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Committee approves state grants, equipment and contracts; lawmakers press fingerprinting, privacy questions
Summary
Ulster County’s law enforcement and public safety committee approved several state pass‑through grants, equipment MOUs and routine contracts for communications, jail management and the sheriff’s office; a legislator raised privacy concerns about biometric tech used for fingerprinting.
Ulster County’s law enforcement and public safety committee on Feb. 5 approved a series of state grant acceptances, equipment MOUs and contract amendments ranging from homeland security funding to jail management software.
Director Ericson described the State Homeland Security Program (SHSP) amendment the committee approved as an annual, largely federal pass‑through grant the county uses for public‑health preparedness personnel, cybersecurity/access control work with county IT and law enforcement equipment (including the sheriff’s UAS/drone team). Ericson said the county does not fully control allocation of SHSP funds because the state prescribes percentages for specific areas, and staff are tracking potential federal funding uncertainty through the county budget office.
The committee also adopted a local emergency management performance grant (to fund the emergency manager’s salary), an MOU to receive state flood‑mitigation equipment for municipal use (sand trailers, pumps, light towers and VMS signs) and a yearly Motorola Solutions maintenance contract that supports the county microwave and radio systems and acts as a backup to the phone system.
Under Sheriff Mullins briefed members on a group of sheriff’s office items: a budget amendment to purchase the Oracle Cordata care coordination solution (to track overdose‑response activity), a live‑scan fingerprinting subscription with Idemia Identity and Security USA LLC used in the jail and patrol, an annual website/app hosting contract with OCV LLC, and a Black Creek Integrated Systems jail-management subscription. All items were approved by the committee.
Privacy question: When a legislator asked whether the Idemia subscription included facial recognition, Under Sheriff Mullins said, “It’s fingerprints only.” Another legislator raised concerns about wording in grant resolutions that might imply required federal cooperation and flagged potential racial profiling of immigrants; committee members said they would be mindful of contract language and clarified that Idemia in this case is used for fingerprints.
The committee closed with a series of routine motions to adopt the remaining resolutions and adjourned.
