i-Saratoga

Common Sense

2010-05-04T08:53:00.000-07:00

Common sense suggests that pounding back five or six car bombs, a dozen pints and a few shots of Irish whiskey in a sitting isn’t the best idea after the witching hour. Common sense suggests getting plastered and pounding on someone’s face isn’t a good idea at any hour. Common sense suggest running someone down with your car at 4 a.m. isn’t even an idea one should entertain at all.

But common sense is not something that comes easy on Caroline Street. Not at noon on a Monday, not at midnight on a Saturday and certainly not at closing time, just a few hours before dawn. There are errors of judgment at all these hours of the day, and some of them have dreadful consequences: Just ask the family of Eddie Loomis.

Life on Caroline Street would be much simpler and safer if every drink served there was chased with a shot of common sense. There wouldn’t be bar-emptying brawls over a spilled slosh of beer. There wouldn’t be drivers climbing behind the wheel with the blood coursing through their veins registering at 1 proof. There wouldn’t be the needless tragedies that sporadically and spontaneously erupt amid the bar district, sometimes claiming the life or lives of the innocent.

True, a shot of common sense would do everyone a bit of good on those late-night sojourns downtown. Yet as we all know, there is no magical shot to give tipplers a lucid look at the big picture before they make their fateful choices. And there’s positively no legislation that will illicit this common sense, contrary to what an out-of-touch jack ass on the City Council might suggest.

Accounts Commissioner John Franck seems to think closing the bars down two hours earlier would somehow sprinkle the city bars with a magical fairy dust that would settle the unrest prompted by the late-night consumption of booze. In his myopic view, all the troublemakers are perched bar side and pounding drinks after 2 a.m., ready to start mayhem and wanton destruction throughout the city. More specifically, Franck seems to think these rabble-rousing drunks only imbibe between the day after Labor Day and the day before Memorial Day.

To put it kindly, Franck’s plan to close down bars two hours earlier in the “off-season” is an asinine proposal pitched by someone who probably couldn’t find Caroline Street without a road map. It smacks of someone who is dreadfully out of touch with the way the city operates after hours and feels the need to cater to tourists, not the people who power the very heart of downtown.

Of course, those who read this blog with any frequency realize there are few kind words here, so why put it nicely? Franck’s legislation isn’t worth the ink used to print the first letter of it. Hell, it’s not even worth the energy used to make a pixel illuminate on a computer or LCD screen. Just as an example of how incredibly stupid his legislation is, Franck himself points to the post-St. Patrick’s Day incident downtown that lead to the death of a city man this year as a motivating force behind the law. Of course it should be noted that Travis Carroll, the man now convicted of running down Ryan Rossley with his car, did so when he was allegedly sober as a church mouse.

Let’s play some revisionist history here for the accounts commissioner. Let’s say the bars closed at 2 a.m. Rossley and his mates decide to keep drinking at a city apartment downtown. Several hours later, they walk out onto the street and encounter Carroll. And the end is all too familiar.

Why stop there? Let’s take a look at Michael Arpey, the fellow who decided to drink all day and night on a Wednesday, then get behind the wheel and crash into a popular 17-year-old Saratoga High football player on his way home. What if the bars had closed two hours earlier then? Well for that would have chased Arpey out a bit earlier, right?

Wrong-o, Johnny boy. Tragically, Arpey sped out of Saratoga Springs shortly before 10 p.m. In fact, it’s safe to say there would be more fellows like Arpey hitting the sauce earlier and harder if Franck’s legislation is ratified.

To add even more stupidity to a mind-numbingly stupid legislation, Franck also notes that the bars would be permitted to stay open later on “special nights” like New Year’s Eve. Who knows? Maybe St. Patrick’s Day would be one of those “special nights.” After all, it makes sense to keep the bars open later on the nights when amateur 'two-beer-queers' are prone to over-indulging, right?

Strangely enough, none of the press given to this proposed law has included comment from the people most directly impacted by closing time: The Saratoga Springs Police. Franck claims he’s talked to plenty of officers and they all insist the time after 2 a.m. is “the worst.” Still, none of these cops have made their thoughts know during the lengthy public dialogue over this ill-conceived law, which is indeed odd.

Franck’s nanny legislation is yet another attempt at the council legislating what does or does not happen on Caroline Street and should be taken seriously by any business owner that doesn’t think a part-time commissioner has any right to dictate how they run their affairs. The discussion now seems oddly similar to the one that occurred about a decade ago, when a hell-bent jackass commissioner named Benton drove a knife into the heart of the Caroline Street Block Party. And there are plenty of people who are still sore about that sordid decision.

The bottom line is that no government can legislate common sense, and the resident of Saratoga Springs should make sure Franck understands this clearly. Aside from banning booze altogether, accidents and tragedies will still occur via the booze consumption in downtown. The best bet is to implore bar owners and servers to police their own patrons so that a hothead freak isn’t willingly given a half-bottle of hard liquor to fuel a festering rage. Hopefully the council realizes this when they mull this legislation tonight in City Hall. Hopefully they also understand that boozers vote, even if they've been up all night drinking.

At a medium pace

2010-02-09T07:18:00.000-08:00

Nobody likes a parking meter. In fact, the parking meter could very well be one of the most loathed inhabitants of the urban jungle, second only to the overzealous parking cop. Business owners say they scare customers away to the free fields of parking at nearby shopping plazas. And the customers often view them as yet another tithe they are forced to pay on their way to being fleeced by a tourist trap.

Indeed, parking meters stir all kinds of ire among the public. Some see damaging them as a suitable way to strike out against a taxing authority –or authority in general. Others see them as a roadside treasure trove to be smashed, bashed, hacked, sawed or otherwise defiled in a manner to rob the bevy of quarters. These are the types of things many parking authorities deal with in municipalities that have their motorists socialized into paying for their spot on the street.

Of course, Saratoga Springs is not one of those municipalities. The Spa City pulled out its meters decades ago in an attempt to make the downtown area more alluring. Ever since, parking has been a right for residents and visitors alike. Not a privilege that can be taxed, but an inalienable right.

This notion is one the City Council should understand as it moves forward with a plan to implement paid parking. Given the almost-certain-to-grow $1.35 million budget deficit, paid parking is pretty much imminent. Layoffs didn’t seem to save much money and the city’s stalled negotiations with the unions don’t appear to be yielding any forthcoming savings.

But if it’s between raising property taxes and billing the city’s visitors, most residents would choose the latter. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a happy medium between implementing paid parking and keeping other spaces free for the taking.

For example, the easiest plan to start charging for spaces is to put barricades up at all the two municipally-owned parking decks. Generally speaking, motorists almost assume they’re going to pay for a spot in such lots. After all, there needs to be some revenue coming in to care for them in the event their concrete starts crumbling.

Moreover, the parking garages shield vehicles from the elements, which can be a real bonus in bad weather. Certainly, there will be some people pissed off by paid parking no matter how it is implemented; count downtown workers among this group. However, charging for the municipal decks while leaving the rest of the business district alone would be one way of striking a happy medium with ardent paid parking opponents, such as the Downtown Business Association.

Will this bring in enough revenue to balance the city budget? Probably not. And as Albany has demonstrated, paid parking can be a bit of a disaster when the wrong folks are enforcing it. The last think Saratoga Springs needs is a new entitlement program that allows the well-connected to flout the law.

But asking people to pay for the garages is a start, and not one that’s a hard-and-fast screwing like nailing in meters in front of every business downtown. Let’s call it a trial balloon. On the plus side, maybe paid parking will convince a few of the city’s laziest commuters to walk a few blocks to work instead of hopping into the car.

How DARE they?

2010-01-22T10:27:00.000-08:00

With wounds still fresh from the New Year’s Day layoffs and city officials still grumbling about potential budget cuts, first-year Police Chief Chris Cole played the DARE card. That being, he defunded the city’s “drug abuse resistance education” program, much to the dismay of the few folks in prevention that still think this Reagan-era relic is an effective weapon to use against the so-called War on Drugs.

The city’s DARE program was instituted more than two decades ago and has trained scores of officers to teach children how to stay off dope. For a while, the Spa City Police actually hosted DARE training seminars and were considered a leading agency in helping to proliferate the program.

“The DARE program has been singularly successful in Saratoga because of the personal quality and integrity of the officers who teach and interact with the students," Maureen Cary, of the Saratoga Partnership for Prevention, lamented to the Times Union Thursday.

Yet after years of brainwashing and billions worth of tax-dollar funding –estimated between $1.04 and $1.34 billion annually across the United States –DARE never seemed to live up to its reputation of preventing drug abuse. Kids kept smoking or snorting, dealers kept dealing and cops kept busting. By 2001, even the U.S. Surgeon General was questioning the program’s effectiveness. Six years later the Association of Professional Psychologists even went as far to say DARE programs actually increase the likelihood of children falling into drug habits.

In Saratoga Springs, the city continues to graduate high school seniors who go on to lead fruitful lives of drug smoking and binge drinking. Some of them come around from their substance-induced haze and go onto lead productive lives. Others succumb to their vices and follow the path to its end. This happens whether or not there’s a cop there telling them that it’s OK to not be one of the ‘cool kids’ smoking grass in between lunch period and class; it’s fine to avoid the weekend keggers or friend who passes a 16 oz. Sprite bottle half-filled with mom’s Smiranoff.

Still, municipalities continue to funnel funding into DARE programs. In specific, this means paying cops’ overtime, mileage and travel expenses for attending DARE seminars and assorted other informational sessions for a program that has never been determined to be effective. And the funding often means spending public safety dollars to keep a cop in a classroom instead of out on the street, as Cole proved by sending the Spa City’s DARE officer back onto the beat.

Like many feel-good programs, DARE is able to withstand the omnipresent scepter of budget cuts because it has withstood the test of time; it is etched into our collective memory as something that is needed to prevent the youth twisting up a fatty with pages ripped out of the Dr. Seuss book tucked in their Elmo book bag. Cutting DARE is a political hot-button and one that social conservatives love to flout as an indicator of a society that is increasingly morally corrupt.

And that is evidenced by the indignation posted by the Saratogian’s online readers. These folks seem to think their anecdotal evidence about the DARE program –that junior didn’t take up manufacturing crystal meth in the basement of their East Side colonial –is enough to warrant keeping a full-time officer in a classroom telling kids to forgo their natural impulses to try something different. Not that any of these kids don’t already get this message from health class, public service announcements, sports team code-of-conduct pledges, persistent visits from Mothers Against Drunk Driving or other organizations, et cetera.

Even if DARE did prove to be somewhat effect, there simply isn’t enough cash lying around to keep a program going in Saratoga Springs. It’s something former Police Chief Ed Moore might have thought about last year or even the year before when he was crafting a department budget way beyond the means set out by the City Council. These are the exact programs that could have been trimmed to prevent the layoffs that occurred, if in fact there were any once the dust finally settles.

You can make a difference

2010-01-19T11:09:00.000-08:00

As you read this, people are dying in Haiti. They’re starving. They’re sick. They’re scared. And that was before a 7-magnitude earthquake ripped through the capital of Port-au-Prince.

This poverty-stricken Caribbean nation was in bad shape long before concrete and timbers started raining down on them. Years of inept leadership left them with a nation mired in abject poverty. With exception to a very few corrupt despots, this is a population entirely bereft of even a modicum of prosperity.

And that’s exactly why you should consider giving money to the legal relief fund of former state Sen. Joe Bruno. He was there in our time of need, now we need to be there in his. For a measly $1,000 –less than the monthly lease payment on a 2009 H2 –you can buy a ticket to Hollywood Joe’s fundraiser at the Desmond in Colonie and help fund the best legal defense team money can buy.

See, unlike the Haitians, Bruno isn’t sick or starving, and he certainly didn’t seem scared when a trial jury found him guilty of federal corruption charges last month. And that’s exactly why affluent New Yorkers need to help him out. In short, this is a man who knows prosperity and can’t afford to lose it. He’s got plenty of fight left, and he plans to use every last bit of it to polish his larger-than-life image.

In contrast, the starving Haitian who spent three days buried beneath the ruble of a poverty-stricken nation’s ruined capital is probably going to die anyway. Even if he or she beats the odds and survives the aftermath of the quake thanks to a modest donation, that person will then need to subsist on the standard $2 the average Haitian earns per day.

Besides, they’ll likely fall prey to the lawlessness that will inevitably descend upon the country once the world stops paying attention to it in a few weeks and all those earnestly given dollars donated to the so-called cause will be lost in an anonymous grave. Or even worse, the aforementioned individual will lash some sub-standards rafts together and then join several dozen friends on a 700-mile sojourn across the Atlantic to Miami. Under these circumstances, it’s highly probable those donated dollars will end up feeding sharks, which is hardly the intended purpose, right?

Then there’s Joe. True, he’s already 80 years old. But he’s got lots of life to live, and it’s unlikely he’ll be able to do that living behind the confining bars of a federal penitentiary. Even worse yet, the taxpayers will have to pay for Bruno’s stay at Club Fed, which simply adds insult to injury from a fiscal perspective.

Of course, there are some wingnuts out there who think it’s not right for the disgraced senator to be soliciting money for his legal defense, which has cost $742,000 over the last six months and left the Committee to Re-Elect Senator Bruno fund more than $1,000 in the rears. These stinking hippies somehow think it’s wrong for multimillionaires like Nigro Company President John Nigro and Albany Med CEO James Barba to throw a lavish shindig aimed at raising money for a lawmaker who many view as the epitome of what is wrong with the system. Talk about wet rags.

Update: The Times Union reports a veritable who's who of shameless...um...philanthropists were among "the notable attendees" at Bruno's bash, including "banker Daniel J. Hogarty Jr.; lobbyists James Crane and James Featherstonhaugh, who was the first witness called by the government at Bruno's trial; lobbyist David Dudley, a former Rensselaer County Republican chairman and former Senate counsel to Bruno; Rensselaer County Clerk Frank Merola; and ex- state Sen. Mike Hoblock...Robert Mujica, a Senate budget specialist; former Senate counsel Michael Avella; Abe Lackman, an ex-state Senate finance secretary under Bruno; state Senate GOP spokesman John McArdle; ex-Senate secretary Steve Boggess and Jack Casey, a Senate lawyer." The fundraiser was also attended by Price Chopper President Neil Golub, who for some reason entered through a side door. Fancy that.

Seriously though, Bruno and his supporters have a lot of chutzpa to carry on this fiasco in wake of the most deadly natural disaster this hemisphere has seen in modern history. To say it's in poor taste to host such an event is sort of like saying it’s in poor taste to piss on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier during a Veteran’s Day observance.

Were Bruno and his followers to have even a teaspoon of tact, they’d do an about-face during this event and donate all the proceeds to the relief effort. The gesture would be both a show of class and a display of humility amid a tragedy that has wrought untold misery on our continent. Or better yet, this whole crew of plutocrats could forgo the fundraiser’s merriment, hop aboard one of their jump jets and go lend a hand down there. After all, sometimes a helping hand is worth more than a donated dollar.

Enveloped

2009-12-18T10:11:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-09T10:11:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-04T09:58:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-03T11:29:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-03T09:03:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-31T11:24:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-21T09:39:00.000-07:00

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...

Havin' a bad day

2009-10-16T08:54:00.000-07:00

Ron Kim should do himself a favor and leave Friday’s paper on the front stoop; maybe even refrain from turning on the television, answering the phone or logging onto the Internet for a while. In fact, the best thing for him to do at this point is to stay in bed with the covers pulled over his head; or tuck into a Snuggie with a good trash novel, 'cause he's havin' a bad day.

After nearly four years of abject neglect, Ron Kim's failure in office is finally starting to bite him on the ass. Last week, he was told his overspending and the city’s budget deficit is prompting more than a dozen layoffs in his department. This week, he learned that his politicking with the Police Department’s lack of a ladies room was going to cost the city $80,000 –twice what the city had initially expected. And then just when things looked like they were settling down, Kim caught word of a the legal proceeding filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union over the city's failure to release the police department’s Taser usage records.

Thursday's host of surprises started off with word of the settlement, ending the well-documented debacle over the female bathrooms; one Kim was keenly aware of when he first came to office in 2005. In fact, it was well enough known that the city even allocated money to correct the situation long before the female officers ever filed suit. But the police brass –namely Chief Ed Moore –wasn’t interested in correcting the problem because they were busy stumping for a palatial Public Safety compound. And they had support from Ron Kim, who decided to join the rally cry for a new station instead of monitoring the performance of his department.

Editor’s note: As the Saratogian reporter asserts in the comments section, this might not be true. Andrew Bernstein says Moore did try to rectify the situation by converting a jail cell into a female locker. He was allegedly blocked by the dynamic duo of Curley and Dreyer. There is no written confirmation of this in published accounts, but Bernstein is a fairly straight-forward reporter, so we'll take his word for it.

Given the facts, the state Human Rights Division’s doubling of the award should come as no surprise. After all, it’s hard to sympathize with a city police department that built its first employee ladies room nearly four decades after hiring its first female officer. In truth, it’s a miracle that the city escaped the whole case with a paltry $80,000 fine.

As could be expected, Kim tried to shift the blame for his own mismanagement onto other people and entities. He argued the fine wouldn’t have been nearly as steep had the city simply built a new station. This assertion was promptly shot out of the sky by division spokesman Jim Mulvaney.

“If there is a continued problem, we assume there will be a subsequent complaint,” he told the Daily Gazette Thursday.

Kim might be able to avoid much flack from the Taser action –at least among those voters with memory issues. Saratoga Springs Police received the electric “nonlethal” weapons last year under Kim’s stewardship, and took no time in putting them to use. By some accounts, the weapons have electrified the nightlife on Caroline Street; something that subsequently caught the attention of the NYCLU.

