One thing one might say for hiring an attorney as chief executive officer: they will make things far more complex than anyone could imagine.

Marc Rider, an attorney, was named executive director of the Ulster’s Resource Recovery Agency over a year ago. He was charged with seeking a solution to the county’s solid waste disposal issues, asap. To put this in context, the state created the RRA some 45 years ago for that same purpose.

To his credit, Rider, a former deputy county executive and one-time candidate for the county’s top job, has pursued his mission with energy and determination.

However, the lawyer in him just can’t seem to resist adding new wrinkles into what many thought was accepted dogma. Which is to say, who ultimately controls the purse strings of the RRA — the agency, or the county legislature and, by extension, the county executive who has the last word (absent a veto override) on anything the legislature adopts.

Asked the direct, but apparently simplistic question, on who was going to finance a multi-million-dollar county landfill, Rider replied that it was the RRA’s call. His agency, he said, would design, locate, build, operate and pay for a landfill. In other words, the RRA would have the last word.

Financing the county’s largest public works project in its history — unofficial estimates run north of $50 million, maybe twice that — will require the issuance of bonds. Whose bonds? What bonds? Those bonds.

Legislators seemed to be under the belief that the elected body had the last word on bonding, as indicated by recent exchanges between the RRA and the policy-making branch of the government. Recall how the legislature limited the RRA to $500,000 in bonding authority, and that the agency requested a $10 million cap. Neither would have amounted to a bucket of warm spit (a bowdlerized version of what John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner of Texas, FDR’s first veep, said about the duties of a vice president), a pittance in terms of landfill development.

In hindsight, it would seem to have been a testing of the waters. In a Trump-like escalation of the stakes, Rider is now telling the legislature that the RRA, as an independent agency created by the state, can bond on its own for any amount the landfill project will cost. Legislators consider this a blank check and have stiffened their spines. Worse, some legislators worry that if the landfill project goes south after massive bonding, the county will be left holding the bag.

That’s not the case, counters Rider, who, as an attorney, knows how to read the law.

These would be RRA bonds, sold on the open market, not the county’s. And if the landfill doesn’t meet its bond payments, it’s the bond holders, not the RRA, that get stuck.

It’s a tantalizing take, considering that the RRA was formed all those years ago to allow legislators to avoid any responsibility in siting landfills.

All this and more will be chewed over, chomped on and spit out at the legislature’s April 15 monthly meeting at 7 p.m. at the County Office Building. Unless Rider comes up with yet another wrinkle.

Rogue Cop Gets Better Deal

Sentencing deals between defense attorneys and prosecutors keep getting better for the defendant, disgraced former Saugerties police officer Dion Johnson Jr. Indicted by a county grand jury on a laundry list of serious charges, including sexual harassment of women in the police department, burglary, breaking and entering and two felonies, his case was pleaded down last winter to official misconduct and harassment.

Last week, it got better with Johnson pleading to forcing himself on one woman and harassing others. He was given a conditional discharge. He was also ordered to pay a $3,000 fine and do 60 hours of community service.

The way this case has gone, authorities might soon issue Johnson a medal of commendation.

District Attorney Manny Nneji blamed this inexplicable leniency on the victims’ refusal to go through the rigors of a trial.

County Judge Bryan Rounds, who approved both deals, told a reporter that his “number one priority was empowering the victims.” Huh?

It won’t happen in county court; that’s for certain now. Next stop: civil cases where the town of Saugerties could be on the hook for untold millions.

Left to be pondered is what impact this sorry saga may have on women who might seek careers in law enforcement or those who find themselves in similar circumstances.

Here and There

Pulling up behind a Tesla at a traffic light the other day (it wasn’t on fire), I noticed a bumper sticker I just might attach to my rear end.

“Fight truth decay,” it read, something my profession has been committed to since Peter Zenger went to trial on libel charges in colonial days. Coincidentally, Zenger, a weekly newspaper editor, was acquitted because he told the truth.

Seeking truth has gotten a lot harder in recent years. Even newbies are good liars, having learned from their elders. They used to call it “spin.” Now it’s “gaslighting.” Pity the public.

Phyllis and I dined recently at Lox of Bagels, an eatery just south of the Village of Saugerties, where I spotted a sign in front of the cashier: “35 cents extra each egg.”

“Each?” I thought. That’s $4.20 a dozen.

Referring to the sign, I asked the high school cashier behind the counter what her mother thought of the price of eggs.

“She’s livid!” she exclaimed. Isn’t everybody? Of late, I’ve become one with my bowl of cereal.