In July of 2000, Berkshire County dissolved the county government that had overseen the region since 1761. The state, local organizations and individual communities took on the county government's former responsibilities. Some of these responsibilities have made the news lately. Towns and cities have called into question the maintenance of the Valley Mill Bridge, the ownership of Pontoosuc lake, and the harvesting of weeds at Pontoosuc, Onota and Laurel Lakes, among others.
Is the gap left by county government imperfectly filled? Will the disbanding of county government have other consequences? William 'Smitty' Pignatelli, Chair of the Lenox Select Board and a former county commissioner, and Thomas Stokes, a former Stockbridge Selectman and commissioner who closed out the county, explained exactly what the former county government did while it was in play.
The Berkshire County Commission had three county commissioners and an advisory board. The Mayors of the Berkshires' two cities and the Chairs of the towns' select boards made up the advisory board. They voted on county budgets, Pignatelli said, like town meetings.
Successful county government was "not a really sexy" topic of conversation, he said. It never made headlines. Many people did not understand what county government did. But local officials benefited from it.
Stokes said the county government provided regional services and a forum for town leaders to discuss regional policy. It allowed the Berkshires to advocate in Boston with a united front.
Pignatelli agreed. The Berkshires once had two state senators, he said. They now have one senator who represents four counties altogether. He thinks it is important that the Berkshires have a regional voice, especially in these financially difficult times. Next year may be difficult, he said. It historically happens: this is an election year. "No one wants to be the bad guy. Next year, all bets are off."
The county still has regional approaches to many things: public safety, schools, transportation, planning, housing, insurance. Towns work out individual exchanges: Lenox has a block paver, and Stockbridge has a street sweeper. Each town lends a piece of equipment to the other. Lenox, Lee and Stockbridge have made a more formal compact with Tri-town Health, which Pignatelli calls "the greatest example of the benefits of a regional approach." Each town needs same services. Tri-town health forms "a conduit to provide those services at a fraction of what it would cost each town alone."
Former County Tasks
Stokes said that county government is an old institution; in fact, it predates the United States of America. Originally, county governments primarily revolved around law enforcement: sheriff, courthouse, jail. Later, counties took on roads and bridges, and in some places, hospitals and retirement homes.
By the time it was dissolved, the Berkshire County government handled bulk purchasing of equipment, the registry of deeds, highway and survey departments, county records, surveys, clean lakes and clean rivers programs, the surplus property program, and appeal boards, where towns could appeal planning decisions. Pignatelli said the county government also started Meals on Wheels and the Berkshire Housing Collaboration.
The county owned the Pontoosuc lake and started the weed harvesting program that spread to Onota, Laurel and other lakes. They ran a Clean Rivers program in the fall. It was free to communities, on request. The county removed fallen trees from the rivers. In winter, trees and ice could dam the river dangerously.
The county owned and maintained dams and bridges as well. When Pignatelli was younger, he remembered going to Pontoosuc with his father, who was a commissioner in the days when the county still ran the court system. The city was afraid the dam on Pontoosuc Lake would breech. There was talk of evacuating parts of Pittsfield. The county commission fixed the dam.
The lake is floating now, under state control, he said. When county commission made that decision, he said, he was the only member of the advisory board who voted against it: he asked the state for a maintenance plan, and did not get one.
Nearly everyone was involved in the county group purchasing program, he said. It saved thousands of dollars on equipment from paper clips to sewer pipes. Many supplies that all communities need are cheaper in bulk. This program still goes on, through a municipal cooperative.
The county's Group Health Insurance Fund continues as well, with the county's old office equipment to back it.
The county surplus program is gone, though. William Weigle ran it on a volunteer basis. He traveled to military bases, and built up a network of contacts. He found equipment - desks, chairs, backhoes. Weigle got a bulldozer for Tyringham for $11,000, Pignatelli said. It had 200 hours of use, effectively brand new. To buy one new would cost $200,000. That was five or six years ago. Windsor and Peru got dump trucks "for a couple of thousand dollars." The program bought generators: one is at the Lenox Department of Public Works. "Not enough people used the program," he said, but the benefits were enormous: "We buy an $80,000 truck. Windsor buys a $2,000 truck, and it's the same thing."
