Enveloped

Only in the Spa City could the throwing of an envelope make headlines. In most municipalities, such an occurrence would be worth a laugh in at the water cooler; maybe some playful ribbing between co-workers.

Yet with the vitriol pumping through City Hall these days, the simple act of the city attorney chucking an envelope at the Public Works commissioner seems to have stirred the fetid pot of politics, leading some more rational thinkers to wonder whether a slow gas leak on Lake Avenue has diminished the thought processes in the seat of government enough that the common municipal worker has reverted to a kindergarten level of intellect.

The Daily Gazette chronicles the childish exchange between Joe Scala and Skip Scirocco in an article that really exemplifies why the city is in such dire straits. Fortunately for the city and its self-respecting residents, the article was relegated to the back section, allowing both to save a bit of face in what is the latest in a series of poor discord among government officials.

As the story goes, Scirocco showed up at the city attorney’s office shortly before the close of business Wednesday and dumped off the envelop containing 28 letters to be distributed to the various DPW employees being laid off. Scala promptly sent them back to the commissioner with a note saying that it wasn’t his job to distribute the letters. Scirocco, incensed by the refusal, promptly returned the envelope, claiming he figured it was a “human resources issue” that should be handled by the attorney, who works as part of the mayor’s office.

The equally incensed Scala followed Scirocco out of the office and then chucked the letters in his direction, striking him in the “back, neck and head,” according to the Gazette article. The two men then “exchanged words” and the whole incident somehow made its way into the news.

Now at this point, it should be noted that there are no mysteries over who is getting laid off in City Hall. This message has been made abundantly clear to all those involved. The letter is a mere legal formality that could have been tasked to just about anyone. Hell, the letters probably could have been included in each worker’s paycheck this week, absolving any need to throw them at anyone.

Not in Saratoga. Here, everything must be a fucking three-ring political circus; every word a scandal, every gesture, an ordeal; and now every envelop-chuck, a news story. Sadly, the chuck-heard-around-the-region is a news story, because it exemplifies the fetid state of local politics and personifies the type of thinking that dragged the city into financial ruin.

There is an ever-increasing willingness to pass the buck, if not to the other political party or administration, then to whoever seems to be conveniently located. In other words, it’s easier to chuck your problems onto someone else’s desk –or someone else’s head – instead of dealing with them and moving on.

Ironically, this is precisely the thinking that led to these employees getting laid off in the first place. None of this would have happened had the City Council spent within its means many moons ago. Instead, they chose to spend the windfall of VLT funding at the peak of the city’s modern golden age and push off any sort of fiscal responsibility onto the next administration.

Hopefully, these are things that dawn upon Scirocco and Scala as they open up the B-section of the Gazette Friday. Maybe it’s time to grow up and take responsibility, rather than acting like petulant children fighting over who has to wash the evening dishes.

Post Script

Sometimes it’s better not knowing who is behind the curtain pulling the levers and turning the knobs that control the grand visions that suddenly appear in the Capital Region’s sky line. Sometime knowing about the machinations that make government work can be disheartening. After all, society desperately wants to believe there’s an honest and powerful wizard out there altruistically looking out for the public good; instilling a feeling of pride in job well done.

That’s why the public tends to look the other way when they get a peak behind the curtain. In fact, they’ll look the other way during the first, second and even third time the curtain is parted. Only when the screen is thrust open and the man behind is dragged into the light will they finally admit there’s something screwy with the whole process.

Take for instance Joe Bruno, the debonair Republican state Senate majority leader, who always exuded the type of moxy usually reserved for old-school gangsters. Hollywood Joe carried himself like a power broker that didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer and would do anything short of selling his own grandmother to get a deal done. There was simply nothing about him that suggested he operated under the law or by the book. In short, it would take a lot of wishful thinking to consider Bruno as a politician on the up-and-up.

Instead, Bruno’s constituents sort of looked at him like the guy who would drive an unmarked box truck into an impoverished neighborhood around the holidays and start unloading brand new color TVs at 10 cents on the dollar. Certainly, no one is under the illusion that the sets are legit, that the shady cigar-toting salesman is selling them as a charity or that some great miscarriage of justice hasn’t occurred somewhere beyond the city limits. At the end of the day, the ghetto will glow with the radiance of a thousand network colors thanks to that shady cigar-toting salesman. And he’ll be welcomed back with open arms each time they hear that dull growl from the box truck.

This is Joe Bruno at his quintessence: If the taxpayers are going to get robbed, I’m going to slice a cut for myself and then I’m going to get a share for my people. And for the more than two centuries that have lead up to this very moment, this is exactly how politics are conducted in New York or any state for that matter. Quid pro quo; you help me, I help you, we help them.

If the electorate really cared, they would have dispatched of guy like Bruno years ago. Take for instance the scandal that enveloped him in 2004. After littering the state government with his entire extended family, Bruno brashly secured a lavish office for his brother at the newly restored Van Raalte Mill in Saratoga Springs. The office cost taxpayers more than $50,000 a year and was aimed at easing poor Robert Bruno’s 50-mile commute to his six-figure job at the state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services Albany from Glens Falls. Hollywood Joe ran unopposed that year, just like every election since 1996, and the scandal barley left a blemish on Bruno’s career. Ironically, he won tens of thousands of votes that year on a platform to reform Albany, just one month after the scandal broke.

