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Bruised Apples

Local Ocean accepts a $250,000 check from National Grid in 2011, as Congressman Chris Gibson looks on. PHOTO: Michael Farrell for The Albany Times-Union

Winner of the 2010 Crystal Apple Award from the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce just months after opening, Local Ocean recently lost its sweet PILOT (Payment In Lieu of Tax) deal with Columbia County.

Welcomed with great fanfare and largesse by local development agencies, and much-celebrated in the regional press, Local Ocean has been bedeviled by two patent lawsuits—and laggard in making payments to the County.

Local Ocean’s meteoric rise and fall from official favor is not a unique path. The tight-knit and often insular County development elite has a history of patting itself on the back, awarding its own most favored projects before they even get off the ground.

Beaten out by Local Ocean, another 2010 Crystal Apple nominee was the rebranded and renovated Historic Blue Stores Restaurant and Bar—reopened under new management just prior to their nomination, then went under again. (Today, it is back open under yet another set of managers, Darren and Tara Buffa, and appears likely to survive.) Passed over that year were the Columbia-Greene Dialysis Center, Catamount Adventure Park, Taconic Farms, and the BeLo3rd business coalition.

A longer look at the Crystal Apple award-winners over its history is instructive.

Among all award winners listed on the Chamber’s site from 1992-2013, more than one in five (20.5%) are out of business or have retrenched locally. For example, Kaz, Inc. won the award in 2002 and shared the award with Stageworks again in 2005. Dunn Builders, the Crystal Apple winner in 2004, closed its downtown Hudson location after a rash of employee thefts, then had its huge Greenport operation swallowed up by Herrington’s. The Old Chatham Sheepherding Inn (1996) closed, though farm operations continue.

A little less than another one in five (18%) have become mired in controversy, fallen out of favor with officialdom, or just fallen into disrepair—such as the once-vibrant St. Charles Hotel, which won the 1997 Crystal Apple but after several management changes no longer features a public restaurant or bar. Its private meeting room and large public event space, once highly-popular gathering spots, today are seldom used.

That renders nearly 40% of the 1992-2013 award winners either defunct, disappeared, or discredited.

This year’s award-winner, the Columbia Land Conservancy, tarnished its image last year by its coy, behind-the-scenes enabling of the City of Hudson’s heavyhanded seizure of the century-old Furgary Boat Club—using a black-suited SWAT team toting machine guns to subdue three older, sleeping men in their ancestral cabins.

Meanwhile, roughly two-in-five awards (38%) have been given to large, established companies and businesses which are closely embedded in the County development establishment, such as Herrington’s, Kaz or Columbia Memorial Hospital. The Chamber’s Board includes Paul Colarusso, whose company A. Colarusso & Sons was the 2009 winner. Other awardees have had seats or representatives over the years on many of the same boards (HDC, CEDC, local and County IDAs, the Chamber itself) which arrange corporate tax breaks, grants and other incentives. Such coziness—bordering on conflict-of-interest—makes the awarding of the Crystal Apple that much less prestigious.

Most laughable and conflicted of all, though, is the original Crystal Apple, awarded to The Columbia County Board of Supervisors for its “development” of Commerce Park. Considered a boondoggle from its very inception, Commerce Park took years to find tenants, and two decades later still is sparsely populated. With the Chamber of that era almost entirely controlled by political interests, today’s equivalent of the ’92 Crystal Apple Award would be like this site awarding itself a blue ribbon for Best Columbia County news source.

Smaller local businesses—such as the Kline’s multigenerational, family-owned Traditions, or the longest-running merchant on Warren Street, Arenskjold Antiques, here since the 1980s, or the rock-solid folks at Jimmy’s Auto Body in Livingston—rarely seem get invited to the Crystal ball.

This is not to say that the Award committee never finds its mark. 2003 winner FACE Stockholm continues to manufacture and maintain a storefront locally, even as it continues to thrive and expand internationally. Camphill Ghent, the 2012 winner, does spectacular work with its residents. The likeable director David Colby, who was brought over from the Berkshires several years ago, has cleared out cobwebs and freshened up the fusty, good-old-boy atmosphere which once pervaded the Chamber’s offices.

But these are the exceptions that prove the rule. Perhaps the trophy should be recast as a giant wooden acorn, and renamed The Blind Squirrel Award.

County airport numbers: Pie-in-the-sky?

Chart from Columbia County master plan for the airport in Ghent

With news of a proposed six-figure purchase of additional land for the Columbia County airport, the question arises: How much actual use does the airport get?

