Olde Saratoga Coin opposes Albany County's attempt to regulate secondhand dealers. The reporting of customer's personal information is inefficient and ill-conceived. Furthermore, there has been no substantive change between the proposed version of the law and one previously vetoed by County Executive Dan McCoy.
Reporting of customers' information to the county is unnecessary given the existence of the Albany County Dealer's Association's Law Enforcement Reporting System. That system recently helped solve an interstate theft that was stopped by the staff at our store. In late October, police in West Stockbridge, Mass., transmitted pictures and descriptions of property stolen during a burglary in their jurisdiction through the Albany County Dealers LERS system. That information was immediately disseminated to member-dealers, and the item was recognized when it was attempted to be sold at our store. The stolen property was immediately identified and returned to the rightful owner, and the perpetrator was arrested.
The LERS system works. If the customer database reporting system proposed under Law G were in effect, this crime would likely not have been solved. If, by the small chance that the stolen property was somehow identified by police after combing through tens of thousands of weekly transactions entered into the database, it would be many weeks or months later.
This is not to mention the man hours that would have been required to comb the database. If the county's goal is truly to recover stolen property as has been stated, the system proposed under Law G would be far less successful in recovering stolen property that the existing dealer's reporting system.
The LERS makes far more sense than database reporting.
The proposed law will result in police looking for a "needle in a haystack," wasting precious time and resources. The LERS system identifies only those items that are stolen and alerts those most likely to encounter those items.
The LERS system will allow for outside agencies to list stolen property. The proposed system only correlates Albany County information. If the proposed system was in place instead of LERS, the recent West Stockbridge case would not in all likelihood have been solved.
The LERS system is provided free of charge to the county. And any upgrades are paid for by the dealers. Implementing the proposed system will cost the county money on start-up, maintenance and monitoring costs.
The proposed system also raises substantial legal issues in the areas of personal privacy and police profiling. Does the county really feel that it is necessary to violate its own citizens' freedoms for a situation that arises once in every 2,000 to 3,000 transactions? Especially when there already exists a better way?
No matter what law is in place, the majority of secondhand dealers are going to continue to deal honestly, and that small minority of dishonest individuals will continue to break the law. This law would only hurt honest business people. It would raise the cost of doing business and lower the public's ability to market their used goods.
Make your voices heard on this important issue. Urge County Executive Dan McCoy to veto this legislation: county_executive@albanycounty.com or 447-7040.
Mark Ballantyne is the owner of Olde Saratoga Coin.