Pignatelli praised the county surveying department and county records as well. Any community could hire county surveyors for planning projects, at a third of the usual cost, he said. The county kept meticulous records - of old roads, old layouts. Probably no one knows where they are, Pignatelli said: "until you need them, you don't care."
Stokes said at the end of his tenure, he spent county funds to preserve old documents on microfilm. On one disk, he had all the old railroad maps from the entire county.
The county commission started the idea of one place to call in an emergency too. 911 calls are routed through county communications center.
Stokes said the county did not have quite enough clout to make the communications center a success: the county had six separate centers and a county center where one would have done. Some towns argued that they needed local dispatchers to give good directions.
Pignatelli said the Sheriff has taken over County Communications, and that county dispatch is a good tool: it is a start toward pooling public safety services.
Redivision of Tasks
When the county government dissolved, it parceled out its former jobs and resources. The county gave Pittsfield its weed harvesting equipment, Stokes said. The State Department of Environmental Management took over county lakes, though the ownership of Pontoosuc Lake in Pittsfield is now unclear.
The state now runs the Berkshire courts, jail, and registry of deeds. Towns maintain the roads and bridges within their boundaries. Lenox stepped up as 'municipality of record' to be responsible for insurance and bulk purchasing - to back the programs, not to administer them.
The Berkshire Regional Planning Commission handles planning. There is always something of an overlap between regional services and regional planning, Stokes said. When regional planning commissions organized, many counties incorporated them under their county structure. Berkshire County did not. He thinks, in retrospect, that this was a mistake. Most of the grants the county dealt with centered around planning issues.
When he served as a selectman in Stockbridge, he said, he learned that many issues are regional. He has "grave concerns about way we are growing," he said: smart growth needs cooperation between towns, to balance industrial parks with open spaces. Years ago, when the Berkshire Mall was proposed, there was debate over building it in downtown Pittsfield. Pittsfield shopkeepers organized against it. The developer moved the mall to Lanesboro, nearly on the Pittsfield town line. Shops in downtown Pittsfield closed, most notably England Brothers, Stokes said. "This is a typical example of lack of planning."
There is a limit to authority of BRPC, Stokes said. Planners are not top officials. Planning commissions report to a Mayor or Select Board.
The Berkshire Regional Planning Commission is a major resource, Pignatelli said. Lenox pays less than $3000 a year for the BRPC's planning services. BRPC could double that assessment and Lenox would still be getting more than it paid for, he said.
Closing of County Governments statewide
There are few viable county governments left in Massachusetts today. The most notable exception is Barnstable County - Cape Cod. When Governor Weld was in office, he proposed a bill that would have eliminated county government in the state. But he singled out Berkshire County and Barnstable County as counties that were doing well, and perhaps should continue. It is interesting, Pignatelli said, that though they are at opposite ends of the state, the two counties are rural, tourist- driven and geographically set apart.
Pignatelli said that before court reform in 1972, courts and district attorneys operated under the county commissions. He believes that when the state took over the courts, that was the beginning of a slow bleed that led to Berkshire County's elimination.
Middlesex County was running a $2 million deficit, which accelerated the debate over the usefulness of county government. Worcester County had more than 40 no-show jobs. Some of these county "employees" had county cars. Such abuses cast doubt on county government. Berkshire County got thrown in with these, though they balanced their budget year in and year out and ended with a surplus, he said. "It's easy to lump counties together, but it's unfortunate."
Barnstable County came through intact, along with the Cape Cod Commission. They were "the smartest in terms of tackling issues," Pignatelli said; "things Berkshire County struggled with two years ago, Cape Cod dealt with 20 years ago." The commission was "well entrenched, well respected." It is known for bargaining with power companies to reduce the cost of electricity, among other things. "We talked about an electric aggregation in Berkshire County," Pignatelli said, but "timing was off." The savings were too indirect. Mayor Doyle said Pittsfield could not afford the $250,000 a year county government cost, in order to save money elsewhere, on electricity.
Closing the Berkshire County Commission
Franklin and Hampshire County, next door, both have a council of governments. Berkshire County tried to go that route when the county government dissolved. Despite popular support for regional government, the Berkshire County government was retired completely.
