He mistakenly signed a bill into law that he meant to veto. His community insists it’s legally binding

Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon said he would veto a bill that sought to establish term limits for his position, then he erroneously signed it hours later

NEED TO KNOW

• Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon accidentally signed a term limits bill into law after saying he planned to veto it just hours earlier
• County legislators insist his mistake is legally binding under New York law and that the measure will be put on the ballot in November
• County Attorney Robert Durr, who took responsibility for the error, said the matter is likely to be brought before the courts as Democrats and Republicans spar over what happens now

A local politician in Central New York accidentally signed a bill into law — one he actually meant to veto.

On the morning of Wednesday, July 15, Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon expressed his intent to veto a bill that would seek term limits for certain government roles, including his own, per local outlets CNY Central and Syracuse.com. The bill, proposed by Democrats in the county’s legislative body, would limit the number of terms the county’s comptroller and executive could hold.

But hours later, McMahon, a Republican, erroneously signed the wrong document and sent it to the county legislature. Nineteen minutes after the first communication, another followed, dictating that the bill be vetoed, according to legislative chairwoman Nicole Watts.

“Whatever we received first by electronic commission transmission in New York State is considered to be legally binding,” Watts told the outlet, citing section 210 of the county’s charter. She added, “That is our responsibility.”

Leaders of the legislative body plan to send the new law to the Onondaga County’s Board of Elections, so it can be placed on the ballot in November for citizens to vote on.

Syracuse.com reported that the county’s Democratic elections commissioner and Republican elections commissioner disagree on how to proceed. The Democratic commissioner believes that the bill should be adopted in accordance with election law, but the Republican commissioner refuses to approve putting the law on the ballot because McMahon clearly made a “clerical error.”

County Attorney Robert Durr told Syracuse.com that he was to blame for the error. He said he handed McMahon a folder full of documents and, believing he had reviewed all of them, told the executive to sign them all.

In a statement released Thursday, July 17, McMahon said, “We made a clerical error. That’s on us. As soon as we discovered it, we promptly submitted the veto resolution that reflected exactly what I had, as County Executive, already publicly announced.”

However, he added, it was “disappointing” to him to see his error treated as a “political victory,” since he had already told constituents that he opposed the term limits legislation.

McMahon’s office tells PEOPLE the county attorneys are confident the error made by staff is “curable.”

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It’s likely the matter will be brought before a court given the partisan commissioners’ disagreement on what comes next, Durr told Syracuse.com, but the county attorney feels confident that any judge would side with McMahon.

“It’s a simple error that no court is going to punish anybody for,’’ Durr claimed.

Read the original article on People