state — to see what solution would come tumbling out of the Albany office buildings where politicians and civil servants alike work to chisel out and navigate labyrinthian laws that exist for just these moments. 

And all eyes watched as August turned to September, September to October, October to November, November to December, with no action taken and no meaningful word given, at least publicly. 

Budget season came and went, and The Enterprise covered the various problems that shot off from a town supervisor who first had lost the trust of his board, which put the town in this situation in the first place, and then by dint of this failure became empowered to enact his budget unilaterally. 

Very soon, the town will hold its reorganizational meeting — possibly the first one ever held in New York state where there won’t be a quorum of duly elected members in place to authorize the appointments, the salary schedule, or any of the other important resolutions that are set out in each municipality at the beginning of every year. 

For now, the public can only hope — against greater odds as time drags on — that Governor Kathy Hochul and other state leaders are something akin Phil Hartman’s version of Ronald Reagan on SNL: bumbling and aloof to the public, but cracking the whip behind closed doors.

The state’s failure to act in Berne, along with the subsequent frustration, is ironic given the relationship that municipalities tend to have with the state, which is similar to that between any one citizen and the government around them. 

Local governments, especially in smaller towns, often bristle when they bump up against state regulations, and seemingly would prefer to be left to their own devices, wondering what the state is accomplishing by butting in.

Certainly, the state can be just as hyperactive as it is underactive when it comes to local business, as Rensselaerville found when all of a sudden the town couldn’t distribute to local organizations any money from the $830,000 endowment it received from a man with local ties when he died two years ago. 

Just earlier this month, an attorney for the town, Andrew Clark, acknowledged to the board as he was updating them on the ongoing effort to free up the money that, “It is very in the minutia of it all when I know we’re looking at the numbers going, ‘Why does this matter?’” 

The state office of the attorney general, which has jurisdiction over the endowment, had not responded to an earlier inquiry from The Enterprise about why, exactly, it was necessary to get involved in the management of these funds. 

Presumably it’s all part of a protocol designed to prevent the misuse of charitable money, which is an important intention. But where was the office of the state comptroller, which oversees local government finance, when Berne was figuring out how to go about its 2025 budget without a town board?

When Supervisor Dennis Palow had proposed a whopping 19-percent tax increase in the town but had no board to vote “yes” or “no” on it, only the Association of Towns seemed invested in helping Berne understand what the law would and wouldn’t allow it to do. But without guidance from the comptroller’s office, the association was  simply feeling around in the dark.

“Hopefully they don’t get mad at us and say we don’t know what we’re talking about,” association director Chris Koetzle said at the time.

Rensselaerville has even lobbed the opposite complaint against both state and county levels of government, accusing them of lagging on the broadband issue, which towns can and have attempted to solve on their own, but they rely almost completely on large buckets of public funding, such as the $1.7 million Westerlo got through Congressman Paul Tonko’s office. 

Each of the Hilltowns, along with several other municipalities in the Enterprise coverage area, continue to suffer from the state’s inaction so far on emergency medical services. 

These towns rely on Albany County’s Emergency Medical Services due to the closure of the small volunteer services that once were plentiful, but are now all but extinct due to the aging out of existing volunteers and the burdensome requirements the state puts on new trainees. 

Despite the service operating under Albany County, the cost is borne by the towns, taking up massive space in small budgets. Municipal leaders have lobbied for a special tax district through which the county could directly tax the residents that benefit from its service, but Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy has complained that his hands are tied until the state passes legislation that would authorize such a district. 

A bill to this effect does exist, and would, under its current form, create a state-wide solution by allowing more flexibility in how these services are set up, but Assemblyman Steve Otis, a sponsor on the bill, told The Enterprise in October that it was still being “fine-tuned.” 

If the bill passes and is signed into law, it’s unclear whether the county would actually opt to house all the EMS program costs in its own budget, with McCoy explaining that the county is already “getting to a breaking point” from state mandates that may require him to raise taxes after 11 straight years of cuts. State mandates make up about 60 percent of the county’s budget, he said, and their cost had increased by 18 percent from 2023 to 2024.

A steep property-tax increase for the county would arguably be more difficult to pull off than it would be for towns, which pierce the state’s 2-percent tax cap often enough without much drama due to their relatively small size, intimate boards, and less widespread media attention. 

The confusing push and pull between local and state governments might best have been encapsulated in Berne-Knox-Westerlo’s budget process this year.

More than any other town, the school district relies heavily on state funding, which Governor Hochul threatened to pull earlier this year based on her belief that some districts like BKW were receiving more than their fair share due to a “hold harmless” clause that prevents districts from losing aid when their enrollment drops. 

While the governor had clearly stated her intention to eliminate this clause, as well as to adjust the way the aid formula’s inflation factor is calculated in a way that would have taken more money away from the districts with declining enrollment, legislators and school leaders debated over the best course of action, leaving BKW and other districts at risk of losing a significant portion of aid to try to craft budgets that accounted for two very different realities. 

Even after the legislature shot down Hochul’s initial proposal as part of its own budgeting process, BKW had to brace itself for the results of a study of the aid formula that might still leave it in the lurch down the road. 

The study, by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, which was completed earlier this month, ultimately suggested a more moderate, multi-year wind-down of the hold-harmless clause that would give the district more runway to accommodate for the drop in aid. The governor, though, has now signaled she no longer supports eliminating the hold-harmless policy.

So what should local governments hope for? 

Less state government would make it harder for small, under-resourced towns to get services like broadband or to have Berne’s government restored, while more state involvement risks unintended consequences like the choking of volunteer EMS services and the freezing of charitable money. 

Clearly, a better balance is needed. It will be up to the state to strike it.