At this point, it should be noted that the NYCLU isn’t against the use of Tasers, per se. Instead, the organization wants officers to use them under circumstances when they would use lethal force. They have targeted several Taser-happy departments in the Capital Region, including the Guilderland and Glens Falls police; both of whom have some pretty hellacious tales about zapping unarmed and non-violent suspects. In other words, including the Spa City cops with these departments is not a vote of confidence for them or their Taser policy.

The legal proceeding is also a blow to one of Ron Kim’s main campaign slogans: Open Government. Admittedly, the Taser records were not released by long-time Assistant City Attorney Tony Izzo under the advice of Chief Moore. But Kim, as it happens, was the only city commissioner aware of the NYCLU’s request under the state’s Freedom of Information Law.

Oddly enough, Moore’s reasoning for not releasing the Taser records is almost identical as the reason Ron Kim gave for not releasing the police department’s manual or contract to the Saratogian in June: Such documents could jeopardize the department’s safety.

“They constitute intra-agency materials that are exempt from the Public Officer’s Law,” he told the Saratogian Thursday. “Those records are also exempt under that law as they could endanger the life and safety of persons if disclosed.”

Well how about that? The so-called “open government” candidate for mayor is openly allowing a subordinate and the largest department he presides over to duck into the shadows so they can avoid public scrutiny.

These are messages that voters should keep in mind as they make their choice for mayor next month. Kim’s tenure in office would be wrongly characterized as being rife with mismanagement. After all, you have to try to manage something in order to fail at doing it. Kim’s nearly four years in office have been marked by his refusal to uphold a single responsibility of the public safety commissioner. And while some would argue the city couldn’t do much worse by re-electing Mayor Scott Johnson, Kim seems destined to prove them wrong.

The genesis of a disaster

2009-10-08T11:03:00.000-07:00

Not many people wake up in the morning saying, ‘hmm…I think I’ll pick up recreational heroin use.’ Most people have seen the afterschool specials and public service announcements. Others have witnessed the rigors of intravenous drug use first hand through an afflicted associate or family member; in a clinic or shelter. The sum total of this perception is enough to sway most rational people away from indulging in the needle.

The problem comes when someone busts out a bindle at a party and says ‘hey, why not?’ Shower some booze and some other inhibitors on the situation and you’ve got the genesis of a disaster. First it’s a line. Then it’s free-basing. Next thing you know, the needle is plunged into the arm and there’s a long perilous slide to drug rehab or the grave.

Strangely enough, the city leaders were faced with the proverbial bag of smack back in 2006, during the first 100 days of the mayoral administration of Valerie Keehn, as one poster on the Saratogian’s City Desk blog recently recounted –albeit through a memory liberally tinted with hues of rose. At the time, the funding was only going to be afforded the poorest areas hosting racinos.

The legislation raised eyebrows among the Spa City’s legislative delegation in Albany, but not enough for them to suggest they take a cut for Saratoga Springs. At the time, the city was booming and hardly anyone could envision it falling into a budget hole; everyone except. Finance Commissioner Matt McCabe. He saw a multi-million dollar gap forming in the middle of the city budget and knew there was no way to cover it up with the numbers he was juggling. The widening hole prompted him to suggest a quick fix instead of a long term solution.

At first, he suggested the city levy money on NYRA. But after he learned of the pot being provided to Yonkers through the Pataki Administration’s 2006 budget –at the behest Republican Mayor Phil Amicone –he quickly focused on securing a pot for Saratoga. Keehn and Public Safety Commissioner Ron Kim jumped aboard the effort and the three decided to lobby for it in Albany.

The effort would have been roundly dismissed by the Republican-dominated Legislature were it not for the election of 2005. Party leaders –Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno in specific –were still stunned by the crushing defeat they witnessed at the hands of the Democrats in the one-time Republican stronghold of Saratoga Springs. And they were facing a tough re-election of then U.S. Rep. John Sweeney, an oily fellow who was proving to be increasingly unelectable. They knew they needed help and were searching for any feasible way to curry favor in the city. So they offered the city a needle.

Drunk on the euphoria of being able to close a crushing budget deficit, the city leaders graciously accepted. They plunged the fucker deep into the city’s funding stream and gave the depressor a push. Suddenly, the city’s problems disappeared. Keehn later credited Shawn Thompson, a ranking legislative aid in the state Senate minority, for alerting her of the funding.

Of course the fix was temporary. As anyone with a working knowledge of hard drug use could tell you, ‘H’ doesn’t take away the problems. In fact, it usually makes them worse. But for a few glorious moments, they don’t seem that bad.

Those glorious moments came to an end for Saratoga Springs at the inauguration of Eliot Spitzer. The downstate Democrat had no love for the city or for upstate New York, and he made that know during his first spats with upstate legislators. One of them happened to be Republican Assemblyman Jim Tedisco, who was at odds with the governor over ethics reform

“Listen, I'm a fucking steamroller, and I'll roll over you and anybody else,” Spitzer reportedly told Tedisco during a cell phone conversation.

The rolling came when Spitzer targeted Tedisco’s district for cuts in his 2008 budget. His other target just happened to be Bruno. Spitzer’s distaste for these legislators manifested itself in the elimination of the VLT funding. The aid was an easy target in the shimmering brazen glow emanating from Saratoga Springs. The funding itself was a throwback to the corrupt Pataki Administration, and a simple walk down the neatly manicured streets of the Spa City allayed any real notion that it deserved such a massive chunk of the state education fund to offset its spending.

The funding would have disappeared in 2007, had it not been for a curiously vitriolic election year in Saratoga Springs. The giant schism among the city Democrats threatened the re-election hopes of Keehn, who was well aware of her tenuous situation as the fall came. In a last ditch effort to win over the electorate, Keehn called in a favor at the state level. And it was an easy one to call in, too.

Thompson was powerplaying Keehn’s re-election while simultaneously searching for ways to gain control of the senate for the Democrats. Spitzer was suffering his first bouts with unpopularity. Bruno was becoming the focus of a federal investigation. All these players had to do to look good was restore the city’s funding. Provide one more needle pinch and then boast about it all the way to the polls.

Again, it worked, but only partially this time. The funding was enough to stave off a massive budget deficit, but not enough to prevent the Keehn Administration from imploding. Five months later, Spitzer was caught with a hooker, ushering in the era of David Paterson, a downstate Democrat with even less interest in toiling in upstate affairs.

Three months after Spitzer’s fall, Bruno resigned his senate leadership and his seat. He was replaced as majority leader by Dean Skelos, who also had no vested interest in any of the territory north of the Tapan Zee Bridge. There was some hope for upstate when Thompson’s Democrats took over the Senate. But that quickly evaporated when Malcom Smith was appointed majority leader.

Paterson almost immediately ripped the VLT funding out of the budget, citing the state’s own fiscal crunch. The message to rich cities –or rather upstate’s only rich city –was clear: Cut your finances and live lean. Meanwhile in the Legislature, there was no message to be heard at all. The screams and shouts from Saratoga Spring were falling on deaf ears.

Some argue the situation as it played out last year would have differed had Keehn been re-elected, or if the City Council was again dominated by Democrats. But this is all palaver proffered by political hacks fishing for suckers among the electorate. The message from Albany is clear regarding the VLT aid: Not now, not tomorrow; never again. And rightfully so, because the whole purpose of having these ghastly machines in our community is to support education, not bloated municipal budgets.

It’s time to send the city to rehab. And that starts with cutting spending. There’s no way to maintain the level of expenditures and the ceaseless increases in spending. Sure, there are other revenue streams that could be secured –word is the feds are looking for a new Yucca Mountain –but finding them is not a long-term or viable solution. It’s kind of like Methadone: Sure it works for a little while. But eventually, you’ve got to kick the habit.

The honeymoon is over

2009-10-06T08:32:00.000-07:00

City Democrats expecting a lasting detente between the two rival factions of their party can better think again. Roughly four months after the new media regaled in a new and improved party with a unified message, all indications are pointing to the fact that the two factions that bitterly fought through elections in 2007 and 2008 are back at it again.

This week, two-time incumbent Accounts Commissioner John Franck is expected to support a bipartisan budget-cutting initiative calling for up to 40 layoffs in city’s workforce, according to source. It’s not clear where the layoffs will be targeted, but one could assume they’ll be largely split between the departments of Public Works and Public Safety –the city’s largest employers.

The layoffs also allegedly have the blessing of Mayor Scott Johnson and Finance Commissioner Ken Ivins, according to sources. Conspicuously absent from this list of supporters are the names of Republican Skip Scirocco, the DPW chief, and Democrat Ron Kim, the PBA lapdog.

That’s because neither commissioner would dare to support layoffs when both came to power thanks to the city’s unions. As some may recall, Scirocco was ushered into office with an endorsement from the DPW union. And Kim was among a vocal minority of city officials clamoring to bond a combined police and courts building that cost in excess of $20 million in its first incarnation. Not to mention, supporting the city’s unions has been the wholehearted mantra of the Democratic Committee, which is now controlled by the quixotic Democrats for Change, of which Kim is a card-carrying member.

The impending call for job cuts also follows the reemergence of SUCCESS –Saratogians United to Continue the Charter Essential to Sustain Our Success –or the anti-charter revision group that handily defeated former Mayor Valerie Keehn’s rush to city’s form of government. The group cropped back up late last month after a summer-long campaign to revisit charter revision that was led by the Democrats for Change splinter and their allies.

Interestingly enough, the group conducted a forum last week featuring Frank, Johnson, and Ivins, along with City Council candidates Richard Wirth and Ed Miller; all people who either are or were against changing the charter in the past. Conspicuously absent from this lot are Scirocco and all the Democratic candidates; each hand-picked for their run by the Democrats for Change. All four candidates were invited to participate in a forum this week. Not surprisingly, the forum was cancelled.

On a side note, some over at anti-revisionist camp should really do some work on their acronym. But apparently, ‘SUCCESOS’ doesn’t really have the same ring to it. Or does it? Maybe the Latinos would pick up on it if they could just drop a 'c' from it. But why digress?

At face value, this divergence of opinion between Franck and the DFC zealots might not seem like much of an issue. But when taken into context of the looming layoff proposal, it appears as though the battle line was drawn. And it’s one that cuts through the center of the Democratic Party –albeit missing the splinter faction that has hijacked the city’s committee.

Needless to say, any sort of honeymoon that was conjured by the committee last summer is clearly over. Of course, some would argue there never really was any honeymoon between the warring factions of the Spa City Democrats. Rather, an allegiance of convenience that was wryly made by Franck to ensure the committee wouldn’t wage a costly primary against him in September and broken the exact moment the primaries passed.

And rightfully so. With his election all but guaranteed, Franck has no vested interest in befriending the Democrats for Change, which at best will be able to secure a simple majority on the council. More likely, however, the DFC will get their asses handed to them in a sling. They’ve harvested a lack-luster panel of neophyte candidates from their patronage tree and are leading a ticket with a guy who is roundly considered the most inept, politically driven person on the city council. Couple this with the fact that the city electorate is still weighted toward the GOP and you have what could amount to a crushing defeat for this misanthropic clan.

If the DFC loses with all three of their candidates, they will at last be flushed from the halls of city government. Some might hope to appeal to Scirocco, who was ushered into power with their votes. But the chance of a card-carrying Republican like Scirocco extending any sort of favor to the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party is about as likely as that fat drug-sucking bastard Limbaugh going on Weightwatchers and enrolling as a Socialist. For Franck, this is all the more reason to jettison the seriously misguided committee, even if it doesn’t collapse under the bluster of its own hot air.

Canoodling voters

2009-10-02T08:49:00.000-07:00

To paraphrase the words of Winston Churchill, those who are unable to learn from history are destined to repeat it. Or applying this theory to the city’s Public Safety commissioner’s race, those who can’t remember what they read in the past are destined to elect another partisan hack into office.

Looking back on what he wrote several years, it’s hard to believe that lame duck Commissioner Ron Kim is running for anything other than angry mob chasing him out of City Hall. He was elected in 2005 on a platform that turned out to be wholly different from the actions he took in office over the past four years. In fact, one is left wondering exactly what Ron Kim has done over the past four years when considering the statements he made before winning his first term in office.

And that’s the beauty of hollow campaign promises: They always seem to make it into print somehow. In Kim’s case, they made it to the Saratogian in the form of a point-by-point campaign letter promising the electorate he would right the wrongs wrought by his predecessor.

Probably the most egregious example of Kim’s failure to live up to his promises was his insistence that his office didn’t need a deputy’s position. In a July letter published in the Saratogian, he assured he would “redefine” the deputy’s roll or even “eliminate it altogether.” He also claimed he would examine the position with “input from critical decision-makers” to see how it would best serve the public’s interest.

Less than a month after taking office in 2006, Kim basically flushed this promise down the toilet. Instead of disbanding the deputy’s position, he asked the City Council to grant him a second one. Though he characterized the request as one made out of necessity, he made it to create a patronage position for Eileen Finneran, who headed the successful mayoral run of Valerie Keehn. Naturally, the more shrewd members of the council saw through this political hijinx like granny’s underwear and told Kim to stuff it.

That didn’t stop Kim from canning Dudla and importing Finneran two years later. Since that time, she has basically used the office as a way to further her own political goals. Those goals certainly didn’t include lowering the department’s budget expenditures or overtime, which has all exploded under Kim’s so-called leadership.

But let’s continue with his 2005 promises, many of which never included anything to do with the public safety operations in the city. For instance, he called to begin the charter review process and pledged to adopt “strong language that will forever protect this city's greenbelt from overdevelopment.” He also pledged to affect legislative changes that would “address the need for affordable housing” in the city. Not surprisingly, he failed in both cases.

Kim’s campaign diatribe does swing back to public safety issues briefly in the missive when he discussed the need to curb truck traffic rumbling through the city’s west side. Yet as of today, he hasn’t managed any of the enforcement goals he stumped on four years ago.

All this may sound like ancient history to the more fickle of voters. But when taken in context of Kevin Conolly’s recent letter to the Saratogian, Kim’s fallacies seem all the more pertinent. Connolly, who some may recall, is an ardent Kim and “Democrats for Change flunky who likes to take to the pen and rattle out missives to Lake Avenue. Last week, he authored his campaign promises, which sound ironically similar to those made by Kim four years ago.

In his opening statements, Connolly pledges his allegiance to the taxpayers, claiming “[t]he management of the Department of Public Safety is a public trust.” Yet nowhere in his screed does he mention the fact that police overtime and departmental costs exploded under his predecessor. Instead, he makes hollow references to “providing optimal service at a reasonable cost” without ever qualifying how he intends to do this. Quick FYI Kevin: The term ‘reasonable cost’ does not come without either scrapping plans for a new public safety facility or drastically reducing departmental overtime. Choose one or the other or both. Otherwise, your promise is meaningless and hollow.

Then, Connolly laments about the now-under-construction south-side rec center and how horrible a decision it was to build it. Like Kim’s letter four years ago, he delves into issues that he has no control over and will have little, if any, impact on his tenure in office. Even more laughably, he pledges he’ll spearhead an effort to sell the new building –to the YMCA nonetheless –even though such cause isn’t even remotely in the purview of his office. Another quick FYI Kevin: The city’s Recreation Department has nothing to do with public safety or the Public Safety commissioner’s duties. Do yourself a favor and learn a bit about the governmental position your seeking to occupy.

All these complaints may sound petty, but they’re issues that show a degree of ineptitude that will make this candidate every bit as ineffective as the current one. Connolly’s promises ring with the same fallacious tone that Kim’s did four years ago. Only this election season, voters can look back on history and see them for what they’re worth.

Deputize me

2009-09-30T10:01:00.000-07:00

Despite the waning early fall temperatures, there seems to be a warm front blowing in. And a lot of the hot air seems to be derived from pre-election speculation over the names being floated for the city’s five deputy positions. Namely, this talk has focused on the future deputy mayor and the future deputy Public Works commissioner.

In the race for Public Works, some Web denizens have argued electing Eddie “The Hotdog Guy” Miller would usher in a new reign for the ever-polarizing Tom McTygue. There’s been little doubt about the friendship between these two men –both former horse trainers –and it has fueled rumors that Miller’s run could be backdoor way for McTygue to once again insert himself into the forefront of city politics.

Similar is the talk following soon-to-be former Public Safety Commissioner Ron Kim’s peculiar run for mayor. The term ‘peculiar’ is used here because Kim has decided against doing much campaigning. That’s perhaps because he has literally has no platform to run on, aside from being an council obstructionist and a shill for the city’s all-powerful police union –a group that recently formed a political action committee. Now Kim is rumored to be considering former mayor and political lighting rod Valerie Keehn as his deputy.

Now, voters should be cautioned that both these rumors are far from credible. In fact, they’re both rather incredible considering the voters showed both of these political hacks to the door not much more than two years ago.

Tom McTygue, while not entirely irrelevant in city politics, is no longer a stakeholder in city affairs because he doesn’t own property in Saratoga Springs. His legacy remains marred by stories of corruption and favoritism; tales that haven’t abated in his absence. Miller choosing McTygue as his deputy before the election would be almost as egregious as him selecting the deposed DPW commish after a victory in November.

Likewise, Kim tabbing Keehn as a running mate prior to the election would be enough to get him laughed off the ballot. And Kim even contemplating such a deputy selection is enough to convince some that he’s more deserving of a hot tar bath with some feather than a seat guiding the city into the future.

Interestingly enough, Kim and Miller victories followed by the aforementioned deputy appointments could make city council meetings a bit more interesting to watch. Even riding in the so-called back seat of the deputy position, the death stares between McTygue and Keehn would be enough for Time Warner to sell pay-per-view tickets. Can you say revenue idea?

