The Westchester County Board of Legislators just passed another one of their useless, zany laws—this one is among my favorites. It’s now unlawful to “idle” your car for more than three minutes while you run into a store to buy a carton of cigarettes or a quart of milk, or whatever.

There are many reasons why this is stupid. For one thing I don’t know anybody who idles their car who isn’t double-parked in the first place. Isn’t double-parking already illegal?

The legislators who dreampt this thing up want to cut down on air pollution, and idling motors are apparently a major contributor to the problem.

You know it’s funny…Just this morning, while I was backed up for about 25 minutes on the northbound side of the Bronx River Parkway along with hundreds of other frustrated drivers, I contemplated the fact that there must have been a heavy amount of lung-choking particulates going into the air.

Gee whiz, I thought, if the county had adequately warned people about the traffic snafu caused by closing the road at Exit 10 because of bridge repairs, maybe they could have prevented a genuine idling problem that not only afflicted the BRP but also downtown Scarsdale where traffic was detoured and further backed up by traffic lights that stayed green for only a few seconds. Amazing!

Gary Kriss, the chief adviser to Bill “Boss” Ryan and a modern-day “I Claudius”- type functionary who for years flew under the radar of Westchester County government, was slapped this morning with an assortment of charges that he used county money to further his own personal writing projects and those of his wife.

This is a major development in the long-running soap opera about Kriss’s activities, and whatever the final verdict, it certainly comes as a severe blow against Ryan, the powerful chairman of the county Board of Legislators, who is up for re-election next year. If this doesn’t fuel the reform movement in Westchester, nothing will.

At $146,000 plus a year, Kriss was the highest paid official in the legislative branch, but n one really knew what he did. The allegations brought against him suggest he had a lot of time on his hands, if nothing else.

It turns out he was a frustrated novelist, allegedly using software to write potboilers with titles, “The Zodiac Deception” and “The Houdini Killer.” Well, Kriss may need the advice of Houdini, the great escape artist, on how to get how of this fix.

Here is the full press release from the D.A.’s office:

Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore, announced today that Gary Kriss (DOB 10/12/44) of 169 Laurel Ridge, South Salem, New York has been charged with Four Counts of Theft of Services, class “A” Misdemeanors, as the result of a five month investigation into his conduct while Chief Advisor to the Chairman of the Westchester County Board of Legislators.

Over a twelve month period from March 31st, 2006 to April 5th, 2007, at Offices of the Westchester County Board of Legislators, located at 148 Martine Avenue, White Plains, Kriss used the taxpayer funded labor of a County employee to work on a number of personal projects.

Kriss, while employed by the Westchester County Board of Legislators as Chief Advisor to William Ryan, the Chairman of the Board of Legislators and acting without the authority of the Chairman, utilized an employee of the Board of Legislators, Sarah O’Brien, a Graphics Information Technology Specialist, to work on numerous personal projects during her work hours, including designing book covers for novels written by the defendant as well as completing graphic design work for projects for defendant’s wife, Patricia Kriss, who was not employed by Westchester County.

During the above mentioned time period, the defendant was the highest ranking public official under Chairman Ryan, worked closely with Chairman Ryan, and had a close relationship with the Chairman.

As a result, Ms O’Brien, a subordinate, under the defendant’s direct supervision, felt compelled to work on these personal projects for the defendant and complete them within the deadlines imposed by the defendant.

Moreover, the work in question did not relate to the business of Westchester County and was completed during County work hours, with the use of County computer equipment, software, and supplies and County staff in order to personally benefit the defendant or his wife.
The projects that Sarah O’Brien worked on included:

• a book cover for a novel being written by the defendant entitled, The Zodiac Deception;
• a book cover for a novel being written by the defendant entitled, The Houdini Killer;
• a flow chart relating to donations and gifts made to the Yale Divinity School, where the defendant’s wife worked;
• a multi-paged document relating to a referendum for the Ridgefield, Connecticut Library, where the defendant’s wife was employed.

Kriss faces up to one year in the Westchester County Jail on each of the four counts.

