BONUS: Gazette weighs in on Queensbury conflict of interest
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Bravo to the Schenectady Gazette for editorializing this morning that one of the Queensbury Town Board members should address its conflict of interest.
It is behind a paywall so you won’t be able to read it unless you are subscriber to the Gazette. While you may not have a great interest in Schenectady area news, Pulitzer Prize winning editorial writer Mark Mahoney is worth the subscription alone so you might want to try a subscription for the pennies it cost.
The editorial is copyrighted so I can’t reprint it all, but here is a little of the Gazette wrote this morning:
“In the town of Queensbury in southern Warren County, a Republican member of the town board, Tim McNulty, has been openly challenged by citizens over his ethics because he also serves as the powerful chairman of the Warren County Republican Committee, according to The Front Page, a Queensbury-based citizen newsletter.
“In February, the town ethics board ruled that McNulty did indeed have a conflict of interest, but the town board has not acted on the decision.
“And last week, five members of the public spoke to the issue at the town board meeting, asking board members to address the matter.
“Yet he refuses to give up either position, even in the face of questions about how his role as party chairman gives him the opportunity to exercise undue influence over the actions of his three independently elected Republican board members.”
And it concludes this way:
“While the party chairman certainly can exert influence even without being on the same town board as other Republicans, the proximity to his fellow board members in their service to a single town exponentially elevates his influence to the point where it detracts from the most effective governance of the town.
“It’s time for Mr. McNulty to act in the best interests of the citizens of Queensbury and do in public what he should have done in private — demonstrate some integrity and step down from one of his conflicting roles.”
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
Tim McNulty will in no way acknowledge the conflict of interest. He like so many other Republicans have taken pages from the Trump playbook. When confronted with reality, he and so many other of them put up smoke screens. That is exactly what Mr. McNulty did during the last board meeting. Instead of addressing the concerns of Queensbury residents, he played the victim siting the Construction. If this doesn’t sound familiar , you have been listening to the rhetoric spewed from Trump’s mouth.
...thank you Schenectady Gazette!! / And thank you Ken Tingley!!, for bringing this issue to light- and for your perseverance / thanks, also, to the quintet who stood up, at the last board meeting, and spoke out / [Lastly] Tim McNulty-- just step down, already: right now...