SamPratt.com

Cross’s counsel

Televised image of Cross and attorney Tipograph in court today (CBS6)

Buried amid the news breaking this afternoon that Quintin Cross has surrendered to authorities—six weeks to the day since his disappearance—is an interesting tidbit: Cross is being represented by New York City defense attorney Susan Tipograph.

Tipograph’s legal resumé includes clients deemed by some to be political prisoners, for example a member of the Weather Underground. Operating in some of the same territory as the celebrated William Kunstler, her causes are more likely to be covered by publications such as The Village Voice and The Nation than in the pages of The Register-Star.

Tipograph was also the law partner and former officemate of the radical attorney Lynne Stewart, who was disbarred and sentenced to over two years in prison for her controversial representation of Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman. Stewart’s initial prison term for conspiracy and assisting terrorists was extended to 10 years in 2005, after it was further alleged that she had perjured herself at trial. (Stewarts’ supporters believe that she was a victim of post-9/11 hysteria, while others agree with the courts that she stepped over a bright line between merely representing an unpopular client and actual collaboration in crimes.)

So how would Cross wind up represented by Tipograph, who isn’t exactly known for handling small-time burglary cases?* In the middle of the last decade, Tipograph was a presence locally at Time and Space Ltd. on Columbia Street, in connection with various panels and documentary films. I recall meeting her there several times, and this blogger writes that she learned about TSL from Tipograph:

I’d heard tell, via the fabulous lefty lawyer Susan Tipograph, of an interesting performance/film/art/activist center in Hudson, NY...

This leads to the conjecture that Cross conceivably may have connected with Tipograph through someone involved with TSL. Among other connections there, Cross was photographed blowing kazoos on the steps of City Hall with TSL directors Linda Mussmann and Claudia Bruce less than two weeks before it was burglarized. Was Cross in touch with TSL or its directors during the six weeks he was missing? Or, as his recent Facebook postings** about social justice might suggest, did he just happen to find Tipograph on his own?

 

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* ... Though she did recently represent a woman charged with scamming an elderly man with dementia out of his money.

** Cross’s Facebook page has been very active again since last Friday, including posts about “snitches and bitches” and what appears to have been a preview of his surrender: “touch down monday what u want swine lol,” along with other slang references to law enforcement such as “ham and bacon.”

Vrusho's Valley

There are always a few people in your life whose fates, even though you rarely if ever see them, seem to be intertwined with your own.

One such person for me is Spike Vrusho, with whom I used to exchange zine subscriptions in the early ’90s. (His excellent publication, Murtaugh, was Pittsburgh Pirate-themed, and included early cartoons by Tony Millionaire before he blew up with Drinky Crow.) Vrusho now lives in Rhinebeck, where, among other things, he drives a cab—and thus gets exposed to many of the foibles of tourists disembarking from the Rhinecliff Amtrak station.

Vrusho has now published in the pages of The New York Post (also a former employer of mine) a handy etiquette guide for Valley visitors who want to fit in, and not annoy us full-timers quite so much. Vrusho’s recommendations include leaving your Zabar's tote bag and Metrocard behind; not sucking your teeth impatiently in line; and not sporting ironic trucker caps. To these I’d add:

* Abjure all-white attire. Just because James Ivory has a Manor House here doesn't mean you’re going to be discovered for one of his next films during your stay... so no need to dress in bleached linen from head-to-toe. Switching from all black to all white doesn't fool anyone.

* Also no quilted parkas, Barbour, or other faux fox hunt wear. If you must go native, stop by Terni's in Millerton for a Woolrich shirt and some bait.

* Refrain from ordering tricky cocktails. There are no mustachioed mixologists here sporting bowlers and looking like they stepped from the pages of The Beagle Brothers catalog circa 1983 (though some Bard students do aspire to the look). This may be the moment to finally break your lifelong vow never to drink Coors, or else sample a locally-brewed beer like Crossroads or Evans.

* Be nice to your server. My old friend Paul Lukas (who introduced me to Vrusho) used to say in his own zine, Beerframe, that “a service economy is a servile economy.” This is true at least to the extent that most of the negative stereotypes of New Yawkers are the product of service industry clashes. Having refilled water glasses and coffee cups for Manhattanites in the Berkshires way back when, let me be the first to say: Your mug doesn't have to be so full that you can float a needle on the surface tension.

* Not everything here is “cute,” so the word may rub people all the more the wrong way. In fact, a lot of things Upstate (or Up the Valley, or whatever) are decidedly un-cute, or the opposite of cute—for example, the politics. Keep that word to yourself while tripping on those uneven sidewalks, and gazing longingly at the cornices of every building.

Gas(tro) station

Giovanni DiMola reports that 3FortySeven, the stylish shop located in a former gas station in Hudson's 300 block, received approval tonight from the local Planning Board for an outdoor food court.