But seriously, the number-one problem facing the Spa City’s bizarre commissioner-style of government is that voters are never sure who they’re electing into office. Many Democratic-leaning voters pulled the lever for Kim, thinking they’d be re-electing his staff. Instead, they ended up prolonging the administration of Eileen Finneran, Keehn’s former deputy mayor and arguably the one who was calling the shots behind the scenes in her failed administration.

In contrast, Skip Scirocco made it quite known that Pat Design, a former deputy under McTygue, would be his pick for the ‘number two’ position during his 2007 campaign for Public Works Commissioner. No doubt, this was a politically attractive selection because Design carried clout among a number of DPW workers; namely the more moderate ones not dynamically opposed to McTygue.

But regardless of his reasons for selecting a running mate, Scirocco did the right thing: He was honest about his choice to run his department’s day-to-day operations. And the other candidates could learn a thing or two from his example, even if it was one made with political intent.

All candidates running for council should publically disclose their deputies long before November. Their choice shouldn’t be a surprise sprung on the public as the New Year dawns. This is called full disclosure, and aside from changing the city charter, it’s about as close to accountability as a candidate can offer the public.

Yet none of them do. Instead, they wait for the election to shake out and then chose candidates from a pool of campaign workers or political insiders. These choices are often made on a basis of who knocked on the most doors during the campaign; or even worse, who has the most political clout with a given campaign.

Speaking of accountability, how come reporters never ask the commissioner candidates who their choice for deputy would be? How come this is a question that the media typically glosses over both before and after the election? Most times, the selection of the deputy commissioners is one that is relegated to briefs or short, back-page articles chucked into the void of news created by December’s holiday laundry list. So here’s a challenge to all of you reporters out there: Ask who these people plan to chose as their Deputy Dawg, and don’t take “I don’t know” for an answer. If they don’t know at this point, they are either lying or they don’t belong in office.

Dog Eaters

2009-09-11T09:51:00.000-07:00

Anyone in politics will tell you, it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and if you’re not thick-skinned, you’re liable to become the next dog on the menu.

So it came as a mild surprise last month when Ron Kim, the city’s Public Safety Commissioner and Democratic mayoral candidate, began flapping his gums to the media over some derogatory remarks posted on Saratogian’s Web site over the past six months or so. He alleged the comments –including one referring to him as “Kim Jong Il” –were racist in nature and aimed at belittling the first-generation Korean-American’s heritage.

Kim took the opportunity last month to call for a wholesale restructuring of the newspaper’s online posting policy so that comments –such as one allegedly calling him a “dog-eater” –would be snared by the editors or a filter of some sort. As bizarre as his reaction might have appeared to those unacquainted with the Public Safety commish, they were right in tune with Kim’s overall erratic behavior during his two terms in office.

After all, this was the same guy who angrily stood up during a City Council meeting, packed up his belongings in a fury and stormed out the exit. And this is the same fellow who called a media conference to unveil the so-called “failure-o-meter,” a placard showing the number of day since the council “failure” to bond money for a new public safety castle; to date, no one is quite sure whatever happened to the taxpayer-funded failure-o-meter after it “went on tour” through the city. This is also the guy who brazenly lied to the media when he falsely claimed he was being forced to lay-off at least 17 cops, when he was really asked to trim his budget just like every other city department.

No, the quirky cry of racism from Kim in mid-August didn’t seem too far out of his character. Some might even argue that the overall weirdness fit right in with his modus operandi: Get your name in the paper for good or for bad.

But there were and continue to be some oddities about the whole affair. First of all, there’s a question of whether the comments left on the Saratogian’s Web site were directed as slurs against Kim’s heritage, or whether they were simply off-color remarks about his mannerism, which in fact do conjure images of a power-drunk demented dictator, madly shouting demands into a crowd.

Kim answered these questions by pointing to remarks either alleging he eats dogs or referring to him as a dog-eater. Now, this term is a sort of mid-level slur that took root during the post World War II era, long before the age of information and during a time when it was somewhat fashionable to belittle Asiatic people.

But these days, the term ‘dog eater’ has quite a different meaning. In fact, one of the more widely recognized Asians in popular culture these days is sometimes referred to as a “dog-eater.” Of course, this sort of term self-attributes itself when you’re able to cram 59 hotdogs in your face in under 12 minutes. It should also be noted that the term didn’t really ruffle feathers when the BBC used it in a headline, or a comic book writer of Asian descent used it in a title, and so on and so forth.

Nevertheless, Kim took offense to it and rightfully so, some online posters have argued. But the real question remains: How did Kim find out about the so-called slurs and why did it take him so long to respond to them? And why didn’t he simply report the comments as abusive when to the paper’s Web administration?

Well, the answers to these questions are starting to become clearer as the Kim Campaign continues to fuel the story. All four daily newspapers were more than willing to let the story drop after the first report, seeing as though none of them really seemed to give it much credence to begin with. Kamp Kim, however, kept hammering the Internet with it.

First, there was a clap-trap entry by Kim ally Lew Benton on the Times Union blog, claiming the Saratogian’s condoning of blatantly racist remarks as being parallel to instances where black and Jewish residents were barred from Spa City establishments during the late 19th and early 20th century. Then this week, a Los Angeles-based immigration reform group curiously tossed out a news release to the Saratogian, decrying the paper allowing such remarks to be posted –roughly a month after they had already been removed from the Web site.

Kim claims he never alerted the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium about the issue, but suggested maybe his brother did. After all, he does live in California, the commissioner admitted. He also suggested the issue might have been dredged up by conservative radio talk shows that discussed his plight –even though he never identified any particular one.

But the most telling comments to the Saratogian were the ones where he claimed he never even read the hurtful comments. As the paper paraphrased, Kim “does not typically read comments left on blogs and other online forums, because he prefers not to think about what is being said about him behind his back.” Instead, he was alerted by campaign members and urged to take action so that if his children ever wanted to get into politics, they wouldn’t have to face such outward bias.

“It’s just wrong,” he told the Saratogian in one of his classic disjointed statements. “My kids, if they were to run for office, shouldn’t not run because someone is going to call them up and call them a ‘dog-eater.’"

Say again? Was that a double negative? So, you’re bringing this up for your children’s future run in office? Are you sure you don’t mean your own run for office?

Simply put, this is a ploy to attract any attention to the Kim Campaign. The notion is that a candidate that blankets the airwaves, printing presses, online chat bases and lawns with his or her name will ultimately sway the most fickle of voters. In the process, if you can guile a nationally reputable organization into taking up your cause –maybe even finance your campaign –you’ll be able to outshout any of the negative publicity generated by the conquest for saturation coverage.

The problem is Kim has revealed himself for what he is: A vapid and hyper-reactive media whore whose campaign lacks the sort of momentum it needs to unseat an incumbent. Adding to this sad reality is that the incumbent –Republican Mayor Scott Johnson –isn’t even that popular right now. But at least he hasn’t issued half-crazed news releases calling for greater censorship of the media and free speech. Oddly enough, that’s something one might expect from a well-known dictator on the Korean peninsula

Saratoga burning

2009-09-09T10:18:00.000-07:00

Flames could consume the Saratoga Racecourse, the state Legislature could ban thoroughbred racing and one out of every three fans that attend the burned-out track could fall ill with atomic dysentery and the whole gig would still be a success in the minds of the New York Racing Association. With waning gate receipts and a declining handle, NYRA officials proclaimed the meet a booming success. Or rather a booming success compared to the gloomy forecast offered by the normally chipper leader of the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce in July.

“By any measure, the 2009 Saratoga meet was an overwhelming success,” NYRA President and CEO Charles “Chipper” Hayward told the Times Union, while sporting his best poker face.

The 2009 meet was an afterthought the week after the track opened. Despite some cheery early season anecdotal predictions from spectators divorced from reality, the lack of attendance at the track certainly didn’t translate into a more bustling downtown. Those who decided to forgo the $3 general admission price certainly didn’t take that scratch to the bars, restaurants and boutique businesses lining Broadway.

All season, downtown seemed to lack the social luster it normal glows with every time an estimated 40,000 addled revelers pile into the city proper. The scene didn’t seem as vibrant, the bars not as packed and the streets almost ghostly compared to peaks seen during the economic swell that encapsulated the region until last year.

Even with a precipitous decline in track attendance in 2008, few were willing to suggest that the lavish, faux-Manhattan attitude in Saratoga Springs had finally bitten the city in its ass. The arrogant suggestion then was that the crashing national economy –the global worldwide recession –would never befall a gem like Saratoga. Many suffered bouts of sheer hubris and decided to blame the whole dismal meet on something that nobody could dispute: The weather.

But as some are realizing now, the weather is but a small factor in the overall equation that drives –or was driving –the Capital Region’s economic powerhouse. There were many other factors other than rain that have steered people away from downtown and the track that few like to contemplate and even fewer like to discuss openly in the media.

At the top of the list is the utter identity crisis that has struck the city when all of its lower and middle income neighborhoods were gentrified; when developers began building $350,000 homes in areas where there were once affordable homes. This massive overhaul of formerly modest-priced buildings resulted in a sudden influx of tax revenue for the city. But instead of saving this as a nest egg, city leaders instead used it as an excuse to begin spending like a trust fund baby who just nailed a trifecta.

Even four years ago, there was plenty of indication that the real estate bubble was at capacity in Saratoga. Yet a clan of greedy realtors instead decided to keep inflating the fucker. Others simply raped the system in any way they could muster, sucking vast tracts of cash out of the foundation that the whole bubble was built on in the first place.

The business community did its share too by raising the prices of food, booze and everything else downtown. Some did it to stave off the ever-increasing tax burden placed on them by a City Council and City School District thoroughly unwilling to craft budgets amenable to year-round residents. Others figured the sudden rise of multi-story condominiums meant the transition from faux-Manhattan to real Manhattan was only a few years away.

And now we’re seeing the results of this bungled experiment in city building. Seldom has there been a time when two downtown businesses have decided to file for Chapter 11 protection at the apex of the meet, and another on the outskirts being seized by the government for unpaid taxes. While most businesses interviewed in the prototypical “so how did the season go” stories published this week expressed optimism over their register receipts, others seemed a bit concerned about what the fall will bring.

Amazingly, there are still some who think the tenuous situation facing the Spa City is just fine; that the summer sales tax numbers will come in, and we’ll see that Saratoga Springs is indeed recession proof. Among them is Lew Benton, the city’s resident tree counter and patronage sponge, who is assured a nice bright future suckling up to a variety of publically funded retirement plans.

Not long ago, Benton used the auspices of the Albany Times Union’s failing exercise in community-driven blogging to claim the hubbub about the city’s declining fiscal conditions was nothing but politically-driven propaganda. Overall, the piece seems like a thinly veiled advocacy of the city’s decision to leave the county sales tax equation years ago. But Benton, who is among the decision makers in the recently hijacked Democratic Committee, must paint a not-so-bleak appearance of the city’s financial condition, lest he draw the booming chorus of voices that demanded the council curb spending.

Curbing spending these days is really the only way to prevent a sudden eye-popping boost in taxes, which is something that is all but assured anyway. And a boost in the levy will certainly doom plans for his long-sought-after public safety facility; the leading stump his candidate for mayor will stand on in the coming months.

Benton is among the string-pullers directing the otherwise vapid Ron Kim, a fellow who can barely form cogent sentences on his own. He’s hoping Kim can oust Republican Mayor Scott Johnson, while another disciple –Kevin Connolly –takes control of Kim’s abandoned seat at the head of Public Safety.

The frightening part of this scenario is that neither Kim nor Benton seem overly concerned about the danger signs that are starting to crop up in just about every sector of the city’s functioning: The gloomy track receipts, the closing businesses, the aborted building projects, the $3.5 million city deficient; hell, the number of wealthy residents under indictment for real estate fraud. In fact, Kim recently voted against the city’s modest capital budget because it didn’t include the money needed to build a public safety building nearly five times the size of the facility used today.

Hopefully, these stories are still fresh in voters’ minds as they head to the polls in November, lest we end up with a council inept in its ability to adapt to the changing times. Keep in mind: There was another gilded age when city leaders thought that nothing could go wrong.

Sober

2009-08-26T07:56:00.000-07:00

Amazingly, 25,000 people soberly packed into the Saratoga Performing Arts Center Tuesday evening, never once brushing elbows with one another. They left the drugs at home and avoided the beer tent. They didn’t bother to tailgate or get rowdy.

No, they just stood there watching the Boss, one gigantic, pulsing entity unified in their good behavior. No booze-fueled arguments, no drug-induced romps through the woods with a wayward park police officer in tow; no smashing, grabbing, raping, pillaging or other felonious behavior. In short, nothing happened among the tens of thousands of fans that poured through the park, perhaps even picking up their garbage –down to the last cigarette butt.

Why were these fans so well behaved? Well, because they’re flag-waving Americans, that’s why. They’re the people that make this country tick. They are the heartbeat of a generation. They know how to stand at attention, keep a clean blood stream and watch a musical legend with uninhibited vision.

Or perhaps that’s the image the media and authorities would portend.

Wednesday’s rags gushed about Bruce Springsteen’s concert in the park. They prattled on about how the Boss belted out his best at the amphitheater and how the crowd swooned. But they never mentioned anything about clouds of marijuana smoke wafting over the crowd, or garrulous drunks bellowing into the night. The idea is that none of this ever happened, because the Springsteen crowd is older and more mature.

In reality, there’s no way to make 25,000 people of any flavor behave. In the realm of probabilities, it’s just not possible. There will always be one crazed addict among the bunch who will light up, party down and then play a game of grab-ass with the first fine piece of tail that saunters by. Unfortunately, this is the nature of humanity: There are assholes among us.

This is not to say the Springsteen crowd should be characterized by someone of this ilk. In fact, this sort of caricature stands in direct contrast to the image of a Bosshead many reporters would conjure: Late 40s, upper-middle class, law-abiding urban professional who probably came to the concert in a mini-van with his or her teenage daughter and their friends.

You can bank on the state Park Police having a similar concept of the typical Springsteen fan. Why side-step up to these people and demand to search their possessions? Why chase them like dogs or harass them intermittently? These are taxpaying citizens, not a bunch of dirty hippies, the reasoning goes.

This was not the case two weeks ago, when Phish took the stage at SPAC. Before the band could put down their instruments, the Saratogian was already demanding to know how many fans were arrested and what was seized. And the park police, county prosecutor and the Spa City cops were all the willing to oblige.

They even gave the reporter a weekend-long breakdown of the arrests: Cop assaulted on Caroline Street by a crazed Phish fan the day before the concert and lost a tooth; on the same night, an investigator gets splashed with liquid LSD by some drug manufacturing dopehead eagerly waiting to pawn his wares. The concert brings more assaults and arrests. The assistant district attorney’s phone is ringing off the hook; he gets no sleep that night. The jails are full. Saratoga is burning. The mayor is briefed and urged for a spell to call in the National Guard; maybe an airstrike. You can’t trust these fucking hippies; give them one night of bliss and they’ll take over the place.

In reality, the Phish concert brought about 22 arrests, which is less than a tenth of a percentage point of fans that were inside the venue. That’s not even taking into consideration the thousands of fans that were outside the sold-out concert that evening. Yet these are details that don’t make it into the paper.

Likewise at the Springsteen concert. Nobody wants to read about the drunks that were corralled for misbehaving or the tailgaters that were cited for a variety of indiscretions. These are things that Springsteen fans don’t do in the discriminating eyes of the media and law enforcement. Even if a curious reporter had bothered to ask about the tenor of the concert, chances are pretty good the cops wouldn’t have mentioned any of their work that night.

So there is a distinct flavor of injustice that is offered by this unlikely union between media bias and police prejudice. And it’s one they use with quiet precision to ensure only the right type of crowd is permitted into the homogenous confines of this upscale city.

Roadside hummers and other related thoughts

2009-08-19T09:40:00.000-07:00

If the beast roars out, you have to give it sacrifice that will satiate its voracious appetite. And the quicker you can toss it a tender morsel of flesh, the safer the village will be in the end.

This was the message that flashed down the narrow dendrites in Sheriff Jim Bowen’s brain last week, when a husky voice on the other end of the phone started unfolding for him the events that transpired in Edinburg. Deputy Donnie Harder got caught with his pants down, the voice says. The dumb fuck decided to get a piece of action and he did it with the wrong woman, the voice explains. They’re going to rip you to shreds over this; you might as well hang up now and clear your desk.

No way, Bowen’s Id cries out. That’s no way for a man of the law to go down, especially the longest-tenured sheriff in New York State. Find a sacrifice to the beast; give it something juicy from the get-go, so there are no other questions to answer.

Moments later, he’s on the phone with Jim Murphy, the unopposed Saratoga County district attorney and a card-carrying member of the same Republican cabal. He’s bastion of faith in the county, and a guy who hasn’t had a challenger in years. He’s safety.

Murphy understands the situation. Bowen is cashing in a political favor. He needs help on this, and the county’s top prosecutor is just the man to do it. He’s got a spotless record, and he’s often regarded as the man who modernized the prosecutor’s office.

Together, Murphy and Bowen lay the cards on the table: There’s a deputy who thinks it's alright to get a blowjob on the clock, and there’s a good chance his indiscretion isn’t the only one taking place within. There’s a challenger for the sheriff’s seat whose main claim to fame is a campaign to unveil the political favoritism in the village of Corinth. The mere notion of a corrupt sheriff’s department would be enough for him to steal the incompetence vote: The teaming volumes of people who pull the lever for a candidate simply because he or she purportedly represents change.

So they throw Harder to the wolves. Less than four hours after the alleged incident occurred, Murphy lodges a felony charge against the deputy that could land him a 25-year prison term. By noon the next day, Murphy and Bowen have the press conference scheduled. The call to the media is so quick that the normal channels of information dissemination –leaks through political enemies and social anarchists –don’t have time to start spreading the news.