Even the opposition party supported Bruno during his heyday. He was in the process of mounting his fifth consecutive unopposed election in 2006, when pesky Rensselaer attorney Brian Premo decided he wanted to give voters a choice. Premo, a Republican-turned-Democrat, petitioned for a chance to take a crack at Bruno, but was summarily tossed out on his ass by the senatorial district’s Democratic leadership. The idea was to not offend the powerful leader so that the pork carcasses would continue to arrive unabated.

Premo took the issue to state Supreme Court, but met rare bi-partisan resistance. Democratic leaders lead the charge against the prospective challenger, and they used a sharp-tipped rapier handed to them by the GOP. Ironically, this micro-battle was occurring at a time when the national Democrats were bitterly fighting to regain seats in the U.S. Congress; most notably in the Capital Region, the seat of Republican U.S. Rep. John Sweeney.

In the end, the 2006 election could have been the high watermark of Bruno’s career in politics and the point at which the tide began to sweep back out to sea. Divisions had been forming in the state GOP for some time, and Bruno happened to be on the one that didn’t have the U.S. Attorney’s Office on its side.

There was no mystery about then Gov. George Pataki’s presidential aspirations or that he quietly played doorman to the Bush Administration whenever he could to get in the better graces of the neoconservative cabal. Sweeney, who was a strident Pataki-ally, had plenty of clout with national party prior to his fall from grace. And as that fall grew more precipitous during the 2006 election, Joe Bruno sat on the sidelines watching; clearly not willing to sacrifice an ounce of his political capital to rescue Pataki’s federal connection.

The 2006 election also was the unofficial coronation of Eliot Spitzer, the so-called “Sheriff of Wall Street” and ardent government reformer, who seemed to target Bruno as an epitome of the corrupt brand of politics that had plagued Albany for centuries. Spitzer very quickly moved to expose some of the senator’s indiscretions in an apparent attempt to discredit his chief opponent to reform. Less than a year later, Spitzer was gone.

Why dig into all this old history as Bruno walks away in shame? Well, because a man of Bruno’s power and political savvy doesn’t suddenly lose both overnight to a very convoluted federal corruption scandal that could potentially implicate any number of state legislators who regularly throw their influence around in questionable ways. Not unless there was a bi-partisan commando team parachuting in to take him down.

In the aftermath of Tuesday’s bombshell verdict –one that hardly came as a surprise to any political pundit –there was nary a state legislator to chime in on Bruno’s demise or the fate of his legacy. His colleagues in the Republican caucus were quiet, as were their Democratic counterparts. There wasn’t a peep from Gov. David Paterson’s office, even though he served more than two decades with Bruno in the senate. All of them stood quietly, as the jury slowly and methodically hung Bruno with the miles of rope he left behind amid his political legacy.

What does all this mean for New York and its brand of politics? Most likely, nothing at all, even though the hollow cries for reform are ringing loudly throughout the land right now. Sure, there will be talk about reform, just like there always is when a well-known politician is unceremoniously slain like a charging bull by the matador. There will be more like Bruno to rise and fall like the sun and moon. The cycle will continue because it’s the bitter nature of politics itself: maintaining the three-way balance between self-interest, special interest and the public’s interest.

Parting shots

Most municipalities take weeks or even months to announce the appointment of a police chief. Cities often keep their options open. They solicit dozens –even hundreds –of resumes to fill such an important administrative position. That’s because it’s wise to properly scrutinize the guy who will be holding the purse strings of the overtime purse. It’s wise to know if the top cop is going to be a push-over for the police benevolent association, or if he’s going to do his job in accordance with its principles: protecting the taxpayers.

But Saratoga Spring simply isn’t like most municipalities. In fact, it’s nothing like them, as outgoing Public Safety Commissioner Ron Kim proved this week with his well-orchestrated political shenanigans with his two top administrators and his subsequent appointment of Assistant Chief Chris Cole to the position within 72 hours after the outgoing one abruptly announced his retirement.

Much has been said about the abrupt resignation of Fire Chief Robert Cogan and Police Chief Ed Moore this week. Both said they were reluctantly leaving their six-figure jobs to get lucrative retirement packages so that they could save jobs in their respective departments. Those sympathetic with their cause lauded their selfless move and pleaded the city commissioners to reconsider the draconian staff cuts.

The story was leaked to reporters on Monday. And by Tuesday’s city council meeting, the issue had ballooned into a full-blown political bout between Kim and Public Safety commissioner-elect Richard Wirth. And it has proven to be every bit as contentious as the outgoing commissioner’s election-season sparring with Mayor Scott Johnson.

Over the last three days, Kim has been making a variety of claims that may or may not be true. For him, the truth really doesn’t matter because he’s going to be out of office by months’ end. First and foremost among these claims is that the city will save more than $200,000 through these retirements –some reports place this number at $260,000 –and should therefore restore some of the estimated 14 jobs cut from Public Safety.

