Town Board dragging its feet on conflict of interest policy
Chapman Museum walking tour will focus on the contributions of women
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Town Board meetings have a long-standing tradition in our democracy. Residents can watch how Town Board members vote and speak directly to their representatives about the issues that concern them.
It is democracy at work.
But those Town Board votes and hearings are just one step in the process.
How the sausage gets made is often done in afternoon workshops without much scrutiny from the public. It is there the debate, concerns and real agreements are hammered out.
Because the Queensbury Town Board was going to talk about its ethics policy and conflicts of interest in its Monday workshop, I tuned in via Zoom.
Back in November I filed a complaint with the town's Ethics Board that Councilman Tim McNulty had the "appearance" of a conflict of interest because he also serves as chairman of the Warren County Republican Committee. It essentially made him the boss over the other three Republican councilmen. If one of them were to vote contrary to his wishes, he conceivably could make sure they were not endorsed in the next election cycle.
It has happened before in Queensbury.
In February, the Ethics Board ruled that McNulty did indeed have an "appearance" of a conflict of interest and urged the Town Board to address the issue.
Since my original complaint, I've addressed the Town Board twice more asking when they would address the issue.
Supervisor John Strough, Deputy Supervisor Jean Lapper, Town councilmen Tim McNulty, Michael Dixon and Scott Gushlaw were in attendance Monday. Councilman Anthony Metivier was not.
Patsy Murray, a member of the Ethics Board, was also there and wondered why the Ethics Board was not invited to the meeting.
"We have some ideas that may inform your decision," she said.
Board members mumbled something about it being a public meeting anyone could attend, but Murray reiterated, the Ethics Board should have been invited.
She was right.
Whether it was an oversight or not is unknown.
Strough suggested the town adopt "disclosure forms" for every elected official and perhaps others to file annually disclosing any conflicts of interest with businesses or non-profits. The forms would include revealing all political donations made to their campaigns or relatives who work for the town. Strough provided a copy of Warren County's disclosure form as a working model.
It was surprising the town did not already have such a system. There was no opposition to adopting such a form, but there were many questions about the details.
Finally, Deputy Supervisor Lapper, who is unelected, said what was on my mind. When were they going to talk about the conflicts of interest that were the basis of the complaint?
What came next was stunning.
McNulty - whose leadership position with the county Republicans was the basis of the complaint - is working on language to update the town's ethics policy and was going to make recommendations, although no time table was made for those recommendations.
It appeared to me McNulty had a conflict of interest in regard to solving his own conflict of interest.
Did I have to file another complaint?
As a cynical long-time journalist, this was putting a fox in charge of hen house security.
Murray reminded the councilmen the Ethics Board would like more "clarity."
From her experience as a Certified Public Accountant, Lapper reminded the board that to be viewed as an "ethical body or person" the rules had to be strict.
"That's where I come from," Lapper said.
Strough summed it up by saying, "Some kind of improvement in the definition of a conflict of interest was needed."
It didn't take long for the Town Board to tire of the discussion as one of seven items on the agenda. Anytime you talk about something as complicated and controversial as ethics you need lots of time to consider all the nuances of the policy.
It was decided to kick the can down the road to a July meeting where the Ethics Board would be invited to share its insights. Strough asked Gushlaw if he could put together more details on a possible disclosure form. Gushlaw wondered if July was too soon to get that done.
At the end of the discussion, Strough said, "We've made progress."
Had they?
After all, my complaint was filed last November.
Chapman Walk
The Chapman Museum will be hosting a new walking tour on Friday called "The HER-Story of Glens Falls."
The tour showcases remarkable women and their connections to Glens Falls and the vital roles they had in shaping the history of the area.
Tours begin at 11 a.m. at the Chapman Museum (there is parking there) and cost $15 per person ($10 for members). A minimum of four are needed per tour and a maximum of 15. Please register for the tour at 518 793-2826.
Keep in mind, the weather will be more suitable by Friday.
VOA takes hit
Although three Voice of American employees have a lawsuit pending, massive layoffs were issue on Friday leaving it with a staff of about 250.
The three VOA employees issued a state saying the legal fight would continue and called on Congress to “to continue its long tradition of bipartisan support for VOA.”
They told CNN Media reporter, Brian Stelter, “Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and extremist groups are flooding the global information space with anti-American propaganda. Do not cede this ground by silencing America’s voice.”
In another case, the judge demanded that he be informed of what as happening with the VOA as the federal government was instructed.
Pushing back
Wouldn't you love to see what Supreme Court Justice Sania Sotomayor is saying to the other justices in their closed door meetings?
Last week, the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law that bans medical treatments for transgender youth.
In a scathing rebuke read from the bench, Justice Sotomayor compared the decision to previous cases that upheld laws of discrimination.
The New York Times described it this way:
“Those laws, too, posed politically fraught and contested questions about race, sex and biology,” the justice wrote. In the interracial marriage case, she wrote as an example, Virginia had argued that if the court intervened in the matter, it would find itself in a “bog of conflicting scientific opinion upon the effects of interracial marriage, and the desirability of preventing such alliances, from the physical, biological, genetic, anthropological, cultural, psychological and sociological point of view.”
Justices usually end their descents by signing "respectfully."
In this case, Sotomayor wrote, "In sadness, I dissent."
Factory workers
The call to re-establish manufacturing in the United States is facing one major obstacle - workers.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that the pool of blue-collar workers interested in factory work is shrinking. About 400,000 manufacturing jobs are currently unfilled in the United States and that number is expected to grow.
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.
Someplace I read that John Roberts has an acute sense of what history will make of his tenure as Chief Justice. Nonsense, his place in history gets cemented with every decision handed down. They take positions that are clearly at odds with what the founders intended, what they wrote down and what became the constitution. Rendition to third countries without due process? Yeah, that's in there. My slight hope that Roberts and Coney-Barrett would somehow come to thier senses has been destroyed, back to stammering in disbelief.
That "discussion" by town board members made it sound like it had never occurred to them to have disclosure forms to sign every year (truthfully). Smaller less impact full boards have those forms, but the lax and self-interested attitude toward ethics has their slips showing, so to speak. Thank you for watching and reporting their shenanigans from afar. Your information about factory workers once again points to the need for workers who absolutely, desperately need jobs to survive with their families, and many of those travel far and wide for the privilege of employment. But racism and bigotry prevail in our current administration, glaringly biting the hand that feeds class society. Sotomayor's signature tells me that the rage and righteous indignation she should feel toward her biased colleagues has turned to hopelessness. It is interesting that the millions made by a democratic Supreme Court Judge for her book has made recent headlines, while other glaring perks garnered by long standing Supreme Court judges are literally glossed over. They absolutely need to expose their own conflicts of interest/ethics criteria also. What a rotten mess this all is.