One down!

Sheldon Silver, Ex-NYS Assembly Speaker: Guilty on All Counts

By BENJAMIN WEISER and SUSANNE CRAIG NOV. 30, 2015

After a five-week trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the end came rather quickly and unceremoniously for Mr. Silver, 71, a Democrat who served more than two decades as Assembly speaker before he was forced to resign from the post after his arrest in January.

EDITORIAL: Will state learn from its mistakes?

What’s happened in public education over the last two years is remarkable and scary.

Read it here:

Safe Haven - no questions asked

Safe Haven programs protect newborns, parents

Early Friday morning, police found the body of a male newborn in a garbage bag inside a dumpster behind a Bells Pond XtraMart in Livingston.

Following the discovery of a newborn’s body in a Columbia County dumpster, officials want to emphasize the Safe Haven program.

Michelle Shrader

News10.com

SCHODACK, N.Y. (NEWS10) – Sheriff Deputies say they have found the body of 33-year-old Michelle Shrader of East Greenbush.

Officials say she was located deceased in a wooded area just off of route 150 in the Town of Schodack around 4 p.m. on Monday. She was positively identified by her husband.

Watch coverage here..

Open Meeting

Your presence is needed at Tuesday's RensCo Meeting
Once again it is important to show the Rensselaer County Legislature how determined we are to get a good Drinking Water Protection bill passed.

Call to action

On Wednesday, October 28th, Rensselaer County Chairman Stan Brownell and Vice Chairman Alex Shannon proposed another bill to protect drinking water , and we understand that they intend to bring it to a vote on November 10th.

The language of the bill reflects much improvement over the “eminent domain” version, and we now have a basis for moving forward to the development of a bill acceptable to us, the residents. However, it needs a lot of improvement. In fact, when comparing this bill to that which Legislator Alex Shannon and others introduced in August, this bill represents a significant step away from that bill's protections.

For example: The bill covers residents living within ¼ mile from a blast; the August bill protected residents living one mile from a blast: a 75% reduction in those protected. While we could live with covering residents living within ½ mile, ¼ mile – only 1320 feet -- is too small a radius.