This promises to be the antithesis of a mall food court, with fresh, eclectic international cuisine dispensed from customized vans or carts by local vendors, along with a beer garden... Some Thai and/or other East Asian flavors are anticipated along with Truck Pizza, for starters.

Membership has its privileges

This City-owned Jeep was blocking a hydrant in the 500 block of Warren Street in Hudson this morning. The blinkers were on, but no driver was in evidence. There was an empty parking space immediately behind it, and three more just upstreet on the same side. (For a previous official parking folly, click here.)

Cropmarks

Mid-Hudson News is spreading the word that $1 million in Federal funding is "being made available to enhance the competitiveness of New York specialty crops, including fruits, vegetables, maple, honey and horticulture crops.”

Grants will range from $30,000-$100,000 each to government units, “not-for-profits, and educational institutions” for “research and grower education, food safety and marketing focused projects” intended to boost the State’s estimated $1 billion specialty crop industry... According to the State, New York ranks in terms of gross revenues, 2nd for apples ($224 million), 2nd for maple syrup ($17.8M), 3rd for wine and grape juice ($58.4M), 3rd for cabbage ($54.5M) and 4th for tart cherries and pears ($7.3M).

Modwood: Mori (Vol. 3)

Manhattan-based architect Toshiko Mori has built at least four modern houses in Columbia County, including one in Austerlitz, one in Ghent, my neighbor’s house in Taghkanic, and another in an undisclosed location for Mary and Sean Kelly. (Mori also designed Kelly’s new gallery in the so-called Hudson Yards neighborhood.)

Landlord/tenant relations

An email received this afternoon, regarding the ongoing community scrutiny of Eric Galloway’s Lantern Group and new Galvan Initiatives Foundation:

From: Victor Mendolia
Subject: My Galloway series
Date: April 22, 2012 2:01:10 PM EDT
To: Sam Pratt

I will be posting a series on my experience as a tenant in Eric Galloway's building in NYC. […] The first post is here: http://goo.gl/vGqmd

UPDATE: Part 2 of Mendolia’s series is now live on his site.

Not entirely professional

Historical memory—even relatively recent memory—is not The Register-Star’s strong suit.

For example, a profile of Bill Hallenbeck this morning leads boosterishly with the claim that the new Hudson Mayor “has spent his entire professional career in public service, from his stint in law enforcement with the Hudson Police Department and Columbia County Sheriff’s Office to his two years as Third Ward Supervisor.”

Well, not entirely.

As noted on this site in November, Hallenbeck had at least one private-sector job: Doing public relations legwork for St. Lawrence Cement.

At the time, that Swiss-owned company was spending a small fortune to promote its massive, coal-fired cement project in Greenport and Hudson. By the end, they’d wasted just under $60 million, according to their annual financial reports. After their defeat SLC was subsumed into Holcim, which still has legal and regulatory business with the City, creating a potential conflict of interest (or at least potential bias) in City Hall.

So how do we know for sure that the Mayor had a private-sector job with t he cement company?

A specimen of the charming public relations efforts funded by SLC, this one through their front group HVEEC.

First, because many still recall Hallenbeck going door-to-door on Warren Street on SLC’s behalf. (He later blasted the street’s merchants as out-of-step with the community, a favorite divide-and-conquer tactic of the company’s hamhanded p.r. flacks, though one which eventually backfired. Many also still recall that the medical staff of Columbia Memorial Hospital concluded that the project would be likely to increase asthma among local children, cancer in adults, and heart attacks among the elderly, making the company’s us vs. them strategy all the more offensive.)

Second, because Hallenbeck publicly thanked SLC for hiring him in a 2001 letter published as a “My View” in... The Register-Star. Hallenbeck’s letter did not explain why he was “out of work for a while” and started working suddenly for a private company rather than in “law enforcement.” But that question could readily be answered by any reporter or editor willing to spend some time in his or her own paper’s archives.

Now, at the appalling pay rates of local papers, and the high turnover among its cub reporters, it would be unfair to blame beat writers for this lack of media memory. Or maybe the writer deemed stumping for SLC the unprofessional part of the Mayor’s career...

But the paper does have electronic archives going back a decade or more (which can be searched much more thoroughly at Columbia-Greene Comunity College Library than with The Register’s clunky web archives). And there are a few people associated with the paper who have been around long enough to know when a claim ought to be verified before rushed into print. Otherwise, journalism is reduced to stenography.

Anyway, it would be interesting to know the source of this “entire” claim, which neatly erases a key item n the Mayor’s resumé.

Down on the corner

Notice anything different about this street corner?

