Newcomer challenges political veteran

Cindy Gieger aims to serve as ‘voice’ for ag

By Dan Hust
JEFFERSONVILLE — Why should voters choose Cindy Gieger as their next District 5 Legislator?
The Jeffersonville resident is characteristically confident.
“First of all, I’m a leader,” Gieger says. “I’ve been a leader all my life.”
She cites her co-founding of the Sullivan County Farm Network and its Farmstock educational events, her attendance at Legislature and Industrial Development Agency meetings, her advocacy for small business and agriculture issues from the hallways of Cornell Cooperative Extension in Liberty all the way up to the State Capitol in Albany.
“I’ve had what you’d call ‘on-the-job training’,” she notes.
With husband Stefan, she’s also nurtured a family of four and sustained a successful dairy farm in an area where most have disappeared.
It’s an area Gieger knows well.
“I feel I can enact change being a seventh-generation Sullivan County resident,” she says.
Unlike others, Gieger ultimately accepted local Democrats’ encouragement to run, willing to risk the challenges in order to be “the impetus that opens the floodgate of opportunity for us.”
“I feel I have to do it,” she explains. “I have no political aspirations. I’m driven because I feel I can make a difference.”
She’s already garnered notice for passionately advocating for a creamery and the red meat plant coming to Liberty.
She’s been in the offices of U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Congressman Maurice Hinchey, NYS Senator John Bonacic and Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther, often pushing ag causes.
In fact, she’s on both the Rural Economic Area Partnership (REAP) Board and the NYS Agricultural Commission Blue Ribbon Task Force, tasked with improving ag prospects throughout New York.
“I’m in a really good position to be a voice,” she explains.
She now has her sights set on replacing fellow Democrat Frank Armstrong in representing the townships of Callicoon and Fremont and portions of Delaware and Liberty.
“It evolved from my run for [Callicoon] town council two years ago,” she explains of a race she lost by a razor-thin 21-vote margin.
She feels the Legislature needs to ensure western Sullivan County has a voice. She’s also interested in effecting change on a countywide level, however.
She’d start with increasing communication between legislators and also between legislators and the staff of county government. She’d seek to do the same with taxpayers and town officials.
“I see a lack of representation for the taxpayers,” Gieger observes of the Legislature.
She recognizes, however, that there’s some tension in her home Town of Callicoon.
“I extend my hand to them on all issues,” Gieger says. “I am open to working with them. ... I would love for them to expand the dialogue.”
Gas drilling is one of the key issues in her district, but while she’s not in favor of the fracking method, Gieger says she’s not completely against drilling.
“If they can get the gas out of the ground without the chemical factor, then my position may change,” she explains.
But till then, she feels the only responsible course is to cautiously protect the land, the water, the air and the people in District 5.
Gieger admits her fellow farmers are struggling, but she fears drilling in its current form will benefit one group at the expense of another. That’s one of the reasons she’s not pursued leasing her own hundreds of acres.
“Do I owe any responsibility as an official of the county to people who don’t have the land I have?” she says.
To that end, she wants to update the county’s comprehensive plan to ensure adequate protections, while at the same time devoting resources to helping farmers find alternatives to drilling – like the solar panels she and Stefan have installed, cutting their electricity bill in half.
“Instead of leasing to gas, you could lease to a solar farm,” she points out, referring to a concept gaining steam in California where a minimum of 25 acres is turned into a solar array for about $1,000 a month in startup costs.
If someone isn’t on her side of the issue, though, she doesn’t plan to ignore them.
“I’m not a divisive person,” says Gieger. “My goal is to work toward agreeing to disagree.”
She plans to put that philosophy to use on a variety of county issues, like convincing legislators to stop raiding reserve funds to balance the county budget, or to more aggressively address limitations on the state’s liberal tax-exempt property laws, or to hold the Industrial Development Agency more accountable in job creation from the funds it disburses.
She also wants to let taxpayers understand the challenges county leaders face in balancing a budget. She likes the two-percent tax increase cap imposed by the state – so long as it comes with unfunded mandate relief.
“Without that, it can’t work,” she assesses.
Still, she promises to find other areas to cut before considering county layoffs, deeming legislators’ recent breaking of union contracts to be wrong.
A “biggie” for Gieger is job creation, along with putting as much resources into small business development as the county does for large ones.
“I would like to revisit and devise an inventory of the commercial buildings and land that are available currently in the county and see those properties utilized,” she explains.
Hand-in-hand with that goal is bringing broadband Internet access to the entire county, along with making SUNY Sullivan a four-year institution.
Gieger envisions a comprehensive effort to encourage people to settle here, raise families, and become part of the growing foodshed supplying the NYC metro area with locally grown food – perhaps by offering county-owned land for lease to startup farmers.
Casinos may have a place, she adds, but not as tax-exempts. More to her liking are the plans already in the works for Carbon Harvest Energy and Re3, both hoping to be green energy leaders at the landfill site in Monticello.
Gieger also is supportive of the county’s Adult Care Center and Sheriff’s Office.
And she’s intent on ensuring the state knows the county’s needs and wants.
“They need to know that we mean business,” she says. “That we’re not there for personal, political reasons.”
Even travelling to Albany as often as she does, Sullivan County has always been home to Gieger. Born and raised in Liberty, she became a registered nurse in 1982 and earned an associate’s in applied science from Orange County Community College.
After working in the county’s Adult Care Center and private nursing homes, plus the hospital and Public Health Nursing, Gieger returned to the family farm to raise her children and help run the business.
She was active for 18 years in 4-H and continues to participate in local youth sports, along with being a very visible part of the Kurpil Family Fiddlers.
“I like the four seasons here, the open space and fresh air,” she says. “And I feel relatively safe here. It’s a good place to raise my kids.”
Running on the Democratic and Rural Heritage lines and endorsed by Gunther and Hinchey, Gieger is in a race for the legislative seat with Republican Gregg Semenetz.
“When I started the run, I committed myself to running an aboveboard campaign,” she explains. “... I think my experience with county affairs and the voice I’ve provided on the state level [are strengths].”
She promises to be apolitical.
“I don’t want to be beholden to anybody,” Gieger says. “I don’t need credit for anything – I just want cooperation.”

