Maybe the poobahs of Westchester County government aren’t catching on to the woeful economy, but it looks like the town of Cortlandt is trying to set an example in the way of belt-tightening leadership.

Town Supervisor Linda Puglisi said she and eight and other elected officials will not take raises in 2009. That’s a savings of $12,000 right there. Not a lot perhaps, but it’s the symbolism that matters.

Times are tough in Cortlandt, as they are everywhere. Puglisi saiid the town is getting one-third of the mortgage tax revenue it projected for 2008, or $700,000.

The supervisor also said that two-year contracts for 11 contractual employees, mostly bosses, will be amended from a 3.5 percent salary increase to 2 percent…a savings of $14,145. Union contracts, she said, are currently in stages of negotiation.

Other cuts:

50 percent reduction in consultants, saving $42,600.

One-third cut in seasonal hiring, saving $25,000.

Hiring freeze from 2008 to 2009.

When it comes to mortgage foreclosures in Westchester, we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. Check out the legal ads in The Journal News and it’s not hard to see that foreclosure notices dominate.

It will only get worse before it gets better. According to the state Comptroller’s Office, subprime mortgages accounted for 7.5 percent of the county’s total in 2004, By 2006, the shaky subprimes were at 19 percent. Those homeowners are in the biggest trouble.

Indeed, over the last years, 2,431 foreclosure filings and judgments were filed in Westchester last year…an increase of 58.7 percent. Unemployment is at 5.3 percent, the highest in 15 years.

Next year is an election year, and County Executive Andy Spano finally may be catching on to the fact that his political future rests on how well he responds to the economic mess. So far, his notion of trimming the fat-laden county budget by a mere $100,000 and change has not been well received, nor has his attempt to push through nearly $900,000 in raises for nonunion county workers, many of them department heads and directors.

But to show he’s concerned about Mr. and Mrs. Homeowner, Spano has assumed the role of George Bailey. He’s written a letter to 23 banks, a kind of collective “Old Man Potter,” asking them to voluntarily  place a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures. In his letter, he requests that they work out ways to renegotiate the loans with delinquent homeowners.

The word “voluntary” is key. But some banks are already doing this…so Spano’s impact may be negligible. Anyway, the announcment of his effort was made today.

Nine years ago, the state abolished the New York City commuter tax.

But for months, ever since the economy went south and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced its $1.2 billion budget gap, we’ve been predicting that the commuter tax would come back on the table.

And now it has. Or will.

Today, the city’s comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., is going to formally submit a plan calling for the revival of the tax and for an increase in registration fees for all cars in the city and the 12-county region served by the MTA. Thompson said if the new taxes and fees go through, the MTA will reap $2 billion a year in revenue.

The old commuter tax amounted to .45 percent…so if you earned $100,000 and commuted to a city job you paid $450 in extra taxes. A few Westchester County legislators have already expressed their opposition to the commuter tax, but their protests may get swept aside by the tidal wave of the bad economy.

Thompson is also proposing that the present $30 car registration fee, which is paid every two years, be changed to $100 annually for cars weighing up to 2,300 pounds. After that, it’s nine cents extra for every pound. So if you’ve got a heavy SUV, here’s another excuse to get rid of it.

These ideas are in addition to raising transit fares and tolls by 23 percent.

So add it up…the recession is going to hurt in many ways. This is just the transportation part of the misery. Even those who are lucky enough to keep their jobs, will feel the pain…it’s like getting pelted by a rain of nickels and dimes.

The Westchester County Board of Legislators will meet this afternoon and will probably vote on $890,000 in raises, including 3.25 percent pay increases for County Executive Andy Spano’s commissioners and department heads.

News of this has reverberated through the ranks of outraged taxpayers, many of whom have asked how they can register their opinion on the matter.

You can call or write.

Here is Spano’s e-mail address: ceo1@westchestergov.com. You can also call the legislators.

