The Albany County Courthouse in Albany. Photo: Albeit simple, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Albany County voters have a lot on the front of Tuesday’s ballot: governor, comptroller, attorney general, Congress, the Legislature and a long list of judges and town offices. Two questions that could change how county government works are on the back. Flip it over.
Proposition 1 would get rid of the county’s elected coroners and replace them with an appointed medical examiner’s office. Proposition 2 would give the County Legislature a way to expel its own members. Both are amendments to the county charter, and both passed the Legislature before going to voters.
Proposition 1: coroners out, medical examiner in
Albany County has four part-time coroners, elected to four-year terms. They respond to deaths that are suspicious, unattended or accidental, they can investigate, and they must sign off before a body is removed from a scene. The charter requires them to have lived in the county for a year and to take death investigation training after they’re elected. They don’t have to be doctors. The county contracts out autopsies, often to Ellis Medicine.
Under the amendment, a chief medical examiner would run the office instead. That person would have to be a licensed physician with expertise in forensic pathology, appointed by the county executive to a six-year term and confirmed by the Legislature. The office would be full time and could hire a chief deputy and death investigators. It would sit within the county Health Department.
County Executive Dan McCoy has pushed for the change. He told WAMC he was frustrated by the lack of reliable data on COVID-19 deaths during the pandemic and on overdose deaths during the opioid crisis. “I’m not taking away from the coroners, they did a good job. But it’s the administrative side of the house, right? And it’s the 21st century. We got to change the approach,” McCoy said.
Sheriff Craig Apple supports it too. He said some coroners his office has worked with have been “incredibly great” and others “horrific,” and that bodies have sometimes waited a long time to be moved from streets and homes because a coroner hadn’t arrived. County officials also say few people have been willing to run for the job in recent years.
The argument against is mostly about money. The county executive’s office estimated the medical examiner’s office would cost about $935,000 a year more than the current system, or around $600,000 more if a cost-sharing deal with a neighboring county goes through. County officials told legislators that agreement could be approved as soon as December if the proposition passes. Some legislators think even the higher estimate is low, particularly for the three death investigators the county plans to hire.
“I am concerned the cost of the new office will be more than the administration thinks,” Legislator Mark Grimm, who voted to keep the coroners, told WAMC. He called it a “close call.”
The Legislature passed the measure 26-11, with members of both parties on each side. A yes vote creates the medical examiner’s office. A no vote keeps elected coroners, and voters keep choosing who holds the job.
Proposition 2: a way to remove legislators
The second question sets qualifications for county legislators and a process for enforcing them. If it passes, the Legislature could investigate a member and expel them for three reasons: not living in their district, knowingly filing a materially false financial disclosure with the county while in office, or being convicted of a felony while serving.
Expulsion would take a two-thirds vote, 26 of the 39 members. The Legislature could then appoint a replacement to serve until the next general election, when voters would pick someone.
Minority Leader Frank Mauriello, a Republican, backs it. “These are four-year terms, and so if a legislator does something that really goes against the public trust in them and their ability to serve in that office, I think we need to step forward and really police ourselves and remove that person,” he said. Mauriello is also on the ballot this year, running for the Assembly’s 110th District against incumbent Phil Steck.
The proposal passed 34-3. It grew in large part out of a fight over whether Legislator Beroro Efekoro, a Democrat, actually lived in his district. As the Times Union first reported in 2025, fellow Democrats looked into a tip that Efekoro had listed another Albany property as his primary residence on a mortgage form, and a county investigator reportedly followed him for two weeks. Efekoro said he lived where he said he did and called the inquiry retaliation for crossing party leaders. The matter was dropped. Efekoro was one of the three votes against putting Proposition 2 on the ballot.
Critics of measures like this generally worry that a majority could use removal powers against members it simply doesn’t like. The three grounds in this amendment are narrow, and the two-thirds threshold is high, but the decision would rest with legislators rather than voters or a court.
Voting Tuesday
Polls are open 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Tuesday. Voters can find their polling place and view sample ballots through the Albany County Board of Elections. The county posts its own plain-language explanation of each proposition with the sample ballots.
