Voters ready to pick next exec
Rensselaer County election season features race for top job
Rensselaer County voters on Tuesday will decide on a new county executive when they head to the polls.
Voters will decide in the general election whether to elect the Republican candidate, Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin, R-Troy, Democratic candidate Andrea Smyth, D-Rensselaer, or Green Party candidate Wayne Foy.
The Record recently spoke with the two candidates from the two major party lines about some of their short-term and longterm goals as county executive if elected.
McLaughlin was originally born in Boston and attended Xaverian Brothers High School there. After high school, McLaughlin knew that he wanted to become an airline pilot, so he attended the Florida Institute of Technology and received his commercial and instrument airplane ratings. He then attended Arizona State University and stud-
ied Finance. After that, he received his bachelor’s degree from the University of the State of New York and his MBA from the University of Phoenix.
After earning his degrees, he began his aviation career in Albany, landing his first flying job with Mall Airways. He also started a small lawn care business in order to make extra money to pay his student loans. His next job was with another commuter airline, Brockway Air, which became Metro Air Northeast. That airline shut down during the first Gulf War. McLaughlin then flew as a corporate pilot for Key Bank. From there, he went to the major airlines and flew the Airbus and Boeing 737 for America West and USAirways. After 9/11, the airline industry was in chaos and McLaughlin was laid off, along with the bottom 36 percent of the seniority list of USAirways. McLaughlin has compiled more than 12,000 hours of flight time, approximately 1½ years, with a perfect safety record.
Landing on his feet, McLaughlin then decided entered the mortgage banking industry with Citizens Bank. Within one year, he was in the Presidents Club and ranked in the top 10 percent of all loan officers. McLaughlin then got into politics and has served in the 107th Assembly District for seven years. McLaughlin’s current 107th Assembly District covers parts of Renesselaer, Columbia and Washington counties.
McLaughlin, 54, said he intends to look at outgoing county executive Kathleen Jimino’s 2018 budget on the short-term during his transition if elected to the roughly $121,000 per year position.
“Short-term, we’re going to take a look at the budget heavily because that really wouldn’t be my budget per say, so that will be done during the transition,” McLaughlin said. “We’re going to immediately look toward getting a grant writer on staff, so that we can make sure that we can go after every dollar that we can go after. We’re going to restructure departments that need to be restructured and we’re going to take a look at, you know the first 100 days type of things would really be looking at everything.”
Smyth, 55, grew up in rural Dutchess County and is a graduate of Arlington High School, the University of South Florida and the Rockefeller College Graduate School of Public Affairs & Policy at the University at Albany. She has a bachelor’s degree in public relations and a master’s degree in public management and has worked for some of Albany’s most influential groups, including the New York State Association of Counties, the New York Public Welfare Association and the Home Care Association of New York State. She is currently executive director of the New York State Coalition for Children’s Mental Health Services and owner of A Smyth Advocacy, a government relations and strategic planning firm she started in 1999.
A lifelong healthcare advocate, Smyth said she believes she has decades of policy and budgeting experience that can help with the county executive role. Smyth said she had previously run for the Rensselaer County Legislature and also ran for a seat previously on the East Greenbush town board.
Smyth said an important short-term goal for her administration would be to look more into the county’s recent shared services agreement that was mandated by Gov. Andrew Cuomo for counties to make official shared service plans.
“I want to definitely attack the shared services initiative right away and identify more ways to help the property taxpayers across the county by building upon the foundation of shared services that already exists, but making a more robust attempt at suppressing property taxes,” explained Smyth.
Smyth also said another immediate goal of hers is to secure state and federal monies to help improve the county’s aging infrastructure and water quality issues.
“In addition to that I also want to immediately try to get as much of the water infrastructure money that is going to be available through the state and the federal government, so that we can address all of the different aging infrastructure and water quality issues that are all around the county.”
McLaughlin also mentioned that he intends to address the county’s aging infrastructure issues as well, but he believes that this would fall under more of a long-term goal for his administration along with creating more economic development.
“Infrastructure is going to be huge,” said McLaughlin, “and the number one goal is to grow the economy of Rensselaer County.” “We also have a real need to modernize, so we’re going to be looking at using technology to not only to continue to provide the services we provide, but we think we can find a way to do it cheaper without cutting those services.”
McLaughlin also noted that he will be looking to try to replace and relocate the county’s fire training tower along with getting the county’s emergency services communications system and Smyth also noted that looking into the emergency services would be a long-term goal of hers, while McLaughlin noted that he would want to look at this issue fairly quickly.
“I definitely want to work with the emergency first responders and the emergency response system to make sure that everyone has access to timely emergency response services,” Smyth said.