But the next assertion is a bit brasher. Kim claims he and he alone has the right to appoint successors to the retiring chiefs because the city can’t legally have its two most important departments operating without top administrators. Along these lines, he also claimed there is no existing language in the city charter that says he can appoint an interim chief to either position, so he is legally bound to appoint at least the police chief before Dec. 12, the day Moore officially retires.

Now let’s stop here for a moment. There are some interesting machinations at work in this decision making process. Interestingly enough, Moore didn’t initially know when he’d take his retirement when he stood before reporters gathered at city hall late Tuesday afternoon. And with tears “welling” in his eyes, no one from the media was going to push him for a date. In contrast, Cogan had a definitive date in mind: Christmas Day.

Of course, this all changed quickly between the announcement and the interviews for the police chief’s position, which were conducted on Thursday. Moore quickly comes up with a date, which happens to be exactly one week after Kim makes his decision.

The whirlwind of events rightfully left Wirth incensed. Wirth, who ran on a position of restoring a bit of fiscal order to the badly managed police department, didn’t even get a chance to get his feet wet before Kim pushed him into the pond. Now he has a major dilemma on his hands: Accept the choice of Cole as given and hope for the best or cry foul and battle it out in the court of public opinion; or perhaps county Supreme Court, where any such argument would surely land, costing the taxpayers thousands of dollars. Either way, he gets screwed.

That is, unless Cole is the best man for the job. After all, he’s next in line anyway and has been running the department during Moore’s well-publicized disappearing acts. But that may be more of a reason to overlook him as the next chief.

On a side note, the city did have somewhat of a precedence in appointing an interim due to the one-week service of the ailing Robert Flanagan back in 2003, ironically the week before Moore became chief. Flanagan, who was nicknamed ‘chief,’ replaced outgoing boss Ken King Jr., until his retirement a week later. Though there may not be a similar circumstance where this could occur these days, the brief appointment sets a legal precedence at the very least.

Now, despite the pomp and circumstance that was humming amid Moore’s announcement, he’s been nothing less than a calamity as police chief. Under each year of his leadership, overtime has increased. This suggests he’s either a very poor manager of his resources or that he’s made a point of bending to the Saratoga Springs PBA. Moore also presided over a number of ugly lawsuits, one of which involved himself. Let’s not forget that he and his number-two sued the city and won a hefty settlement that resulted from the political dickering and sexual exploits of former deputy Commissioner Erin Dreyer.

Moore was also the guy who failed to take action when his growing number of female officers complained about the lack of a woman’s changing area at the aging station. The issue eventually landed the city in court for state labor violations, which in turn lead to taxpayers’ funding a large cash settlement to the officers.

To his defense, Moore may have been told by Kim that he didn’t need to fix the issue, because Kim seemed assured that he’d be able to shove a $20 million public safety castle down the throats of taxpayers under guidance of mayoral disaster Valerie Keehn. And he came pretty damn close to doing it too.

Still, Moore’s mismanagement is more than documented, so Wirth would have been justified in wanting to clean house. This is especially the case because Moore –blinded by the prospect of rich mahogany and hardwood furniture of his prospective new office –chose to politicize his job. He did so by brazenly standing next to Keehn and then Kim on more than one political occasion.

Interestingly enough, few media sources have bothered to delve into exactly what the outgoing chiefs will actually save the city. Credit the Daily Gazette for taking an honest stab at it in Friday’s paper. Moore will carry away a retirement package of $73,000 annually while Cogan will be given $69,000 per year; not including any health insurance benefits, which were not listed in the article.

It should be noted that this will come from the state retirement fund, rather than from directly out of taxpayers’ pockets. But in essence, that’s another major problem in the city’s budgetary woes: Nondiscretionary funding. Payments into the state retirement fund and health insurance costs are two of the main drivers in any budgetary increase. These are functions that are hashed out with bargaining units and then written into contracts. What will the ultimate savings be from these retirements? Chances are they will be negligible.

In the end, this whole episode can be boiled down to Ron Kim’s formal ‘fuck you’ to the incoming council. And he carries these tidings for the rest of his ‘Democrats for Change’ cronies, each of which were banished to the nether regions of city politics. Only time will tell how bad his last-minute dickering screwed the incoming administration, but it doesn’t take a genius to see the tone has been set.

Power rankings

Update: So much for the DFC. It's back to the drawing board, fellas. All four Republican candidates won handily, sweeping aside the shattered Democratic party's candidates. Yepsen and Franck, the lone Democrats to win Tuesday, also happened to be unopposed and at odds with the DFC. Fancy that.

Following politics these days is a lot like following professional sports, especially if you happen to be among the many that could care less about off-year elections. These folks are like the casual baseball fan; the one that couldn’t be bothered to watch any one of the 162 regular season games, but becomes a slavering fanatic the minute his or her team pulls into the playoffs; or better yet, the World Series.

There are also the bookies; the guys that need to watch all 162 games from each of the 30 teams. Given that each game lasts about four hours, they quickly find themselves in a pinch when they’re choosing the over-under for any given day. That’s why the world of professional sports likes to give out the so-called power-rankings. They feed every statistic imaginable into a complex algorithm of sorts and then add in a liberal helping of subjectivity to come up with their figures.