By 2 p.m. on Aug. 12, Bowen drops the bombshell: My deputy coerced a woman into sucking him off, and he did it using his badge as prod. The story is sensational. The press and television reporters eat it up. When Bowen wakes up the next morning, Harder is corralled in Saratoga County Jail on $25,000 cash-bail and he’s not likely to get sprung. After all, Harder barely has time to break the news to his wife before his mug is plastered all over the internet and on the evening broadcast.

Every newscast and every newspaper contains the same story. The homogeneous coverage is to the extent that a reader could rip-off the by-line and not be able to distinguish between the articles. Curiously absent from each one is the notion that Harder’s indiscretion might be emblematic of a deeper, more sinister problem that has metastasized in the sheriff’s department under its geriatric leader.

These are problems that have slowly bubbled to the surface of Bowen’s ever-growing law enforcement complex. For instance, there’s the case of Deputy Bill Marshall, a longtime member of the sheriff’s department and Junior Baseball league manager, who escaped any sort of legal ramifications for falsely charging a teen that got punched by one of his players.

The quirky story was first covered by a Times Union sports writer and gained steam before Bowen and Murphy colluded to bury it. At the time, Bowen said Marshall’s behavior “didn’t look good” and swore he’d get to the bottom of it.

But the bottom turned out to be the charges getting dropped and the case being thrown out of court; the latter of which would have happened anyway. Yet nobody asked why Marshall wasn’t reprimanded at the very least; or even better, charged with making an unlawful arrest. The case virtually vanished until there were some murmurs about it after Harder’s arrest.

These are just the latest in a long string of very public misbehavior by Bowen’s boys or by Harder himself. Let’s not forget these are the same guys who happened to be speeding in driving rain four years ago when they slammed into Phil Eckstein, a popular Skidmore student who died from his injuries. And let’s not forget about the time they rammed a Saratoga Springs crew team in 2000.

Harder also has a penchant for slamming into things, no pun intended. In 2007, he rear-ended a car in Wilton with enough force to smash it into a third car. At the time, Harder was processing a shoplifter he picked up from the mall. The girl suffered a bruised forehead, cut nose and lost a tooth; injuries that suggest she was placed in the back of the cruiser, but not with a seat belt properly fashioned.

Interestingly enough, none of the news agencies made this connection while they lapped up Bowen’s story like warm milk on a cold day. Now more than a week later, they haven’t bothered to ask what Harder’s penance was for injuring a suspect. Why? Because Bowen generally doesn’t talk to the media. When he does, he spits out very carefully orchestrated sound bites that ensure there won’t be any follow up questions.

Not to credit the media for its unbelievable lack of effort. They have become complacent with the way Bowen and Murphy run the show. Today, they don’t bother calling Bowen for information, because they realize there’s only one way they’ll get it: At an abruptly called news conference with Murphy by his side.

Well boys and girls, it’s time to start asking some goddamn questions. Letting Bowen squirm out of the Harder story, the Marshall affair or any of these disasters of injustice is simply appalling. He needs to be taken to task for his mismanagement and inability to keep his cops out of trouble. After all, shit flows down stream. And if a lowlife deputy like Harder is getting blown in his cruiser at the bottom of that stream, there must be some serious issues at the top.

If at first you don't suceed...

2009-08-07T09:45:00.000-07:00

...then fail and fail again. This seems to be the mantra of the Schenectady Daily Gazette’s business model, which is sort of like watching a 12-beer drunk stagger home after a long night of imbibing. The drunk has enough primal cognition to realize they must affect a change in their surroundings immediately before happening upon an inhospitable circumstance; but they lack the coordination to navigate and therefore make the same flawed decisions with almost comical repetition. Take two steps, fall down. Take two more steps, fall down again. Fiddle with the keys. Drop the keys. Take another two steps, fall down; repeat.

The whole scene isn’t one that anyone can correct. From afar, an observer can chuckle, maybe even chortle at the bloke. But anyone with a conscience will feel a twinge of remorse for this schadenfreude; a sense that this somewhat humorous spectacle is indicative of a greater looming problem that will foment tragic circumstance as the failed attempts at navigation mount.

This week, the Gazette’s leadership took a bold step into a dark and perilous forest by abruptly clipping off their freely published Web content. The paper’s leadership claims the sudden shift in was necessary to remain viable in an otherwise hostile market, which has hemorrhaged profits at an unsustainable rate. Without ad revenue coming in from its free content and with circulation dwindling, the paper needed to do something to move toward sustainability, Editor Judy Patrick claimed in a column published shortly before the switch Monday.

To date, the paper has clipped off free-access to everything except its small collection of blogs and a generic classifieds search engine. Articles posted online contain about 20 words of the lead, which the papers’ brass dangles like a carrot in an attempt to lure online subscribers. The bold move came shortly less than two years after the Gazette first stepped into the light of online publication and at a time when its Web presence had fallen to a very distant second to the Albany Times Union, which virtually presides over the Capital Region’s slice of cyberspace.

The Gazette’s new format charges $4 per week for a print and online subscription, which is a penny less than it costs to receive the paper delivered to your doorstep. Online only subscribers can expect to pay $2.95 per week for full access to the Gazette’s content. Print-only subscribers pay $3.99, thereby reducing the monthly cost by a whopping nickel.

Needless to say, the Gazette’s online readership was not pleased. The general feeling among these readers was that they’d gladly take up reading the TU online for free and gleefully watch the Gazette spiral into insignificance and anonymity. And an informal survey conducted by the paper affirmed these attitudes. Of the 928 readers that cast a vote, only 127 said that papers should charge for online content.

“I think this signals the [Daily Gazette] going back into the ‘dark ages’ and will not help the long term outlook of the Daily Gazette and the potential it had in its hands that the stuffed suits let go,” wrote one online reader. “Are you telling me that the 1,200 paid online subscribers you might get back at $4 each are really worth it?”

Others noted that the paper chose one of the worst times in the industry to shift to online readership and an even worse economic time to be demanding cash from the readers now accustomed to getting the paper for free. Some offered the Gazette’s decision as further indication of its inability to change with the times; something that has been a hallmark for just about everything that is associated with Schenectady.

“I can imagine the management team of the Gazette in the 1870s telling [its] customers and employees that there's no need to cater to these newfound railroads, or a few years later explaining to their board that telephones will never be necessary for businesses,” wrote another poster.

Not surprisingly, the Gazette’s move sent ripples throughout the publishing industry. Most notably, the change prompted a response from the all-free-content New York Times, which is struggling with its own financial issues. David Carr, the writer who pens the Times’ Media Decoder column, tried to log onto the Gazette’s Web site to read about the switch, but was asked to subscribe to receive the full content of the editor’s letter to readers. Not being that interested in Schenectady, Carr attempted to gain access to just Patrick’s column and was asked to pay $2 –half the amount for receiving a full week of coverage.

“Here at Decoder, we’re still deciding whether to pony up the two bucks to find out the rest of the story,” he wrote. “Sure, we could pick up the phone, but that is so old media.”

Carr brings up a remarkably interesting point, even if it’s at the expense of poking fun at one of the many loopholes in the Gazette’s logic. There is always a way to package and market online content, but it’s not in the same manner that one markets something tangible. Just ask the recording industry about that.

Less than a decade ago, the free proliferation of music via Napster and other peer-to-peer sites threatened to decimate the recording industry. In response, a select group of money-grubbing musicians decided to hire a team the most expensive lawyers the world had to offer and go after Napster’s jugular. And when they dispensed of Napster, they went after the scores of college students and housewives download the free content.

The whole affair drew the musicians, the recording industry and the lawyers more bad press than any of them ever imagined. The legal battle fanned the flames of the fire Napster lit, prompting a veritable revolution of open source software aimed at subverting the wrath of those who demanded penance for their creative property. So whenever the lawyers nailed one site, another four would pop up.

Reason finally reached the industry with the rise of Apple’s iPod. The creation somehow convinced producers to see beyond the money they were making with tangible compact discs and understand that the online format wasn’t nearly as valuable as they had originally figured. Suddenly, songs were being sold by iTunes for less than a dollar. And suddenly, paying for a song didn’t seem that far out. The American consumer rationalized that paying what amounted to a third less than a Double Mochachino at Starbucks was worth it to know the product they were getting was genuine and received through legal channels.

Now imagine if the news industry adopted a similar model. Imagine if the news industry understood that not all readers want to read every last detail about Schenectady or even the Capital Region. Would readers pay a nickel to read the text below a salacious headline? How about buy five for a quarter and get the sixth free? Reader accounts could be billed monthly via credit card, which would allow them to click away feverishly if they wanted. At the end of the month, settle up.

Still, the whole approach to balancing the waning ability of ad departments on the backs of readers is ill thought out to say the very least. Entire papers once sold for an infinitesimal fraction of the cost to produce them. Oddly enough, people stopped buying them around the same time the industry started raising the newsstand price. First, prices were raised from a nickel to a quarter, then from a quarter to 50 cents, and to nearly a dollar now. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people aren’t reading them anymore.

Yet the industry as a whole refuses to address these issues. And pretty soon, the only alternative will be wholesale changes in the product itself. Take for instance a recent move by the Times Union to seed community-based blogs throughout its coverage area. They started with Bethlehem, a large suburb that the paper has seemed wholly unwilling to devote its coverage. The experiment was wildly successful and now the effort has spun blogs to East Greenbush, Albany, Scotia-Glenville and yes, Saratoga Springs; all with limited success. Given the recent layoffs at the TU, this could very well end up becoming the future of their local coverage.

The bottom line is there are no easy fixes to the ailing media. To credit of both the TU, they’re trying something new, even if that something seems like a poor substitute to the professionalism of modern journalism. The Gazette, on the other hand, is showing exactly how long in the tooth its thinkers truly are. And they’re bringing new life to the axiom, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

The Negotiator

2009-08-05T09:22:00.000-07:00

The scanner chirps to life shortly after 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning. The tones are followed by a gruff voice, which seems none too pleased to be barking out orders at the crack of dawn.

“Tone is for SEMS. One-car motor vehicle accident with entrapment on Henning Road by Union Avenue,” the voice orders. “Delta response. Med Flight is on-standby.”

Seconds later, you’re off. The pall of darkness over the city limits is torn open by the ambulance’s flickering red lights. Adrenaline fills your veins as the rig speeds closer to the scene. Flares illuminate the street just enough for you to see the crumpled wreckage wrapped around a tree. Police are on scene investigating, riffling through a pile of wreckage that seems to contain a number of beer cans and a now-empty bottle of Palace Vodka. You realize quickly this is a case of drunken driving.

Firefighters are already having at the vehicle with a variety of hydraulic saws and pliers. They’ve almost gotten the badly injured man from his mangled car when he summons you over. The man, who is remarkably conscious and still clutching a can beer, talks in a voice and tenor that astounds you for the condition of his twisted body.

“Look,” he says pausing for effect. “Before we get started, I want to negotiate some details.”

You blink. Negotiate? You’re partially embedded in a tree, you think. What’s there to negotiate? But astoundingly the man continues, occasionally taking sips from his beer.

“First of all, I hope you realize that without fellows like me, there would be no job for you,” he says pointing the can in your direction. “So I’d like a bit of respect.”

“Now I understand you don’t pay rent,” the man continues. “And with the city’s finances these days, that’s simply unacceptable, so we’re going to have to change that before we get started here.”

You blink a few more times just so the fellow knows you haven’t drifted into a coma.

“Next, I think you should pay me for this ambulance ride you’re about to provide, seeing as though my insurance reimbursements are bound to make you money,” he says in a tone that seems far too nonchalant for a guy facing felony DWI charges. “After all, big cities make money off their ambulances, so why can’t we?”

He pauses. You stammer.

“So why can’t we?” he asks again, only louder. “Look, you freeloaders need to start ponying up some cash, or else I fear we’re at an impasse. I’m going to need…let’s say a twenty-spot…before you get started with the work at hand. And some licorice whips too…you know…my blood sugar is starting to drop…”

Characterizing Public Safety Commissioner Ron Kim’s negotiations with the Saratoga Emergency Medical Services as a crippled drunk driver dickering with a paramedic is way too easy. In fact, nailing the comparison is sort of like shooting a five-foot long carp in a bucket with a twelve-gauge shotgun: With every pump, you’re going to hit something on the mark.

Kim started this dreadful process with SEMS when he insisted the city’s ambulance service should be a profit-driven model that earns money for his department’s enormous budget. He caught the attention of several like-minded city officials, who figured putting the ambulance contract “out to bid” couldn’t hurt anything by the egos over at SEMS.

Well the bids came back and two of them offered the Spa City exactly what Kim proffered. But suddenly, the prevailing thought among the commissioners swung away from disbanding the service that has faithfully carted injured Saratogians to the hospital for decades; suddenly, it didn’t seem like such a good idea to callously shear off a cost-free operation that both employs local people, puts volunteers to work and saves lives at the same time.

That’s when Kim arbitrarily decided to continue negotiations with SEMS, even after the city council accepted the “request for proposal” the company submitted months ago. So imagine the company’s confusion when they showed up to sign the contract they submitted and it miraculously turned into something wholly different. The proposal that involved paying a small fee per ambulance trip and a token $1 per month in rent for the city-owned ambulance station somehow ended up becoming a $50,000 annual payment to the city, plus another $50,000 worth of “service fees” for “certain calls.”

Even disregarding the fact that Kim flagrantly flouted the process of seeking and accepting requests for proposals, his mind-numbingly stupid logic makes no sense. Anyone who can balance a checkbook would realize a non-profit ambulance company isn't designed to make money. That's the whole purpose of being a non-profit agency. But under Kim’s misguided accounting, SEMS should assuredly be able to handle a measly $100,000 payment without facing financial peril simply because they have a $1 million budget. Failure to do so means the company simply isn’t being “accountable” to the people, he told the Saratogian this week.

“I’m aghast at their continuing desire to not be accountable,” he said.

Under this logic, being “accountable” means a non-profit agency should have no problem billing residents more or going into insolvent levels debt to kowtow to the demands of a public safety commissioner, who has already proven his inability to balance a budget. Being accountable means gutting a system that has worked without failure in the city during a time when community-based ambulance companies are failing at almost unprecedented rates due to the inhospitable environment presented by the healthcare system.

Well, the voters of Saratoga Springs should show Kim the true definition of accountability. An official who is accountable to the electorate is rewarded with another term in office. Conversely, those who create problems and put the community in a situation where it could feasibly lose a life-preserving service should be shown the door; or better yet, keelhauled on the Minne-Ha-Ha.

There's more work to be done

2009-07-28T00:32:00.000-07:00

Imagine the horror. It’s late and you’ve just gotten into a fight with your boyfriend. You’re walking home in a neighborhood you’ve walked hundreds –maybe thousands –of times before. You feel safe. You feel invincible. And then there’s a flash of light.

You stammer for a second, before blinking your eyes. There’s another flash. You lose consciousness.

When you come to, someone is barking orders. Suddenly, you’re inside, and your head is smarting like it was recently clocked with a cinderblock. You try to understand what is going on, and decipher the shouted commands, but no rational thought can make heads or tails of what is transpiring. Your muscles begin to shake in an involuntary fashion.

From here, there are two paths to take. Both lead to gut-wrenching uncertainty; life or death. The commands are getting louder and the threats more brutal. You act as if it’s the last worldy choice you'll make.

This is the shit we used to see on the ABC afterschool special. This is the fodder of every parent’s worst nightmare. This happened in our city. And sadly, it wasn’t the first time.

Fortunately for us, there were some good cops on the streets this week, and they performed with startling precision. In the case of the Locust Street abduction, special thanks must be extended to the New York State Police, a body that remains the premiere law enforcement agency amid a veritable sea of semi-professional and sometimes backwater cops. Also, to the rank-and-file among the Saratoga Springs Police, the cops who realized this case couldn’t go cold for the sake of the city. Kudos, folks; this is one that you can feel proud about. So in a sense, this missive is to congratulate these authorities for job well done. Give yourself a pat on the back, because you scored in a major way.

But these accolades are finite. Thursday’s horrific episode isn’t nearly over. There is at least one person that won’t readily forget what happened on that night. Not today, and certainly not tomorrow; maybe not ever. There’s another who sits in a jail cell thousands of miles away from his native land; a place he should have never left.

This brutal event is a wake-up call to Saratoga Springs, New York and the United States as a whole to change its immigration policies so that sadistic bastards like Victor Hernandez-Perez don’t end up in the country running amok; raping and pillaging to their hearts’ delight. Or even worse yet, so that a bunch of vigilant racists don’t decide to wage a pogram against all non-native Hispanics; even the ones who toil for pennies on the dollar and work until their fingers bleed.

Either way, this country is at a breaking point; a boiling point. For fucks sake, it’s past the breaking point to find a reasonable solution. Here are the facts: There’s a new untouchable class in New York, sucking up the hours that no self-respecting American wants. The influx of Latino labor has proven to be an invaluable thorn that a select few like to jam in the side of hyper-aggressive unions. The presence of so-called ‘illegals’ has promised a windfall to chiseling business owners –those too stingy or too desperate to pay a livable wage.

Then there’s the other side, the one with people who wander downtown wraith-like and below the radar. They are unaccounted, unrecognizable and for all intents and purposes, invisible. This is a trait that behooves both them and the sizeable fraction of the business community that feeds f off their labor. And they’re in no hurry to change this.

Yet for the sake of this union, there needs to be an answer or a response that appeases both sides.To put it bluntly, it’s time for both sides of this issue to pony up and find a solution, because the masses can’t take much more of this shit; or as the good doctor once said, this fear and loathing. There’s too much gunpowder in this room and way too many people chain smoking cigarettes.