Walking the length of Warren Street, from Front to Worth, every corner curb is festooned with one or more of the following:

• Street signs;
• Stop signs;
• Stop lights;
• Light poles;
• Telephone poles;
• Electrical boxes;
• Garbage cans;
• Dog warnings;
• Hydrants;
• Meters; and
  
• Trees.

Some, like the southwest corner of 5th and Warren, feature a half-dozen or more obstructions.

But out of some 48 corners on Warren Street, one solitary curb is bare: the southeast corner at Park Place. Why?

The reason is simple: The City gave up trying to put anything there, because they always get demolished by big trucks whose drivers have strayed off the designated truck route. Every sign, tree, can, or other vertical object placed at that corner gets knocked down, sooner or later. Usually sooner.

It was this exact corner which inspired various politicos in 1999-2000 to form an ad hoc Truck Route Task Force. Sometime Alderman Dean Melino had a shop called Ecclectables just around this corner, and he was tired of tractor trailers illegally coming down Warren Street from Worth Avenue or Prospect, then trying to negotiate this tight turn. Either they’d take down a sign or tree, or cross into the oncoming lane, or even wind up in the parking areas along the Park, or all three.

Melino was locked in a second election campaign with then-Hudson resident (now Greenport Supervisor) John Porreca, and both worked to out-do each other in calling for (A) more police enforcement of existing truck rules, (B) better signage designating the truck routes, and (C) ideally, moving the truck route of Hudson entirely. The Task Force was formed by then-Assemblyman Patrick Manning with other Republicans and various citizens, including myself, to make meaningful progress on the issue, rather than merely complaining about it.

For several weeks, I lunched daily in a booth in the front the Diner, counting how many trucks were illegally using upper Warren and Park Place. Though I saw dozens of trucks per session, not once did I see one stopped by the Hudson police for being off the route. Manning and I also staked out this corner for an afternoon, hailing truckers who tried to make the turn to interview them: Why are you here? Where are you headed? How do you feel about having to drive through Hudson, with its stop signs, cyclist, kids playing in the street, tight turns, etc. (Without exception, the truckers said they’d rather take a longer but speedier route than have to negotiate Hudson’s stop-and-go urban traffic and pedestrian hazards.)

But after productive meetings with the DOT, with whom we mapped out alternative routes, and who clearly stated that the route could be removed from Hudson, County leaders seized control of the effort, removed all the

All this history is relevant again now because Linda Mussmann and various politicians apparently held a non-public meeting recently about the truck route issue. And what did they reportedly conclude? That this very same problematic corner at Warren and Park Place should become the new the ground zero of Hudson’s truck route.

Yep, the same corner that big trucks can’t get around without either knocking something over, or veering into the opposite lanes, or both.

Interestingly enough, Mussmann refused to participate in the late 90s Task Force, because of her aversion to Manning and other members. Meanwhile, now that he’s Greenport Supervisor, my friend John Porreca evidently is opposed to the route including more Greenport miles, even though a high percentage of the trucks are destined for that town’s big box shopping centers. To add to the fun, 5th Ward Supervisor Rick Scalera now is posturing that something must be done to move the route, though he did not lift a finger to do so in all his years as Mayor.

(Does some politician have a feud with a resident or business in the 700 or 800 block, causing them to be targeted repeatedly? This year has also featured a push to put a homeless shelter in the middle of these blocks, which have seen a great deal of positive business and real estate movement lately. Like the siting of halfway housing in the middle of North 5th Street just as it was showing signs of life in the late 90s—a move which effectively blocked the spread of business off Warren Street—it often seems like City Hall wants to slow down progress driven by independent people and businesses.)

Hudson sometimes seems to exist solely to illustrate two sayings that are so well-known by now that they have achieved cliché status. Namely: Santayana’s nostrum that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” plus Einstein’s definition of insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” To move the truck route to arguably the most problematic corner in town would represent both a failure to learn from the past, and an insane exercise in futility.

More background on this long-running issue is to come, including some research on the genesis of this truck route several decades ago.

Failing upward (or, Learning from L&B)

Back in the mid-1990s, Hudson citizens blew the whistle on the City of Hudson’s Federal grant programs. A lesson from that incident speaks to certain claims about Eric Galloway’s Lantern Group by the director of his new Galvan Initiatives Foundation.

David Kermani (who then operated a high-end Warren Street rug shop) and other compatriots alleged that the City had made an improper side deal with L&B Contract Industries, later known as LB Furniture. Prompted by citizen complaints, HUD’s inspector general indeed found major “irregularities” in the City’s handling of a $556,000 grant to L&B, plus a host of problems within Hudson’s development agencies. [PDF of the report] Those irregularities included not just the company’s failure to make interest payments, but also the connivance of Hudson Development Corporation (HDC) staff in allowing L&B to make just one repayment of $4,998.25. Nice deal, if you can get it: $551,000 in free government money.