Well, off-year election voters should be offered the same service. Sweet Jesus, how can someone be expected to keep up with much less follow all the intricate machinations of local politics? One would need to read the paper, or attend city council meetings or participate in their participatory democracy. And we all know there isn’t time enough in the day to do laundry, much less devote three hours every other week to hear a gaggle of grumpy commissioners prattle on about city affairs.

In response, iSaratoga has decided to spend the weekend crunching numbers and pounding 12 oz. cans of subjectivity, so that voters will at least know where they stand in the booth Tuesday afternoon and evening. Keep in mind, these aren’t endorsements; rather they’re an illustration of where the candidates stand in the grand scheme of things, so voters have a clear idea of the fighting underdog versus the smug first-place champion.

1. Scott Johnson; incumbent mayor; Republican.
Comments: Johnson had an unremarkable first term, but that seems fairly remarkable considering the devastation he faced with the failing state and national economy. The fiscal bumbling of the Keehn administration set him up to sink, but somehow Johnson remained afloat. Meanwhile, he advanced a recreation center project that stalled for nearly a decade and has managed stave off his resulting critics –many of whom openly supported the project the previous year. Johnson’s term garnered him endorsements from both the Saratogian and the Albany Times Union, both of which supported his foe in 2007. He also won an extremely rare endorsement from the Skidmore News. The incumbent mayor is a powerhouse, and not one to bet against.

2. John Franck, incumbent Accounts commissioner, Democrat.
Comments: Teddy Roosevelt would have liked Franck. He tends to fit the former New York governor’s slogan, ‘speak softly and carry a big stick.’ Franck realized he couldn’t go head-to-head with the Democrats for Change and knew the GOP was having a tough time finding candidates. In contrast, the DFC was throwing endorsements to just about any corpse they could find in the hope of getting a council majority. In a wry move, Franck spoke softly to the party leaders about gaining unity and then waited. Once July passed without a primary challenge, Franck picked up his big stick and promptly beat the tar out of his so-called running mates. Like others that aren’t exactly keen on the DFC’s motives, Franck has distanced himself from the party message and even attended GOP events. And they can’t do anything about it now. If they do, their bull shit message of ‘party unity’ will seem all the more hollow.

3. Anthony “Skip” Scirocco, incumbent DPW commissioner, not sure.
Comments: Scirocco made some mighty strange bedfellows in his last election and has thus distanced himself from the GOP machine. Word on the street was that he wasn’t even attending –or not invited –to Republican functions. Ordinarily, that would be the death knell for any candidate running for office in Saratoga County. But that’s simply not the case of the Spa City GOP. In fact, Scirocco’s distancing from his registered party has placed him in the good graces of the city Democrats –or at least the Democrats for Change overlords that have hijacked the party. After maintaining a candidate in DPW for nearly a quarter-century, the Democrats decided against challenging Scirocco –a decision that was assuredly a quid-pro-quo for his work to oust Tom McTygue in 2007. Scirocco also gained favor with the unions by fervently objecting to staff layoffs both in 2008 and this fall. If there’s a guy who is in command in the DPW race, it’s the Skipper.

4. Matt Veitch/Joanne Yepsen, incumbent city supervisors, who cares.
Comments: The fourth ranking isn’t exactly something to brag about, but it shows these cats have pretty much fulfilled their end of the bargain. Yepsen had her spats with the DFC, specifically when they shunned her as a candidate for state Sen. Joe Bruno’s seat. Well, that’s ancient history now, and like Franck, Yepsen has ridden the DFC message of unity into an uncontested election. Likewise, Veitch hasn’t done anything to draw ire from his party bosses. They’re a lock for office, but so would a semi-literate troglodyte.

5. Peter Martin, DFC Finance commissioner candidate, Kool-aid drinker.
Comments: Martin has two things going for him. He has the unpopularity of incumbent Ken Ivins Jr. among the city’s unions and he has the fact that a lot of voters will simply pull the lever for a candidate that happens to be in their party. The confluence of these two streams among the electorate often means a win. Still, Martin is anything but a lock. If city Democrats don’t come out in force, he’s going to have a tough time getting to the finish line. If he does win, it will be a small coup for the DFC, which will then have control over the city’s purse strings come budget time in 2010. However, absent another win in city races, Martin will be chiefly ineffective on the council and somewhat akin to a recently beheaded chicken. Look for Eileen Finneran to scamper into his office as deputy if the DFC doesn’t win another race.

6. Ken Ivins, incumbent Finance commissioner, Republican.
Comments: Ivins carried a pair of brass balls into office this year. He didn’t dwell on the loss of the VLT-aid, which was smart, seeing as though no one in Albany would have listened. He also didn’t even hesitate to call for sweeping job layoffs to both reduce the burden on taxpayers and bring the greedy city unions back to the negotiating tables. So why the low ranking? Well, Ivins’ pragmatism in office has been spun six ways sideways by the rabid DFC hacks. He’s been roundly castigated for doing the right thing and will likely suffer at the polls as a result. It’s a shame too, because what Ivins has brought to the table is much more reasonable than what his potential successor has suggested.