Flight data from the FAA suggests at least one answer: Not nearly so much as officials would have us believe.

Take a look at the numbers. A decade ago, the Columbia County Board of Supervisors commissioned a long-range plan for the County airport in Ghent, in part to satisfy FAA safety and other concerns.

That 2003 report included the above chart, indicating that the airport handled some 37,000 flights per year. By 2020, the airport was anticipated to be handling 52,000 flights per year, or 1,000 per week.

Meanwhile, the 2009 Town of Ghent Comprehensive Plan stated as a fact that “at present, the volume is about 50,000.” The Town also projected that the airport could handle volume as high as a whopping 230,000 transits.

So how much use does the airport really get? Other evidence suggests it is nothing even close to 50,000 flights.

Data obtained via the aviation site FlightAware shows that in the full year between December 2011 and December 2012, only 1,586 takeoffs and landings were recorded. FlightAware says it gets these numbers directly from the FAA itself.

Not 50,000. Not even 37,000. Less than 1,600.

A more detailed breakdown follows below.

IMAGE: Bing.com

“My impression is that activity at the airport has gone down significantly since the 2008 recession,” said one experienced pilot who has used the County runways for many years.

Now, not every flight into and out of a County airport gets reported to the FAA. The numbers above do not appear to include many flight school trips, which can involve a lot of repeated takeoffs and landings. Under Visual Flight Rules (“VFRs”), during good weather and high visibility some other flights are not necessarily required to file a flight plan, either.

Yet even if you triple the FlightAware numbers—adding 1,600 training flights and 1,600 VFR flights—you still wind up with total yearly activity of less than 5,000 trips in and out. That’s only about 10% of what is stated in the Ghent Comp Plan  and the County’s projected master plan numbers.

In other words, 90% less that the official line.

Indeed, both basic math and interviews with neighbors suggest that there is nothing like 50,000 flights per year out of the County airport. As the comparison chart below shows, 50,000 compute to just under 140 per day... And given that Richmor Aviation made a handshake deal with neighbors about 25 years ago to limit flights to the hours between 7 am–11 pm, that would mean roughly 9 takeoffs or landings per hour, or one every 6-7 minutes.

Anyone who has driven along that section of 9H, or lived in that area, or visited friends there, knows that planes are a rarity, not something which occurs every 6 minutes. Just sit in a car in the Kozel’s parking lot, and you can verify that doesn’t happen. Or, surf over to FlightAware’s live dashboard, and see for yourself how few arrivals and departures are scheduled on a moment-to-moment basis.

Moreover, small airport use tends to be heavier in warmer months, so the average in summertime would likely be more like every 3-4 minutes, if the County and Ghent numbers were in fact real.

Using the same basic math, the projected maximum capacity of 230,000 flights cited in Ghent’s Comp Plan seems as ridiculous as it would be dangerous: 230,000 transits per year would mean almost 20,000 per month, 4,500 per week, over 600 per day, and 25 per hour around the clock including the wee hours of the night. Limiting activity to the 16-hour community noise abatement deal, there would be a plane zipping in or out every 90 seconds or so.

If such official numbers were at all accurate, living near the County airport could begin to resemble life near LaGuardia.

The question of how much the airport is really used becomes all the more relevant now that the County has voted to a approve a $629,000 offer to the owners of Meadowgreens to expand the airport and bring it more into FAA compliance. (Few were there to witness the vote, in part because the local paper of record, The Register-Star, published the wrong date for the meeting.)

Given how out-of-sync the County’s planning numbers appear to be with reality, this could pose a problem with FAA funders. When the County submits this $629,000 expansion plan to the Feds for approval, it will be interesting to see what numbers it claims.

Greenport opposes Premier PILOT

It hasn’t been reported in the local press yet, but on Wednesday the Greenport Town Board unanimously passed a resolution expressing its opposition to the payment-in-lieu-of-tax plan for Premier Brands.

The PILOT proposal under consideration by the Columbia County Industrial Development Agency would allow Premier to avoid paying its full share of taxes over the next 10 years. The Westchester-based company intends to site a warehousing operation in the now empty Wal-Mart space on Fairview Avenue, in the Price Chopper plaza.

Notably, the attorney representing Premier is Bill Better, the former Columbia County attorney who stepped down after three female County employees filed sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits against him in 1997. One of those suits alleged that that “Better forced her to contribute to the local GOP, and was sexually harassed and stalked by him,” and was settled for $120,000. Another similar suit was reportedly settled for $210,000. Better denied the charges, with his attorney characterizing the suits in the Times-Union as “a stick-up.”

Better is also currently representing PCB processors TCI of NY before the Ghent Planning Board, and was retained last year by the Stuyvesant Town Board at a $250-per-hour rate to address lawsuits related to Will Pflaum’s dog boarding business.

Rural broadband options expand—slowly and unsurely

With relatively few residents scattered across a large area, Columbia County denizens have struggled for years to obtain even basic internet connectivity. Just retrieving email and watching YouTube, let alone streaming an HD movie at a decent resolution, can be deeply frustrating—and also costly.

The population density in Columbia is just 99 people per square mile. As you head southward, that number climbs steadily, with 371 per square mile in Dutchess, 431 in Putnam, and 2,193 in Westchester. This low density means that many fall into the dreaded “last mile” category, in which houses at the far end of a road or more than three miles from a telephone switching stationcan get neither cable modems nor DSL service.

But that is finally changing, though in baby steps that leave this area far behind metropolitan regions.

For the layperson, 3 Mbps is the bare minimum necessary to stream a movie in any decent resolution, without it looking all blurry and blocky—pixillated, designers would say. If you have a big TV or a projector, or have multiple people online in your household (whether on a smartphone, a tablet, a Roku, or just surfing the web) you probably need twice that just to cover normal usage. A power user or large household may want 10-15 Mbps or better.

Several new options have emerged of late for rural broadband customers that bring parts of the County into that territory, at least on paper:

(1) FAIRPOINT. Though it’s not yet reflected on their website, Fairpoint Communications says it has bumped up its top download speeds for both business and residential accounts from 3 Mbps (megabytes per second) to 15 Mbps. A web designer in Chatham reports that she recently upgraded her business account with Fairpoint, and is now getting just over 15 Mbps. The price structure, according to a rep I spoke with, remains the same as before, but with far higher download speeds. Fairpoint services mainly customers in central, northern and eastern parts of the County.

(2) HUGHESNET. For those out of range of cable and DSL, satellite internet provider HughesNet is now advertising its Gen4 service, promising download speeds comparable to Fairpoint’s, up to 15 Mbps. However, since this is delivered via satellite, service can be intermittent. But far more troubling than weather outages is HughesNet’s continued insistence on a “cap” on how much bandwidth customers use to prevent overloading their satellites.

Such caps can greatly diminish the value of higher speeds. HughesNet’s most expensive “power” plan costs $99 per month, and promises a monthly total of 40 GB (gigabytes) of data. If you exceed that limit, your download speeds will be slowed to a crawl, unless you buy expensive “restore tokens.”

Worse, the fine print shows that the 40 GB number is misleading, as half of that allowance can only be used between 2 am and 8 am. So unless you spend most of your time on the internet during the wee hours of the night or early morning, you are really only getting 20 GB. If 20 GB still sounds like a lot, consider that may mean at most 4-8 hours of video streaming at a high resolution per month, setting aside some bandwidth for your other internet usage.

Unless you are a weekender who would only be using the web for a small portion of each month, or someone who only uses the internet for basic news and email, that cap makes the new 15 Mbps Hughes offering pretty useless; it just means you’re going to burn through your small allowance that much more quickly.

I was a HughesNet satellite customer for more than 5 years, and found the service maddening. The data caps (then daily, instead of monthly) often made it difficult to do more than rudimentary stuff online. And their customer service was truly atrocious: ignorance, incompetence and outright dishonesty characterized the typical dealings with Hughes reps. Unless there has been some major change in the culture of this company, I would exercise extreme caution before signing up for these Gen4 services, as promising as they initially sound.

NOTE: The satellite provider WildBlue is basically a repackaging of the same services as Hughes, just with slightly different pricing and bandwidth offerings. The same caveats apply, though I don’t have the same direct (bad) experience with their customer service.

(3) HOTSPOTS. Wireless companies like AT&T, Sprint and Verizon are now aggressively marketing mobile hotspots (with goofy names like “Mi-Fi”) which can provide broadband-like internet to homes over cellular networks. Some of these deliver fairly decent download speeds, depending on your location; the Verizon Jetpack 4G LTE promises downloads in the 5-12 Mbps range.

Various friends in places like Claverack report being satisfied with these services, with the caveat that they are not much into internet video. And currently, there are few places in the County were you can get better than 3G coverage. Depending on the model and plan purchased, you may be able to carry that service around with you if you commute or travel a lot, which is an added bonus.

However, as with satellite internet providers, the devil is in the details. These services can be pricey, and typically have strict bandwidth limits. The highest-level Verizon plan, for example, costs $110 per month with a limit of 20GB of usage. After that, you have to start buying gigabytes of data à la carte at exorbitant rates, or wait until your next billing cycle rolls around. Cell-based services seem to be advancing more rapidly than cable and DSL due to the huge number of people with smartphones; so in a couple of years, the idea of being tethered to a line for internet may seem ridiculous. For now, however, this option requires many compromises.

(4) GTEL.  Gtel based in Germantown promises DSL speeds up to 10 Mbps for qualifying business customers, but with lots of asterisks and caveats attached.

(5) MHCABLE. Lastly, Mid-Hudson Cable now claims it can offer business customers speeds as high as a truly whopping 50 Mbps, while their advertised residential cable modem plan top out at an unremarkable 5 Mbps. However, Mid-Hudson still does not reach many parts of the County, primarily servicing the 12534 zip code on this side of the river.

This site was first to report back in 2011 the head-scratching news that MHCable had sent back a much-hyped multimillion-dollar Federal grant to help provide broadband services to “last mile” customers in rural areas of Columbia County.

This meant that customers in less-accessible areas were quoted up-front prices of $1,000-$3,000 for the privilege of then paying MHC for monthly service. Among the reasons cited by Mid-Hudson president James Reynolds for sending back the money for which his company had applied was the belated recognition that it would require MHC to pay its workers prevailing wage on any Federally-funded work.

Others complain that MHC services do not necessarily deliver promised speeds. Mark Orton of Hudson, for example, ran extensive speed tests back when he was still an MHC customer, eventually switching to DSL in order to gain more stable, reliable service that could handle his videoconferencing and other needs.

Considering that Columbia County is now home to many people used to far better internet connectivity, and also an unusual number of so-called telecommuters and self-employed people who work at home, one would think that local leadership would make internet access more of a priority. The County will propose to spend $1 million primarily to benefit a single company operating the Ghent airport, even as many residents can’t get a decent signal through their Apple Airport.

And while it seems that rural broadband conferences are held on a regular basis (and with a lot of press hoopla for any politicians who pay lip service to the idea), progress remains slow. Greene County political blogger Thomas Pletcher called the last such symposium there “a sham.”

In many towns in the area, cable and internet contracts are renewed with little or know actual negotiation or haggling, with the widespread perception in certain municipalities that the well-connected management of such companies have more clout than local taxpayers.

UPDATE: Several people have emailed with questions about NYAir, another relative newcomer here (though basically an arm of Mid-Hudson Cable). I wrote about NYAir back in March at this link. This is not really a broadband service at this point, as you can’t reliable get more than 2 Mbps down, and speeds tend to hover closer to 1 Mbps.

One of their techs told me last summer that the company was planning to upgrade from a 900MHz broadcaster to a faster WiMax system sometime “in the next year,” which could mean closer to true broadband speeds, depending on what they install and how far one is from a tower. Note that NYAir is “backhauling” from these towers (such as the one on Blue Hill in Livingston) to MHCable, which seems to result in major slowdowns in service during primetime hours as thousands of their cable and internet customers tune in.

Pull up a Chair: Fingar speaks

In response to this site’s query about why multiple sources have predicted that he may be on the way out as Columbia County Republican Committee chair, as well as for general comment about the current state of the County GOP, Greg Fingar provided the following statement this evening. It is reproduced in full below:

Well I guess in some sense we're all “on the way out.” Aren’t we? I don't expect, nor desire to be the head of the ccgop forever.

The Roy v Kathy primary was inevitable. Both candidates confirmed that with me. My strategy was to let the republican voters decide who they wanted to defeat the democratic challenger in the NYS senate race while maintaining our focus on the races where we had unanimous committee support. I was concerned that a divided committee, may cause us to take our eye off the ball.

For the most part the strategy worked. We successfully elected, Chris Gibson, Pete Lopez, Steve McLaughlin and Kathy Marchione. We were not successful in the assembly race Byrne v Barrett, however Byrne did prevail in my home town of CLERMONT.

Now while your sources may tell a completely different story, I have received nothing but praise for the handling of the McDonald v Marchione situation, and lets not forget, we ultimately did win that race. And I have to say, praise came from the most extreme tea-party members to moderate republicans. 

As respects the GOP chairmanship, the committee reorganizes in Sept or Oct of ODD years. I will be up for re-election next year. My focus, at the moment is; 18 supervisor races, a County Judge, Sheriff and Coroner as well as countless town wide races.

I am anticipating an extremely active political season in 2013. In addition to the 4 regularly scheduled GOP events we are discussing many town wide opportunities for our candidates to meet residents and voters. 

GREGORY C. FINGAR

NOTE: An open-ended suggestion to sit down for a more in-depth interview to discuss these and other matters has been made to Fingar.

Fingar calls report “absolute BS”

Six days after publication here of a story about a widely-rumored shake-up in the County Republican Committee, GOP chair Greg Fingar has issued an irate denial.

In a Monday morning email, Fingar chastised Ancram Supervisor Art Bassin (and by extension this site) for “circulating absolute BS,” claiming that “it certainly isn’t productive or true for that matter.”

Fingar further characterizes the multiply-sourced reports as “an outright lie” and an attempt to “stir controversy within the community.” As noted in very the first paragraph of the original story, this site’s sources were “three separate (and ideologically-distinct) sources.”

Journalists protect such sources. But without furthering a Republican witch hunt, it can be also disclosed that these three sources are themselves credible political figures, not closely allied with each other, and had no obvious motivation to either support or oppose an insurrection against Fingar. The piece moreover was reported as a possibility not a certainty, noting that Fingar remains in the position and his tenure is not necessarily at an end yet.

Meanwhile, recent election cycles have borne witness to obvious fissures and infighting among the County GOP.

For example in 2011, a barely-concealed struggle resulted in then-judge Paul Czajka seeking the District Attorney’s seat held at the time by Beth Cozzolino. Cozzolino then sought the judicial position held by Czajka, facing down a September primary for the Republican line from Mark Portin before ultimately losing in November to Democrat Richard Koweek.

Similarly, 2012 saw a slew of tightly-contested GOP primaries for key State-level positions, for example from insurgent candidates Neil DiCarlo and Kathy Marchione against Steve Saland and Roy McDonald, respectively, after the latter two supported gay marriage.

This site is more than willing to report Fingar’s denial, while continuing to have no reason believe that any of its sources were deliberately “lying.” It’s possible that each was independently mistaken. Other scenarios are that a change in favor of Benson was sent up as a political trial balloon and reached disparate parties—or just that it took six days for an incipient insurrection to be squelched.

 

Changing of the GOP guard?

Greg Fingar may vacate the Columbia County Republican chairman’s seat, and New Lebanon Supervisor Michael Benson may covet his seat cushion, according to three separate (and ideologically-distinct) sources. 

GOP chair Greg Fingar with election law attorney James Walsh (Source: CC Scoop)

Fingar remains in the position for the moment, according to a fourth source familiar with the situation. It is not clear whether Fingar would step down voluntarily, or is coming under pressure to do so.

In addition to serving as the New Leb Supervisor, Benson is president of BCI, one of the Capital Region’s largest and most influential construction firms. The company is known for its uncanny knack for winning bidding wars on public projects, and has done extensive work for government within the County. For example, BCI completed renovations for the Chatham Central School District, and also construction on the City of Hudson’s new wastewater treatment plant.

In addition, BCI built A. Colarusso & Sons’ corporate offices, suggesting that if elevated to Republican chair, Benson perhaps would be sympathetic to mining interests which have been the source of some local controversy in the past.

Benson’s profile picture at BCI’s website

Earlier this year, a small controversy erupted after nearly 30 underage students were arrested in relation to a drinking party at a New Lebanon home while the parents were traveling. Initial State Police reports didn’t disclose the party details. But it eventually leaked out that it took place at the Bensons’ home—becoming the subject of reports in the Times-Union and elsewhere—after the Town Justice had to recuse herself.

Benson contributed $250 to lobbyist, County powerbroker and former Assembly Minority Leader John Faso’s political action committee in 2001, and has donated similar amounts in the past two years to the Columbia County Republican Committee and Conservative Party. In November 2011, he donated $5,000 the State Republican Committee. All of these donations were made via BCI’s Loudonville Road address in Albany.

BCI Construction itself has donated a total of $17,890 to various political candidates over the past decade, according to New York State campaign finance records. Most of these donations were to Republicans, but a few were to Democrats in places such as Albany and New York City where the politics are heavily Democratic.

