2. Last year, Commissioner Crotty initiated a drastic change in the long standing policy of having professional DEC career civil servants serve as environmental monitors for voluntary and court-ordered corrective remedial activities. This directive, issued in conjunction with the Towpath Landfill/Recycling station hearing decision, is moving DEC towards a policy of having the fox guard the hen house. In spite of the opposition expressed by legislators and the environmental community, DEC persist in allowing these "bad actors’ to hire private contractors to "ensure" compliance with environmental law. The legislature should mandate that environmental monitors be knowledgeable DEC staff professionals.

4. Another equally serious and growing trend is using quasi-governmental academic organizations, non-profit agencies and commissions to contract out work normally done by competitively tested, civil service recruited, professional staff. This "off-budget" hiring problem has become so pervasive in the last few years, that last year the Chief Fiscal and Personnel Officers of DEC could not answer questions as to how many of these contract employees work at and for DEC. On Dec. 31, 2003, PEF's President sent a letter to Comptroller Hevesi requesting an audit of DEC and similar agencies to shed public scrutiny on these "cancerous growths" (click here for text of letter ). The hiring freeze should be lifted for federally funded items, and the "off-budget" contracting out of DEC positions to organizations that lack full accountability to the NYS citizenry should be prohibited.

5. DEC has formed an internal task force on self-certification oversight and investigation activities to be conducted by developers of contaminated properties and is preparing contracts for third party contractors to perform the long term monitoring and sampling of Class 4 Hazardous Waste Sites. Unfortunately, once again, rather than ensuring aggressive enforcement of environmental standards by knowledgeable DEC professionals, DEC is moving towards letting the industrial foxes protect your environment. The governor and legislature should provide the funding for full time professional civil service staff needed to protect the public health & welfare. DEC’s use of unsupervised third party contractors for important environmental work should be prohibited.