Do the right thing

2009-07-17T10:40:00.000-07:00

Dozens of small white signs dot the Woodlawn Avenue properties running north from Greenfield Avenue. Their message is simple: Save 23 Greenfield Ave.

Residents living near the stately brick structure now owned by the Riggi Family clearly don’t want to see it demolished. Their signs offer an ironic welcome to the restoration crews that are tirelessly working to save an equally historic structure just a few blocks away.

The carriage house behind the palatial Victorian mansion at 719 North Broadway curiously hovers in the air, as a handful of workers slowly pull it from the clutches of certain demise. Weeds grow from its rotted eaves and parts of the ornate molding have crumbled away, making it hard to image how the building was raised instead of razed. Simply put, its ongoing restoration is nothing short of herculean.

But for once, it seems as though the owner of a historic property is taking great pains to do the right thing. The restoration of the former Jeffords Estate stands testament to what can be accomplished if a developer has an eye for preserving history. And it stands in direct contrast to the demolition-by-neglect process fomented by other notorious property owners like Bruce Levinsky, absentee landowner Joseph Boff and of course, the Riggi Family.

The Queen Anne-style home was once owned by Walter Jeffords Jr., an renowned horseman who served as vice president of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. His widow, Kay Jeffords, continued his legacy and was among the Spa City’s most notable socialites.

Correction via Field Horne, who did extensive research on this structure: “the Jeffords House is Italianate, not Queen Anne. It was built in 1875 by Dr Benjamin Walker King, a physician from Fort Edward.”

Walter Jeffords died in 1990 and was followed by his wife 13 years later. Before her death, her estate and all the various treasures she and her husband amassed at the North Broadway mansion were liquidated at auction. The empty house, already showing signs of neglect, was likewise sold for $700,000 in 2004.

What followed was a period of deterioration that brought the home and its ornate carriage house perilously close to the wrecking ball. But in 2007, the property was transferred to a limited liability corporation, which started restoring the main house later in the year. The principle of the corporation is Lance Bell, a shareholder in the state thoroughbred company, the New York Breeders' Sales Co.

The evident decay caught of the carriage house caught the eye of a local photographer and blogger, who lamented about its neglect.

“Not all buildings here are taken care of,” wrote the blogger in a 2007 entry. “This very unique Carriage House is being allowed to go to rack and ruin. And if you are actually standing here and looking at it, you can see that it is getting close to falling down.”

Not so much anymore. The property appears to be well on its way to being returned to its former grandeur. Workers have poured a new foundation for the carriage house and the main mansion appears to be nearing completion. When it is, the Saratoga Springs Preservation Foundation should seriously consider giving Bell and his contractors an award.

They should also use him as a prime example of a conscientious resident who understands the value of these old homes and why they should be preserved no matter the cost. Records show the limited liability corporation took out a $630,000 loan before work began; an amount that is likely to be spent in its entirety to bring the property and all its structures into the 21st century.

Still, this is pittance to pay to preserve this city’s rich heritage, some of which disappears each year with neglectful property owners who don’t see the value in historic structures. Take for instance Boff’s property on Franklin Square. No amount of public shame or chiding seems to convince him of the value in keeping the Winans-Crippen house from the wrecking ball.

Even as city leaders were frantically trying to craft a moratorium to prevent the destruction of s different historic structure, the callous Floridian was thinking of ways to demolish his piece of heritage. Laughably, this out-of-state wretch claims he can’t afford to restore the house. Of course, he can afford to destroy it and build a new palatial structure in its place; an excuse that doesn’t hold water for even the most dim-witted of city officials. In fact, Boff should have told the city the truth, which is that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Saratoga’s rich history, historic structures or legacy that would bridge us to the past.

And he’s not the only one either. The Riggi family is preparing for another banner year on the social circuit by crafting a lawsuit against the city for enacting the moratorium. While their pending legal action may have merit in court, the shameful manifest destiny of their property boundary certainly doesn’t.

Both property owners should take a good look at the North Broadway project and then hang their collective heads in shame. It’s an example of a resident doing the right thing for a change, as opposed to the easy or inexpensive thing. Perhaps if city leaders made an example out of this work, they’d convince others to grow a conscience when it comes to owning and caring for historic buildings. And maybe –just maybe –one of them could buy Bell a cold one for a job well done.

What would ya’ say...you do here?

2009-07-13T11:11:00.000-07:00

Let’s set the scene: It’s budget time, and the Saratoga Springs’ City Council finally realizes they must layoff a number of employees to prevent a triple-digit budget increase. In their infinite wisdom, the commissioners decide to pay a pair of efficiency experts $50,000 to figure out a way to make the city workforce more lithe and lean.

And somehow, they end up with the Bobs.

The Bobs go to work immediately, scheduling an interview with all the city’s employees. Unlike the commissioners, they realize the teaming number of redundancies filling City Hall and nearly all of its offices. When we join the action, the Bobs are sitting down with Deputy Public Safety Commissioner Eileen Finneran, who has just finished a foot-long grinder and is polishing off the last swallow of a 40 oz. double mocha Coolatta.

Bob Slydell: So what you do is you take direction from the commissioner and implement policies through you department?

Eileen: That, that's right.

Bob Porter: Well, then I gotta ask, then why can't the commissioner just take his orders directly to the department heads, huh?

Eileen: Well, uh, uh, uh, because, uh, the commissioner is not good at dealing with the department heads.

Bob Slydell: You physically take the orders from the commissioner?

Eileen: Well, no, my, my secretary does that, or, or the fax.

Bob Slydell: Ah.

Bob Porter: Then you must physically bring them to the departments.

Eileen: Well...no. Yeah, I mean, sometimes.

Bob Slydell: Well, what would ya’ say… you do here?

Eileen: Well, look, I already told you. I deal with the goddamn commissioner so the departments don't have to!! I have people skills!! I am good at dealing with people!!! Can't you understand that?!? What the hell is wrong with you people?!?

Finneran, who is basically the modern-day version of Erin Dreyer, really doesn’t do anything in City Hall; or at least no official capacity that her staff couldn’t or doesn’t handle in her absence. Her position by its very nature is the ultimate in redundancy, seeing as though both of the departments she presides over have very well-paid chiefs, who should theoretically be more than capable of running their respective departments.

So what exactly does Finneran do with her 40 hours at city hall? Well, that’s the $66,000 question. Last week, the Saratogian reported a list of duties that fell to Public Safety Commissioner Ron Kim’s “executive assistant,” who was the only person laid off by the council after all the bluster about cutting nearly two dozen Public Safety jobs.

The executive assistant answered phones for Kim’s office, screened and directed calls, scheduled interdepartmental meetings and compiled the agenda items prior to council meetings. These tasks now fall to other public safety workers, such as the senior account clerk or the code administrative assistant and accounts payable clerk, according to the report; “everything else” will fall to Finneran.

Now for some background: Finneran is perhaps the least-qualified employee to grace the public safety office. She replaced Frank Dudla, a retired state corrections officer who served nearly three years in the department. Finneran’s only connection to public safety was that she served two years on the Zoning Board of Appeals, which is casually related to code enforcement.

Her first brush with public safety came when Kim tried to hire her as a second deputy after first taking office in 2006. Kim realized he couldn’t dispatch Dudla, who was a popular choice for deputy, so he decided the city could use a second. He argued the move was to improve code enforcement efforts and carry out his legislative agenda. Naturally, the city council told him to screw off, and Finneran eventually landed a gig as deputy mayor; a position she was equally unqualified for.

Finneran highlighted her abject incompetence in 2007, when she led a futile push to get Mayor Valerie Keehn re-elected. Just a week before the election, she lambasted Independence Party candidate Gordon Boyd, who rightly predicted the state VLT funding would one day expire. In castigating Boyd in an op-ed piece published in the Saratogian, she noted that “the city’s financial condition is anything but dire.”

The Amazing Kreskin she ain’t.

There was a gleaming hope that the 2007 election would sweep Finneran out of city hall once and for all. But instead, she found a way to burrow into the public safety department as Kim’s deputy. In making the appointment, Kim said Finneran would “focus on broader issues of legislation” and other Democratic-oriented subjects.

Translation: She’s a political operative who spends her time ensuring her clique of Democrats maintains its stranglehold on the party. Case in point: The 2008 coup she helped orchestrate with the so-called Democrats for Change. During a weekday last July, Finneran spent her morning milling about at the county Board of Elections in Ballston Spa; an area that may or may not have public safety issues, but none that involved the city of Saratoga Springs. Still, Finneran saw it fit to spend a good portion of her tax-funded shift at the board jotting down the order of candidates for the city’s Democratic Committee.

Finneran, a charter-change proponent, has also taken a shine to attending meetings about changing the city’s form of government, albeit during off-work hours. This isn’t to say she wouldn’t show up at such a meeting if one was scheduled during her shift. There was plenty of speculation the mayor’s office was leading the charge for the failed charter revision push in 2006; Finneran, of course, was the deputy of that office and was never shy about her drive to change the city’s form of government.

So the city dismissed an executive assistant so that they didn’t need to dismiss a political hack that spends her time exacting a partisan agenda instead of ensuring her department’s bloated budgets aren’t growing at an out-of-control pace. Is it any wonder why police overtime reached record levels last year and is on pace to do the same this year?

Voters should take all this to heart as the political season revs up this fall. There’s a very good chance Finneran will return as the city’s deputy mayor if Kim is successful in his campaign against incumbent Republican Scott Johnson. And if he’s not, she’ll have at least one other option in city hall.

Kevin Connolly, a programmer and auditor for the state Department of Taxation and Finance, is likely a front runner in the public safety commisioner’s race, seeing as though he’s running against Republican Richard Wirth, who Kim beat like a gong during the 2007 election. For those who are unfamiliar with Connolly, he was one the Keehn Administration’s appointees to the charter revision committee; he was also a foot soldier in her failed re-election bid. And he’s a card-carrying member of the so-called Democrats for Change. Care to give a guess who he’ll appoint as his deputy if Kim is unsucessful in his bid for Mayor?

Ideally, the city council will look at the public safety deputy’s seat the next time they’re considering employee cuts, which are virtually inevitable next fall. This year, city officials offered a stop-gap solution to raising taxes by raiding the fund balance. They won’t have this luxury by the fall, when they’ll need to find away to replace or cut $3.5 million from the 2010 budget. So it’s about time to start listening to the Bobs. Let’s start by cutting the one position that does nothing. The city council did it in 2005, and they could do it again today. Finneran’s salary won’t solve the budget woes, but it’s a goddamn good start.

Civil Unions

2009-06-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

CSEA owes Mother Nature a debt of gratitude. In fact, they might want sacrifice a goat to mighty Zeus or some equivalent deity for the forecast of the severe thunderstorms that prevented the union from making asses of themselves and the greedy city labor leaders they were foolishly trying to support.

The giant inflatable rat will be tucked away in its satchel, when CSEA launches their quizzical protest of the New York Conference of Mayors meeting this afternoon. Union leaders claim the prediction of high winds and heavy rains prevented them from toting the iconic balloon the Saratoga Springs Hilton, where CSEA members will picket at a conference entitled “municipal budgeting during tough economic times.”

So let’s get this straight: The union that refuses to forgo pay raises and vociferously argued against cutting any City Hall or Public Works jobs to stop the ballooning Saratoga Springs budget was going to inflate a giant rat outside of a conference aimed at making reducing cost burdens so that workers won’t be laid off. Yep. Guess they didn’t think that one out too well, now did they?

Today, the rat and the CSEA cronies that inflate it serve as a constant reminder of the bloated, fetid condition of organized labor as it continues to show how much of a lumbering dinosaur it has become. This is especially the case with the Spa City’s civil service unions, which seem to view themselves as immune to the ongoing economic woes that have and will continue to inflict a burden on the taxpayers. It’s an ironic symbol of the inflexibility the city’s union leaders show when it comes to adapting to dire economic conditions.

And today’s demonstration is no exception. The intended target was obviously Republican Mayor Scott Johnson, who the CSEA is trying to portray as a hard-line union buster more interested in lining the pockets of wealthy law firms during a tough election year. But the whole approach has backfired when Johnson took to the press last week, outlining the atrocious recalcitrance of the unions as city –and state –taxpayers struggle to pay bills.

The city’s demands don’t seem all that unreasonable. Basically, Johnson’s hired ringers are asking the Public Works and City Hall employees union to forgo their annual raises this year, which amounts to a pay boost of about 3 percent. Raises would be boosted to 1.5 percent in 2010 and 2.5 percent in 2011. The unions were also asked pay a $500 annual contribution to their health care costs, an amount that works out to be less than $10 per week; a modest tithe to collect from the 195 workers, half of which receive free health care.

The unions responded with what can only be termed as an insult, considering the financial tumult facing the city and remembering how vehemently they protested to retain all of their jobs last winter. They agreed to waive their salary increase this year, but are demanding bi-annual raised for the next two years. These contractual raises –3 percent in January and 1.5 percent in July –would be given automatically without regard to performance. And no mention of whether they’d help reduce the burden of inflated health care costs that are driving the city’s budget upward at an alarming pace.

Certainly, the unions don’t want to capitulate too much, because they fear they’ll lose negotiating power when contract negotiations start again in 2012. They’re right in a sense. But they’re also not giving any credence to the situation facing the city this year and far into the future of the union contract. The City Council put a dump-truck sized band aid on the budget in the form of raiding the fund balance.

All this seems inconsequential to union sympathizers, who are again looking to boost revenues rather than make concessions. One of these trolls recently chimed in on the Saratogian’s City Desk blog, claiming the paper had unfairly maligned the plight of the unions by publicizing Johnson’s rhetoric.

“[It] would be nice to see you offer possible solutions to these problems instead of consistently being a mouthpiece for certain members of the city council,” chided the anonymous poster. “The unions provided this city council with a plethora of ways to raise revenue such as; a public safety tax added on to each hotel room in the city and a public safety tax added on to a ticket purchased at SPAC. These two revenue generating ideas have been implemented in cities across this state and would generate a tremendous amount of income for the city.”

Right. So to allow the unions cost-of-living increases double the size of most private sector workforces and to arbitrarily lend half the workforce free health care, city officials should consider imposing even more random taxes on the already-overpriced concerts, which aren’t even under the auspices of Saratoga Springs’ government. Sorry, but this sort of palaver is at the root of why the city is in the budgetary condition it’s in today.

Unions have enjoyed a good run in the city and have secured very reasonable conditions for the workers they represent. But to continue this run at infinitum is simply not possible, by any stretch of the imagination, especially when the year-after-year excuse for budgetary increases is the cost of healthcare and contracted raises. Their cost-of-living increase and healthcare benefits have long since outstretched the level of services they provide for the cost. Now is the time for the unions to extend a bit of civility to the city, rather than immediately chanting ‘inflate the rat.’ Their dickering has made them look foolish, greedy and ultimately uncaring about the residents they allegedly serve.

The Riggis Suck

2009-06-02T08:53:00.000-07:00

To describe the Spa City’s Riggi family as a group of arrogant ego-maniacal gasbags is to use far too endearing terms for them. About a six years ago, Ron and Michelle Riggi used their millions to turn the corner of North Broadway and Greenfield Avenue into a gigantic toilet. Now he’s using his seemly endless pile of cash to lay a giant log-sized stinker in it for the entire city to smell.

There were times when the city’s most ostentatious family seemed like that weren’t all that bad. They tossed money at the YMCA to build the new palatial facility off Ballston Avenue, and they’ve been diligent socialites at the city’s circuit of black-tie fundraisers. But with the stunt they are pulling on Greenfield Avenue, there’s simply no way around it any more: The Riggis flat-out suck.

This gang of wealthy plutocrats feels they’re special enough –ordained enough even –to flout city law by arbitrarily demolishing a home that has stood since the dying days of the America Civil War. They purposely hid their intent with the one-third acre property so that they could get a jump on demolishing its perfectly livable home before preservationists by the droves started lobbing grenades over their North Broadway fence and burning Riggi effigies outside city hall. Well, the gig is up.

The Saratogian reports the Riggis as the proud new owner of a historic home that will either be reduced to rubble or left to rot as they sue the living hell out of the city. This news comes roughly a month after a number of preservation-minded residents raised suspicion about the bizarre deconstruction of the two-story brick house; including the removal of its windows and adjoining porches.

Media inquiries into the matter determined Jim Taylor, the CEO of the Gloversville-based Taylor Made Products, had sold the property to an undisclosed buyer. Natural speculation drifted toward the Riggis next door. For years, there was speculation that the queen Riggi wanted more land to let her two dozen mongrels run free and unfettered. Unfortunately, her betrothed built a palatial compound on their more than ample acre of land, which happens to be one of the largest lots on North Broadway. And we all know small dogs don’t like running around on imported stone walkways.

So buying Taylor’s house and knocking it down seemed like a logical expansion for the Riggis. And they’re really one of the only families crazy enough to spend at least $1.1 million for a beautiful historic home, only to bulldoze it into the ground to expand their lot.

Now some more libertarian-minded residents might argue it’s their god-given right to do whatever they please with the property, provided they follow the letter of the law. Despite its age, the building is not located on any historical registry and is only considered a ‘contributing structure’ to a nearby historic district. But this argument simply doesn’t hold water in the case of the Riggis, who basically used surreptitious means to force the future demolition of the building.

They denied having any hand in the alleged asbestos abatement –a farce used to hide the fact they were having a clearinghouse of the home’s historic fixtures –being conducted on the property. Then when then media started sniffing around, the hastily slung together a limited liability corporation to hide the fact that they had bought the property. And they likely would have carried on with the unpermitted demolition –or at least as much as they could –if it weren’t for the stop-work order the city issued last month.

