Government & Politics

Latimer Launches Seven Citizen Task Forces

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Rep. Latimer (center) with task force members and staff liaisons

December 5, 2025

By Barrett Seaman—

Given the current balance of power in Washington, there’s not a lot that a first-term Democrat in Congress can do. But George Latimer, who represents New York’s 16^th District, is trying to affect change at the top by going at it from the bottom up.

This past week, the former County Executive, who has held elective office on the local, county and state levels for more than 35 years, announced the creation of seven volunteer citizen task forces—each assigned to seek improvement in one of seven public policy areas. They are:

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Energy & Environment
Infrastructure
Intergovernmental
Veterans Affairs
Foreign Policy & Military Affairs
Jobs & Economy
Social Services

Each committee (except one) will be assigned seven members from various communities in the 16^thDistrict, which covers about half of Westchester and parts of the Bronx—the exception being the task force on Jobs & the Economy. In announcing the program, Latimer stressed that these are all made up of citizen volunteers, chosen for their particular expertise and experience.

Jane Veron, a marketing strategist and co-founder of The Acceleration Project that provides pro bono support for small businesses, chairs the Jobs & Economy task force. Given the challenges small businesses face in the current environment, Veron’s committee gets an extra two members for a total of nine.

Chairing the Foreign Affairs & Military Affairs group is Asha Castleberry, an Army veteran with more than a decade working for the State Department, Pentagon and other foreign affairs institutions, concentrating on the Middle East. Navy veteran Kevin Meggett, now chair of Black Veterans for Social Justice, will chair the Veterans Affairs task force.

As the committees get down to business, Latimer allowed, there may be issues that transcend the current boundaries dividing the groups—or possibly spawn a new, re-focused task force. The Infrastructure committee, chaired by former Scarsdale trustee and school board member Jonathan Lewis, may well finding itself working closely with the Intergovernmental Task Force, chaired by just-retired Mayor of Ardsley Nancy Kaboolian—or with the Environment & Energy group, chaired by former Carter and Reagan administration official Martin Rogowsky.

“This is an effort to try to deal with public policy at the federal level mindful of what the impact of that policy is at the state, county and local level,” said Latimer, who is a vigorous proponent of interconnectivity among levels of government. “We are reaching out into the communities we represent and asking people of talent and skill to give up their time voluntarily –no one is being compensated for this—to help us craft what we hope will be good public policy.”

Representative Latimer won his seat against incumbent Jamaal Bowman a year ago in large part because of his close relationship with just about every elected official in Westchester County. His aim in creating these task forces is to use networking to bring ideas from the district back to Washington—in effect putting the legislative process back in the hands of the people it is designed to serve.

Asked by The Hudson Independent what a successful outcome of his task force project would look like and why the House as a whole should pay attention to just one of 435 members (and one in the minority caucus at that), Latimer envisioned a process in which good ideas would rise to the surface and possibly find support from other members—even Republicans. It could be proposed new legislation or amendments to other pending bills, he said. “If we have something of substance—we start to loop in other House colleagues—make it bipartisan if possible. If we can show bipartisan consensus that would be ideal.”

Latimer addresses task force members and staff at the County Center

The life cycle of the seven task forces coincides (naturally enough) with Latimer’s term in office, which would end January 2027. Between now and then, he expects the committees to go off and organize themselves and work through three senior members of his staff: Robert Hoch, Tremaine O’Garro and Ellen Hendrickx, to coordinate their work and, if warranted, reorganize around promising ideas that emerge from the process. ““If we do something that works,” surmised the Congressman, “that’s what America should be.”

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