LEGISLATORS PHONE NUMBERS:

Phone (914)
William J. Ryan (Board Chair)
District 5
995-2827

George Oros (Minority Leader)
District 1
995-2828

Peter Harckham
District 2
995-2810

John Nonna
District 3
995- 2847

Michael B. Kaplowitz (Vice Chair)
District 4
995-2848

Martin Rogowsky (Majority Leader)
District 6
995-2834

Judith A. Myers (Majority Whip)
District 7
995-2802

Lois T. Bronz
District 8
995-2833

William Burton
District 9
995-2812

Vito J. Pinto
District 10
995-2817

James Maisano (Minority Whip)
District 11
995-2826

Thomas J. Abinanti
District 12
995-2821

Lyndon Williams
District 13
995-2837

Bernice Spreckman
District 14
995-2815

Gordon A. Burrows
District 15
995-2830

Kenneth W. Jenkins
District 16
995-2829

José I. Alvarado
District 17
995-2846

The Westchester County of Legislators, aka the “Board of Nannies” are always coming with new ways to control our behavior. The love to create nutty laws…the nuttier the better. I think they ought to pass a law prohibiting people from placing their tongues in light sockets or on cold, metal surfaces in winter.

But Dennis Kremer, a Westchester resident, sent me a list of proposed laws that could potentially keep the board in business for at least a year. Here they are. Feel free to come up with your own suggestions.

NEW NANNY LAWS:

• Men can no longer dye their hair black. The chemicals pollute our ecosystem and we need to prevent our children from believing our County Executive is not a follicle natural!
• We can no longer de-ice our driveways with salt. From now on we need to use battery powered hair dryers.
• You can no longer blame mandates for every fiscal critique of your administration. It sounds like, “my mother made me do it”
• You must reduce the fees and other charges paid to outside consultants and vendors by hard and soft dollar political contributions they made to secure their vendor role. If they have all this money to throw away, they can take a revenue haircut.
• By the way, what happened to all the mail boxes that used to be conveniently available for us to drop our mail? The nagging ninnies need to now support the Feds because driving to the Post Office wastes gas.
• You can no longer assess anyone’s house with the same appraised value in Westchester County with more tax that a similarly appraised house. We are all neighbors!

• You can no longer restrict County citizens from obtaining permits to park at any Metro North Station, if these stations are attached to State property or right of ways.

  Gotta go now. Have to go idle at drive in ATM cash machine.

The group that wants to eliminate  Westchester County government reminds me of the villagers in the old Frankenstein movies who, armed with farming implements and torches, chase the monster into the old windmill and light it on fire. The “monster” in the eyes of many taxpayers is Andy Spano and/or Bill “Boss” Ryan and they are certainly feeling the heat.

This is a slash and burn movement, and any county official who scoffs at  at it does so at their own peril.

Last night, I went to the Rethinking County Government group’s meeting in White Plains and it was interesting to see that at least one higher up in the Spano Administration, does, indeed, take them seriously. Larry Schwartz, the deputy county executive and political-strategic brain behind the county regime, listened intently and could be seen furiously taking notes.

It’s an eclectic bunch, to say the least. Many of the organizers are renegade Democrats from the No-Spano-Zones of Greenburgh and Yonkers e.g. Greenburgh Town Supervisor, Yonkers City Councilwoman Joan Gronowski. Another leading figure was White Plains City Councilman Glenn Hockley. Others in attendance included Yonkers City Councilman Liam McLaughlin and former city councilman Dennis Robertson.

Another interesting character was Sam Zherka, the publisher of the Westchester Guardian and noted strip-club owner. He was invited to come up to the microphone where he talked up the idea of having “thousands” of protestors marching against county government in White Plains. Hence, my Frankenstein imagery.

In any event, this group is soliciting for money…and Zherka was the only one I saw who has deep pockets.

Spano dismisses the leaders of this group as “disingeneous.” Feiner, for one has had to raise taxes in his town considerably in recent budget years. Gronowski’s city of Yonkers is facing layoffs of up to 300 employees.

