By Joyce Bels
Kat Leslie contributed to this report
Tom Faggione has announced that he is leaving the Orange County Legislature.
“With respect and appreciation,” he began his farewell announcement before thanking residents, colleagues, county employees and those who supported him during his tenure.
Then came perhaps the most interesting sentence of all:
“Stay tuned for the next chapter of this journey.”
Oh, we shall.
Because before Orange County turns the page on Tom Faggione, it might be worthwhile to reread a few pages from the chapter he is closing.
Faggione’s departure has an oddly familiar ring to it.
Less than a year ago, his longtime political ally, former Legislature Chairwoman Katie Bonelli, won reelection to the Orange County Legislature — and then resigned before serving the term voters had just elected her to serve.
That resignation created a vacancy that, under Orange County law, was filled not through another immediate vote of the district’s electorate but through the county’s statutory appointment process involving the municipal governing boards within the district.
Matthew Turnbull ultimately received the seat.
The voters elected Bonelli.
The political process delivered someone else.
Now Faggione is leaving his own seat before the expiration of his term, setting that same vacancy provision into motion in District 13.
That does not prove some grand conspiracy. Resignations happen, careers change and public officials are entitled to move on.
But when political history begins to rhyme this neatly, taxpayers are entitled to listen.
When Politicians Pick Their Voters
The connection between Bonelli and Faggione extends much further than two conveniently timed departures.
For years they occupied two of the most powerful positions in county government: Bonelli as Chairwoman of the Legislature and Faggione as Republican Majority Leader.
And during their leadership came one of the most controversial exercises of political power in recent Orange County history: redistricting.
Following the 2020 Census, Orange County was required to redraw its 21 legislative districts. Bonelli established a small working group to serve as the intermediary between the Legislature and the county’s hired redistricting consultants.
Faggione was on it.
The process was hardly greeted with universal applause.
Legislators complained that the public had been promised three maps and received only one. Republican Legislator Kevin Hines called the process an “epic failure.” Democratic legislators raised transparency concerns. Even Republican Janet Sutherland ultimately described the process as “flawed.”
Yet the map moved forward.
Faggione himself later made the motion in the Legislature’s Rules Committee to advance the local law formally establishing the new districts.
Redistricting is necessary. Population changes. Districts must change with it.
But there is an enormous philosophical difference between drawing districts around communities and drawing political opportunity around politicians.
Democracy works best when voters choose their politicians.
It begins to smell considerably different when politicians choose their voters.
And the aftermath made that criticism harder to dismiss.
Bonelli subsequently filed to run in the newly reapportioned District 1 even though questions were raised about her residence being outside its new boundaries. She won the election anyway — and then resigned before taking the new term.
Her departure placed selection of her immediate successor into the hands of municipal officials in the newly configured district, that included the Town of Palm Tree and portion of Monroe.
The map, the election and the resignation therefore produced a result few ordinary voters could have predicted when the redistricting process began.
And somewhere in that history sits Tom Faggione.
Not on the sidelines.
At the table.
Seven Newspapers Became Four
For the Warwick Valley Dispatch, however, Faggione’s legacy isn’t an abstract argument about political maps.
We lived part of it.
In 2022, Orange County designated seven newspapers to publish local laws, legal notices and other matters required by law.
By 2024, under the Bonelli-Faggione leadership period, that number had fallen to four.
Almost half disappeared from the list.
Among them was the Warwick Valley Dispatch.
The Dispatch had served as an Orange County official newspaper as far back as 1901 and had been publishing in Warwick since 1885.
Yet in January 2024, it suddenly wasn’t good enough for Orange County.
Warwick — one of the county’s largest municipalities — was left without its historic hometown newspaper carrying county legal notices.
Faggione defended the decision as “100% a business decision.”
Perhaps.
But what followed was considerably more revealing.
When the Dispatch challenged the decision, Faggione suggested to its editor that the Legislature could revisit the matter later and see “how things are going.”
Think about that sentence for a moment.
How what is going?
Our circulation?
Our printing press?
Or our reporting?
Newspapers are not children waiting for candy for good behavior.
They are not probationary employees.
And elected officials do not get to put the First Amendment on a performance-improvement plan.
A newspaper’s responsibility is not to make politicians comfortable enough to reward it next year.
Quite the opposite.
The newspaper’s job is to ask the question the politician would rather not answer, print the vote the politician would rather voters forget, and occasionally make powerful people spit out their morning coffee.
If that means things aren’t “going” particularly well between the newspaper and government, then journalism may be doing precisely what it is supposed to do.
The Instinct Survived the Leadership
To be fair, Faggione did not invent political discomfort with newspapers.
And, apparently, he did not take it with him when his leadership influence waned.