7. Ed Miller, candidate for DPW commissioner, Independence.
Comments: Ed Miller is an intriguing candidate because of who he has in tow. There’s no mystery about his closeness with McTygue, or that he’s being supported by the losing side in the battled for control of the city Democrats. If he pulls off an upset, he could very well become a link between this disjointed faction and the city Republicans, a group that’s having struggles of its own in the post-Bruno era. But with this said, there’s a very slim probability that Miller unseats Scirocco. He tried to shoot the moon by touting the Regatta View water connection debacle, but the issue never gelled. He would have been better off taking a page from the DFC by paying off a few disgruntled DPW workers to spread rumors to Metroland about Scirrocco being embroiled in an FBI investigation one month before the election. That tactic seems to work well.

8. Ron Kim, DFC candidate for Mayor, Republocrat or Democan; you choose.
Comments: If there was ever a poor choice for mayor, it was Ron Kim. He might have had a chance, had he simply not done or said anything over his last two years in office. Instead, he became the mouthpiece for the lingering remnants of the Keehn Administration. He lacks the ability to think for himself. And when he does, he ends up storming out of an important council meeting. His ‘failureometer’ made him the laughing stock of the city. His cries about needing to “layoff” up to 17 public safety workers in 2008 showed his inability to act rationally and with civility. His choice of Eileen Finneran as a deputy showed just how beholden he was to the Keehn Administration. And the list goes on for what seems like an eternity. Voters, if there was a weaker candidate for mayor, he would have lost the Democratic nomination to a pile of bricks from the City Center’s façade.

9. Richard Wirth, candidate for Public Safety. Republican.
Comments: Republicans figure two’s the charm with Wirth. He got beaten like a gong by Ron Kim in 2007, but they figure that was because he was going up against an incumbent. This time, they figure something will change in the minds of voters. Either that, or that the city Democrats will forget everyone needs to vote on Tuesday. Wirth isn’t a bad candidate per se. But once the voting public makes you a loser, it’s tough to change that image barring cataclysmic failure on the part of the opposition candidate(See: Richard Nixon, circa 1968).

10. Kevin Connolly, DFC candidate for Public Safety, first in line for Kool-aid.
Comments: Even in Jonestown, someone needed to drink the punch first. That someone in the DFC is Connolly, who basically adopted their crazy platform as his own, shirking any sort of reasonable issue to base his run for office. Saying exactly what Ron Kim is saying is not a platform; at least, not one that’s likely to get you elected. He should hope that voters are equally dismayed by Wirth, never bothered to listen to him blather during the debates, close their eyes and reach for a lever. That way, at least he has a one-in-two chance of being elected. His other chance to win will come if the city’s Police Benevolent Association mandates that all members living in the city vote for this guy so they can get their 7 percent raise in January. But if the electorate sees him for what he is –a card-carrying union hack beholden to the DFC –they’ll steer mighty clear from him at the polls.

There you have it, folks. Get out there and vote. Regardless of the outcome, hopefully we awake to find candidates in office that can rise about the rhetoric and find answers to the problems that have plagued this city for years. Were there ever a time for consensus building, it’s now. The other hopeful outcome of this race is to at last put to rest the McTygue-Keehn battle, because there’s good a chance that both sides will end up yesterday’s news.

Pigging out

Just when the blog was on a roll, its lead writer has his brain pan split by some otherworldly ailment of sorts. Yes folks, swine flu has struck i-Saratoga, rending its lead-up-to-the-election coverage lacking in every since of the term.

The site’s lead doctors made the diagnosis Saturday, while in an exam room somewhere deep in the bowels of Caroline Street. At least, they proffered it to be an exam room. Some more discriminating observers might call it a bar. Nevertheless, after a quick bath of hand-sanitizer, a handful of pill party mix and a modest gallon of ‘hot-toddy,’ things appear to be clearing up –or at least somewhat.

The more conspiracy minded among you might blame this whole affair on some callous political hack who swabbed the vile expectorate of some wretchedly sick bastard and then dubiously dabbed all the door knobs on all the bars in a 50-mile radius of Saratoga Springs. While not discounting this entirely, the editorial board does think this scenario is rather implausible.

More likely, the aforementioned scribe utilized the extra hour of drinking time early Sunday to enable a saturation suppression of the immune system. Regardless of the reasons, the words are flowing into cyberspace again, so feel free to come on back in for a scroll.

In its effort to comply with state Department of Health regulations, i-Saratoga recommends you read this blog wearing a surgical mask and with an IV drip of the aforementioned concoction. Health officials have assured the ‘hot toddy’ is a better solution to staving off the dreaded H1N1 virus –or ‘hiney’ as it’s called in more astute medical circles –than receiving any sort of vaccine.

On a related note, immunizing the populations from swine flu certainly is a lofty goal for the pharmacological industrial complex, and one they’ve seemingly pulled off, despite all the bluster in the media about shortages and what not. With the ‘is there going to be enough’ and the ‘don’t you make us take that shit’ hysteria in the news, nobody has really thought to ask what the price tag will be on this massive immunization effort or its effectiveness.

