This morning's Ithaca Journal reports on rape charges filed against a Dryden man after a party on Midline Road. Two other adults who hosted the party are charged with providing alcohol to juveniles at that party. Also, another Dryden man pleaded not guilty to kidnap and rape charges stemming from a December 5th incident.
I'd worried that there seemed to be a lot more rapes over the past few months than in the past, but I've also heard it suggested that the increased willingness of the new Tompkins County DA, Gwen Wilkinson, to prosecute these cases may be leading to more charges filed and more attention to them in the news. It's not good news that this may have been happening all along. Somehow, though, that makes more sense than a post-election outbreak of the very crimes Wilkinson vowed to prosecute more seriously.
There's an extended article about the politics of the library funding referendum. (Remember, that Tuesday election is only for and only affects residents of the Ithaca City School District.) The editorial opposes the proposal for a library tax. In other Ithaca schools news, the district and support employees haven't yet reached a contract.
In the print edition, I'm sorry to see that Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton voted against two measures which might have made the New York State Legislature a more interesting and perhaps functional place. The first would have allowed senior minority party leaders of committees to hold public hearings, and the second would have required conference committees when the Assembly and Senate pass similar bills. At this point, I suspect the only real reform we'll see will come if Eliot Spitzer sticks to his promise to have independent redistricting rather than the usual gerrymandering for the Democrats in the Assembly and the Republicans in the Senate.
Posted by simon at February 4, 2006 9:14 AM in Ithaca Journal , crime , schools (Ithaca)