Stokes and Pignatelli both agreed that the county commission needed to be overhauled. Pignatelli said when he first got there, in 1994, the county was in rough shape. It was a difficult time: within first month, the commissioners discovered a $200,000 shortfall. The state was not paying the courts' rent.
During the second year of slow rent payments, the county shut off the air conditioning in the courthouse in July. They promised to turn it back on when court paid rent. It worked. But it was a constant financial struggle for the court to pay its bills and expand its services, he said.
The towns paid an assessment for county's services based on property valuations, not population. Pittsfield paid approximately $200,000, Pignatelli said, and Lenox paid approximately $50,000. The assessment was restricted, by Proposition Two and Half: a cap on how much the county could raise taxes without override. It was difficult at times, he said. Health insurance and retirement costs kept, and keep, rising. Sometimes the increasing cost was greater than the two and a half percent increase in revenue the county was allowed. They had to cut services, lay off janitors, cut funding to Berkshire Visitors' Bureau.
By the time Stokes took office, county government was positively unpopular in Berkshire County. Town governments were larger and employed more professional staff, he said. They did not depend on county services as they used to. The county treasurer was controversial, and the county government had no support among state legislators. He thought this extremely short-sighted, and regretted that county government could not evolve enough to meet the county's needs.
He also faced strife between the commissioners and the registry of deeds, he said, but mantras in closing county was 'a layer of government we did not need' and 'wasteful expenditure of town funds.' It was a bargain, he said. It saved taxpayers money, especially when the county ran the jails and courthouse tightly.
Stokes was elected in 1998, and helped to close the county government in 2000. The year he was elected, he sponsored a non-binding ballot question. He, asked if Berkshire County wanted a stronger regional government. The question passed in every town by a roughly two-to-one margin, he said, even though most officials opposed it.
The Berkshire County government was disbanded through an act of legislation. It was a budget amendment, Stokes said: it did not go through the usual committee system. The state by-passed public input. There were no public hearings. The Berkshires dissolved its county government without any chance to testify, on either side.
Pignatelli said every time a ballot question about county government appeared, it passed. One came up three or four times while he was in office. The year he was elected, 1994, 29 of the 32 Berkshire communities supported county government.
As the county government wound down, the BRPC and state representatives produced a memo: the BRPC was to put together a task force to look at the future of county government. The task force evolved into charter commission that Pignatelli and Stokes both joined.
It produced "a watered down compromise that did not have strong backing from most of task force," Stokes said; "It passed in a few places." The compromise would have created a council of governments.
Stokes wrapped up the county government and audited all accounts. Several towns were nervous, he said, because the state continued to assess towns that had already closed for the liabilities of county government. The largest item was unfunded pension liability. The county had a pay-as-you-go pension for employees in courts, registry, road crews: present workers were paying for past ones. When county closed and there were no present workers, the system would break down. Legislators had promised to fully fund it - build up equity so that the program could sustain itself.
Stokes established the county's assets and spent them, so that the funds would be used in Berkshire County, rather than turned over to the state. Among other projects, he said, he bought Hoosac Lake.
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Winter Storm Warning Issued for Berkshires
Another snowstorm is expected to move through the region overnight on Friday, bringing 5 to 8 inches of snow. This is updated from Thursday's winter weather advisory.
The National Weather Service in Albany, N.Y., has posted a winter storm warning for all of Berkshire County and parts of eastern New York State beginning Friday at 4 p.m. through Saturday at 1 p.m.
The region could see heavy to moderate snowfall rates of 1 to 2 inches per hour overnight, tapering off Saturday morning to flurries.
Drivers should exercise caution on Friday night and Saturday morning, as travel conditions may be hazardous.
Saturday night should be clear and calm, but warming temperatures means freezing rain Sunday night and rain through Monday with highs in the 40s. The forecast isn't much better through the week as temperatures dip back into the teens with New Year's Eve looking cloudy and frigid.
Many homeowners are showing their holiday spirit by decorating their houses. We asked for submissions so those in the community can check out these fanciful lights and decor when they're out.
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