Basically, drug companies that received the multi-billion dollar federal contracts to purse this vaccine out could very well be bottling ‘hot toddy’ and selling it for an estimated $35 a pop. Considering you can purchase a cheap bottle of brandy for roughly $5, that’s not a bad haul for Big Pharm. But this sort of thinking is psychotic madness. Who would ever mistrust Big Pharm? Really, they’re a great group of companies that would never think of hoodwinking the public, right?

Let’s also not worry too much about the cost to states. On a little reported aside, county health departments across the Capital Region are getting beaucoup bucks to coordinate anti-swine flu campaigns in their communities. This ranges from organizing flu-shot clinics to raising awareness of how to stave off H1N1. This includes teaching people the difficult concepts of how to wash their hands and cover their mouths when they cough; or to not go into work with a 103-degree fever.

Thankfully, New York has a booming economy and a multi-billion dollar surplus to pay for all this...wait a sec…you say there’s no surplus? What’s this about a deficit? Uh oh.

Tale of the tape

Running a political campaign a kin to a full-out sprint across a tightrope while ducking a swarm of rabid vampire bats hell bent on sucking you dry. Just one wrong juke and it’s all over except for the cleanup crew.

Campaign managers –or political hacks as their more commonly known –are constantly dashing across this wire. And as the minutes tick closer to Election Day, their speed grows incrementally. One poorly-worded campaign flier or one errant media report can really set a candidate’s run for office in a tail spin. Conversely, one well-timed tip can mean the difference between a concession speech and a victory proclamation on the first Tuesday of November.

In the Spa City, there is no shortage of political chicanery. In fact, the last couple of weeks have been wrought with campaign power plays; so many that voters sometimes need a score card to keep things in perspective. Well, iSaratoga’s stalwart editorial board has decided to offer a layman’s guide to campaign propaganda, sorted and graded for your edification.

Story: City comes up short on health insurance allocation

Details: After spending nearly four years squirreled away in the darkest recesses of City Hall, Eileen Finneran is really starting to become the political spinster everyone knew she could be during her rookie year. The “deputy Public Safety commissioner” –quotes are used here because she doesn’t perform any of the job’s normal functions –is showing why Ron Kim quickly snap her up as his number-two. First, she manages to turn the Rec Center vote, one of Kim’s greatest disasters, into a campaign platform for the Democrats. Now she’s done almost the same thing by leaking this story about her department being in the red on its health insurance contributions.

Finneran paired with her old buddy Skip Scirocco at Public Works to throw a one-two punch at Finance Commissioner Ken Ivins and Mayor Scott Johnson by default. The claim is that the city is short roughly $500,000 in its employee health insurance contributions, meaning there could be a serious budgetary shortfall for both the Public Safety and Public Works departments. The error seems to be egg on Ivins’ face, seeing as though he was the one that proposed the budget. In truth, all five commissioners voted for the budget –including Kim and Scirocco –and none of them seemed concerned about it then. Even Ivins doesn’t seem that concerned. He rightly stated that the money can come from surpluses realized on other lines.

But who really reads that far down in articles, especially one about health insurance premiums? Score one for Finneran. She’s made Ivins appear incompetent, even though the issue she raises isn’t really an issue at all. Her spin gives the otherwise lackluster Peter Martin a shot at securing unseating Ivins and Finneran an alternative office to hide if Kim isn’t successful in his bid for mayor.

Grade: A-

Story: (none)

Details: Scott Johnson’s campaign handlers don’t like dashing across the tightrope too often. They didn’t in 2007 and they don’t appear to being doing so in 2009. He doesn’t wage massive political attacks in the fall, nor does he outwardly offer public criticism to his opponents. These sorts of things are better left to campaign mailers, radio ads and the occasional television spot. In fact, Johnson has literally dumped his war chest –almost $44,000 –into this sort of public relations, which subverts the unbiased media and speaks directly to the voters.

In these ads, Johnson cogently derides the criticism he takes from his opponent and then offers a bit of tinder to fuel the flames already burning beneath Ron Kim’s drive for the mayor’s office: Kim storms out of council meetings; Kim voted for the Rec Center six times; Kim has driven a $3.5 million increase in the Public Safety spending. These are all hard things to dispute, and in the absence of a television camera or news reporters, Kim is simply not able to do so.

By staying out of the spotlight, Johnson can also claim he’s not playing politics on city time. And that’s a pledge his opponent could never make. That’s not to say this sort of campaign tactic can’t come back and bite a candidate in the ass. Avoiding the tightrope can be every bit as lethal as running across the damn thing. Ducking out of the spotlight is also a tough thing to do, especially as mayor. If it involves blowing off media calls, a candidate runs the risk of souring his or her relationship with reporters. And that’s basically a death knell for any campaign.

Grade: B

Story: Waterline extension spurs debate

Details: Eddie Miller, the Independence Party candidate for Public Works, has been trying to convince voters that Skip Scirocco is corrupt. When the story about the Regatta View waterline broke, he though he found his silver bullet. Scirocco claims the city-funded work, which has connected two private residences to city water, was conducted to extend a fire hydrant further down Union Avenue. Miller naturally disagrees.

