Paul Tonko: “I think what you are pointing to here is a very important component of the agreement. We do lose the control, the direct…”

“I think what you are pointing to here is a very important component of the agreement. We do lose the control, the direct authority, required of us by the constituency that places its trust in each and every Representative that is elected to come to Congress. They believe rightfully that we are going to have their best interests. We vote in accordance with what we hear from them about standards that should be maintained, established, and implemented; and to have that passed on to a court of whatever, of a format that is far removed from a given situation and may be looking at just greed as a factor, an unwillingness to pay abundantly well for what our standards should be maintained for just reasons, moves the process away from us with any control that we might have had taken away. I think that anonymity is a dangerous outcome as a result of this sort of agreement. So I think that, again, there is a lot of fine print in the agreement that has to be really examined and thoroughly reviewed so that we are not putting our situations at risk and our communities at risk. All in all, it is wanting to maintain standards that will respond to the needs of the environment. We know how critical that is. We know how much improvement is required and that we make great gains. But for those who signed into the process--some were actually directly communicating to the executive branch saying: let's get this fast track going. Why would you circumvent your role?…”