Smear tactics threaten progress at Adirondack Park Agency

Big rigs should stay out of heart of downtown

Mar 02, 2025

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Adirondack Explorer magazine has been reporting in multiple stories over the past two and a half years that the leadership of the Adirondack Park Agency under Executive Director Barbara Rice is overbearing and insensitive toward employees. The employees’ complaints began after Rice proposed moving the agency’s headquarters from its location along Route 86 in Ray Brook four miles west to downtown Saranac Lake.

Also, and probably as a result of this tension, the state Inspector General’s office has undertaken an investigation of the APA. Almost nothing is known about the subject or scope of the investigation, although that hasn’t stopped Explorer reporter Gwendolyn Craig from writing about it several times.

The Explorer’s stories demonstrate a few things: how bitter toward local communities and suspicious of them some longtime employees of the APA still are; how difficult it can be to transform the culture of a workplace and set high standards, especially when employees have union protection; and how easy it is to smear the reputation of a public servant with anonymous complaints.

The most recent story appeared on the Explorer’s website on February 21 and described a letter from the state Public Employees Federation that complains of “bullying, hurtful comments and general abusive behavior” within the APA and states that Rice and management staff have created a “culture of fear.”

No specific acts of intimidation or abusive behavior are described in the letter, but general complaints, such as “belittlement” and “disregard for professional input,” are mentioned.

“Compounding these issues are executive management’s troubling trends in hiring and promotional practices, which raise serious ethical concerns,” the letter states.

No hint is given what these “troubling trends” or “serious ethical concerns” are. The letter doesn’t say, and neither does the Explorer.

The letter is unsigned but, according to Public Employees Federation spokesman Rob Merrill, it was endorsed by 20 employees out of 38 the union represents at the agency.

Merrill said no union members at the agency have filed a grievance. I asked if that was the usual pattern — to anonymously endorse a letter of generalized complaints that gets leaked to the press instead of filing a specific grievance that can be investigated.

“In this case, that is what members decided to do,” he said.

He admitted the complaints could be an expression of dissatisfaction from employees upset with changes made by a new, energetic leader that require more work.

“I don’t know if we’ve gone that deep,” he said, about the cause of the complaints. “Everybody’s definition of bullying is different.”

“We do start, as a union, by listening to the alleged victims. We try to honor that and do our best,” he said.

I called Craig, whom I know from her work at the Post-Star a few years ago, when she was a reporter and I was an editor there. She refused to talk.

I called the Explorer’s publisher, Tracy Ormsbee, who defended the stories as newsworthy and Craig as an excellent reporter.

I brought up a story from July 2023 about an online survey of APA staff, in which more than half of the respondents expressed negative feelings about a move to Saranac Lake.

That story begins with a long anonymous comment that was added to one of the online surveys: “This proposed move seems to be about what our Executive Director (Barbara Rice) can do for Saranac Lake and not about the good of the Agency. It truly feels like management wants to hear our opinions, as long as those opinions back up the proposed move. It feels like any concerns that have been brought up have been minimized and the employees have been marginalized.”

That truly sounds to me like bellyaching from someone who thinks they know better than their boss.

Specific objections to the move mentioned in the Explorer stories are that, because the new headquarters would comprise two buildings next to each other, employees would occasionally have to walk from one building to the other through a cold parking lot; historical antagonism among local residents toward the APA could mean employees would get harassed on the streets of the village; and Rice’s interest in her family’s Saranac Lake furniture store, now run by her sister and her brother-in-law, is a financial conflict.

It is also cold in Ray Brook, I pointed out to Ormsbee, and employees have to walk from their cars to the building there. The streets of Saranac Lake are safe, including for APA staffers, many of whom have lived in the village over the years. As for the “conflict of interest,” is anyone actually arguing that APA workers are going to buy more furniture at the Rice family store if the headquarters is moved 4 miles closer to it?

The comments are ridiculous and should have been fact-checked against reality, I told Ormsbee.

“Ridiculous statements don’t need fact-checking. If readers think they’re ridiculous, they can decide that for themselves,” she said.

Context is important in news stories, I said.

“What we should report are the facts,” she said.

“What you should report is the truth,” I said.

“Yes, the facts,” she said.

“The facts and not the truth?” I said.

That ended the exchange. But the truth is, facts can be reported in a manner that gives a false impression, and that is what the Explorer has been doing for the past couple of years.

This is as good a place as any to mention I am longtime friends with Barb Rice. That biases me in her favor, but I believe, for the purposes of this opinion column, my association with her adds more than it subtracts. I know her energetic, outgoing, ambitious character. I know she is demanding but fair. I know she sets high standards for herself and others.

The Franklin County legislators who in 2017 made Rice their first female chairperson know, too, what an outstanding public servant she is. So do the state officials, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, who served with her when, before she was chosen to lead the APA, she was an assistant secretary for economic development for New York, concentrating on the North Country.

The sad part about all this is Rice has a passion both for the stunning natural environment and the rich human culture of the Adirondacks. Moving the headquarters out of the state administrative enclave in Ray Brook and onto Main Street in the park’s most populous village is a gesture of friendship, announcing the APA’s intent to work with and be a part of local communities.

The revolt against Rice’s initiatives, particularly the move to Saranac Lake, has been fueled from outside the agency by longtime environmental advocates and retired APA officials, such as Bob Glennon and Stephen Erman, who can’t seem to accept that, if the struggle over Adirondack land use is viewed as a battle, they have won.

Hundreds of thousands of acres have been added to the Forest Preserve over the last few decades. Development — what little there is — has been largely restricted to the hamlets, as the APA Act intended. No one talks anymore about abolishing the Park Agency.

I used to be a frequent critic of the APA, and I wrote a series of stories for the Post-Star about 15 years ago that looked at several notorious enforcement actions in an attempt to explain why so many Adirondackers viewed the agency with so much distrust. It is past time now for all sides to put that distrust behind us and work together constructively.

Since its founding in 1998 by Dick Beamish, himself a former APA staffer, the Explorer has been a voice for preservation of the natural world in the Adirondacks. At the same time, Beamish has promoted Saranac Lake and referred to it as “the capital of the Adirondacks.”

The park agency headquarters belongs in the capital of the Adirondacks. The Explorer and the longtime staffers of the APA and the agency’s alumni should give Barb Rice a little grace as she tries to make that happen.

The village of Saranac Lake. The historic power and light building being eyed as part of a new headquarters for the Adirondack Park Agency is the shorter of the two blockish white structures that can be seen at the near end of Lake Flower.

Truck traffic

I’ve been wondering for years now why the city of Glens Falls allows big rigs to wallow through the center of downtown. I see it frequently — a large tractor-trailer, turning off South Street to proceed down Glen, then continuing down the hill into South Glens Falls or heading east out Route 32; or an equally big rig, heading north on Glen, then struggling to make the left turn onto South Street. Why doesn’t the city have a truck route that bypasses the busiest block in downtown? Or, if it does have such a route, why aren’t there prominent signs for it and why isn’t it enforced? Downtown Glen Street is often partly blocked by smaller trucks doing deliveries. If you then add a big rig, trying to make it past, you’ve got a hazardous situation.

On Friday, I took this video of a big truck coming up Glen. What you don’t see is what happened at the light — the driver trying and failing to make a left turn onto South Street, then reversing to return to his lane, using up the entire green light and backing up traffic most of the way down Glen. He made it on his second attempt, but it shouldn’t be happening to begin with. It would be easy for trucks to take Hudson Avenue, or, if they’re coming into the city and end up on South Street, to bypass downtown by continuing onto Maple, skirting City Park and taking Ridge.