Now the home is exposed to the elements, leaving the city with precious few options. In its present condition, the building will sustain enough damage in a few years that it will become nearly impossible for even the most preservation-minded developer to rescue it from ruin. This is exactly the situation the Riggis will unfold for the city amid what is sure to be a nice long drag through the legal system.

This is what is known in Saratoga Springs as the Levinsky Method of demolition: Allow something to rot for long enough and the city’s bound to capitulate. Granted, it’s not the most expedient method of demolition. It took pompous developer Bruce Levinsky more than seven years to convince the city the wing of the Rip Van Dam built in 1832 was dilapidated enough to demolish. During that time, the city council hemmed and hawed until there was literally no option other than to allow Levinsky to have his way.

The same sort demolition-by-deterioration is occurring on Franklin Street, where a once-grand Victorian isn’t likely to weather another season without sustaining serious structural damage. Absentee owner Joseph Boff was also lobbying to wreck the building before the city’s Preservation Foundation intervened with an appeal to the media. Boff has since withdrawn his demolition application, but has not said whether he’ll try to restore the prominent home built in 1871. And with each day that passes, the notion that he will endeavor a restoration seems more and more unlikely.

In the case of both Levinsky and Boff, the property owners have somewhat legitimate claims, because fixing up dilapidated historic structures can be a real financial strain. However, the Riggis have no such argument for their project; or at least not yet. The home they purchased was listed in “excellent” condition, according to Saratoga County’s Office of Real Property. In fact, the building and garage themselves were assessed at roughly $844,000, a sum the Riggis don’t mind throwing to the wind.

So what can the city do? In short, nothing at all. The city council can approve a so-called demolition moratorium this week and hope to work something out with the Riggis. But their attorney is already threatening litigation if the demolition permit is not granted. Even if there is a moratorium installed, it won’t prevent the home from sustaining untold damage from the elements.

In truth, the only people who can do anything about this debacle are the residents of the city themselves. Anyone who has had the displeasure of meeting the Riggis understands they have a flavor for the limelight. Michelle loves to have her mug plastered in the Lifestyles section of the Saratogian, and her hubby hasn’t been one to shy away from cameras. So why not declare a moratorium on everything Riggi? Tell these bastards the Spa City views them as an icon of modern consumption and wastefulness. No pictures, no names, no nothing; effectively turn the Riggis into the name that nobody mentions. Not even if their snot-nosed silver-spoon sucking son appears on Gossip Girl.

Some of our more intrepid, less-law abiding residents could take things a bit farther. Rotten eggs lobbed from afar could easily lend a nice hue –and fitting smell –for the Riggi Mansion. Midnight dog walks could also lend a nice touch for the home’s exterior. Just tell Fido to aim between the bars of the wrought-iron fence. And lastly, there’s always the shouting of obscenities at them while they dine out or walk downtown; or do anything. In the end, they should feel a sense of the outrage they have caused with this stund. So here’s a nice and formal ‘fuck you’ going out to the Riggis from their friends over here at iSaratoga. Maybe one of these days they’ll grow a semblance of a soul. But that's about as doubtful as the city’s ability to protect its stock of historical structures from the whims of the rich and powerful.

Freeze frame

2009-05-31T11:30:00.001-07:00

The video shows Officer Eileen Cotter exiting the unisex bathroom at the Saratoga Springs Police Department in 2008. She’s talking with a Post Star reporter, telling him about the difficulties women officers face in the archaic station off Lake Avenue.

“I’m 46 years old I’ve been running past the guys while their changing in their underwear all the time they get a little bit miffed, but it doesn’t shock me,” she explains. “I just feel bad for the junior females that have to go through that…”

Wait, stop. Freeze that frame for a minute. Take a closer look behind Cotter. There’s a blue bumper sticker on locker 12, several inches above the officer’s head. The sticker stands out starkly among the dented grey lockers. But even starker is the message it sends: Elect Scott Johnson.

It’s hard to mistake the message, especially if you’re Al Turkheimer, the chairman of the city’s Democratic Committee. And given the party’s endorsement for mayor –Public Safety Czar Ron Kim –it’s a message he clearly received.

There are sparsely few plausible explanations for the committee selecting Kim for their endorsement, and none of them are too soundly rooted in logic. First of all, there’s the obvious: Kim’s department is the last sanctum of the deposed mayoral administration of Valerie Keehn. His deputy, Eileen Finneran, is a large source of the political bickering that shredded the party in the run up to the 2007 election.

In as much, Kim’s candidacy is dividing decision, albeit one far less divisive than tabbing Keehn herself. Still, if the Dems were looking for a unifying voice, they effectively strangled it into silence by running Kim.

Of course, there are Kim’s own idiosyncrasies, which make him an easy target for the veritable tsunami of Republican attack ads come November. He’s not a gifted orator and is highly prone to munching on his own shoe. His shoot-first-and-forget-about-the questions attitude toward government have virtually filled newspaper archives with a cornucopia of direct quotes that make him sound akin to a rabid mental patient still high on his last Thorazine shot he received before fleeing the ward.

His nearly four years in office is littered with failed ideas that basically sucked from the get-go. Not even two months after he took his oath, Kim was already pining for a second deputy for his office. He quickly sided with the Keehn Administration and inexplicably selected patronage sponge Lew Benton for his public safety facility planning committee. That panel of geniuses returned a solely taxpayer-funded plan to build a Public Safety Castle almost as large –and even more expensive –than the $25 million Breyo mansion.

But why stop there? Kim is also known for becoming red-faced when he doesn’t get his way. When his fellow city councilors refused to advance a ‘more affordable’ $17 million public safety facility –one that carried an average tax rate increase of roughly $200 per year –he stormed out mid-meeting.

And then there’s the taxpayer-funded “failure-ometer,” which ironically ranks as one of Kim’s greatest failures. First posted in a basement window in City Hall, the placard was intended to count the days in which the City Council ‘failed’ to act ‘an even more affordable’ $11 million public safety facility. A clearly-high-on-ether Kim told at least one media source he planned to take the failure-ometer on tour throughout the city. The whole incident drew a stern and well-warranted rebuke from the mayor Kim is now set to challenge.

“It’s an unfortunate example of New York Post-style sensationalism that is inappropriate for the dignity of City Hall,” Johnson told the Times Union.

So why the fuck did the Dems choose Kim? Well, let’s get back to the sticker in the Spa City’s police station. The police and fire unions are two voting blocks that can easily swing a close election in favor of a candidate. Generally in Saratoga, these unions have been known to ally themselves with the Republicans. As some may recall, the firefighters illegally used their station in 2006 to host a John Sweeney meet-up with former New York City Mayor Rudy Guilani. And of course, there’s the sticker brazenly displayed in the police department’s locker room.

Things have changed since then. Police Chief Ed Moore stood behind Keehn and Kim by extension, because both were offering him a palatial department featuring his own plush office. Kim has also been an ardent proponent of allowing the already-out-of-control overtime budget blast through a ceiling no previous administration could have ever imagined.

In fact, Kim has kowtowed to the police and fire unions whenever possible. Now he’s put both Johnson and Republican Finance Commissioner Ken Ivins on the defensive by saying the proposed $1.3 million worth of cuts to the public safety budget will prompt him to slash nearly three dozen jobs, including 14 firefighters and 18 cops.

In its infinite wisdom, the Saratogian has already blamed these proposed layoffs on Ivins and made special note that he is in fact the Republican on the same slate of candidates as Johnson. This sort of propaganda fuels Kim’s run by jumping his support base beyond just the unions and their families. This is despite the fact that it was Kim himself who proposed the cuts and said he wouldn’t support them at the same time. Now how’s that for brazen stupidity?

Yet the fickle and easily swayed electorate isn’t known for its intelligence. Just one little white lie in the media can explode into a full-blown scandal that will sink even the most formidable opponents. Just ask former Public Works Commissioner Tom McTygue about the FBI investigation lie that helped sank his re-election campaign. In other words, the party is of the mind that they can capitalize on the outrage Kim has prompted himself, and then use it to show Johnson and his ilk as band of callous ogres looking to diminish public safety.

The sad part is that Johnson’s administration has caused enough actual tumult now that just about any viable candidate could vanquish him from office. Unfortunately for the Democrats, Kim is not and never will be a viable candidate for anything. His popularity as a public safety commissioner was largely derived from the aforementioned hysteria and the Republicans keep running human gongs against him. That will all change now. And unfortunately for Turkheimer, there’s a good chance the Republicans will take four out of five council seats come next fall.

Scare Tactics

2009-05-28T08:23:00.000-07:00

Public Safety Commissioner Ron Kim would rather gnaw his own foot off at the ankle and then use the dismembered limb as a gavel at the bargaining table than come up with a cogent plan to reduce costs in his department. Or at least he’d like city tax payers to think that’s his attitude toward the $1.3 million worth of cuts he’s been asked to make in the Spa City’s police and fire budgets.

Kim’s posturing in wake of the proposed budget cuts has been no less dramatic than if he were performing the aforementioned self-inflicted amputation. He told an audience choked with firefighters and police officers that the budget cuts would force him to hand out pink slips like they were Broadway parking tickets during peak race season. In the commissioner’s estimation, he would need to lay off 14 firefighters and 19 cops in order to meet a requested 6.8 percent reduction in 2009 spending.

“If we don’t work together, I believe this city will regret taking this kind of step,” he said Wednesday.

People will wait hours for a cop or firefighter, according to Kim. And that’s only if someone is there to dispatch the call. Kids in school will start snorting coke and pounding vodka smoothies on the playground, because there won’t be anyone there to tell them it’s wrong. Those school children not geeked on hard drugs will assuredly fall prey to the hurtling automobiles, because there will be no crossing guards to help them traverse the mean city streets.

Overweight tandem tractor trailer trucks will charge down Broadway leaving chunks of uprooted pavement in their wake. Surely, they’ll cause traffic snarls during track season, because there will be no cops to guide the ebb and flow of racing congestion. Malicious criminals will flock to Saratoga from the oppressive, over-policed cities of Albany and Schenectady because there will be no police patrols to stop them. Bleak and hopeless, fire and brimstone; famine, plague and pestilence. The horror. The horror.

But this is all a gigantic scare tactic Kim is using to achieve the end game for his department, which is to forestall any cuts to the budget in the hope an economic turnaround will come to the rescue. Anyone who has dealt with the commish during his nearly four years in office will understand he has a flare for the dramatic and really doesn’t mind making a jack ass out of himself in public if there’s a slight chance he can pander to his constituents. These constituents happen to be the police and fire union leaders and the chiefs that have persistently and successively failed to curb out-of-control spending in their departments.

The worse of the two are the Saratoga Springs Police under Chief Ed Moore, who has spent money like it were being printed with a seized counterfeiting machine in one of his department’s jail cells. His department is the largest annual expense incurred by the city. And each year, this expense seems to rise.

The union-beholden Kim is always the defender of the police budget each year, and will even trot Moore in front of the public to bemoan a lack of personnel or how the overtime costs are simply out of their control. This repetitive process plays out like clockwork every year there is a budget crunch. But for two years under Mayor Valerie Keehn, there was no crunch; nor was there much of one when the Johnson Administration first took office.

The reasons for this were threefold. First, the city council always had the state’s VLT aid to plunder each year. Secondly, there was the fund balance to raid with the VLT money didn’t come through. And lastly, there were the unions to handle; among them, the omnipotent and all-powerful police union.

Now push has come to shove. The city’s coffers are empty. The state aid is gone and will never return. Yet the city’s police union is still barking as though it had the leverage to make demands. The saber rattling reached a feverish pitch Wednesday, when union head Ed Lewis brazenly likened the police force to a burgeoning business.

“When a corporation looks at cuts it’s because of a lack of business,” he blurted out in a moment of unfettered stupidity.

Well Ed, if the city police were a corporation, the CEO would have been fired long ago for mismanagement of assets and burgeoning overtime costs. Or this executive’s failure to uphold workplace standards set by the U.S. Department of Labor, resulting in a federal lawsuit successfully being lodged against the aforementioned corporation. But why go there?

The police also trotted out wounded Officer Adam Baker as a tangible example of what will happen if the public safety department is forced to cut $1.3 million. Some of the less fickle residents of the Spa City may recall the police chief flippantly using Baker as the exclamation point on his push to restore cuts to police overtime in October.

At the time, Moore suggested Baker might not even be alive today were it not for a veritable cadre of police ready to spring into action –and make lots of overtime –when his jugular was nicked by a troubled Four Winds patient wielding a box-cutter. Now he’s expecting residents to believe Baker’s job will be part of the aforementioned cuts?

But admittedly, the police brass and union leadership don’t honestly think any of their fear mongering will ever come to pass. They even admitted as much during their dog and pony show, which has been ongoing since Kim and Lewis flashed their mugs before the hopelessly fickle television media before the Memorial Day weekend.

“This is more political, this whole thing,” Lewis admitted to the Daily Gazette. “It’s more of a poker game that is going on between these commissioners.”

And one that is taking place at the behest of honest taxpayers who are simply trying to figure out whether they’re going to need to buy a hand-held howitzer to defend themselves against the masses or if they should simply take out a fourth mortgage to make next year’s city tax payment. Bravo, gentlemen. Way to uphold your duty as sworn elected officials.

Kim’s solution to all of this is to liquidate the city’s assets and stamp parking meters on every corner like Albany Mayor Jerry “The Tan” Jennings did in Albany. But truth be known, one-time increases in revenue won’t solve this problem. In fact, one-time revenue boosts were exactly what got the council into the mess that it’s in now.

Even sustained revenue streams like paid parking won’t solve this budget crisis. And Kim’s ridiculous posturing certainly won’t fix the problem. What it will do is curry him favor among the less cognizant residents that are likely to wage a witch hunt against any commissioner complicit in the budget crisis. His blathering is a way to place the onus on Finance Commissioner Ken Ivins, who does bear some responsibility in this crisis, but only for not playing hardball with Kim last year, when it was blisteringly apparent the Public Safety Department’s budget was the most bloated of them all.

Tuna Fishing

2009-05-26T07:53:00.000-07:00

They think we’re stupid. That’s the only explanation for the rumored candidates the city’s Democratic Committee is putting forward. Some of the more ardent critics might take this a step further and say ‘they think we’re fucking stupid,’ but why go overboard?

Party insiders are whispering the name Valerie Keehn as the Dems’ choice to face incumbent Republican Scott Johnson for the mayor’s seat. The former mayor interviewed with the committee and could be named as the challenger any day, according to sources.

The reasoning behind running the woman often considered the worst mayor the city had seen in decades is simple: The so-called McTygue faction was beaten out of the party in September, ushering in a new era of rule by the so-called Democrats For Change, a group hopelessly beholden to the politics of diehard Keehn ally Shawn Thompson.

The discordant members who pulled for Johnson as a vote against Keehn now have the impossible choice. Either they can vote for a Republican that has presided over one of the worst fiscal disasters the city has witnessed in modern times; or they can come back to Keehn Kountry, the mayoral administration that came precariously close to doubling the ongoing fiscal woes.

Chances are a number of voters will decide to stay home, rather than vote for either of these milquetoast candidates. Then it’s a toss up to see which candidate can get people to the polls. In this case, the advantage would likely swing toward Keehn, whose somewhat rabid followers have proven that can turn out in droves.

Adding insult to injury are the other ‘races.’ Rather than find a decent candidate for the Public Safety commissioner’s seat, the Republicans rolled out ol’ Richard Wirth, the guy who was beat like a gong by a stammering, yammering dolt that has only remained in office by being a union shill. In the Public Works race, it doesn’t sound like the Dems will challenge GOP incumbent Skip Scirocco, another guy who likes to nuzzle up with the union bosses. And why would they? He was the torpedo Keehn used to sink the unsinkable political juggernaut of Tom McTygue and has been a strident ally of the aforementioned dolt.

In the Accounts Commissioner race, it appears as though the Change-o-crats will hold onto John Franck, who was formerly on the outs with the party as a McTygue sympathizer. But they need to keep Franck on the ballot as a concession to the moderates of the party. Otherwise they might question why the party is waging a primary against one Democratic candidate, while not producing a challenger to the Republicans in another council race.

The end result is that only one newcomer is running for office. Democrat Peter Martin will challenge Finance Commissioner Ken Ivins, bringing the only new face into the fold. All other races will be challenged by former party picks or unchallenged altogether.

Egad. Now that’s democracy American-style!

But sometimes it takes a stroll through the darkest of shadows to see the shining beacon of light. And in city politics, that light could be emanating from a palatial home built on the banks of Lake Lonely.

Today, iSaratoga has sent a correspondence to Jimmy Sexton, the agent for Miami Dolphins’ Executive Vice President Bill Parcells, inquiring whether the Super Bowl winning coach might be interested in a run for the mayor’s office. That’s right, the Big Tuna as mayor of the Spa City. He’s a part-time city resident. He’s a consummate leader. Heck, he’s even got a bad-ass nickname. Who better to lead Saratoga through the new century?

Now some might say a ranking executive for one of the NFL’s most prestigious franchises would be hard pressed to find even a passing interest in local politics. But consider this: Parcells is living under the shadow of Dolphins’ legend Don Shula, who ESPN even ranked as a better all-time coach than the Tuna. That can’t sit well. Then consider the fact that Shula also just opened a restaurant downtown, which in no uncertain terms is Tuna territory. He was here first, and by wining the mayor’s seat, Parcells can put Shula in his place once and for all.

So get the word out. The Tuna’s coming to a ballot near you. Thinking positively about his candidacy is really the only way to go at this point, especially considering the alternatives. And if he’s not interested in a run, perhaps Saratogians could show their celebrity resident a bit of good will by penning his name in as a write-in. But let’s first see where he stands as a bona fide candidate to challenge the dregs of the political barrel the major parties are trying to proffer as competent leaders.

