KINGSTON – With the Ulster County Charter change to a county executive form of government, Executive Michael Hein wants the Stewart Airport Commission to conform.

Under state law, the county executives in Orange and Dutchess counties serve as ex-officio members and send a designee to attend the meetings.

In Ulster, when the law was adopted in 1982, there was no county executive, so the legislature chairman appointed a designee. 

Last week, Ulster Legislature Chairman Frederick Wadnola named Legislator Richard Gerentine as his representative.  Both are Republicans

But, Hein, a Democrat, who has been county executive for over a year, under the new county charter, wants that changed.   He wants the authority.

“We have our attorneys working on this issue, working both with the governor’s office and other representatives that we have here from the region in an attempt to address this issue,” he said. “Clearly it is a technicality in the law, but is all part of the speed bumps as you transition from one form of government to another.” Hein said no other county in New York has made that significant of a charter change in the last 25 years, “so there a lot of these kinds of speed bumps that we are working through.”