BUFFALO, N.Y. - You may have heard once or twice during the four years he was County Executive that Chris Collins drove his own car on the job. What you may have not known is that his vehicle had been outfitted by the County with lights, a siren, and a police radio.
Collins has been out of office for two weeks, but as of early Thursday afternoon, that equipment remained in his car.
Collins personally removed the equipment and returned it to the county Thursday afternoon.
This settled a simmering dispute between Collins and the administration of the man who bested him in the November election, current Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz.
Prior to Thursday, Collins was insisting that he be allowed to take his car to a dealership of his choice to have the equipment removed. He also wanted the County to pay for it.
"I believe they should, because it's my car. I drove it for four years, put 90,000 miles on it, and paid all the expenses and such," Collins said, while noting his predecessor in office, Joel Giambra, used a county owned vehicle and had a driver whose salary was paid for by taxpayers.
"I think any one of your viewers would realize the cost of a dealer visit can be a little pricey," said County Executive Poloncarz's Press Secretary, Peter Anderson. "That same work could be done by the County, at no added expense to the taxpayers."
The simmering dispute began to boil when the County withheld Collins' final paycheck, contingent upon the return of its equipment.
"I think it just shows the vindictive and petty behavior of the new County Executive," Collins told WGRZ-TV.
The County later decided to issue the check after being reminded by Collins that such action would violate state labor law.
Collins also expressed concern about the work to remove the equipment from his vehicle being done under the supervision of the county's new Commissioner of Emergency Services, Dan Neaverth Jr.
"I'm not going to have Danny Neaverth, who I fired a year ago, taking out the equipment on my personal car," Collins said.
"Nobody is going to monkey with his car," said Anderson on Thursday morning, expressing doubt that Neaverth would actually be involved in the work and suggesting it could very well end up being done by the same mechanic who installed it in Collins' car four years ago.
Collins said the equipment was installed at the suggestion of his Commissioner of Emergency Services upon taking office in 2008, after Collins decided to use his own vehicle on the job in order to save taxpayers money.
Collins says he used the emergency equipment only twice. Once, when he turned on the lights and siren when racing to the scene of the crash of flight 3407, and the other when he used the radio to report that he was the victim of a hit and run on the NYS Thruway.
A few hours after speaking to us about the stalemate, Collins phoned 2 On Your Side to report that, upon inspecting the equipment and realizing how easily it could be removed, he did the job himself before personally returning it to the county.
Anderson confirmed that the county was in receipt of the equipment, adding that there are no plans to re-install it in the personal car of the current County Executive. "It will be put to good use in another emergency vehicle owned by the county," he said.
Click on the video player to watch our story from 2 On Your Side Reporter Dave McKinley and Photojournalist Norm Fisher from Eden.
Click here to read Dave McKinley's latest blog.