Gregg Semenetz wants to do 'the job right'

By Jeanne Sager
YOUNGSVILLE — Gregg Semenetz already has a copy of the county budget sitting on his kitchen table. He wants to be the next legislator for District 5, but more importantly, he wants to do the job right.
“The county’s in trouble, the county needs business people to run it,” the Republican candidate for the open seat says. “We need to reduce the size of government and make things more accountable. I’m not naive enough to say I can change things overnight, but we have to start making course corrections.”
Hence the budget on the table in his Youngsville home. On January 1, Semenetz wants to walk in with an understanding of every county department to get the ball rolling.
His is a name that’s known in county politics. He spent 16 years in town government: four years as a Town of Callicoon councilman then 12 more as Town of Callicoon supervisor. He represented his township on the county level myriad times over those years. He crafted 16 budgets, carried the town through two of the worst floods the county has seen, and was able to limit the town’s debt load to only one major project: the Town of Callicoon highway building. Even the removal of the junkyard in Callicoon Center to create a town park was done without borrowing a dime.
Even since leaving office, Semenetz has maintained a relationship with the public sector. First certified as a licensed New York State code officer in 2002, today he works code enforcement in the towns of Bethel and Cochecton and maintains an assistant code position in Callicoon.
But it’s not as a government guy that Semenetz says he can be the best legislator for District 5 residents.
It’s as a businessman.
“I want to get out of ideology and get down to fixing the government,” he explains. “My campaign is what I can do. Experience matters, that’s my motto, that’s what I’m running on.”
Semenetz started his first business right out of high school, making hay on the fields of Sullivan County while working his way through college. Although he went to school in the city, Semenetz’s grandparents bought their property in the county in 1948, and he spent summers and vacations right here. It’s where he met wife Bridget and where the couple decided to settle down.
He opened a lumber mill right outside Jeffersonville in 1981, became a licensed real estate broker a decade later when he opened Millhouse Properties. He ran the two business together before selling the mill. Over the years, Semenetz has taken on code enforcement and spent several years running multi-million dollar projects for Sullivan County Paving, sewer plants, bridges, the sort of major projects that take up substantial portions of the county’s budget.
And, Semenetz points out, “I always came in on budget and on time.”
It’s that attention to detail and fiscal responsibility that Semenetz sees a need for on the county level.
“The biggest issues facing our county are no jobs and an inability to stay here,” he says. “High taxes . . . I’ve got three kids, all Jeff-Youngsville graduates, and only one is left in Sullivan County because there are no jobs.
“Sullivan County is a great place to raise a family,” he continues. “But they can’t stay.”
Righting that course, helping Sullivan County families reap the rewards for investing in generations of kids, means bringing business sense into the government offices, Semenetz says. “We’re spending more than we’re bringing in – it’s basic business. These are tough decisions that are going to have to be made this year.”
Paging through the budget on his kitchen table, Semenetz is ready to make them. He just needs the go-ahead from the voters.