To the Editor:

Back in 1990’s when Jim Wright was out senator, I called him to inquire why there was a $1.00 law enforcement fee on my car insurance bill. He stated it was a fee to pay for work being done by the DMV and state police to try to stop auto theft.

He also stated that by charging $1.00 per car insurance policy New York State has taken in 11 million dollars that year. This year my insurance bill said I owe a $10.00 in law enforcement fee. Assuming there the same number of autos, if not more, being insured in 2022 as there were in 1990 New York state will take in at least 110 million dollars in law enforcement fees this year.

As you can see from the letter below, Senator Ritchie’s office quotes an even worse figure for this year: 129 million dollars. See attached copy of letter below. A dataset published on New York State’s website cites 11,902,573 as the number of traffic tickets issued in NY in a four year window. (2018-2021). Can you imagine what that would mean in income extorted by New York State?

I live on Route 37 in Lisbon. This year the road was a disaster with failed pavement, large potholes, and gaping cracks. New York state claimed they couldn’t afford to resurface it so they patched it with strips of blacktop. Now it is still awful to drive on as elevation of the multiple patches throw the car from one side to the other.

At the same time as the state couldn’t afford to repave a state highway, our so-called governor gave 840 million dollars in taxpayers’ money to two millionaires to build a new ball park in Buffalo. Note that Hochul‘s husband operates the concessions in the existing ballpark. Isn’t this a conflict of interest? More taxpayer money wasted on private enterprise; the stadium is not a public structure. We have had Democrats serving as governor for too many years and each have let this kind of shenanigans happen while in office. It is state of the art extortion.

NY City, Albany, and Buffalo are all sanctuary cities which means they love to protect illegal immigrants at taxpayers’ expense. The mayor of NYC is complaining that Gov. Abbott of Texas is sending busloads of illegals to NYC. They like to say they are a sanctuary city but now complain when they are called upon to provide a sanctuary for the illegals. I hope Gov. Abbott sends a load every day as they deserve to get them all.

Martha’s Vineyard, MA, got a plane load of illegal immigrants and they had them removed by the National Guard. Why? They think Biden is doing the right thing with open borders so why do they have a problem?

I don’t know about everyone else but I don’t want any of my tax dollars spent on ball parks or supporting illegal aliens.

Politicians always say they will be public servants until they get elected. Then it is a different story. Remember, elected officials work for the citizens of the state and we elect them to do the jobs we can’t do or don’t want to do. They are our employees. They are elected to work for us not the other way around.

The best way to fight all the uncontrollable politicians is to vote them out of office and stop them from wasting taxpayer money. Vote Republican all the way.

William Bartlett
Ogdensburg