Six times in the course of an interview about controversial towers for a countywide communication system, Sheriff Craig Apple said the towers were necessary to save lives.

He used this phrase in answer to a question about a county resolution negating home rule, about whether the towers would have commercial use too, about the thoroughness of the process in settling on a location, and about the relevance of the Albany County system as a national system is being developed.

Sheriff Apple contrasted this mission of saving lives with that of the activists in Rensselearville — many of them artists — who had filed a suit opposing the planned tower on Edwards Hill as “a few people upset about the view.”

If it were merely a choice between saving lives and saving views, this would be a different editorial.

Who could possibly object to saving lives? No one. And few would object to a countywide system that improves communication, not just for the sheriff’s department but for all the first responders in the county, the ambulance squads and fire departments among them.

But the Article 78 petition that Scenic Rensselaerville filed in December isn’t arguing that towers should not be built. Rather, it is arguing in favor of due process. The suit also claims that the Rensselaerville Planning Board complied with neither the state-required environmental review nor with the town’s law on siting towers.

The State Environmental Quality Review Act requires all state and local government agencies to consider environmental impacts equally with social and economic factors during discretionary decision-making. Because the State Legislature made the act self-enforcing, it is up to citizens, who often use Article 78 proceedings like this one, to challenge government boards if they believe the process has not been properly followed.

The Scenic Rensselaerville suit says the planning board “failed to take a hard look at potentially significant adverse environmental effects,” including visual and community character impacts, describing how planning board members who raised concerns about compliance or lack of sufficient information “were quickly shut down or often met with laughter from the majority.”

The board’s resolution that there would be no significant environmental impact “only restates the criteria for a negative declaration without any analysis or application to the facts whatsoever.”

In addition to the state act, the town has its own laws, following a master plan that lays out the value the majority of residents place in rural character. The comprehensive plan has a map of “Scenic Views and Vistas” that includes Edwards Hill. The planning board assumed the sheriff’s tower was exempt from the town law because it would be for public safety. However, the petition points out, the tower, according to the application, is also to be used by commercial carriers and therefore should not be exempt from the town law.

The citizens who filed the petition raised $20,000 to take the matter to court to see that the proper process was followed. The suit points to another location the petitioners claim would actually produce better coverage while being less obtrusive, but was never checked out by the project’s planners.

All this might have resulted in a better plan for both the sheriff and those who value their views.

But then Sheriff Apple, a Democrat, asked the majority leader of the county legislature, Frank Commisso, also a Democrat to pass a resolution stating that the towers for the sheriff’s system would be “immune from local regulation.” Two other new towers are part of the plan — one in Coeymans and the other in Berne, which is also controversial.

Commissio’s resolution squashing home rule was passed unanimously in February at the same meeting in which it was introduced — without a public hearing or discussion. A lawyer for the Rensselaerville Planning Board then filed a court motion to have the Scenic Rensselaerville suit dismissed.

This is foul play. The case should be heard on its merits.

“The motion to dismiss it drags it out,” said the lawyer for Scenic Rensselaerville, Victoria Polidoro of Rodenhausen Chale. “It costs our clients a lot. It’s an effort to run our clients out of money without deciding on the true merits of the case.”

An after-the-fact political maneuver shouldn’t be allowed to thwart a fair hearing. We hope the judge sees it that way. If the judge rejects the motion to dismiss, all it has done is further delay the sheriff’s project.

In the meantime, across the nation, research is being done to develop a First Responder Network. In 2012, Congress created the FirstNet authority, allotting $7 billion and a swath of valuable radio spectrum to build a broadband network for public safety that would encompass the entire country.

It won’t be until the middle or end of 2017 that FirstNet has a plan for New York State, spokesman Ryan Oremland told us, and then the governor has 90 days to accept it or decide that the state will build its own Radio Access Network as part of the national system.

 He also said, “We might be using satellite in some rural areas.”

Sheriff Apple dismissed this, saying, “FirstNet is pie in the sky…They’ll be putting up towers, too, not just using satellites.”

The sheriff’s plan, he said, will cost $19.3 million, with $6.5 million from the federal Department of Homeland Security.  That’s a lot of public money for a system that may soon be obsolete for its intended purpose — saving lives — yet will allow a commercial toehold that otherwise would have been banned.

New York is a strong home-rule state. We should be proud of that; it allows individual towns and villages to develop plans that suit their needs and define their futures.

We admire citizens who are willing to put their money and reputations on the line to defend a worthwhile process. We believe our county legislators were wrong to try to short-circuit that process.

We don’t doubt the sheriff’s sincerity in wanting a system that he believes would help public safety — and yes, save lives — but a sheriff, of all people, should not try to circumvent the law.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer