SamPratt.com

Walk in the woods

A carefully-built wall found in the middle of deep woods in Taghkanic (NY)... Must have been farmland many years ago.

Hurry up & wait

 

Word is that the counting of Hudson absentee and affidavit ballots will now occur on Monday, the soonest that Bill Hallenbeck’s attorney Giff Whitbeck is available.

With just 27 votes separating Hallenbeck and his mayoral opponent, Nick Haddad, there are an estimated 220-225 absentee and affidavit ballots to be considered, though 10-20% of those could prove invalid. Ballots for the Hudson race only came out of their impoundment yesterday, with recanvassing of the Hudson results and logging of the poll book information and affidavit ballots taking place yesterday. (The Board of Elections has to first verify the election night results, and also review the books to make sure no one who submitted an absentee ballot also voted on the machine on November 8th.)

Ballots for other close races in Claverack, Greenport, Hillsdale and Taghkanic will likely hit the tables today (Tuesday) and presumably will be complete before Thanksgiving.

The already-slow pace of the counts has been further reduced by the existence of a super-tight judicial race between Republican Catherine “Kiki” Cholakis and Democrat Ray Elliott, with lawyers for each observing counts in every town in a seven-county area.

Update on absentees

According to data obtained via Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request from the Columbia County Board of Elections, as of Thursday afternoon:

• 183 voters had returned absentee ballots;
• 65 others had not (yet) returned their ballots;
• 1 voter cast an “affidavit” ballot on Election Day.

None of these have been opened yet. Of those voters who have returned their absentee ballot:

• 102 are Democrats;
• 32 are Republicans;
• 32 are “independents” not affiliated with any party.
• 12 are Independence Party members;
• 3 are Conservatives;
• 1 is a Working Families Party member; and
• 1 is a Green.

That said, party affiliation sometimes isn’t a very reliable predictor of how voters may lean in local elections. In addition:

• 20 of these ballots were picked up and delivered to voters by Linda Mussmann, who was circulating a sample ballot for Hallenbeck on Election Day; and
• 4 ballots were “carried” by former Democratic alderman Lyle Shook, also believed to be a Hallenbeck supporter.

Considering that ballots had to be postmarked by Monday, and the U.S. mails generally arrive within 1-3 days even across the continental U.S., it doesn’t seem likely that very many more (if any) ballots will be received. The BOE does, however, have to wait 10 days, especially to allow any overseas military ballots to come in.

Since the Board was closed today for Veterans Day, no Friday update was available. This site has also been unable (due to a fight instigated by Republicans over where to store the ballots) to verify the Board’s hand-written machine tallies which indicate a slim 27-vote lead for Bill Hallenbeck over Nick Haddad for Mayor. Presumably on Monday, the actual printouts from the electronic vote scanners will be available for inspection. And the Columbia County Board, mainly thanks to Virginia Martin, has a practice of also hand-counting all machine-counted votes, a laborious process but one essential to protecting the integrity of all of our votes.

The Board is expected to begin processing absentee ballots on Friday the 18th, but it is not certain whether they’ll handle towns alphabetically, or do the non-controversial ones first, or address the candidates who are still in suspense first (as in Hudson and Taghkanic). If they don’t get to those towns on the 18th, the wait could extend into the following week.

Plus there is a potential for court challenges, conceivably meaning that some places might not know the identity of their new Mayor or Town Board members until WinterWalk, or later.

The Art of the Impossible (or, Legislation by Lawyer)

This Fall, voters will flock once again to the polls to elect their County Supervisors, Legislators, Aldermen, Town and Village Board members, and other local officials. In schools, town halls, and firehouses, we’ll humbly pull the levers (or, more often lately, feed ballots into an electronic machine). We’ll leave the polling place feeling satisfied that for all its faults, our democratic system still functions as originally intended.

Then, around the first of the year, our freshly-elected officials will take the oath of office. The slogans and promises of their campaigns will still be ringing in our ears... But then the hard work of legislating begins.

After each election cycle, our bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed new legislators face a dizzying array of budgetary constraints, committee assignments, grant applications, lawsuits, FOIL requests, statuatory requirements, upset citizens, motions, seconds, resolutions, and amendments. Just mastering a public body’s Rules of Order can seem like a herculean task.

Into this morass of regs and reqs strolls the Town (or City) attorney. Feeling besieged and even helpless, elected officials turn to their lawyer, for guidance and instruction. On the face of it, that’s necessary and proper. But over time, that need can become a dependence.

If you attend a local government meeting, one usually finds the lawyer—not the elected officials—doing much of the talking. In many towns, even trivial decisions seem to require a legal consultation, including the dreaded retreat into a closed-door “executive session” to discuss legal options out of the public eye.

The effect is to create a system of legislation by lawyer. Roll-call votes are still cast by elected officials. But for anything even remotely controversial, the “call” effectively gets made by their attorney.

Unlike politicians, who typically are built for combat, lawyers are built for compromise. Lawyers (with exceptions) tend to be conservative by nature, in the more traditional meaning of conservative. Deflecting controversy, assuaging governmental clients’ fear of lawsuits, not rocking the boat, protecting political patrons, and keeping their jobs are paramount. This tendency results in the blunting of candidates’ optimistic campaign promises of change, progress and reform. “It’s time for a change” soon becomes "You might get sued if you change that.” Debates center around how to play things legally safe, rather than finding bold, creative solutions.

Moreover, while politicians come and go, attorneys (or at least their firms) tend to stick around. The faces on your local Board or Council may change, but the cast of lawyers rarely does. As insurance against major electoral changes, many firms that rely on the sinecure of municipal work deliberately keep both Democratic and Republican lawyers on their rolls. When the donkeys throw the elephants out, or vice versa, the firm still retains the town’s business. They just swap out the partner from the losing party, and bring in another from the winning side.

Worse, conflicts of interest arise when the same handful of attorneys wear multiple governmental hats. In each county of the Hudson Valley, usually just two or three firms represent most of its constituent towns.

Consider a couple of local examples:

In a jarring 2009 voting rights fight in Columbia County one attorney initially represented both the Town of Taghkanic and the County Board of Elections, whose positions were at odds. At first the lawyer in question argued that his dual role was proper. It took a major public outcry and an ethics complaint to finally force him to pick, grudgingly, one client or the other.

More recently in the City of Hudson, most major decisions about the controversial future of the City’s waterfront have been made privately by the City Attorney and an outside planning firm. A hefty chunk of their work was underwritten by an industrial company with a big stake in the outcome. Meanwhile, consultation with the Hudson Aldermen has been token at best, with months or even years passing without the ostensible "lead agency" being updated on its own plan’s progress. By the time of each sporadic update, so much water (and technical mumbo-jumbo) has gone under the bridge that elected officials have little choice but to take their lawyer’s word for it that her decisions are correct.

Clearly, there are times when legal advice is useful, and even indispensable. But when a municipal lawyer becomes the de facto chief policy-maker, democracy is undermined. So what’s to be done about it?

• First, we need a change of mindset among elected officials, in which legal counsel is sought only when truly necessary, not as a matter of course;

* Second, we need a corresponding change of mindset among attorneys, that they exist to help officials actively achieve their campaign goals, rather than covering their rumps;

* And third, we need term limits for municipal lawyers and firms, so that counsellors don’t become political institutions unto themselves.

Thomas Jefferson once remarked that if we only take action when no lawyer objects, we’ll never take action at all. When left up to lawyers, politics becomes not the art of the possible, but of the impossible.

Origins of “Taghkanic”

There are many theories about what the word Taghkanic means, its origins, and its spellings... A widespread belief in the Town is that it means “land of flowing waters” in Mahican. A 1906 State publication has a different interpretation:

Taghkanick, the name of a town in Columbia County and primarily of a tract of land included in the Livingston Patent and  located “behind Potkoke,” is written Tachkanick in the Indian deed  of 1685; Tachhanick in the Indian deed of 1687-8; “Land called  Tachkanick which the owners reserved to plant upon when they  sold him Tachhanick, with the land called Quissichkook ;" Tach-kanick, “having the kill on one side and the hill on the other”; Tahkanick (surveyor’ s notation 1715) is positively located by the surveyor on the east side of the kill called by the Indians Saukhenak, and by the purchasers [of] Roelof Jansen’s Kill.

Of the meaning of the name Dr. E. B. O’Callaghan wrote : “Tachanuk, ‘Wood  place,’  Literally, ‘the woods,’  from Takone, ‘forest,’ and iik,  ‘place’” which Dr. Trumbull regarded as “the least objectionable” of any of the interpretations that had fallen under his notice, and  to which he added: “Literally, ‘wild lands,’ ‘forest.’”

It would seem to be more probable that Tachk, Taghk, Tachh, Tahk, etc., represents Tak (Taghk), with formative an, Taghkan, meaning  “wood ;” and ek, animate plural added, “Woods,” “trees,” “forest.” Dr. O’ Callaghan’ s ilk (00k), “Land or place,” is not in any of the orthographies.

The deed-sentence, “When they sold him Tachanick,” reads literally, from the name, “When they sold him  the woods.” The name was extended to the reserved field, to the  stream and to the mountain.* The latter is familar to geologists in what is known as the Taconic rocks. Translations of the name from Del. Tachanne, “Cold stream,” and Tankkanne, “Little river,” are without merit, although Tankhanne would describe the branch of Roelof Jansen’ s Kill on which the plantation was located. 

* The purchasers claimed but the Indians denied having sold the mountain. It was heavily wooded no doubt. Livingston claimed it from having  bought “the woods.” The Moravian missionaries wrote, in 1744, Wtakantschan, which Dr. Trumbull converted to Ket-takone-wadchu, “Great woody mountain.”

(Not sure that clarifies anything, but it’s something for the record.)

 

In Taghkanic, the sick plot thickens

The two incidents of racist graffiti reported here earlier today are not, apparently, the full extent of the spraypainting spree which seems to have begun sometime late Friday night or early Saturday morning in Taghkanic.

Another Taghkanic resident discovered Sunday night that his barn had been vandalized as well, with the crypic message “Yeh... hello.” Equally bizarrely, the words “My house” with an arrow were painted on the road nearby.

The State Police are investigating; the County Sheriffs office apparently did not have an open case on this as of Sunday night. It is unclear who attempted to black out some of the graffiti on the road. (Was it a neighbor who was rightly offended, or a road crew aiming to spare others the offense, or the perpetrators themselves trying to cover their misdeeds after the fact?)

Racist road graffito in Taghkanic

Spraypainted in purple and yellow sometime during the holiday weekend, a* racist graffito materialized on the pavement along a rural stretch of Old Route 82 in Taghkanic, close to the Livingston line.

At least one neighbor reported it to the police early on Saturday. Reports are that it remained untouched all day, but by Sunday brunchtime someone had attempted to partially erase it. (Click here if you really must see a photo of the defaced pavement before it was somewhat covered over; due warning, this includes graphic language.)

Unfortunately, whoever tried to remedy the vandals' crude message appears both to have run out of steam, and also followed the lines of the letters too closely, so that the offensive words remain legible. Lightly resurfacing the whole defaced area would be a more thorough fix.

The two-color, large-scale design would suggest that this took the offender(s)—pimply teenagers, one would suspect, from the childishness of both the act and the handwriting—a fair amount of time to create... Maybe someone saw them in the act. A canvass of area stores to see who was buying purple and yellow spray paint also seems in order.

* UPDATE: Two other neighbors now report a second incident of similar vandalism on County Route 10 near Taghkanic-Churchtown Road, verified in person. These call for a certain type of people to “go to hell,” along with “pigs too.” The second grouping has been mostly covered up, but is still discernible.

UPDATE #2: A barn in the same area was also vandalized; some details can be read here.

Anti-Semitism, Midwestern-style

Taghkanic assessor Art Griffith, who unapologetically uttered the phrase “we jewed them down” at a Town Board meeting this winter, now has company... in Sauk County, Wisconsin.

According to reports in The Baraboo News and elsewhere, LaValle Supervisor Virgil Hartje described how in negotiations with a County vendor, they had “jewed down” the price. Hartje, the manager of a lumber yard and construction firm, initially refused to retract his remark, characterizing it as “more a business word” than a slur.

Griffith similarly shrugged off the incident, calling his term “common” and one that’s “used all the time.” Like Griffith, Hartje’s words inspired public and media outrage, along with a stern letter from his region’s chapter of the Anti-Defamation League.

But unlike Griffith, Hartje did finally apologize—albeit two months after the fact. And the Sauk County Board began to consider adopting a stronger code of conduct for its members.

MH Cable: Not tapping that grant after all

It’s hard to imagine any company turning up its nose at nearly $3,500,000 in free money... especially in this economy, and if that money would both expand the company’s customer base and also perform a vital community service.

But apparently, Mid-Hudson Cablevision is one such company.

As a result, potential rural customers in hard-to-reach “last mile” locations—including Yours Truly—are being told they’ll have to pony up thousands of dollars each just to get connected. Customers in densely-settled cities like Hudson or within 200 feet of existing lines typically pay no such fee.

During last year’s hotly-contested Congressional race between Scott Murphy and Chris Gibson, Murphy announced the award of a $3.5 million “rural broadband” grant to MH Cable. According to the then-U.S. rep’s August 2010 press release, the funds would come from the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utility Services programs.

Now, this funding was not forced upon Mid-Hudson. The company applied for, was awarded, and at the time celebrated the grant. MHC President James (Jim) Reynolds crowed last year that

We are very pleased to receive the news that we are being awarded this grant. These tax payer dollars will help us to continue the work we have been engaged in for 30 plus years. This government support will help make it possible to extend service to rural marketplaces that would otherwise be very difficult reach. We will be moving as quickly as possible to move forward with the outlined in our proposal and certainly appreciate all of the support and assistance that we received from Congressman Scott Murphy.

Murphy in turn gushed that the towns of Ashland, Cairo, Catskill, Coxsackie, Jewett, Lexington, New Baltimore and Windham in Greene County, plus Austerlitz, Copake, Claverack, Ghent, Chatham, Hillsdale and Taghkanic in Columbia County would benefit from this Federal program, stating that

Expanding rural broadband in our Upstate communities is key to building businesses and creating jobs. This is one of the most critical issues for our rural communities. This project will benefit everyone from farmers and small businesses looking to sell their products online, to volunteer firefighters needing high-speed Internet to keep the public safe. Broadband investments like this are a critical component of my Renew Upstate New York plan, and will help ensure the 20th District becomes a leader in the 21st century economy.

Yet according to Mid-Hudson engineer David Fingar, the company has since decided not to tap into these funds—at least for the moment.

Asked why (during a cordial visit to my property recently, after I'd placed multiple calls over the past three months to MHC about availability in my area), Fingar stated that there were “too many conditions attached” to the funding, but did not rule out accessing the funds later.

Until then, potential customers are being asked to come up with rather large lump sums—in my case $1,870 plus tax—for the privilege of then giving Mid-Hudson about $1,000-$2,000 each year in subscription fees, depending on what services one orders. (Fingar—a member of the local insurance clan, which includes County Republican chair Greg Fingar—did offer that if I ordered a significant enough package, they might be able to work out an installment plan on the hookup.) Others in my neighborhood have been quoted figures ranging from $2,000 to $2,600 for getting hooked up. Meanwhile, with an estimated 20,000 subscribers, MHC’s annual revenues are variously reported as between $20 and $50 million.

