While nearly all city and county leaders in the Hudson Valley dive head-first into the world of Zoom and Skype to hold mandated public meetings, leaders of the Dutchess County Legislature have not yet wet their feet.

Democratic Minority Leader Rebecca Edwards said she was disappointed to learn the chairman, Gregg Pulver, canceled the board’s April meetings saying, “there’s no real reason for them,” while the county manages the COVID-19 outbreak. Edwards’ view is the complete opposite of Pulver’s.

“Given the [COVID-19] crisis, it seems like a time when public officials need to be doing more oversight, and be more engaged,” Edwards told Spectrum News In a FaceTime interview Thursday morning.

Edwards said it is important for legislators to debate resolutions proposed by her caucus to keep recently laid-off county residents from being pushed out of their homes. One resolution has to do with a moratorium on rent.

While the state has issued a freeze on evictions for three months, there is no such measure that would protect tenants from being evicted after the moratorium for not paying rent. Edwards said the discussion on resolution should be a priority.

“It’s the kind of thing that would require the legislature to meet and talk through what the implications would be, what can we do for landlords, and what federal or state funds we might be able to bring to bear to help solve the problem,” Edwards said.

Chairman Gregg Pulver said, currently, issues Edwards considers urgent are not worth setting up a teleconference meeting with all 25 legislators and several staff members.

“I know the Democratic caucus offered two, or three, or four resolutions,” Pulver said when reached by phone Thursday. “But none of [the resolutions] are critical enough to address what’s going on.”

Aside from disagreeing on the importance level of the minority caucus’s ideas, Pulver said a meeting would not be useful since legislators have not yet received sales tax receipts and other important financials in order to make key decisions, and the county executive has “all the executive power he needs and is keeping us all informed.”

Pulver also said meeting via an online service such as Zoom would inhibit progress.

“Including staff and department heads, there could possibly be 40 people on a Zoom meeting,” he said. “They can be quite unwieldy with that many people.”

Spectrum News was unable to find another municipal or county-level board in the Hudson Valley that canceled meetings.

“The others figured this out at the end of March,” Edwards said, “and we can’t?”

“There is very little, if anything, that we can do to abate this pandemic,” Pulver said. “Why would we pull people off the front lines to have a meeting? That’s kind of where I’m at.”

Pulver plans to resume meetings in May. He said he is aware of his colleague’s references to the county charter that a chairman does not have the ability to cancel a meeting, but only postpone for up to a week. He added, though, the charter “probably wasn’t written with a pandemic in mind,” and that he canceled the April meetings “for all the right reasons.”

Spectrum emailed questions to the office of County Executive Marc Molinaro, seeking his opinion on whether meetings should be held and whether he had concerns about whether the legislature is following the law. Officials at his office declined to offer answers.

“Our understanding is Chairman Pulver is planning to host May Committee and Board meetings remotely via Zoom and we stand ready to participate,” a spokesperson replied.