Brain-dead

2009-05-12T09:11:00.000-07:00

Serving in public office can lead to severe brain atrophy, according to recently published reports. The study conducted by the Saratoga Springs electorate over a four-year period showed a direct correlation between serving positions of authority in City Hall and an abrupt decline in cognitive functioning.

Using CAT scans, complex equations and logarithms, researchers determined the average weight of the standard city commissioner’s brain decreased by about 10 percent –or roughly 140 grams –each year served at the public capacity. Similar studies conducted on deputy commissioners and department directors showed a similar decline in brain mass, though results varied significantly. Some deputy commissioners with prolonged exposure to City Hall were found to have lost nearly 50 percent of their brain mass.

“Frankly, I was astonished,” said one of the researchers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “One deputy was literally drooling on herself in a corner.”

The landmark study is now trying to link a precipitous decline in the city council’s aggregate intelligence quotient with the observed brain matter shrinkage. And given the recent discussions over an estimated $3.5 million budget shortfall, it won’t be too difficult.

When faced with a looming debt, city officials have the unabashed gall –or mind-numbing stupidity –to suggest they can’t do anything about it except levy more “revenue” somehow. Some even have the brazen, unabashed hubris to suggest all the spending in the bloated 2009 budget is due to “essential services.”

First-term Department of Public Works Commissioner Skip Scirocco claims his budget is already “operating on a shoe string” and that further cuts would create dire circumstances in the city. The threat suggests the city will be wallowing in filth and vehicles will be falling through pot holes if even a dime is removed from the DPW budget.

Likewise, Public Safety Commissioner Ron Kim said there is “no way” he’s going to be able to cut his budget. But no worries, he said; the city can always raise revenues.

That’s right. Raise revenue, a polite way of saying ‘raise taxes.’ Now it’s just a matter of where these taxes are going to be raised. Will it be in application fees? Will it be in property taxes? Will it be in the form of paid parking, or more traffic cops handing out bull-shit tickets?

Not surprisingly, the only voice of reason during the City Council’s discussion about the budget was a tax-weary resident named Albert Callucci, who watched the genesis of city’s mounting debt and was sounding the alarm months ago. Months ago, the pragmatic-minded Callucci warned city officials they shouldn’t rely on VLT aid from the state and suggested a rethinking of what the departments consider essential services.

But these calls fell on deaf ears. The council went ahead and included the VLT aid in the budget, even as the Paterson Administration warned of the impending belt-tightening at the state level. They also ignored something that is now known as the global recession or worldwide economic downturn. These are terms that suggest consumers might think twice about eating out five times a week or buying designer doggie shawls at a main street boutique. Translation: Sales tax receipts are going to dip.

But amid the fog of their collective brain atrophy, city officials instead decided to balance the badly off-balanced budget by raiding the dwindling fund balance. They also fudged a few numbers on the revenue side so that things wouldn’t look so bad. Everyone patted themselves on the back, crossed their fingers and went into hibernation over the winter.

Sure enough, the city is fucked. Not just fucked, but super-fucked. Porn-star fucked even; the kind of fucked that’s portrayed in some of the more salacious gang-bang videos featured in less savory corners of the Internet.

Now instead of planning for a budgetary shortfall, they’re faced with finding a knee-jerk way of filling city coffers before they go empty. And if anyone is doing the numbers, that won’t be very long. Estimates suggest the city has about $3.8 million of unallocated fund balance, which is just a $100,000 less than what the city is set to spend in 2009 if –and this is a big ‘if’ –all the departments stay on budget(pop quiz: Can anyone name the last time the Public Safety Department was under budget?) This is before even considering the city needs to keep a robust fund balance on hand and would have needed to replace what Finance Commissioner Ken Ivins removed last fall to present a zero-tax budget.

So basically, the city council has failed Saratoga Springs in a way that few could possibly fathom. But to place the onus on this gang of jokers is forgetting the ridiculous and frivolous spending of the previous council, which basically threw money into studies about pie-in-the-sky projects the city couldn’t afford even in a robust economy: a $35 million public safety building, a $6 million indoor recreation facility, unnecessary water pipelines to either the Hudson River or Saratoga Lake.

All along, the city was using the VLT aid –anywhere from $1.9 million to $3.4 million of state funding meant to cover the virtually non-exsistent negative municipal impacts of the racino –to balance an overweight budget that made a fat-back sandwich look lean. First it was the Republican Lenz Administration, and then the Democratic Keehn Administration. Now it’s Republican Mayor Scott Johnson who will have the dubious honor finding a way out of this decade-in-the-making disaster while trying to avoid becoming the city’s third-consecutive one-term mayor.

Simply put, there’s no easy way out of this debacle. Despite the sudden panicked calls for paid parking, there’s no way the city will be able to overcome its shortfall without making cuts to its workforce. If that means losing “essential services,” then so be it. The thinning ranks of the common people can’t afford to pay any more to support a city government that is designed as if the average residential income is seven figures. City workers need to be laid off, period. If that means no more street festivals, fine. If that means fewer leaf pickups in the fall, fine. If it means fewer cops on the street fine.

But before the departments punishing residents with diminished services, why not start where the city is fattest? Why not get rid of the deputy commissioners, the most corrupt and useless positions in the city? Eliminating the deputies is easy, as the Republicans demonstrated during the Dreyer scandal. Such a move would save the city roughly a half-million costs, if all five are sent packing.

So then who would run the city’s “essential services” you ask? Well, the commissioners for one. If they’re really interested in holding political office, they’ll need to work for their paltry salaries, not pawn off all the important decisions on political hack thoroughly unprepared to make them. Then perhaps maybe the voters would look beyond the names and political parties running for office and pay a bit more attention to their credentials. This prudence is direly needed these days, as the corruption and political patronage on both sides of the isle has crashed this city’s government into the wall with the force of a formula-one racer. Now the only thing left to do is pick up the pieces.

Wrecked

2009-04-22T09:41:00.000-07:00

There comes a point in the narrative every Bonny and Clyde-type film where the main protagonists can indeed turn back; where they can point to their successes with a sense of dignity and walk proudly into the western horizon amid the golden hues of the setting sun. But more often than not, these characters choose the other direction instead, headlong into almost certain doom. And there’s really no way of turning back once they take that first step east.

Saratoga Springs Mayor Scott Johnson found himself in a similar situation in February, when he could have easily called off the project to build a gigantic recreation center on the east side. At the time, the city was facing resistance on what seemed to be all fronts: Neighbors were filing for court injunctions, the chairman of the county Democrats was complaining to the state Department of Labor and the city was facing a multi-million dollar budgetary shortfall with its loss of VLT revenue from the Saratoga Gaming and Raceway. On top of all of this, the city’s building inspector was apparently raising design issues with the rec center’s plans, due to a type of insulation included in the plans.

Johnson should have taken this as a sign. At that point, he could have easily walked away from the project unscathed. Certainly, admitting defeat would have taken a certain degree of humility on his part. He would have assuredly taken heat from his own party for stepping away from the flames of a fire that was brazenly fanned by his Democratic opponents.

But scrapping the project would have been the right thing to do. The city doesn’t need a rec center with the new YMCA. In fact, it’s debatable whether the city can even afford a new building given its ongoing fiscal woes. And that’s before considering the City Recreation Director Linda Terricola can’t even manage the buildings she oversees today. Case in point: The multi-million dollar ice rink almost wholly powered for free with gas produced by the former landfill is the only municipally-owned one in the entire Capital Region that is annually thawed for a quarter of the year.

Yet Johnson has steadfastly resisted any calls to end the $6.5 million project. He plowed ahead though the mire of residential dissent, and now he’s getting ready to land a shovel in the ground. Certainly in his mind, building the damn thing was the only way to go.

Johnson is mere months away from launching his re-election campaign and very little has changed for the better since he took office. All of the hot-button issues that drove the last campaign are and will continue to be on the table well beyond November. That doesn’t bode well for an incumbent that pretty much rode into office on a shock wave created by the epic implosion of the city Democrats.

Johnson has no discernible issues he can point to as reasons for his re-election, and he’s running out of time. Politically, he’s banking on getting the rec center built by fall, thereby proving his ability to work through immense political meddling. But this is flawed reasoning that stands in direct contrast with the one platform he did have for re-election: His administration didn’t set the city on the same collision course with disaster that the Keehn Adminstration seemed hell-bent on taking.

Now Johnson has filled the ammo cache of any political enemy that chooses to oppose him. Were a challenger to emerge from the GOP, they could easily argue Johnson strayed away from fiscally conservative policies by throwing even more money into a boondoggle project that has spanned the course if decades. His Democratic challenger will certainly exploit the notion that he was recklessly bull-headed in pounding the rec center into the ground. And they may already be using this angle too.

The peculiar case of former building inspector Lauritz Rasmussen is a prime example. Rasmussen, who was hired by Johnson, has very publicly claimed Johnson’s office fired him because he refused to give a rubber stamp on the project. Johnson rejects this notion and claims the “public record” will reflect his reasons for dismissing the man. It’s entirely possible

Rasmussen is playing up his role in the rec center debacle under the urging from someone –or some party –that has an ax to grind with Johnson. Or it’s plausible he’s telling the truth. Either way, the issue makes bad press for a mayor just six months before the election, especially when there’s little record to go on other than the status quo.

The bottom line is that it’s too late for Johnson to reverse course. He’s put too much energy and effort into advancing the rec center project and any deviation at this point would do little to change the course he’s charted. Arguably, that direction will yield him negligible results even if the structure comes to fruition. And it will gain him even less ground if it’s not. In other words, the Titanic is heading toward the iceberg. The only question now is how bad the damage will be once it hits.

Times Union busters

2009-04-09T06:12:00.000-07:00

Think of the conflict that must have raged somewhere inside Jim Odato’s mind when he wrote about the state layoffs proposed by Governor David Paterson in Wednesday’s Times Union. While the longtime state Capitol reporter was penning a story about the governor exempting non-union state workers from the looming 8,900 layoffs, his own union was battling behind the scenes to save jobs among the TU’s senior writers –jobs like his own.

The bell tolls this morning for the Capital Region’s largest and most respected daily publication. And when it does, close to a quarter of the paper’s staffers could be wandering onto the unemployment line. If the parent Hearst Corporation has its druthers, many of these layoffs could come from the paper’s senior employees once the Albany Newspaper Guild’s contract is cancelled today. The alternative and equally dismal scenario has the guild picketing against the union-breaking policies the company recently exacted on some of its other workers, such as the staff at the San Francisco Chronicle.

This story starts when the original contract between Hearst and the guild –the local union representing about 280 workers at the paper –expired last summer. Negotiations between the sides continued through the fall and winter, with little progress. Then in February, George Hearst III was appointed publisher of the newspaper.

Hearst, a descendant of William Randolph Hearst, was the chief negotiator for his company on behalf of the Times Union. The move was initially met with cautious optimism, but soon became a harbinger of ominous times ahead. One after another, Hearst-owned papers began to see layoffs and even threats of closure. Less than a month after taking the helm, “Mr. Publisher” announced he needed to cut costs by more than 20 percent at the Times Union, meaning layoffs were imminent.

Of course, layoffs under the rolling contract meant only the newest hires at the paper would be affected. And these employees typically make a fraction of what senior workers make. That’s why Hearst brazenly told guild members last month of his intention to terminate their contract as of this morning.

Though legal, Hearst’s move was a highly unorthodox way of forcing union concessions. The main concession his company is seeking is the ability to can whoever they deem necessary. Deductive reasoning suggests these workers would be many of the veteran employee soaking up large benefit packages and relatively fat paychecks for a job that could be easily pawned off on a pimple-faced Columbia grad more than eager to find a way to start paying back $80,000 worth of tuition loans.

From an anti-labor perspective, threatening to terminate the contract is nothing short of genius. Tell the guild leaders to screw off, assure them their contract will be canceled and that the layoffs will be flowing like spring runoff into the Hudson once it is. Don’t bring them to the drawing table, force them to it. Once their sitting down, nail them to the chair; don’t let ‘em up until they’re broken; shatter the fuckers. Split the goddamn union right down the center of its cerebral cortex. And the best way to do this is eliminate the very union leaders that refuse to make concessions on their contract.

But this is no ordinary union. This is the union representing press. More specifically, this is the only press in the Capital Region that has remained somewhat insulated from the failures of print journalism and news media on a whole. Certainly, the Times Union isn’t perfect. But it’s about as perfect as they come in the tri-city and northern region, considering the thread-bare newsrooms extending from Poughkeepsie to Plattsburgh.

Now Hearst is proposing to cut indiscriminately the workers that allowed the Times Union to adapt into what it is today. The cuts come despite a number of guild concessions, including a 5 percent across-the-board pay reduction among its members.

For what it’s worth, the guild isn’t exactly a pushover either. They’ve already voiced their intention to seek support among Albany’s other unions and to wage aggressive campaigns against the Times Union’s advertisers. They could also strike, which would nail a stake through the heart of everything the newspaper has achieved in this modern era of journalism.

Already, the failed negotiations and the company’s slash-and-burn tactics have taken a noticeable toll on the paper. The guild has chronicled the debacle on a public blog, which features comments from a number of its members regarding a precipitous decline in morale.

“I don’t have words to express the breach of trust I — and I’m sure other members — feel right now,” wrote one veteran TU reporter on the guild’s blog. “One of the bitterest aspects of this is the apparent lack of interest in either appreciating or considering any of the Guild’s good-faith efforts to contribute to a solution. That is: help save our newspaper without destroying its quality entirely.”

And it shows, too. The quality of the paper’s regionally renowned Web site has also diminished over the last few months, although it’s unclear whether this is attributable to the change in publisher or the union negotiations or both.

True, this is a tough time for the news industry and one that’s only bound to get tougher in this economy. Unions must exhibit flexibility during this storm, or face a grizzly demise amid its bluster. But what Hearst is doing to the guild –and the Times Union by extension –is placing in jeopardy basic rights guaranteed under the Constitution. Perhaps “Mr. Publisher” should think about this when he returns to the negotiating table this morning. The fate of the region’s news lies in the balance.

iSaratoga to Dalai Lama: Live in the now

2009-04-07T07:17:00.000-07:00

Note to the Dalai Lama: Learn how to Google. We’re in the 21st century now, and it really looks like the monolithic Internet search engine is here to stay, so why not learn how to use it?

Surely, his holiness has encountered the World Wide Web. Perhaps he simply doesn’t understand the subtle nuisances of this nearly ubiquitous site. Well, iSaratoga has decided to offer his fickleness a chance at learning this technology before he inadvertently makes another serious publicity gaff.

First, let’s start with the basics. To log onto the search engine, simply typing “google” at the top of your browser. Modern ingenuity will lead you to the home page. Next, think up something you’d like to learn a bit more about –say for instance the term “World Ethical Foundations Consortium.” Type these words out and put them in quotation marks in the box located next to the multi-colored word “Google.”

Here’s the hard part. Take your cursor and place it over the word “search.” Click your mouse button once, or even just nail the return key. Suddenly, you’ll be whisked away to a new, more verbose page that should include a variety of headings that include links to World Ethical Foundations Consortium and other bizarre areas of cyberspace.

While scrolling down –and this is assuming you know how to ‘scroll down’ –you may come across another term that seems dissimilar to the aforementioned consortium, namely a link titled “NXIVM Ethics in the Executive workplace, executive and business…”

Now behold the power of Google. You can take this new foreign term, NXIVM, and enter it into the same little box you used before to learn more about this term that may or may not seem foreign to you. Let’s try it, shall we?

There should be a fresh group of headings for you to scroll through. Now a bit of a warning: Some of these headings could be a bit alarming. For instance, it can be a bit off-putting to see one of the top search results comes back from CultNews.com; or that this entity that is somehow linked to this so-called ethical foundations consortium is also into filing multi-million dollar lawsuits aimed at stifling free speech.

True, just about all of the information contained on the Internet must be taken with a grain of salt. There are simply too many kooks and wingnuts out there to believe them all. But it’s hard to deny the indelible online link between these two organizations and the fact that both seem to generate a third term to be searched in Google: Keith Raniere.

Had his holiness taken this short dabble into Google’s functions, perhaps he would have saved himself a fair amount of chagrin he’s now experiencing for canceling his appearance in Albany three weeks before it was scheduled to occur. After all, it’s hard to convince people of your good-natured plight to free Tibet when you’re giving international speeches sponsored by a shadowy organization that has used lawsuits and intimidation in a not-so-furtive attempt at white-washing its image.

Many throughout the blogosphere weren’t even sure if the announcement of Dalai Lama’s visit wasn’t some cruel April Fool’s Day joke perpetrated by some sadistic Internet troll five months too early. The sum total of the exiled Buddhist leader, Raniere, and the Times Union Center seemed almost too good to be true. In fact, many were saying to themselves ‘doesn’t this guy use Google?’ when the announcement was first made.

But clearly as the date of his appearance approached, the Dalai Lama realized his reputation would be tarnished by accepting an invitation from a group that has curried favor among the extremely powerful elite and hasn’t exactly used it to spread mirth throughout the region. Some say NXIVM threw around its influence with the Albany Times Union so the paper would avoid linking the blisteringly evident dots between the organization and something called the “Ethical Humanitarian Foundation,” which was sponsoring the event.

Metroland Editor and longtime writer Chet Hardin made this point in early March, just a few days before NXIVM slapped his publication with a $65 million lawsuit. Metroland Publisher Stephen Leon says the paper hasn’t been served, and NXIVM representatives claim the filing was made simply to prevent the statute of limitations from expiring. However, there seems to be a definitive link between these two seemingly disconnected events.

