Citing environmental concerns about the expansion of Albany's Rapp Road landfill into the Pine Bush, the town has tentatively negotiated to send its trash to the Colonie Town Landfill, Supervisor Kenneth Runion said Wednesday.

"It's an environmental decision," Runion said. "My feeling is that the town of Guilderland has always been committed to preserving the Pine Bush and that the current expansion is looking into going into Pine Bush land."

A former executive of a New York trash-hauling company has been sentenced to seven years in prison for a bribery scheme that helped him overbill a city by $1 million.

Federal Judge Stephen Robinson said Tuesday that Albert Tranquillo III will serve the seven years after his current 8 1/2-year stretch for racketeering is over. The judge also ordered Tranquillo (Tran-QUILL'-oh) to pay back the city of Mount Vernon.

The 31-year-old Tranquillo pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy and bribery. His company had a contract to remove debris from city property and he confessed that he padded his invoices after bribing Public Works supervisor James Castaldo.

Castaldo has admitted accepting the bribes and is serving five years.

"It is somewhat of a supply-and-demand issue," Leistensnider added, acknowledging concerns that if the city were to raise tipping fees the private haulers and municipalities might take their business elsewhere.

All revenue from the landfill, Leistensnider noted, goes to the city.

Councilman James Sano, chairman of the council Finance Committee, said bonding has "always been the way it was planned," and he questioned what would happen if higher tipping fees drove customers away.

"Then how are you supposed to fund it?" he said.

Last week, the mayor defended his agreement to cut Allied's tipping fee from $46 a ton to $38, a 17 percent reduction. The two-year pact came after the company - the nation's second-largest hauler - threatened to load its garbage onto trains bound for an Allied-owned megadump in South Carolina.

"Those guys held us hostage," the mayor said. "If we don't have the $6 million a year that we get from Allied, I have to lay off workers. It would impact the city's budget dramatically. This was a short-term step to maintain liquidity."

Jennings does not need Common Council approval to set dumping fees, or for any other city contract.

Allied dumping shot up after the price break, from 85,000 tons in 2004 to 140,000 tons last year, the equivalent of 11,000 garbage trucks.

The Times Union conducted a computerized analysis of a quarter-million dump bills dating to 2001.

With headquarters in Scottsdale, Ariz., and annual revenues of $14 billion, Allied operates dumps and transfer stations in 37 states. Garbage hauled to Albany by the company now accounts for almost half of the $13 million in fees earned annually by the city.

This year, Allied is on pace to dump 175,000 tons, which would account for more than half of all incoming garbage.

"It is like we are running the landfill for the benefit of Allied," said 2nd Ward Common Council member Dominick Calsolaro. "I am amazed this kind of deal was done more than a year ago, when they were out there yelling that we were running out of landfill space and it was an emergency, and we had to expand into the Pine Bush.

"Instead, we should be extending the life of the landfill by taking less garbage. That would be a benefit to the citizens of Albany, who wouldn't have to pay for a new landfill so soon."

Jennings' proposed budget includes $9 million to expand the landfill in 2008.

Neither Calsolaro nor 12th Ward Council member Michael O'Brien, chairman of the General Services Committee that oversees the dump, knew about the Allied deal before being informed of it by the Times Union.

In response to a question from O'Brien during a budget presentation to the council on Monday, General Services Commissioner Bill Bruce said the city was charging commercial haulers "in the $60s."

In a subsequent interview with the Times Union, Bruce said he included a line on the Allied rate in a spreadsheet about Rapp Road finances that he had provided to city lawmakers in June.

On Wednesday, the mayor backed his commissioner. "It's not my fault that they didn't read it after they asked for it," Jennings said with a shrug

Councilman James Sano, chairman of the council Finance Committee, said bonding has "always been the way it was planned," and he questioned what would happen if higher tipping fees drove customers away.

"Then how are you supposed to fund it?" he said.

The Treasurer cannot provide a report listing the value of parking fine tickets written per year, and the amount of fines collected, forgiven, reduced or dismissed and the amount remaining uncollected for each year for the year 2002 to date.

