MONTICELLO, NY — In March, then-executive director of the Sullivan County Human Rights Commission Adrienne Jensen resigned from the role. Jensen cited a lack of support for the office in the county: “Both literally and figuratively, the office size and support does not meet the immense need for the position in this county.”

The county has not yet replaced Jensen in the role. The county legislature has taken the opportunity to discuss how the role should be filled, and what form the human rights commission should take. 

The legislature needs to define the role going forward, commissioner of human resources Julie Diescher told the legislature’s human resources committee at a special meeting on July 13. “I think we need to clearly define the role and when we start to deviate, reel it in, and [we need to define] what it looks like, what this group envisions it to be going forward.”

Some of the office’s roles and responsibilities overlap with other divisions. 

In the absence of an executive director, the human resource division is handling the county’s human rights complaints, said Diescher. And some of the initiatives Jensen undertook as the executive director duplicated work done elsewhere in the county: “There were some events that were planned [where] solutions are already in place, like the Office for the Aging.”

The hole left by the lack of an executive director does mean there’s no one to educate community members on their rights and conduct outreach.

The position is currently a part-time position appointed by the county; it oversees the human rights commission, a nine-member advisory board with each of its members appointed by one of the nine legislators. 

“I feel that we’ve lost a great employee,” said legislator Ira Steingart. “It was clear that she was overwhelmed and didn’t have enough staff… If we’re going to keep a person there, I think we need to give it the proper funding and have someone as a full-time person and have staff, or we might as well not have it at all [and] go through the state.”

The legislators discussed full time vs. part time, as well as other structural shifts. 

Strateges include: The county could have a full-time executive director. It could swap human-rights authority from the executive director to the commission, and empower the commission to hire someone in the director’s role. 

The county could also eliminate the position (though none of the legislators supported this option), according to deputy county attorney Tom Cawley. The county receives a lot of housing complaints, with tenants having issues with their landlords, but it is the state that investigates these issues, not the county, Cawley said. 

The discussed benefits of having a human rights executive director centered on education: letting people know their rights and their avenues for redress. “Sometimes you just need somebody to listen,” said Diescher. If the office could provide a caller with facts and with resources, “they’re still frustrated, but now they’re coming from a place of understanding.”

During the meeting’s public comment period, legislative candidate Cat Scott called upon the legislature to dedicate major resources to the role. “The people of Sullivan County deserve that, especially the ones who are extremely vulnerable, who are facing human rights issues.”

Vaccination investigations

As Sullivan County continues into the summer season, it faces an unanswered question about a tabled resolution from earlier in the year. 

On May 18, the legislature tabled a resolution designating Sullivan County a local board of health. It would have authorized the county to regulate attendance at summer camps by vaccination status, including polio, measles and chickenpox vaccines. 

Lise Kennedy, former director of patient services with Sullivan County, questioned the legislature as to why the resolution fell through: see Kennedy’s letter to the editor on page 7. 

When asked by the River Reporter, chair of the legislature Rob Doherty denied Kennedy’s claim that he said the legislation needed a rewrite, and said that vaccinations were a state issue. 

“We as a legislature decided that the state issue of vaccinations is a state issue,” said Doherty. “If the state wanted to pass that, they still had three weeks left in session at the time, I even stated that, and if they wanted to pass that, let the state pass that.”

According to the press office of the New York State Department of Health, “The department does not require counties to take legislative action to implement vaccine requirements at children’s camps; however, it is encouraged as a part of good public health. The department has and will continue to support and assist any county that chooses to implement a children’s camp vaccine requirement; however, enforcement of local laws or regulations is the responsibility of the county.”

The state sanitary code requires that summer camps keep records of campers’ immunization records, but it does not specify which vaccinations are necessary for attendance, according to the Department of Health.