At the time that the Town of Taghkanic negotiated its franchise agreement with the company in 2007, MHC provided service to only 5.5 of Taghkanic’s approximately 49 miles of roads. Though most residents can opt for Dish network TV service, internet access is glaringly lacking, as many homes are eligible for neither cable modems nor DSL. Making do with either wifi hotspots, satellite internet from the likes of Hughes or Wild Blue, or even 1990s-grade dialup from AOL, many of the innovations of today’s dynamic, video-driven web are not feasible. Streaming movies from Netflix? Forget about it.

But this past fall and winter, Taghkanic residents’ anticipation mounted as MHC trucks were seen stringing heavy black wires in various parts of the Town. Here on County Route 27, activity was spotted to the immediate east and west of my property. But due to a fluke in how telephone poles are sited, a roughly quarter-mile chunk of 27 has no poles on the road, with phone and electricity lines routed through woods. This places homes in “line extension areas,” some of them a good deal more than the typical maximum of 200 feet from existing wires, and thus in the position of having to pay a large “contribution in aid of construction” (or CAC) to get hooked up. These are precisely the type of conditions meant to be addresses by Federal programs like the one to which MHC applied for funding it now has spurned.

The problem is compounded by many rural governments being woefully uninformed about their ability to negotiate better agreements from cable companies, in effect turning over rights worth hundreds of thousands or even millions without negotiating for more community services (such as public access channels, production facilities) or coverage. According to Metroland, 

State law requires cable service providers to set aside public-access channels for home-grown programming [and] also give municipalities the opportunity to enter into contracts known as franchise agreements with these companies, whereby the cable-service providers must give up to 5 percent of their revenues to local governments.

The Town of Taghkanic demanded neither a franchise fee from MHC in 2007, nor secured any free goodies—besides one standard installation each for the town's handful of public buildings. The City of Hudson similarly made few if any requests from Mid-Hudson when they last came before the Council for renewal, despite getting expert advice from Troy media advocate Steve Pierce. In much the same way that insurance policies only get cursory review, many small towns and cities fail to realize how much more they are entitled to, deferring instead to highly-profitable cable enterprises as if they were doing the municipality a giant favor just by showing up. The Town of Ashland, by contrast, would appear to have taken a somewhat more responsible approach, asking Reynolds to answer a host of common-sense questions prior to approving a franchise renewal.

Still the larger questions remains: Since nearly $3.5 million was sought, received and touted by MHC less than a year ago, why not use it to overcome the obstacles to (in Reynolds’ own words) “extend[ing] service to rural marketplaces that would otherwise be very difficult reach”?

What about the stated reason—an excess of onerous grant “conditions”? Recipients do have to fulfill normal, routine responsibilities like keeping payroll documentation and other records; but typically grants cover the costs of such administration. A longer list of conditions can be found here.

One theory is that the decision is somehow ideological—that Mid-Hudson’s generally conservative and politically-connected leadership didn’t want to appear, in the age of Tea Party fanaticism, to be suckling at a government teat... But if that were the case, why did they apply in the first place—and why did they accept and use a $5.3 million loan (arranged with help from Murphy’s predecessor, John Sweeney) for expanding rural broadband access in much the same way? Back in 2009—while acknowledging the lesser-known costs of maintaining rural broadband networks—Reynolds predicted that his company would indeed seek more Federal funding opportunities in the future:

Based on [the Sweeney-backed loan] success, Reynolds said Mid-Hudson is likely to apply for stimulus  funding ... While the earlier buildout was to areas with 20 to 25 homes per mile,  the remaining unserved areas in his footprint are in locales with 10 to  15 homes per mile, butting up against the threshold for making the endeavor cost-effective. 

Indeed, MHC cites this past Federal partnership in most of its applications to area towns and the State's Public Service Commission. Some thus speculate that the reversal may be in some way entangled with the Murphy-Gibson rivalry, i.e. that maybe a grant or loan from the new Republican Congressman would be treated differently.

