Walkin' the tightrope

Edward Moore took a giant step out onto the tightrope and then marched forward without bothering to check the perilous distance to the ground below. In a span of less than 24 hours, the Spa City’s top cop decided to make a pair moves that even the most oblivious of political neophytes could identify as deeply rooted in politics.

First, he showed up in uniform on the steps of City Hall while Mayor Valarie Keehn and boss Ron Kim –both of whom are running for re-election in November –lambasted three city commissioners and mayoral challenger Gordon Boyd. Then in a much more brazen move, Moore spat a venom-filled private letter at Boyd, accusing the candidate of politicizing the push for a new public safety facility for his own benefit.

“Forgive me if I offend you, but don't try to sell me sugarcoated dung as good intentions and support,” Moore stated in the long and prattling letter, which was also leaked to The Saratogian. “I did not just fall off the turnip truck, and I will not reciprocate in the same vein.”

For some reason, he also tied in the near-death experience of Adam Barker last week into his reasoning for needing a new station. Moore paired this event with his wanton castigation of Boyd, Accounts Commissioner John Franck, and Tom McTygue, Public Works enemy number-one. In other words, a vote for these guys is a vote that could have killed Officer Baker.

“I do not appreciate the politicization of an issue that may result in the loss of life, especially to one of my colleagues,” he continued in the letter. “We came close enough to that just four days ago with, as of yet, no formal inquiry by either of your compatriots on the council as to Officer Baker’s well being.”

Strong words for a public official commandeering a post controlling the city’s 70-something law enforcement agents. Strong enough that the letter could easily be viewed as a quasi-knife of intimidation held against the throat of a candidate that doesn’t really support all the chief has shoveled since Keehn took office in 2006.

State elections officials didn’t seem to think Moore’s one-two punch in local politics stepped up to the level of violating campaign laws. They indicated that he would need to either financially back a candidate or use his uniform to intimidate one before stepping over the line. He arguably did this by appearing at a thinly veiled Keehn-Kim booster rally Monday, where the two candidates publically bashed anyone not supporting his proposed 47,000-square-foot $17 million Public Safety Taj Mahal.

What Boyd and other detractors of the project argued is that the community can foot the estimated $87-per-year tax hike the new station would cost under the city’s present financial conditions. And he’s one-hundred percent right, too. Instead, he’s proposed squirreling away a few million bucks today, so that this impact isn’t felt at once by taxpayers. But Moore believes this is simply a political tactic the candidate is using to appease voters during election season before he reneges on the deal while in office.

“I am tired of hearing from those like [you] who wet their finger, stick it in the air of public opinion to see which way the wind is blowing, then publicly state they agree with the need of the new public safety building yet privately conspire to prevent it from occurring,” he wrote in the letter.

However, when it comes sticking one’s finger in the wind, Moore sounds a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. He decided to spearhead the new public safety facility initiative coincidentally at the same time the Kim-Keehn duo took office. In contrast, he made hardly a peep about the station under the previous two city councils.

If Keehn and Kim are re-elected, Moore only needs one more vote to move forward on the public safety facility he longs for. Undoubtedly, that vote would rest on the shoulders of Skip Scirocco, McTygue’s Republican challenger, who worked out of the police station as the city dog catcher for more than three decades. Were either Boyd or McTygue sitting on the city council come January, chances are pretty good the concept of a police station would at least go back to the financing stages.

This is all aside from the fact that governmentally appointed police chiefs generally avoid politics like the plague. There is good reasons for leaving political maneuvering up to police unions, rather than the chiefs themselves. After all, there’s a fine line when it comes to what can and cannot be considered bias and intimidation by such an official, who quite literally has the law at his beck and call.