In addition, HUD discoverd that HDC had “subordinated” the grant lien to obtain a further $3,000,000 bank loan. All the while, the report said, local leadership never alerted HUD that it was making any of these arrangements. HUD’s Inspector General was not pleased, and reprimanded both L&B and the City. Moreover, HUD identified apparent “conflicts of interest” and “procurement weaknesses” at HDC and the Hudson Community Development and Planning Agency (HCDPA). For example, the wife of a Board member was getting paid up to $170 per hour “without competition.” Meanwhile, the agency’s “Rehabilitation Specialist” awarded over $27,000 in work “to a company owned by his brother,” again without giving anyone else a chance to compete for the contract.

The Inspector General’s scathing report was issued to 13 Federal, State and local officials.

And then: HUD continued to award the City of Hudson more development grants from these same pool of funds. And City agencies continued to help the perpetually-failing L&B. Despite years of public largesse, the company finally closed up shop a few years ago, throwing some 150 people out of work.

Through it all, the City was given more grant money to play with; and still it continued to botch projects... For example, issuing $1.8 million in bonds to lure a mysterious Californian corporation called Wittcomm, which disappeared and according to inside sources never repaid its obligations. That’s just to name one among many of the chronic failures of these agencies to manage public funding to achieve real economic development, or alleviate poverty.

In short: HUD knew and acknowledged that the City of Hudson had a lousy track record of managing grants—and yet kept coughing up more grants, often in the face of public concern and opposition.

So, how does all of this relate to the latest controversy instigated by Eric Galloway’s local activities? In response to the detailed exposure of numerous complaints and violations on record for Galloway’s Lantern Group in New York City, Galvan director Tom Swope offered the following dodge:

“That the Lantern Group continues to get funding for their projects should be a testament to the high quality of their management.”

Based on the above examples of HUD and the City, can anyone say that continued funding is a testament to anything except bureaucratic ineptitude? We’ve just seen how the City had made an illegal side deal with a grantee, and its development agencies were found to be rife with problems. And yet HUD continued to give the City grant money to play with, and failed in many cases to monitor its use, in spite of past debacles. Continued funding is no proof of even mediocre performance, let alone success.

Yet based on Swope’s fallacious logic, one would also have to conclude that:

• Sustained City support of (the now-bankrupt) L&B was a rousing success;


• The ever-increasing budgets of FEMA and the Army Corps reflect the heck of a job they did in dealing with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans;


• The Kardashian sisters’ continued popularity is reflective of their immense talents; and


• George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004 served as a clear testament that he was a terrific President.

In making such flimsy arguments, Swope is asking people to believe that bureaucrats are stewards of excellence, and never act to protect their own buddies (or rumps). Someone please furnish Galvan’s director with a copy of The Peter Principle, posthaste.

“Vermin and bedbugs”

A sharp-eyed downtown Hudson resident forwarded this link to a Chelsea Now article about a meeting of Community Board 4 in Manhattan, which includes the following report:

[District Manager Bob Benfatto] noted that a recent tour of the Lantern Group’s holdings near Hudson Yards revealed that their building on West 51st Street was in poor condition, with vermin and bedbug infestations, crumbling stairwells and sloping floors.

That article was published just a few months ago. Lantern would appear to have purchased the 144-unit building at about that time for $8.6 million. It’s not clear if they had a prior relationship managing it or not.

But as noted here previously, a CBS News investigation in 2008 of  buildings managed by Eric Galloway’s Lantern Group on the Upper West Side found similarly grim conditions:

“When you go inside and you see how they actually maintain these buildings you realize they're not there to necessarily help this vulnerable population, they're there to make a profit,” said Ime Nsa Imeh of Manhattan Legal Services. [... R]esidents also share their rooms with rats, mice, roaches, bedbugs and, as this building inspection shows, dangerously toxic black mold. [73-year-old resident Rolande Cutner] says it wasn’t always so—just since The Lantern Group took over.

Primary source

Not sure whom to believe regarding the record of the Lantern Group, the housing organization headed up by Hudson developer Eric Galloway? Here’s a firsthand report received from someone who has actually lived in Lantern-managed housing:

One of the very important things that wouldn’t be apparent to most people who are just looking at the violations is the number of complaints for work being done after hours or on weekends. This is Galloway’s MO. They do illegal conversions etc at night and on weekends. This was the case in the building I lived in [...] which was owned by Galloway.

People make complaints about the illegal work going on. They send out inspectors Mon-Fri 9-5. When they arrive, there is no work going on. Of course there isn't. Galloway's crew works at night and weekends when there are no inspectors on duty.

While I am not in position to stake out every Galloway-managed property in NYC around the clock, I am at least confident that this source has, in fact, lived in a Lantern-managed building.