Another theory—and the one I find more plausible—is that Mid-Hudson is simply testing the waters to see how many people they can get to shell out cash up front before dipping into the Federal pool to cover the rest. Once they've maxed out the folks who are willing to foot the bill themselves, they can in theory then start using the grant funds to hook up the rest, and thus get the most new customers possible at the lowest possible risk to the company. When I asked Fingar—who was quite amiable and forthcoming during our visit—whether those who agreed to pay now would get a refund if they used the grants later, he appeared bemused by the question.

According to a telecom legal expert I spoke with, they can probably get away with such temporizing, as the USDA rarely “claws back” such funding even when it doesn't get used as intended. The Federal government oversees about $5 billion in similar programs, and evidently making sure they get spent wisely is low on the list of priorities... Meanwhile, at least one publication, CC Scoop, has expressed skepticism about the grant programs, and The Columbia Paper is expected to publish an article on the topic as well shortly.

So for now, I've reluctantly extended my satellite internet deal, paying for commercial-grade (but still pokey) service at a steep cost. I’d vastly prefer to do business with a locally-owned company, and to not have to deal with the bandwidth limitations and service headaches common to satellite. But at about two grand to get started, it’s hard to justify at this point. If Mid-Hudson Cablevision waits too long, though, to access those funds and provide this community service, they may get left behind by the ever-increasing capabilities of cellular and other over-the-air networks.

NOTE: Calls to the USDA RUS department which handles the Mid-Hudson grant were not returned in time for publication.

Griffith makes news—29 days later

A month after it occurred (and after many other publications covered the story), The Register-Star finally has reported on an anti-Semitic slur uttered at a public meeting by Taghkanic assessor Art Griffith. Griffith refused to apologize for his use of the term, and even defended it. Meanwhile, word locally is that the Anti-Defamation League has sent a stern letter about the situation to Town Supervisor Betty Young.

Sin of commission compounded by omission

An anti-Semitic slur allegedly uttered by Taghkanic tax assessor Art Griffith during the town’s February Town Board meeting has caught the attention of some local, Albany and statewide media—but hardly all.

So far, Deborah Gilbert at The Columbia Paper, Celeste Katz at The New York Daily News, and the Capitol Confidential column of The Albany Times-Union have each reported on the topic.

According to accounts, not only did Griffith use the words “Jewed down” to describe a financial negotiation, but he was unapologetic despite a roomful of upset observers

Gilbert’s article describes Supervisor Betty Young trying to tamp down the situation by saying that Griffith had made a “mistake.” Yet Griffith evidently wasn’t interested in grabbing this lifeline, countering instead that “Jewed down” is a “common phrase” which is “used all the time.” (In what social circles, exactly?)

The comment also was said to have occurred during a testy back-and-forth with a Town Board member of Jewish descent, making some observers wonder all the more whether the provocation was deliberate, rather than a tasteless slip-up.

Several attendees have since noted that a writer for The Register-Star was present at the meeting, including the portion when the slur was said. The paper filed a February 17th report on the Taghkanic highway department’s progress. However, as of this date no Reg-Star article has mentioned the uproar caused by Griffith’s language.

That paper has reported in the past on at least one similar incident, in which a Hudson City School curriculum director made a dismissive statement about "minorities."

---

NOTE: Still others remembered in this context that the highly-contentious 2008 election in Taghkanic involved some allegations of anti-Semitism as well. County and town Republicans hired lawyers and at least one private investigator to challenge (ultimately without success) the voter registrations of many so-called “dual home owners.” Some noted at the time that a very high perentage of the names targeted appeared to be Jewish or Jewish-sounding. However, that concern seemed a great deal more speculative than the above matter, in which Mr. Griffith has affirmed his use of a phrase widely regarded as a slur.

On any given snowday

Several more inches fell on Taghkanic (NY).