Though not necessarily over yet, Fingar’s tenure was colored early on by the intense controversy surrounding his party’s heavyhanded 2009 attempt to disenfrancise absentee voters in the hotly-contested Congressional race between Scott Murphy and Jim Tedisco. At the time, Fingar and Faso joined forces to sic lawyers John Ciampoli Jim Walsh (plus a gumshoe private detective) on second home owners who had legally cast absentee ballots. More recent primaries have brought to light various fissures among factions of the County GOP, which usually presents a monolithic front.

The ballot fracas, which was decided strongly in favor of the voters by fellow Republican judge John Nichols, focused heavily on the small Town of Taghkanic. Their challenges appeared to be backed in part by donations from racetrack developer Alan Wilzig—whose chef and manager Eric Tyree was on the ballot. Funds for the disenfranchisement effort came in part from the County Republican Housekeeping fund (to which Wilzig and a corporation he controlled had donated), a type of political action committee which is not supposed to be used for such purposes according to New York State election law.

At the time, numerous residents who were longtime customers of Fingar Insurance decamped to other insurers in protest, after noticing one of its key partners’ involvement. Ironically, the company’s Columbia County Chamber of Commerce blurb touted its work helping to insure second homes.

Facing facts, one week late

Assembly candidate Cheryl Roberts has finally conceded the 107th State Assembly race to Steve McLaughin, according to the Troy Record. Roberts’ grudging concession comes a week after McLaughlin declared victory on election night.

In the Record article, a McLaughlin campaign spokesman barely conceals his annoyance with Roberts’ lack of grace in defeat:

“It was very clear on election night that Assemblyman McLaughlin won re-election and was given the honor to serve another term in the state assembly... There was certainly no need to drag this out an additional six days when the obvious had already been stated when Steve had won by a margin far exceeding any need for a recount.”

Roberts had previously insisted that all absentee ballots be counted before she acknowledge the result, though numbers gathered from various Boards of Elections by this site a week ago made it obvious that the challenger had virtually no chance to catch up. The challenger would have had to garner almost 4 out of every 5 absentee ballot filed, even though 3 out of 4 of those ballots came from Rensselaer County, where McLaughlin won handily on the machine.

Roberts was cited for circulating dishonest literature against McLaughlin by the League of Women voters’ non-partisan Fair Campaign Practices organization. She campaigned as an environmental champion, despite having advocated one-sidedly for the interests of Swiss industrial polluter Holcim and notorious Connecticut construction firm O&G Industries over thousands of citizen concerns about the future of Hudson’s South Bay.

Nevertheless, Columbia County Democratic officials cynically promoted Roberts’ green bona fides using the (now-disproven) rationale that “she can win”—the same reason given for the party’s switch of its allegiance from progressive Congressional candidate Joel Tyner to CIA lawyer Julian Schreibman. Roberts reportedly wasted more than $100,000 in campaign funding from the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee, while Schreibman ran through $1 million on his race, not counting expenditures by outside groups.

Firing roils the Register

UPDATES: The Register has now posted a job listing for what appears to have been Casey’s position. And welcome to Romenesko readers; if you’re looking for some background on the peculiar dynamics (and myriad failings) of local media, here’s a PDF of my piece in Our Town, guest edited by Jacob Brackman.

Reporter Tom Casey has been fired by the Register-Star, according to more than one well-placed source.

Casey’s Reg-Star profile picture

According to these sources, Casey’s firing was precipitated by his refusal to let his byline run over a story he’d submitted about a recent Common Council budget meeting—combined with the eagerness of higher-ups to make an issue of one Alderman’s principled stand.

An article about the meeting appeared on Friday, but was attributed only to “Hudson Catskill-Newspapers” rather than to any reporter.

The bone of contention is said to have been two paragraphs tacked onto the end of Casey’s article by an editor, claiming that there was some unspecified “upset” at the meeting over “Alderman John Friedman’s decision not to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.” While standing for the Pledge is customary at Council meetings, it’s not actually required by the City’s Code. Indeed, the City Code doesn’t even require Aldermen to show up.

According to sources, Casey had been under pressure by higher-ups at the paper to make an issue of Friedman’s choice, which the Alderman had exercised at some but not all previous meetings. Getting the matter into the body of a news story would give the paper’s management a predicate for writing an editorial about it. The day after the dispute, Casey was reportedly fired by editor Theresa Hyland at the insistence of publisher Roger Coleman.