Certain conclusions are certain. There were no controls in place over any part of this system. There were no criteria to determine which license plates were entered. The list was never reviewed to insure that the vehicle was still worthy of being in the system. There was no clear mandate as to who was authorized that plates be entered.

The Treasurer again maintained that she had no knowledge of the VIP list or that warning tickets were being issued to anyone on this list. It was later discovered that she had in fact received seven such tickets on her vehicle

There is also apparently no one in authority at either Traffic Safety Division or the Treasurer’s Office who knows whether or not the no fine tickets are transmitted in the report of tickets from Traffic Safety to the Treasurer. While the City Treasurer and PVB Director both testified that they have never received no fine tickets in the weekly or daily list of parking tickets, one wonders why these tickets would be removed from the report. It would seem to make sense that a paper ticket was issued in the first place to keep track of the no fine tickets. Otherwise, the PSO would just ignore the car and not issue a ticket as they did prior to the purchase of handhelds. Considering that a PSO could at any time write a no fine ticket for any reason, it would make sense that the Traffic Violation Bureau Chief would want to audit the list of no fine tickets randomly to check for abuse of the system

Treasurer Barnette herself received several no fine tickets, and yet she was never concerned with the amount of no tine tickets being written and the attendant loss of revenue to the city. It is implausible that these tickets were written, yet never received by the parties involved. It should have been incumbent upon her and her PVB Director to determine why these tickets were not

Treasurer Barnette stated that she has nothing to do with the selection of a new system even though an entire Bureau under her leadership is dependent on the type of new system selected.

The attitude and actions of the City Treasurer towards the Common Council and the lack of internal controls of that Office could easily instigate a second investigation by the Council. From the start, the Treasurer portrayed her office as a completely independent office separate and apart from this city government. She refused to give the Council even the most basic information that would generally be available to the public under the Freedom of Information Law. When she did comply, she used the diversionary tactic of providing documents and reports, but not those actually requested by the Council.

There also appears to be a discrepancy with her March 30 testimony where she stated she had never seen or known of no fine tickets, and the later revelation that she had received seven of such no fine tickets. It was also disturbing when revealed that PVB Director Van Apeldorn’s wife received seventy no fine tickets. This calls into questions their entire testimony that evening

EL MONTE – The city council will consider Tuesday whether to initiate Chapter 9 bankruptcy proceedings for El Monte if council members cannot immediately find a way to completely fix the city's $12 million budget deficit.

"If I don't have a balanced budget by the end of the evening, we have to initiate chapter 9 bankruptcy proceedings," said City Manager Jim Mussenden.

In order to get that balanced budget, the city's four employee unions will have to agree to cuts to their benefits or face further layoffs, on top of the 100 employees that were already laid off earlier this month, Mussenden said.

In creating that budget, city staff determined city expenses were $12 million short of revenues. To cut $10 million in spending, Mussenden laid off 100 employees and recommended other cutbacks, including the closure of one of the city's four fire stations.

To cut the remaining $2 million, Mussenden is asking city employees to defer pay raises, pay $200 a month for medical benefits and, for some, pay 5 percent of their PARS retirement costs.

If the employee unions do not agreed to these concessions, Mussenden will propose further layoffs and service cuts, he said. And if the city council does not accept those, he will ask the city council to begin bankruptcy proceedings.

we have 28 committee people in the 3rd ward 24 are hard working democratic we were out on the first day 9 am to 9pm in shifts .

the broken car glass was heard around 2:30am we foundit at 8:30am ms feasther was out at11;30am saying that i drop out when it had not hit the media she said i lost my petitions,we the voters went out and got more petitions signed that is what the people of the 3rd ward did now thats the factsee the news on cbs6on saturday nite

At one point, Rosenzweig objected to a phrase that called the city's failure to buy a new computer system for writing tickets when it knew for years that its old one was about to become obsolete the "worst example of government bureaucracy and inefficiency."

Others were adamant the indictment remain.

"If you want to call it government bureaucracy, I won't object," Morris said, "but I think that's a kind description."

Councilman Joseph Igoe suggested the wording be changed to call it "the worst miscommunication" -- to which Councilman Corey Ellis replied: "That's what bureaucracy is, people don't talk to each other."