“That may be a cover,” Spano said. “This may be a cover for that.”

The battle is on. If you believe Feiner, antagonism will reign. Among other things, he wants to recruit 17 “pests,” one for each member of the county Board of Legislators, to watch every move the make and every vote they take and report back.

Call  them the Barnum & Bailey Board of Legislators…Whatta buncha clowns! And here I thought I was bad about getting back to people!

Louise Simmons, an animal rights activist, says she’s been desperately trying to get through to the board’s legislation committee to talk about a proposal to regulate animal circus acts and no one has bothered to get back to her. She’s either e-mailed or phoned them no fewer than nine  times…and nada. Nothing. Zip.

“I am at the end of my tether with that bunch on the 8th floor.” Simmons writes. “Who the heck do they think they are just ignoring the citizens of Westchester?”

The aim of her “small group”  is to push through a law to ban wild an exotic animal acts in Westchester County. Every year, the Hanneford Circus comes to the Westchester County Center and it usually inspires protests from activists who believe the performing animals are treated inhumanely.

“We say bring the circus, leave the wild animals behind!” says Simmons, who has been trying to get through to Legislator Bill Burton, D-Ossining, among other board members. “No one has had the common decency to even reply to me.”

OK, they’re on notice. The test now is see how long it takes them to answer this constituent’s concerns.

Comedian Al Franken really, really wants to be a U.S. Senator from Minnesota. So much so that he’s got a telephone campaign going to raise money for the vote recount.

I know because a call came all the way across the Mississippi and Hudson Rivers to my Yonkers home yesterday. The pitch: “Support our effort to make sure that the recount is conducted fairly and every vote is counted properly.”

Franken, a Democrat and creator of the wimpy, 12-step Saturday Night Live character Stuart Smalley, is trying to unseat Republican incumbent Norm Coleman. The race is too close to call…Out of 2.9 million votes cast, Coleman leads Smalley, I mean Franken, by about 200 votes.

This is a critical race for Coleman because if he loses, he’ll go down in history as the only politician to lose major elections to both Franken and former wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura, who beat him in a three-way race for governor.

The Republican National Committee is solicting funds for the recount, too, but they haven’t called me yet. Our answer to the Franken phone caller: ARE YOU KIDDING ME! Not today, friend.

It’s an open rant show today on “High Noon.”  I’m going to talk about Veterans Day, the economy and whatever is one YOUR MIND.

But I’m also going to tell you something about next year’s Westchester County budget…something you don’t know and the county executive’s office mistakenly let out of the bag a day early. You won’t know what it is unless you tune in today to 1460 AM or listen live at wvox.com. The show starts a few mintues after 12.

Calls will be taken at 914-636-0110.

An e-mail press release reached me just now, purporting that numerous copies of a phony but very realistic edition of The New York Times with a front-page headline declaring, ” Iraq War Ends,” surfaced this morning. The paper is dated July 4, 2009.

The political missive came with a video.

The video shows actors marveling over the “good news,” reporting the end of the war in the Mid-East and Afghanistan. It also takes a shot at the Times management, showing a bespectacled editor-type harrumphing in front of the newspaper headquarters in Manhattan.

According to the press release after “an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million papers were printed at six different press and driven to prearranged pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers tood ready to pass them out on the street.”

More than a million copies? Thousands of volunteers? Hard to believe.

In any event, it’s not being presented as a hoax, (Sort of reminds me how the old hoaxer Alan Abel weaseled his fake obit into the Times many years ago) but as a political statement.

“It’s all about how at this point, we need to push harder than ever,” said Bertha Suttner, who is indentified as one of the faux Times writers. “We’ve got to make sure Obama and all the other Democrats do what we elected them to do. After eight, or maybe twenty-eight years of hell, we need to start imagining heaven.”

I can’t imagine the Times is all too happy with this.