Coleman and Hyland (Source: Register-Star)

“Theresa made it clear that the decison came from above,” according to one source, who added that management had “asked Tom to let her know the next time he didn't stand [for the Pledge]. They wanted a particular instance that they could pinpoint for a forthcoming editorial. Roger sent somebody else to the meeting to check on whether John stood.” When word came back that Friedman had not stood, but the topic was not addressed in Casey’s article, a confrontation ensued.

“It's a very rare situation,” according to one Hudson-Catskill Newspapers insider, observing that “I’ve never seen it before that someone said straight up that they didn't want their name on their article.”

The situation appears to be all the more rare to the extent that Register-Star articles are seldom copy-edited or substantially changed before publication. Reporters’ texts typically fly straight from their own keyboard into print, with little or no editorial oversight. “It’s kind of frightening, really,” said one source familiar with the paper’s production system,” saying that “typically, they are so hands off, the news runs itself... Theresa and Roger don’t get involved with the copy.”

In addition, the firing is said to have been denounced by senior reporter John Mason, said to have characterized Hyland’s move as “McCarthyite.” Staff now fear that Mason might in turn be punished, with many threatening to walk out en masse if that were to occur. Some staffers have drafted a letter of protest to the Johnson family in Watertown about Casey’s treatment, but it remains to be seen who will go out on a limb and sign it.

“This just emphasizes the point that some good reporters have worked under really crummy circumstances there,” said one source sympathetic with both Casey and Mason.

Regarding the apparent eagerness of some to make an issue of the Pledge, Friedman writes:

“Sometimes I say it, and sometimes I don’t. I simply don’t like the government—any government, including one I’m part of—telling me what and when to say something. [It’s] not a very interesting issue to me, especially with the budget before us.”

Historically, the Register has some history of problematic relationships with its reporters. A decade ago, a crackerjack writer was pressured to resign after his excellently detailed reporting on the Columbia County Board of Supervisors incurred the wrath of then-chair Gerry Simons. More recently, a young reporter was fired for alleged “insubordination” after insulting his editor, though eventually he was rehired.

A newer article appeared in the Sunday edition of the Register about Hurricane Sandy relief work with the joint byline of Billy Shannon and Tom Casey. But the end of the article says “To reach reporter Billy Shannon, call 828-1616 ext. 2499 or emai bshannon@registerstar.com.” The omission of Casey’s contact info perhaps suggests that Casey began the story, but Shannon finished it after his departure.

Requests submitted on Sunday for comment from Hyland, Coleman and Mason have not been answered. Casey still had a voicemail account at the paper as of Monday, but this would appear to be just a lack of thoroughness on the part of management.

Meanwhile, in other Hudson-Catskill Newspapers news, publisher Coleman has moved from Hudson to Ghent, where he voted last Tuesday.

You’ll want to read Sunday’s Times-Union

UPDATE: The article discussed below is now live at the T-U’s website. Also, Pflaum has posted a new synopsis of his ‘Sleepergate’ research.

The front page of today’s Albany Times-Union leads with an explosive investigative report by former local reporter Jamie Larson.

Larson’s research finds that attorney Tal Rappelyea often billed area government for as much as 70 or 80 hours of work per week, reaching a peak of more than 90 hours—and on two occasions, what looks like more than 24 hours in a single day.

Larson’s article independently confirms much of the reasearch of Stuyvesant activist Will Pflaum, who is quoted at length in the article. Rappelyea, County Attorney Rob Fitzsimmons and others offer various explanations or justifications for the seemingly impossible billing. D.A. Paul Czajka, who Plaum elsewhere says he briefed in detail on the allegations, says he cannot comment on whether there is an investigation.

All this also assumes that Rappelyea had no non-governmental clients. If he had any private clients during this time, his workload would be even more superhuman. The attorney states that the 24+ hour days can be explained by the way his 30-hours-per-week for the County are billed: He says he does a total of 30 hours per week of work, but the County bills it at six hours per day, inflating the perceived daily totals. Yet even if one subtracts six from a high of 26 hours, that still makes for a 20-hour day—working continuously from 4 am to midnight. Plus those subtracted six hours would have to be added to some other day.

But if you want to read the story, you’ll have to either buy the Sunday print edition, or wait until later in the week for it to go online.

Plaum reacts to the piece in an email to this site:

I’ve been jumping up and down waiving invoices in front of Ron Knott, Pat Grattan and Paul Czajka for a year. The comptroller, the AG, the IG, the BAR association, the Joint Commission on Public Integrity, the state police: no one has taken the credible complaints about ongoing fraud seriously. It is still going on. The total damage to the taxpayer from the no show jobs at the county attorney's office is over one million over several years.

