It's up to Queensbury voters to punish Magowan
Editors must hold letter-writers accountable for what they write
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Queensbury voters need to pay attention to this because the ball is in their court.
At-large Supervisor Brad Magowan - he represents Queensbury residents for all Warren County business - was censured by the Warren County Board of Supervisors last week for six violations of its Code of Ethics.
What Magowan did was to advocate and then vote to distribute $49,000 in federal money - Covid money from the federal government - to ADK Excursions, a private charter company owned by Warren County treasurer Christine Norton, although the vote came before Norton was treasurer.
After the spending was approved, Magowan, a contractor, proceeded to do work for ADK Excursions and benefit from the monies he voted to give the company.
When this conflict of interest was brought to the Board of Ethics attention it found six violations and passed on its recommendations to the Warren County Board of Supervisors.
The board then met in secret.
"Basically, he (Magowan) voted to give her money, and then he benefited from the fact that he voted to give her the money by accepting some of the money," Warren County Administrator John Taflan told The Post-Star.
Warren County Resolution No. 300 states that the supervisors "accepts and adopts that portion of the Advisory Decisions which states that Supervisor-at-Large Brad Magowan violated the following six provisions of the Code of Ethics: 15(a) - Interest in contracts; Section 15(b) interest in contracts; Section 7, annual disclosure; Section 6, Disclosure of interest in Legislation and other matters; Section 8, recusal and abstention; and section 11(a)(3) private employment in conflict with official duties."
To cut to the chase, Magowan essentially did everything wrong by voting on a measure where he had a clear conflict of interest, then compounded it by hiding it and never revealing it on his financial disclosure forms as required.
The Board of Supervisors met for an hour and a half at a special meeting Friday and reached a consensus to "censure" Magowan.
They told him to not do it again.
That was his punishment.
He will continue his duties as a supervisor.
But Taflan told The Post-Star if it did happened again the Board of Supervisors could "ask" for his resignation.
They could "ask."
Nicely, I imagine (sarcasm intended).
In 2024, Magowan was fourth and final selection by Queensbury voters to represent them in Warren County with 2,883 votes. He beat out Robin Stark by 130 votes.
Magowan has not only let voters down, he has showed a failure of moral character. Queensbury voters should never allowed him to serve again, if Magowan dares to run again.
In 2017, when Town Board members tried to pull some unethical shenanigans to oust fellow Republican Tony Metivier - the great email scandal - Queensbury voters responded by voting all the Republicans out of office.
Queensbury need to do that again.
Or maybe show up at the next Warren County Board of Supervisors meeting and one by one during the public comment period demand that Magowan resign.
That would show the power of the people.
That would be a thing of beauty.
Trolley project
The Chapman Museum and the Upstate Model Railroaders continue to work on the "Hometown Trolley Project." We hope to complete an 1890 to 1900 era diorama of downtown Glens Falls - complete with running trolley line - in time for our Christmas celebration at the Chapman.
Between the trolley project and the DeLong House decorating project, we are just a couple hundred dollars short of our goal to get this done in time for the holiday season.
If you can spare a little of that change in your coin jars and make a donation to the project to get us the final monies needed, do so today. Christmas is just around the corner.
Go to the Chapman Museum website and make a donation today. Make sure to stipulate that it is for the trolley project or the decorating committee.
NY swimming holes
If you grew up in a small town in the Adirondacks, it's probably true that you had a favorite - and somewhat secret - swimming hole during those hot summer months.
The New York Times went looking for those swimming holes in its Sunday story this week.
It wrote:
"New York has an untold number of them, tucked under bridges, beneath highways, along hidden forest paths and in rivers, gorges, waterfalls and chasms. The Adirondacks are dotted with them, throughout the otherwise mountainous and rural landscape. If a car is pulled off into the forest along an unmarked road, a swimming hole is bound to be just through the trees."
Mentioned in the story are Hulls Falls in Keene Valley, Dunkel Falls (Black Hole) in Johnsburg, Griffin Gorge in Wells and Flume Falls in Wilmington.
"Largely unofficial, these rocky, natural pools are microcosms of community and local culture, often shared only by word of mouth, and enjoyed by generations of families looking for ways to cool off during the increasingly hot and humid Northeast summer," and sometimes providing a bit of danger.
You want want to check out this story to see if your favorite swimming hole has been found out.
Great journalism
This New York Times story is the the type of story you think about when you think of investigative journalism.
In Sunday's newspaper, the Times reported that Acadia Healthcare, one of the largest chains of psychiatric hospitals, has found that is success has been built on the disturbing practice of luring patients into its facilities and holding them against their will.
This is like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest come back to life.
It will scare the heck out of you.
Letters to editor
After Labor Day was the time when letters to the editor poured into our offices at The Post-Star, especially during a presidential election year.
Our clerk at the time, Nancy Gautier, spent entire days verifying dozens of letters from readers. In recent years, it became more and more difficult to hold readers to the facts.
I noticed one odd letter this past week from a man in South Glens Falls who wondered why "Kamala" - he did not feel the need to include her last name - went to school for a time in Canada. He wondered why he had not heard this before and then wondered if there were other things not being mentioned. "Without a doubt!" he added for emphasis.
A simple check of Kamala Harris' Wikipedia page explained that Harris' parents were college professors who moved to different universities in the Midwest before her mother accepted a research position at McGill University School of Medicine in Montreal in 1976. Harris graduated from high school in Montreal and spent a year at Vanier College in Montreal before transferring to Howard University.
It took me 30 seconds to find this information. Why the writer felt the need to create a conspiracy out of this I do not know. And why the newspaper allowed him to get away with it was a failure in its responsibility.
Maybe I should write a letter.
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.
That would be AWESOME if you wrote a Letter To The Editor! I just wrote one last night for pretty much the same reason you just mentioned. A letter writer was thanking Stefanik for reversing the decision to close Washington County Correctional. HUH???? I had to burst her bubble by stating the fact that E'lies did NOT reverse anything. The only thing she DID do was use the rally as a political stunt to bash Democrats. You know..............the usual.
On another note, we , The North Country Light Brigade will be at Exit 19 tonight. 😊
I suspect Magowan won’t run for office again in a year, but I wouldn’t count on voters punishing him if he did. We keep voting for Trump. Stefanik is busy excoriating our Governor over a Chinese spy Hochul fired and turned in even as Stefanik herself protected Trump, who has many ties to Russian operatives, from impeachment.
Remember Lake Luzerne Supervisor Vic Grant? He was an insurance agent who sold the town insurance without a competitive bid. He said he was giving the town the best deal but when a competitive bid was forced his was not the best deal. He had another neat trick. He would gas up at the town pump then collect mileage from both the county and the town. That is called “double -dipping,” collecting pay for the same thing twice.
Each time the county supervisors meet the 11 town supervisor are collecting a paycheck from both their town and from the county. I call that double dipping, but it is often a conflict of interest in making decisions for the county that also profoundly affect the interests of their town.
I’m not sure how the supervisor system of government is effectively any different from what Brad Magowan did.
Some years ago supervisors investigated switching to a county legislature. Not surprisingly they did not vote to switch to a system of government that would take away one of their paychecks and other benefits. I would call those votes conflicts of interest.
Ethically town supervisors should be recusing themselves from nearly all votes at the county and that would mean they are collecting a paycheck for a job they cannot ethically perform.
It’s a conundrum.