In January 2025, the Legislature changed direction. Warwick Legislator Glenn Ehlers introduced the amendment restoring the Warwick Valley Dispatch to the county’s official newspaper list. The designation was reinstated, and Ehlers made clear that keeping Warwick residents informed about county government was worth preserving.
That deserves credit.
Ehlers has been remarkably consistent on this issue.
When the Dispatch was again targeted at the Legislature’s January 6, 2026 reorganization meeting, Ehlers again voted to keep it.
That is what consistency looks like.
Not agreeing with everything a newspaper prints.
Not expecting favorable coverage.
Simply recognizing that residents are better served when more newspapers are carrying government information, not fewer.
Then came one of the Legislature’s newest members, Jonathan Redeker.
Redeker represents Goshen and part of Warwick, including the Village of Florida. On his first day in office, Legislator Sparrow Tobin moved to remove the Dispatch from the official newspaper designation.
Redeker seconded the motion. He then voted for it.
For a newcomer, it was an extraordinarily efficient introduction.
Faggione once helped preside over a period in which the county’s designated newspaper list shrank from seven to four.
Redeker needed considerably less time to demonstrate that the instinct survived him.
Different legislator.
Different party.
Same impulse.
When the government does not particularly enjoy what a newspaper reports, removing the newspaper from the government notice list becomes an instinct.
One might call it institutional memory.
We might call it something less flattering.
Redeker had sought coverage and voter attention before the election. After taking office, one of his first consequential acts was to help second a motion reducing the flow of official county information through the very local newspaper serving part of his constituency.
The irony required no assistance from us.
It arrived fully assembled.
Newspapers Are Not Government Pets
The 2026 removal vote passed 19-2.
Voting against it were Amo and Ehlers.
Voting for it included Faggione, Redeker, Ruszkiewicz, Cheney and the overwhelming majority of the chamber.
And that makes Faggione’s earlier “how things are going” remark look less like a stray comment and more like a philosophy that has proved remarkably durable inside the Legislature.
The problem is not simply whether the Dispatch gets a legal notice.
The bigger problem is the premise behind such decisions.
Government should not be deciding which newspapers deserve access based upon whether elected officials approve of their journalism.
A newspaper is not a government pet.
It should not receive a treat when it behaves and a rolled-up newspaper when it does not.
The Legislature eventually restored the Dispatch in 2025, only to remove it again in 2026.
The underlying question therefore remains:
Why should politicians possess such an effective lever over the newspapers responsible for scrutinizing them in the first place?
A Familiar Philosophy of Power
Taken individually, every episode can be explained.
A newspaper designation was a “business decision.”
A redistricting map was simply the product of census requirements and consultants.
A political ally running in a newly drawn district was merely exercising her legal rights.
A resignation after an election was a personal decision.
Another resignation months later is another personal decision.
A newly elected legislator seconding a motion against his community newspaper was simply another vote.
Perhaps.
But government accountability is not about examining political decisions one at a time with the lights turned off.
It is about turning the lights on and looking at the pattern.
The Bonelli-Faggione years repeatedly produced controversies over who controlled the process — who drew the districts, who controlled legislative leadership, which newspapers carried government notices, and ultimately who would fill seats when elected legislators departed.
And if the latest newspaper vote tells us anything, some of those habits not only have outlived the people who helped establish them, but were successfully adopted by some newcomers to Legislature.
That is the record Faggione leaves behind along with whatever accomplishments he understandably believes deserve recognition.
Readers are free to decide how history should balance the ledger.
Good Sailing
Faggione’s farewell says that “public office is temporary.”
On that point, we enthusiastically agree.
Political power should always be temporary.
That is one of democracy’s better inventions.
And his final invitation — “Stay tuned for the next chapter of this journey” — suggests that Orange County and its residents may not have seen the last of Tom Faggione.
Political careers, after all, have a remarkable buoyancy.
Much like that infamous certain substance whose refusal to sink has become proverbial, once overboard, they linger on the surface, float downstream, bob along with the current, until turning up somewhere nobody expected under a new title.
So we will resist predicting where Mr. Faggione’s current carries him next.
County government?
Party politics?
Another public position?
Private life?
We don’t know.
And until there are facts, neither does anyone else.
But he once suggested that the Warwick Valley Dispatch wait awhile and see “how things are going.”
Fair enough.
We think it shall return the courtesy.
And while we’re watching, we’ll also be keeping an eye on the generation following him.
Mr. Redeker included.
As for Glenn Ehlers, credit should go where it is due. In a Legislature where support for local journalism has too often changed with political convenience, Ehlers has repeatedly taken the less fashionable position: leave the newspaper in place, let the public see the notices and allow the press to do its job.
That should not require courage.
Apparently, sometimes it does.
Good sailing, Mr. Faggione.
Wherever this “next chapter” takes you, we’ll be watching to see how things are going.
After all, newspapers have long memories.
And unlike legislative districts, those are considerably harder to redraw.
