845 Confidential: OC seeks state action on fentanyl analogues – News – recordonline.com

GOSHEN — Orange County lawmakers unanimously approved a resolution on Thursday calling on the state Legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo to outlaw variations of fentanyl that were created to skirt the law but have the same effect as the powerful opioid and are just as deadly.

The county is trying to spur action on a pending bill in Albany that would add analogues of fentanyl and other drugs to the state’s controlled substances list, and thereby enable prosecutors to charge the dealers who sell them. The Senate passed the bill last year, but the Assembly hasn’t taken it up.

“As a result of the failure of our State Legislature to define some fentanyl analogues as controlled substances, the illegal drug chemists are constantly ahead of law enforcement,” Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler, whose office proposed the resolution, said in a statement after the vote. “One or two substances get added to the Public Health Law schedules; the criminals develop several more, which aren’t controlled substances until the State Legislature acts. And, of course, State legislative action can take years, if it occurs at all. People are dying and we can’t keep falling behind the drug dealers.”

Joining lawmakers and county officials for the vote were the parents of two young Orange County men who died from opioid overdoses involving fentanyl in 2016 and 2017.

Fentanyl analogues played a role in 18 of the 102 opioid overdose deaths that occurred in Orange County this year as of Nov. 27, according to the county Medical Examiner’s Office. The number of fatal opioid overdoses in the county has increased in each of the last four years.

In a separate statement on Thursday, Hoovler vowed to press the region’s state senators and Assembly members to seek more funding in next year’s state budget for drug prevention programs and law enforcement efforts to combat opioid sales.

“We spend billions annually to help keep people from dying of cancer,” he said. “We spend billions annually and provide law enforcement with necessary tools to help prevent people from dying in car accidents. Well, thousands are dying from opioid overdoses, and the time has come to spend the money needed to prevent those deaths.”

Chris McKenna

Counter your cabin fever at Washington’s Headquarters

CITY OF NEWBURGH — Are you suffering from post-Christmas cabin fever?

Well, the folks at Washington’s Headquarters State Historic Site suggest you spend a little time with them.

The headquarters, which usually is only open for a few hours on Friday and Saturday this time of the year, is expanding its schedule this week. They’ll be open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday to present “A Cure For Cabin Fever.”

Visitors will be able to take guided tours of the historic Hasbrouck House, the fieldstone farmhouse on the site at 84 Liberty St. where George and Martha Washington spent time during the final winter of the Revolutionary War. The house will be seasonally decorated, and you can hear how the Washingtons spent their holiday season that year.

You can also tour the museum, which has more than 1,300 artifacts, and create your own take-home craft — an 18th century whirligig. (The short version is that it’s an object that spins or whirls, but we bet someone will be there to explain it better for you.) It’s free with your museum admission: $4 for adults, $3 for seniors and students. Children 12 and under are admitted free, so bring the kids.

For more information, call 562-1195.

Civil Air Patrol cadets and their families tour Intrepid

Twenty cadets of the Civil Air Patrol from Orange, Sullivan and Rockland counties and members of their family got a feel for what it was like to serve on an aircraft carrier.

Earlier this month, the cadets visited Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, where they stayed overnight aboard the USS Intrepid, which served in World War II and the Vietnam War.

The Civil Air Patrol is the auxiliary for the U.S. Air Force.

The cadets got a tour of the ship and learned about its service between 1943 and 1974. The USS Intrepid became the centerpiece of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in 1982.

Matthew Nanci

Audit: Roscoe School District has saved $1.1M since 2014-15

ROSCOE — An audit conducted by the New York State Comptroller’s Office found that officials in the Roscoe School District in Sullivan County were effective at controlling expenditures and saved $1.1 million since the 2014-15 school year.

The district was able to save that money by keeping certain special education classes in the district and sharing officials with other districts, according to the audit.

For example, in the 2014-15 school district, the Roscoe School District agreed with the Downsville School District in Delaware County to share a superintendent and split the cost. In the 2017-2018 school year, they added the Livingston Manor School District to the agreement.

Since 2014-15, Roscoe has saved more than $364,000 because of that agreement, according to the audit.

Moving forward, the comptroller’s office recommends continuing to pursue measures to minimize expenditures and monitor the value of shared services to ensure the district is fairly compensated by other districts.

Matthew Nanci

Orange County hires Kistner as tourism coordinator

Orange County hired Stephanie Kistner as tourism coordinator last month, filling a position that had been vacant for a year and providing support for the county tourism director, Amanda Dana.

Kistner, who worked most recently as an account executive for Major League Baseball and then Poughkeepsie Journal Media, started work on Nov. 19. Her salary is $52,294.

Chris McKenna