The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/tompkins-county-legislature/)
Legislator Leslyn McBean-Clairborne (D-2nd District) was elected Chair of the Tompkins County Legislature. She is the first person of color to ever serve in this role.
The county legislature unanimously agreed last Tuesday to adopt the five-cent paper bag fee to reduce single-use waste, which will take effect on March 1, 2020. The local law will be enacted alongside a New York State-wide bag waste reduction act that bans most plastic bags from retail sales and allows individual counties to opt into the paper bag fee.
Earlier this month, the Tompkins County Legislature narrowly voted in favor of a resolution that would allow rifle hunting for big game in the area, joining 58 other upstate New York counties that already granted such permission.
What was predicted to be a close contest between the incumbent and a challenger from the left is now a one-man race after Rich John ’81’s opponent withdrew.
Reed Steberger ’13 withdrew from the race to represent Collegetown and the Ithaca Commons at the county level on Thursday night, hours after The Sun reported claims of coercion and sexual assault made against the candidate.
Three women told The Sun this week that Steberger forced them into non-consensual encounters or coerced them to engage in sex while they were in college in allegations that span nearly three years.
Richard John ’81, in an interview on Wednesday, said that if he is elected to the four-year position, he will draw on his past experience representing constituents — for decades as a lawyer and as the district’s representative on the Legislature since 2015 — to serve Collegetown and downtown residents.
Steberger is now running as a Democrat to represent District Four, which covers all of Collegetown and the Ithaca Commons, and is running against an incumbent Democrat.
After representing the fourth district for 10 years in the Tompkins County Legislature, Nate Shinagawa ’05 announced on Sept. 16 his resignation and his residence switch, which would allow him to run for an open seat representing the second district. Shinagawa, the Democratic candidate, faces independent opponent Anna Kelles to represent the Fall Creek community, where he has owned property since 2011 and moved to recently. “I’ve wanted to move [to Fall Creek] for a long time,” he said. “I recently got married and decided that it would be a good time to move with my wife.
Local Ithaca resident and activist Anna Kelles is running as an independent candidate to represent the second district in the Tompkins County Legislature. The Fall Creek district includes parts of North Campus and lower Collegetown and is home to many students and affiliates of the University. Kelles will run against Democratic candidate Nate Shinagawa ’05, who resigned from his position representing the fourth district in the Tompkins County Legislature so he could run to represent the second district. According to Kelles, it is important to create policies which encourage landowners to update their properties, as it would create affordable and livable conditions for students and residents of Ithaca. “Having someone in office that understands that people need a home and people need a certain quality of life, [and] that anytime I have an opportunity to update policies to do that I always will,” Kelles said.