Scirocco’s challenger claims the DPW chief installed the waterline as a kick-back to a couple of friends. Miller has openly questioned why Scirocco didn’t have the project approved by the council and why the estimated $20,000 project wasn’t paid for by the homeowners. This volley of shots across Scirocco’s bow caused him to stammer a bit. He made contradictory statements to the media, and then back-pedaled to his original stance, making him look either a bit foolish, a bit nefarious or both.

But Miller’s crusade against the project continues to boil down to a he-said-she-said, and has never really picked up legs in the media, despite several articles by two papers. The problem with Miller’s silver bullet is three-fold. First, no one can really explain why Scirocco would want to curry favor with these residents; second, many view the issue as being petty in the grand scheme of a multi-million dollar public safety budget; and third, it’s goddamn boring. Waterlines and infrastructure aren’t sexy things, and unless a campaign can really make a salacious accusation, they’re not the ticket that is going to win an election –especially against an incumbent.

Grade: C -

Story: Impasse in PBA contract negotiations

Details: With less than a week left before the election the Saratoga Springs Police Benevolent Association has begun opening bitching about their contract. They bombarded the Saratogian’s Web site with news releases just one day after they declared an impasse to contract negotiations with the city. The news releases in turn spurred a news story about the sorry state of the negotiations. Unfortunately for the PBA and their slate of candidates, the literature and subsequent article really manage to truthfully characterize their organization as a money-grubbing group of thugs that won’t stop until every patrolman is making six figures.

Laughably, the PBA claims it offered good-faith concessions to the city that weren’t answered. One of these so-called concessions is their willingness to forestall their 3 percent raise this year until 2010, the same year they’ve proposed a 4 percent across-the-board salary increase. In other words, the city would get out of overpaying the cops for two months, only to have the bums collect double come the New Year.

To put it bluntly, the fact that the PBA is even making such a demand in this economy and when eight of their members could soon be without jobs is fucking mind blowing. Moreover, it shows their true strategy in this negotiation: Get Ron Kim elected mayor so he can give them carte blanche with their contract. But whoever thought out this strategy –maybe PBA dunderhead Ed Lewis –didn’t take one thing into consideration. Hardly any of the cops live in Saratoga Springs, thus they and their families can’t vote. They also made Kim look like a flatulent asshole for jumping in the sack with the PBA. Keep in mind, Johnson wouldn’t even accept an interview with the PBA, nor would Ivins or John Franck, the unopposed Accounts commissioner. Uh oh...damage control...

Grade: F

Be mindful, these grades aren’t an endorsement of any candidate per se; but rather how effectively their inner circles conduct their respective campaigns. For instance, it would take all the hash in Amsterdam and at least a 55-gallon drum of bourbon for iSaratoga’s e-board to even stomach the thought of fathoming another two years of Finneran’s dickering in City Hall. But when someone’s good at something –even if that something is really malicious –it’s worthy of note.

Editor’s note: This is the first among a marathon of posts pertaining to the election, politics and everything in between. The whip has been cracked at iSaratoga and its bibulous scribes are hard at work. Let’s just hope there’s enough bourbon to fuel this vicious run.

Serial

Sheriff James Bowen’s voice carried a hint of reluctance as he discussed the circumstances behind Jennifer Marie Hammond’s disappearance in August 2003. The doe-eyed 18-year-old from a suburban enclave near Denver was selling magazine subscriptions at the Creek and Pines trailer park in Milton when she vanished.

No one from her company had thought much of it. She had wandered off before, so here disappearance, while peculiar, wasn’t particularly unexpected. But when she didn’t gather her belongings from an Albany-area lodge and never used a bus ticket she had purchased to go back to Colorado, someone thought to report her missing –in November and more than three months after she had last been seen.

Jennifer’s name never made it to the media. Perhaps it was because she wasn’t the type of girl to carry news headline. She wasn’t from the area and didn’t have any forthcoming local connections. She was too old to create the fervor caused by a disappearing child, and she had many of the trademarks that would link her with the so-called counter culture; not the type of characteristics that resonate well with the white-bred 40-something demographic that tunes into the nightly newscast to get their fill of water cooler talking points.

Jennifer didn’t fit the bill, so deputies from the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Department turned her disappearance into a missing persons’ handout. They stapled a few copies around the hill towns of Saratoga County and did what sheriff’s deputies do best: They waited.

Sure enough, they got a lead. Granted, that lead came six years later and in the form of the woman’s skull and three teeth, but a lead nonetheless.

“Everyone wants to know where their loved one is that is missing, you always look every day for that person to contact you or turn up,” Bowen told a gaggle of reporters and cameramen gathered at the county courthouse Thursday. “If we can put a little closure even though it’s a sad closure, at least it’ll give closure to the family knowing where that person is.”

But closure wasn’t what was gnawing on Bowen’s conscience Thursday. In fact, closure was about the last thing on his mind. Instead, it was another case that came to the forefront –one that is anything but closed.

