MONTICELLO – Sullivan County Republican Party Chairman Richard Coombe said he is “thoroughly disappointed” at the way the new Democrat-controlled county legislature voted to issue a request for proposals for an agency to perform its tourism promotion duties.

The function has been handled for years under contract by the Sullivan County Visitors Association. With no public notice, near the end of their Thursday monthly session, they voted to issue a request for proposals to see what agencies might be interested in performing those functions.

On Friday, Coombe criticized the way the issue was addressed.

“Here you had a whole group of new legislators come on the board; the board needed open government desperately and one of their first actions is to go behind closed doors, backroom politics in the worst, helping their own, or it seems to be that way,” Coombe said. “It’s just disgusting and repugnant.”

Sullivan County Democratic Chairman Darryl Kaplan, though, said the SCVA, with a $900,000 annual budget of public funds, should be placed under the microscope.

“How much is being used for funding, home much is being used for salary, who is the attorney, who is the accountant, who is representing all these people,” he said.

Kaplan said the new legislature is within its right to scrutinize the agency and consider others for the job.

William Liblick of Swan Lake, whose name appears along with Neil Gilberg of Monticello and Donna Schlick of Grahamsville, are listed as member of the board of directors of the new Sullivan County Tourism and Promotion not-for-profit corporation.

Liblick said Friday that he does not know at this point if the company will submit a proposal. He said Roberta Lockwood and the Sullivan County Visitors Association have been doing a good job and that their contract expired on December 31.

Gilberg said he was asked by Liblick to serve on the board of his company a year ago when it was in the planning stages. He said he is not an officer of the corporation, but rather just a member of the board.