Democrat mounts challenge in state Senate race

Democrat mounts challenge in state Senate race

By RICHARD ROTH

HILLSDALE—Brian Keeler, the Democratic candidate for the 41st district state Senate seat held by Republican Steve Saland for the past 16 years, says he can’t outspend the incumbent, but he will have a “well-funded, well-supported” campaign.

“We will give [Mr. Saland] something he hasn’t had, which is a serious race here in the Hudson Valley,” says Mr. Keeler. “Steve Saland has, at last report, $300,000 in the bank from years gone by. But we can run an effective campaign with the budget we have.”

Mr. Keeler says Mr. Saland, as chairman of the Senate Education Committee, is “more responsible for the property tax crisis than any other senator in Albany, period.”

Mr. Saland says he isn’t worried about the charges of his challenger, because he has a record of “achievement and service” to the people of Columbia and Dutchess counties. The 41st District includes all of Columbia County and most of Dutchess.

“My opponent has no record, and therefore he has the luxury to distort mine,” said Mr. Saland. “I’m advised that his principal callings are that of blogging and acting: perhaps he believes that permits him to re-define reality.”

Mr. Keeler, a Dutchess County resident for over 15 years, was one of the creators of E pluribus media, the online citizen-journalism organization, or blog, that made its name by exposing a White House reporter as an online male prostitute; and he often posts on dailykos.com, another high-traffic political blog, the term applied to web logs or journals. He has had a long career as a television and movie actor, and he owns a company that aids non-profit organizations in developing business plans.

As for Mr. Saland’s assertion that he is re-defining reality, said Mr. Keeler, “The reality is that we have a serious property tax crisis, no matter how [Mr. Saland] tries to deflect it.”
Mr. Keeler says he decided to run for the Senate because he wants to “get rid of the calcified incumbency that has paralyzed Albany,” adding that Mr. Saland has been “a professional politician for over a quarter of a century.”
School tax reform and government transparency are high on Mr. Keeler’s list of priorities, and he also wants to reform the system’s reliance on member-item grants, a $200 million unspecified annual appropriation “for future consideration.”

“It’s always nice to receive checks,” he says. “But we have to look at the process. Member-item dollars are essentially an incumbency insurance policy. This year we ran a substantial deficit, and the money was borrowed from our kids.”

In response, Mr. Saland, who also lives in Dutchess County, said he “would have to assume that if [Mr.Keeler] were to have the good fortune to be elected, he would decline member items.” He said the beneficiaries of his own member-item grants have been “healthcare, school districts, law enforcement, public safety, and community development, which I think have been of significant benefit to my district.”

The items were routinely listed in the budget “until three or four or five years ago,” according to Mr. Saland.
He introduced a bill at the end of the current legislative session that would give local municipalities the option of phasing out property taxes over a five year period, reducing taxes by 25% per year, and using state general funds to cover their budgets. But Mr. Keeler called Mr. Saland’s legislation “a three-page piece of procedural mumbo jumbo that doesn’t really address the problem,” and he says deeper tax reform is needed, beginning with the state income tax.

“You can’t look at property tax singularly as a standalone issue. It’s part of our tax structure, including income tax and school tax and local government tax,” said Mr. Keeler. “Our income tax structure over the last 20 years has gone from a progressive tax to a flat tax. And that has had an impact on the revenue the state can bring in and on funding for schools.”
Going back to a progressive income tax, Mr. Keeler says, would allow the state to both increase funding for schools and ease the burden on property owners.
Mr. Saland resists that idea. “If this is a call for class warfare, I’m not interested in joining that battle,” he said. “The answer is not to raise taxes, it’s to lower taxes.”

Mr. Keeler dismissed Mr. Saland’s use of “class warfare” as a way of avoiding the issue. “Problems are not solved by using provocative buzzwords,” said Mr. Keeler. “I’m talking about real leadership to solve a devastating property tax crisis that has been left unattended for years.”
Mr. Saland says Mr. Keeler engages in “the kind of campaign rhetoric that I would reasonably expect that he would resort to.” And he points to his work to control taxes through the STAR program, and through his efforts to relieve the burden of unfunded mandates on schools from both the state and federal levels. But in any case, he says, there will be “ample time to discuss these things” during the course of the campaign.

Dutchess County hasn’t sent a Democrat to the New York State Senate since Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in 1910, but Mr. Keeler is optimistic. “Our campaign will be new and exciting and fresh,” he says. “We are going to do things a little differently, to reflect that we have an opportunity to elect a new team in Albany and do things differently.”

To contact reporter Richard Roth, e-mail rroth@indenews.com.

‘This year we ran a substantial deficit, and the money was borrowed from our kids.’ - Brian Keeler

‘The answer is not to raise taxes, it’s to lower taxes.’ -Sen. Steve Saland
©The Independent 2006