Christina White’s skeletal remains were found in March 2006, more than eight months after she vanished into the night. She had an argument with a family member on the eve of her disappearance and was last seen walking along Rock City Road, just a short distance from her home in the trailer park called Saratoga Village. Some say she left her home after having an argument with a family member. She vanished just five days before her 20th birthday.

“We’re following all the leads. It’s going slowly,” Bowen told the Times Union in 2006.

Slowly indeed. Nearly four years later, Bowen’s crack team of investigators doesn’t seem any closer to solving Christina’s murder than they did when a hunter stumbled upon her bones in Greenfield’s Daketown Forest.

Wait. Let’s stop there for a second. Is anyone noticing a few similarities between these cases? Some reporters certainly are. Christina disappeared from a trailer park in Milton and her skeletal remains were found in a remote area about six miles away from where she was last seen. Jennifer disappeared from a trailer park only a mile away from Saratoga Village and was found in a remote location about four miles away from where Christina’s remains were discovered.

Both girls were petite. Christina was 5-foot-3 and weighed about 98 pounds, while Jennifer was described as 5-foot-2 and weighing 110 pounds. Both had child-like features for their age –Jennifer’s bone structure was small enough that investigators initially believed her skull to be that of a 10- to 12-year-old child.

Christina and Jennifer were the type of girls who could disappear for spells without drawing alarm. Christina was described as bi-polar and someone who would frequently vanish into the woods on long walks; Jennifer, described as a sort of free-wheeling hippie who went by the moniker “moonbeam” and with peace symbol tattooed to her hip.

They vanished in the dead of summer and in the less-traveled areas in the county; places where you can stand on the road without seeing a car for long spells. Jennifer disappeared in August 2003. Christina disappeared 22 months later. Both missing persons reports were handled by the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Department and both women reappeared in bone form. Neither skeleton was complete.

These similarities may not sound identical, but they’re close enough to draw suspicion at the very least; maybe even alarm. Lightning seldom strikes the same spot twice. And when it does, there’s a good chance those two bolts were more than just a coincidence.

Bowen refused to say it Thursday, but it was certainly on the minds of more than one person: These cases could be serial by nature. New York’s longest tenured lawman ought to keep this in mind as he contemplates how long he can let this investigation drag on without answers, ’cause he’s gonna have a lot of nervous residents on his hands if he lets this case plug along like usual.

Station identification

Let’s pause from our regularly scheduled political bickering to identify a curious circumstance that was belched out at the media by the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce right around closing time Tuesday. Just as everyone was headed out the door for the rush-hour crawl, the chamber announced that Dave Zunker, the Saratoga Convention and Tourism Bureau chief, was abruptly resigning.

Zunker, the hastily scrolled news release claimed, simply couldn’t sell his house in South Carolina. And he missed his family. They apparently never joined him to live in Saratoga Springs, despite him receiving the job nearly two years ago.

Sound fishy? Well let’s consider this: The real estate market in Columbia, S.C., just jumped by 2.4 percent in September. While this bump did follow a protracted decline in the market along with the median sale price of homes, it does draw into question Zunker’s true motives for leaving the bureau.

In fact, the story proffered by the chamber seems almost wholly implausible for even the cheeriest of tourism cheerleaders. Basically they’re saying an executive, who made a decent enough salary to be drawn to Saratoga Springs, abandoned his full-time job so that he can return to South Carolina to be unemployed in the wayward tourism industry during the worst economic recession the country has seen in decades.

OK, Joe Dalton. We’re trying to swallow this bowling ball-sized lump your feeding, but it’s just not going down. Do you have any water? Maybe a beer? And while your at it, could you tell us how much Zunker was making for his work?

But reporters on the story couldn’t ask these questions, because the couldn’t reach Dalton for comment. Nor could they find Zunker, who seemingly vanished with the drying of the ink on Dalton’s news release. The Schenectady Daily Gazette had the fortitude to get through to Mark Suprunowicz, the chairman of the tourism bureau’s Board of Directors, but he just added to the mystery of Zunker’s departure.

“I can’t comment on any personnel or financial issues of this,” he told the paper Tuesday.

Even more curious is that Zunker left his job in the midst of an unprecedented expansion of the Saratoga Springs City Center, the facility that basically serves as the tourism bureau’s bread-and-butter. Gavin Landry, Zunker’s predecessor, pined for convention center expansion and even warned the city could lose some of the big-ticket events if it didn’t update the aging structure on Broadway.

Interestingly enough, Landry also abruptly left the tourism bureau after 12 years on the job. Only he left under slightly more favorable circumstances. He had a padded position waiting with the New York Racing Association, which was facing dissolution at the time. Landry, who was a quasi hero at the tourism bureau, decided to hedge his bets with the future of NYRA instead of doing what he did best: Booking city conventions. Then after less than a year on the job, Landry bolted that position too.

So what’s the deal? Perhaps Zunker really was just homesick. After all, he did pull into the city at a time when its golden era appeared to be waning. But for the cynics and skeptics amongst us, this assumption seems far too trite to believe. Now back to your regularly scheduled politicking...