2023 election: Abbott v. Smith in the 13th legislative district

Oct. 25—In the 13th district, incumbent Niagara County legislator Rick Abbott is being challenged by Bernadette Smith, a school principal in the Lockport district who wants to do more.

Smith said she believes she would be a good legislator because of her ability to think "forward" and build coalitions to support what her constituents want in a government body. She said her own attitude about work is what will get it done.

"I think about things, I don't act on emotions. I have emotions, but I don't act on them. I use my logical brain in evaluating situations and circumstances," she said.

One of those situations is public health. Smith notes that Niagara County is ranked 51st among the 62 counties in New York state, in a study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation titled County Health Rankings and Roadmaps.

"The things that go into that ranking are life expectancy, access to primary care physicians, access to dentists, access to flu vaccines," Smith said. "Teen pregnancies, injury deaths, the number of preventable hospital stays. Things people can control: smoking, obesity, excessive drinking. Niagara County ranks on the bottom in all of these."

As a resident, Smith thinks the county legislature should focus more on public health.

While saying she's thankful the legislature retained Mercy EMS for four months this year, to provide backup ambulance transport service wherever in the county primary first responders can't catch all the calls, Smith thinks that wasn't the smart first choice.

"In June the legislature wasted about $500,000 worth of taxpayer money while signing a contract with a private ambulance company for additional service. I joined with all the local volunteer fire companies at the legislative meetings for a county run ambulance," Smith said.

Five months later, "county-run" appears to be the direction the county is going, so Smith wonders why the legislators didn't just get the ball rolling on it back then.

Abbott has a different take on that issue.

"The residents of Niagara County deserve to have ambulance service and we agree with that. The discussions are how we're going to provide it. It's just the final decision hasn't come through, how we're going to do this," he said.

Abbott said the county has purchased four ambulances and is waiting on a recommendation from the Rochester-based non-profit Center for Governmental Research how to make the best use of them. There is the possibility of incorporating private ambulances in a "blended" model of supplemental coverage, he added.

Generally, Smith said, she believes in transparency and is concerned about "patronage" in the county.

"I don't believe in some of the nepotism, some of the contracts that have been awarded," she said. "Maybe they're on the up and up, but they raise a red flag."

Abbott has been criticized because two of his children work for the county. He maintains they were both hired on merit.

Approaching the end of his first term of office, Abbott said he's "getting the hang of" his job as a legislator. He noted that the procedures of the legislature are far more formal than the Common Council's procedures, but after six months he was able to get his first piece of legislation through, raising the maximum allowable income of senior citizens and persons with disabilities qualifying for an assessment exemption to cut their county tax bill.

"I have a sense of community and I've always had (that)," Abbott said, adding that he identifies public safety, infrastructure maintenance and revenue from the state as the top issues for the county.