He was released on his own recognizance.

His next court date will be on December 8th, 2008.

Second Deputy District Attorney Ted Livingston, Chief of the Investigations Division, will prosecute the case.

Not that it matters one damn bit, but Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the Democratic Party tough guy who is Barack Obama’s first choice for White House chief of staff, attended Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers.

This proves once again there’s a local connection to everything. But what I find amusing is that Sarah Lawrence, which used to be exclusively a women’s school, isn’t exactly a school I would associate with a hard-nosed Illinois pol who liberally peppers his infamous, arm-twisting palaver with the F-bomb.

Last December, my favorite mentalist, The Amazing Kreskin, predicted who would win the presidential election on Tuesday. He wrote down the name and placed it in a sealed lock box, which no one has opened lo all these months.

I interviewed Kreskin around the time he made his mystical selection of who will be the leader of the Free World.

Well, today is the big day. The box, which has been kept at The World Bar, located at 845 United Nations Plaza in New York City will be opened by the Amazing One at 1 p.m. at The World Bar. Kreskin will use the opportunity to forecast significant upcoming events in world affairs, the economy and national security, said his publicist, Isabel Quinteros.

” This represents the biggest, most long range challenge in his fifty year career,” she said. “He was able to predict a winner at a time when there were more than a dozen contenders including John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney as well as John McCain and Barack Obama.”

Something tells me Kreskin didn’t see Mike Gravel in his crystal ball. I’m sure he got it right and picked Obama.

He’s never wrong. I’ve always said that Kreskin’s powers should be used to fight the Russians. Obama should name him secretary of defense.

If anyone had told Lawrence Otis Graham back when he attended Harvard Law School that a certain classmate by the name of Barack Obama would even run for president let alone capture the White House, he would have said they were crazy.

“I would not have picked him,” Graham said. “Because he was not a politico when we were in law school. He was more of the intellectual, the do-gooder.

“You know, all of us were sort of heading to Wall Street, to pay off our loans and make a lot of money. He was volunteering, going into Roxbury and the poor sections of Boston and volunteering his time.”

Obama never ran for office while he was at Harvard.

“He was no the typical political animal who wanted to be class president,” Graham said.

Graham is familiar to many Westchester residents as a former candidate for Congress and as a regular political commentator on Cablevision’s News 12. But he is also the author of many books, including “The Senator and the Socialite,” which tells the story of  Blanche Kelso Bruce, who was born a slave and in 1875  became America’s first black man elected to a full Senate term.

We have come a long way since then.

Graham, who is black, didn’t think he would see a black citizen become president in his lifetime. Now he is near certain that Obama will win tonight.

“I didn’t tell it was a certainty until he beat Hillary Clinton,” Graham said. “When he beat Hillary Clinton, I said he’s going to be our next president. It didn’t matter. I didn’t care who the Republicans put up against him.”

Graham predicted that Obama will get 325 electoral votes in defeating John McCain.

The sea change in American politics and more importantly, race relations, would be enormous. Graham said he was acutely aware of the cultural and social implications of an Obama victory.

“Most whites have never had a black neighbor or a black boss, even,” he said. “So the concept of electing a black president had previously been absurd, at least for the same reason it was an absurdity for many people to beleive that Oprah Winfrey could one day becme the biggest television star.”

Graham has three children of elementary school age.

“They’ve never been so engaged in politics until now,” he said, “because someone who looks like us could be living in the White House.”

Tomorrow at the dark hour of 7 a.m., I will be on the radio with Bob Marrone, the morning drive host of WVOX radio, 1460 AM. We’ll be talking about the elections.

On Thursday, tune in for a special two-hour, post-election “High Noon” special. Several people will be joining me including—Milt Hoffman, a former editor of the Journal News and politics czar of Westchester County; Jeff Binder, an attorney and political consultant with the Mamaroneck-based Strategic Group; Mike Edelman, a Republican consultant and cable-TV commentator.

Calls will be taken at 914-636-0110. And if you can’t get within radio listening range, log onto wvox.com.