We are not talking about [one] lawyer. There are many no show jobs, just like Rappleyea. We are talking about a systematic failure county wide, state wide. We need comprehensive ethics reform covering local and municipal government.

Pflaum’s original post on what he’s dubbed “Sleepergate” (since it would appear Rappelyea gets very little shut-eye) is at this link.

Absentee math strongly favors McLaughlin over Roberts

In the 107th Assembly District race, GOP incumbent Steve McLaughlin declared victory late Tuesday night, with results (as reported by three County Boards of Elections) showing him ahead by 2,282 votes.

However, challenger Cheryl Roberts refused to concede, based on some theoretical possibility that absentee ballots could alter the outcome. But could they, really? Basic math suggests a reversal in her favor is extremely unlikely.

Calls to area Boards of Elections indicate that the number of absentee ballots issued to voters for this race totals about 4,600. So far, approximately 3,900 of those have been returned. If postmarked by election day, some additional ballots may be received. Generously, maybe 4,150 will come back. Of those, a few ballots will be deemed invalid for some technical reason, while other voters will be found to have skipped over the 107th Assembly race—or have written someone else in. Reasonably and for argument’s sake, let’s estimate that there a total of 4,000 more votes will be counted toward this race.

So does Roberts have a shot? With McLaughlin already ahead by 2,282, the raw numbers suggest her remaining chances are a longshot at best.

Years ago while handling a similar dispute for a Hudson candidate, I devised the simple formula pictured above for quickly computing how many votes a candidate who is behind in an election needs to get from the remaining voters to come from behind to win.

By that basic math, Roberts would have to get 3,141 of those 4,000 absentee ballots just to tie McLaughlin—3,142 to win. McLaughlin would have to garner only 858 of the 4,000 absentees to lose.

In other words, 78%.5 of all the absentee ballots would have to break for Roberts, and only 21.5% to McLaughlin. By contrast, the machine votes broke 52%-48% for McLaughlin.

In other words, Roberts would have to increase her tally +30%  among absentee voters than among Election Day voters just to make this close. In my experience of contested absentee ballot races, the ballots generally follow the same pattern as the rest of voters, and even when they deviate, they rarely if ever deviate more than 5-10% from the “machine” votes.

Furthermore, the demographics of those absentee ballots also do not favor Roberts (whose chances were diminished during the campaign when she was cited for dishonest campaign literature by the non-partisan Fair Campaign Practices organization). 73% of the absentee ballots received so far come from Rensselaer County, which McLaughlin won easily by about 7.5%; whereas only 24% of the absentees come from Columbia, which Roberts won by a similar margin. Washington County was a dead heat, and only a handful of absentees will come from there in any case.

In other words, for Roberts to win she’d not only have to do significantly better than on Election Day, she’d have to do so in the less-friendly territory of Rensselaer County. While the general perception is that in Columbia County, absentees come more heavily from liberal weekenders than from longtime Republican residents, as one moves northward a higher percentage of the absentees emanate from nursing homes and more conservative retirees.

It thus would be remarkable, verging on highly improblable, for McLaughlin’s margin not to hold up. But that may not prevent Roberts’ more rabid partisans from mounting a long, exhausting and expensive ballot fight.

Election results as of midnight

The faces of the FOX News anchors were ashen around 11:15 pm as they dutifully announced the projection—already aired on MSNBC—that Barack Obama would be reëlected President for a second four-year term.

Meanwhile, several Republican nominees running in Columbia County were ahead of their Democratic opponents. According to published reports as of midnight:

• McLaughlin leads Roberts by about 3,000 votes for State Assembly;
• Marchione leads Andrews by about 11,000 votes for State Senate;
• Gibson leads Schreibman by about 14,000 votes for the U.S. House;

On the brighter side for Dems:

• Mott is far ahead for State Supreme Court Judge, with Schick holding an 8,000 vote lead over the closest Republican challenger;
• The Poughkeepsie Journal reports that Didi Barrett won comfortably in Dutchess County, while The Times-Union shows Barrett with a smaller lead in Columbia County, indicating an overall win.

There are absentee ballots and some precincts yet to report in all of these races, but they seem unlikely to change the outcome of these races.

South of us, Terry Gipson has declared victory over longtime incumbent Steve Saland for State Senate.