David Sager firing elicits legislative comments

Story by Dan Hust
MONTICELLO — May 24, 2013 — Speaking on the heels of an announcement that Jeffersonville chiropractor David Sager had been fired from his deputy commissioner of Family Services post with the county, Callicoon resident Liz Bucar conveyed her shock to legislators at the May 16 full Legislature meeting.
“Overall, the response was that David is a man of huge integrity,” Bucar said of comments she had heard about Sager. “... He has been our most consistent public servant, even when it cost him.”
She called Health Commissioner Randy Parker’s past “kind of murky.” (Parker fired Sager the Wednesday prior, and no explanation has been forthcoming.)
Bucar urged legislators to rescind Sager’s firing and investigate the situation.
Legislator Cindy Gieger, who was a driving force behind Parker’s hiring, vowed to have her questions answered and to develop “some kind of different method” to handle future situations like this.
But Legislator Kathy LaBuda cautioned that department heads are legally vested with the ability to hire and fire their staff.
“We are policymakers here,” she stated. “It is so inappropriate for legislators to get involved at all in hiring and firing employees ... and I’d suggest to my colleagues to be very careful in how we move forward.”
Ethics vote coming
Due to what Legislator Alan Sorensen termed “technical revisions” made after labor unions reviewed it, the proposed new ethics law was not voted upon during that Thursday’s full Legislature meeting.
Instead, it was scheduled to come up for a vote yesterday at 4:45 p.m. at the Government Center in Monticello, just before Legislature Chairman Scott Samuelson’s State of the County speech.
A report on both the vote and the speech will appear in Tuesday’s Democrat.