And then there is the curious case of the Tech Valley Times. Editor Robert Millis made light of the Dalai Lama’s appearance on his blog, Nanoburgh. He went on to wonder why none of the mainstream media outlets made mention of the sponsoring organization’s somewhat dubious links. In particular, he singled out the Times Union, which basically wrote a puff-piece all but ignoring the blatant connection between NXIVM and the other ‘foundations’ associated with the event.

“Neither the original story nor any follow-ups include any mention of NXIVM, Executive Success Programs, the cult comparisons, the past and present legal woes, the harassing dirty tricks allegations or any other aspect of the messy history involved with individuals and companies affiliated with the Conceptual Founder of the organization presenting this event,” Millis wrote in his early February post. “Do we just chalk this up to lazy journalism or to something more sinister, such as the fact that the newspaper’s name is on the very building in which the event is taking place?”

One week later, the post disappeared. Contacted via e-mail, Millis said he’s received a number of correspondences about the post and he’s telling everyone the same thing.

“No comment –for the time being,” he wrote.

All of this seems a bit far out. But it certainly seems like there’s an organization that is trying to launder its image via threats and other forms of coercion. And in the end, this sort of thing doesn’t exactly fit in character with the prototypical image most people imagine when they think of Buddhism or the Dalai Lama. So in the future, perhaps his holiness can do a little research online before he unwittingly walks into a scheme to launder the reputation of a very dubious organization that is more or less the antithesis of the peace he tries to promote.

Post Script

2009-04-02T07:33:00.000-07:00

It’s hard to get a grasp on how remarkably out-of-touch the nationally syndicated AM talk shows are until they suddenly decide to cast their shouting opinion onto local politics. Such was the case Wednesday, when mental midget Sean Hannity decided to weigh in on the campaign for the 20th Congressional District.

Despite being unable to find the 20th or any of its constituent communities on a map, Hannity figured himself to be the perfect pundit to weigh in on the too-close-to-call race during his afternoon yawn on the radio. Naturally, the GOP cheerleader tossed his pom-poms in the air for the failed campaign of state Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco, who inexplicably blew a more than 12-point lead in the polls over the course of six short weeks.

To nearly anyone with a brain, Tedisco’s fall from the top was nothing short of epic. While his party wasn’t exactly phrasing their candidate’s campaign this way, they certainly weren’t celebrating like he had won on Tuesday. Even if Tedisco does emerge victorious, his failure to capitalize on his name recognition and public service will certainly make party leaders think twice about his name in the hat for any other political office.

Yet for a blathering dunce like Hannity, Tuesday’s election was all about the Republicans emerging victorious. In his opinion, Tedisco warded off a peppering attack by the Obama-led Democrats. He portrayed Tedisco as an underdog, stalwart in the face of a wealthy financier who threw buckets of gold into the free-for-all for the seat.

Hannity’s best logic came when he boldly proclaimed Tedisco had eclipsed the numbers the Democrats generated in the district during the presidential campaign. He suggested Tedisco garnering 50 percent of the vote showed the Democrats losing ground in the district. After all, he posited, Barack Obama nailed 68 percent of the vote just five months earlier.

“And this was a guy who was down four points in the polls the week before,” Hannity mused.

Simply put, this logic is laughable even from a Republican standpoint. And it shows just how fallacious these talk show hosts can be in their message to an oft-unsuspecting public. Remarkably, they tune in everyday to listen to a flatulent jackass like Hannity, who is nothing more than two-bit college drop-out.

Of course, Hannity isn’t the only national radio host to intersect with Camp Tedisco. The candidate inexplicably made national headlines when he uttered the words “Rush Limbaugh is meaningless to me,” during an editorial board meeting with the Oneonta Daily Star. The quote was featured prominently in the article, promptly republished by the liberal-bent Huffington Post and then blown onto Murphy mailers that were disseminated throughout the district.

True, most district residents would agree with Tedisco. There’s nothing more meaningless than an oxycotin-laced fat-headed pork-chop like Limbaugh prattling on about his own accolades in between diatribes about ‘the libs.’ But the quote, which Tedisco claimed was taken out of context, prompted him to issue a hasty apology. Certainly, Michael Steele knows how he feels.

Amazingly, guys like Hannity and Limbaugh, who once carped from the sidelines, are now supposedly the ones blindly leading the Republicans forward. They gained an immense amount of political power during the eight years of the Bush Administration and don’t seem too eager to give any of it up. All this is good news for their detractors on the left, seeing as though they seem to be blindly leading their followers off a cliff.

Dog and pony show

2009-04-01T11:01:00.000-07:00

Jasper Nolan looked like an aged cousin of Quasimodo as he skulked around the periphery of a packed crowd of Republicans. The scowl on his face was too tight to allow in the free-flow of booze, which was preventing the rest of the crowd gathered at the Holiday Inn from grasping the stinging reality of what was happening; the feeling of looking up to see a metric ton of elephant dung mysteriously whistling down overhead. The tired look in his eyes said it all: The party’s over.

Nolan eventually crossed into the confluence of bright lights and video feeds to join an equally tired-looking Jim Tedisco, who soberly emerged from seclusion shortly after 10 p.m. He also looked exhausted after a solid 45 days of political buggering. He tried to stay on point and upbeat. He tried to bring the ‘Disco Jim’ charm that kept his re-election bids in the Assembly rolling in remarkable succession. But there was no denying the fact he lost the race for the 20th district; or if he won, that it wouldn’t make much of a difference anyway.

Just a few miles down Route 9, Scott Murphy and his supporters regaled at the Gideon Putnam. His upright posture and his beaming smile –everything about him –seemed to suggest victory. Even with more than 10,000 absentee ballots outstanding, the Democrats were clearly placing a bold checkmark by Murphy’s name in the win column. Flanked by Gov. David Paterson and freshman Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Murphy seemed to exude confidence as he boldly proclaimed the race had swung in his favor.

And it has. Anything less than a resounding defeat is a victory for Murphy and the Democrats, considering the remarkably Republican district was hand-picked by former Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno. Tedisco, who was more or less Bruno’s understudy in the state Legislature, had behind him the once omnipotent GOP machines of Rensselaer and Saratoga counties. Those areas delivered heavily for Tedisco, who was previously viewed as the great white hope of the party in the Capital Region and perhaps the state.

But now Tedisco is the guy who blew a race that no clear-minded pundit ever thought he could lose. Just two months ago, most political junkies didn’t even think Murphy would be able to give the Assembly minority leader a run for his money. Murphy was viewed as a candidate picked by his party because of his money and ability to self-finance a race in which the Democrats were serious underdogs. Yet with each passing week, he seemed to gain ground on the back-peddling Tedisco campaign, which failed to grasp the evolving political demographic in New York.

Tedisco’s desperation became blisteringly apparent two weeks ago, when his campaign henchmen decided to blast Eric Sundwall off the ticket, a miscalculated move that will forever haunt him if Murphy ultimately wins. Sundwall naturally turned around and endorsed Murphy after being royally screwed out of his democratic right to run for office by a Republican stacked Supreme Court in Duchess County.

That’s right. All three justices on the bench in Duchess are card-carrying Republicans of the Pataki genre. And they’ve all made a practice of ensuring their fellow party members are victorious in close elections. Combined with state Republican Committee chairman Joseph Mondello and former state Board of Elections Counsel John Ciampoli, they are among the dying vestiges of the Pataki-Bruno era.

And they’re the last hope Tedisco has for victory, albeit a Pyrrhic one. Justice James Brand –the same judge that ruled against Sundwall two weeks ago –will oversee a hand recount of all 10,055 paper ballots issued in the race. In his county, Brand is known as being sympathetic to the Republican cause, which is precisely why Ciampoli has relied on him throughout the race.

The recount process will undoubtedly take months, leaving the 20th district empty and primed for redistricting in 2010. It also means Tedisco can save some face from the Sundwall error, which clearly worked in favor of Murphy’s campaign. Keep in mind Sundwall’s name is on the absentee and military ballots and any votes in his favor will be disqualified. Under the theory Sundwall’s handful of supporters went to Murphy, Tedisco may be able to chisel himself into the lead.

Either way the election swings, the key now is the Democrats’ ability to maintain a majority in the state Senate. Provided they do, they’ll probably gerrymander the powerful Albany machine into a new composite district that will easily be won by any candidate they choose.

So what does this all mean? First of all, Tedisco’s career in politics has taken an abrupt turn for the worse. His run for congress could have certainly been viewed as a litmus test for higher aspirations, such as governor or maybe even Gillibrand’s senate seat. But given the closeness of the race, the party will think twice about placing him on the ballot for anything other than his assembly seat even if he squeaks out a victory.

More importantly, Tuesday’s election is yet another benchmark signifying the end of the stalwart party Alfonse D’Amato built and Bruno kept in power for nearly two decades. On the other side of the isle, the Democrats are riding a golden-crested wave churned from the depths of the Republican’s abject political failure.

End of the line

2009-03-31T07:17:00.000-07:00

Somebody put Jim Tedisco on suicide watch. When the numbers finally come down this evening, it’s best that the veteran state legislator is kept away from sharp objects, strong pills and any other implement of destruction with which he could end it all before the stooges running his campaign realized something is awry.

Sure he looks upbeat; cautiously optimistic at the very least. But so do most self-destructive people shortly before they pull the ripcord on life. Tedisco is mere hours away from learning whether his utterly botched campaign for congress miraculously salvaged him a short stint in Washington, or if he lost the seat to a guy that nobody in the 20th district knew two months ago.

Either way, Tedisco theoretically should have won the race in a landslide. The electorate was firmly entrenched in his party’s favor. He has national recognition and nearly three decades of state government service. Simply put, he was a shoo-in 45 days ago. All he needed to do was nothing at all. The only obstacle stopping him from ascending to congress was time.

That all changed at the start of the race. The national and state Democrats came strongly to the aid of Glens Falls businessman Scott Murphy, a fellow who curried a significant amount of political clout in Missouri, but relative anonymity in the northern Adirondack foothills characterizing a good portion of the congressional district. Fresh from their wins in November, the Democrats injected money and punch into Murphy’s campaign, something that surprised Tedisco and many others during the dawning days of the race.

Stung by the emergence of Murphy, the lumbering Republican machine suddenly jolted into action. Run attack ads. Print accusatory mailers. Grab at straws. Say something about AIG. Maybe harp on Wall Street. Take the GOP playbook, tear out all the pages, and throw them up in the air like confetti; hope that at least one goddamn play floats down. But the more they clutched, kicked grabbed and bit at Murphy, the more he seemed to gain traction in the polls. In the end, he surpassed the flailing Tedisco campaign, which remained a solid four points behind.

Tedisco’s desperation was clear weeks earlier when the Republicans summoned the Hatchet. When John Ciampoli gets involved in an election, the GOP might as well announce they’ve taken off the gloves and are now clutching a strand of razor wire in each fist. Ciampoli, who was once the Pataki appointed counsel for the state Board of Elections, is the political equivalent of highly-trained hitman. His modus operandi is quite simple: Find a couple of small party shills, get them to sign a few waivers and then exploit every loophole in election law there is.

Like any hitman, Ciampoli can’t be linked to any specific candidate. And on paper, he’s only loosely affiliated with the GOP. But in actuality, he does the party’s dirty work whenever summoned. Just ask Brian Premo, who went several rounds against the litigator when he brazenly challenged the otherwise unopposed Joe Bruno for state Senate in 2006.

In the case of the 20th district’s special election, Ciampoli targeted state Libertarian Party chairman Eric Sundwall, whose campaign was starting to attract moderate voters rather than the few fringe danglers that typically gravitate to small party politics. But in a special election for a congressional seat that will expire in less than 20 months, some moderate voters on both sides of the bi-partisan isle were starting to consider him as an option; a protest vote to show up the two-party system.

With Sundwall out of the race, Tedisco probably figured he could split the Libertarian vote and again scramble above the election’s high-water mark. At the very least, he probably assumed the shunned freak vote would instead stay at home to stage their protest. So he employed a trio of card-carrying conservatives to challenge Sundwall’s ballots at the last minute, knowing the candidate didn’t have the resources, money or time to battle it out in court.

Among this trio was Don Neddo, the pathetic shill who helped rally support for the war in Iraq seven years ago. For those who don’t recall this sinister denizen, the ruling Republicans put him on a pedestal claiming he was a decorated war veteran that wanted to see the shimmering glow of freedom shine in the Persian Gulf, regardless of the cost. He was the point man for the so-called ‘Patriot Rallies’ that cropped up across the Capital Region. The rallies were fomented by Clear Channel Communications, a company beholden to the neo-conservatives that pounded the drum beat for war just as people were starting to question whether another one was needed. In the end, he was exposed for the fraud he is and sent packing back up into the darkest nether-region of the GOP’s bowels.

That was until he surfaced in favor of Tedisco’s campaign. Remarkably, Tedisco says people like Ciampoli and Neddo have nothing to do with his campaign. He also claims he has no power over the relentless attack ads that are being sent out by his party at the national level. In fact, he seems to claim he has no control over his campaign whatsoever; that his party is running roughshod over the district like a speeding bullet train without breaks. Needless to say, it’s a troubling assertion that doesn’t bode well for his future in politics.

But most pundits realize Tedisco is all bluster. He’s fully aware of what his party is doing and complicit in it. Even the national ads that incomprehensibly link Murphy to the AIG scandal seem to smack of Tedisco, who once claimed he’d swear off Heinze Ketchup to support George W. Bush’s re-election campaign.

Well, this is the end of the line. A loss for Tedisco today will likely spell his doom in future office. There’s a chance he might be recycled for a state senate seat. But aspirations for higher office will be stemmed there. Even if he wins, the outlook isn’t bright for Disco Jim. He’ll need to bring home a lot of bacon in a Democratic congress that will be less than welcoming to a guy who just spent 45 days bashing mules

City Center Cubed

2009-03-23T10:14:00.000-07:00

Spending eight years with your head immersed in calculations and equations is a good way to lose touch with the environment around you. At the very least, such arduous studies are going to warp your sensibilities. Just ask the architects that designed the recently pitched city center expansion.

After nearly a decade of planning, the Saratoga Springs City Center Authority unveiled plans for the $16 million expansion project during their 25th anniversary gala. The architects’ neatly polished rendition shows a structure encapsulated in dark glass and shimmering in the afternoon sun. It shows people placidly walking by the new structure, not even taking notice of the giant erection looming over the Spa City’s main drag. Perhaps this is because the only remarkable feature of the exterior design is that it took nearly two years to produce.

Simply put, this building is an eyesore that doesn’t fit in with the rest of the hotel complex, much less the buildings along Broadway. The design doesn’t even fit in with the standards set by the modern high-rises that have popped up in every corner of the city. Even the not-so-appealing city center design today seems like more of a fit than the design the authority returned, which might have been loosely based on the movie “Cube.”

Instead of using brick –the material used in just about every other Broadway construction –the authority’s architect decided to rely on concrete and what appears to be stucco. Despite its prominent location and equally discernable faux-promenade on the recently renamed “Ellsworth Jones Place,” the building lacks a single identifiable entrance. No visible doors, just windows. After all, it’s good to keep convention goers guessing how to get into the place

But don’t worry. There’s a “grand staircase” inside –right next to the escalator. And the new building will have 22,000 square feet of space to “boost business by 40 percent over the next three years,” officials from the authority claim.

“The expansion on the corner of Broadway and Ellsworth Jones Place will bring renewed energy and appeal to the northern entrance of our primary business district by creating a dynamic and iconic corner,” authority President Michael Toohey said in a prepared statement published in the Daily Gazette last week.

Bring renewed energy? Is that by overshadowing all the other buildings on the street fitting with the architectural precepts of the late 19th and early 20th century? The sole exception to this statement is the city center and adjoining hotel, which are at least built with characteristic red brick.

The architect –or architects –producing the expansion design decided to toss existing design to the wind. Clearly, the idea was to create a design that stands out from everything in the city. Fortunately for the authority, they didn’t need to go through the normal planning process. Due to timing constraints associated with the roughly $12 million worth of state funding, the authority was allowed to forgo the normal planning process and is instead reporting directly to the City Council. And it’s evident too, given the design they unveiled.

True, the authority has a lot to contend with in the project. They’re basically land-locked, meaning they’re bound to build the new structure within the existing footprint. They also can’t build much further upward, given that the city center is already one of the tallest structures in the city.

Yet even given these constraints, the new design basically flouts any concept of local architecture, leaving some observers to wonder whether the authority a relied on the same uber-designers that officials from the state Office of Parks and Recreation and Historical Preservation hired to design the ‘IHOP in park’ last year. Oddly enough, the design for the Saratoga Performing Arts Center renovation –also dubbed the “SPAC Stack” –was created by Saratoga Associates, the architecture firm headed by former planning board chairman Bob Bristol. Public outcry sent that visual disaster back to the drawing board last fall.

But in the authority’s case, the nationally renowned HNTB Corp. was secured. The company has designed convention centers for Boston, Providence, Kansas City and San Diego. Among the designs, only the center in Providence seems to fit in character of the city. All the others appear to be plucked from Sci-Fi horror movie story boards.

Hopefully, the city’s four commissioners and mayor won’t decide to stand behind this design. Or at least they’ll offer some suggestions. If not, the burgeoning public outcry should be enough to convince them it needs some tweaking. This is a building that should be a centerpiece for design in the city, not a knock-off attempt at emulating big-city architecture that stands out like a sore thumb. True, the convention center is in dire need of an update. However, it shouldn’t come at the expense of landing a hideous black cube in the center of the city.

White-washed

2009-03-18T08:31:00.000-07:00

Sometimes there is a right person for a job, even if it’s for the wrong reasons. For example, Marcia White was the right person to head the Saratoga Performing Arts Center four years ago, even if it was for a fundamentally flawed reason: Her close connections to heavy-weight politician Joe Bruno.

At the time, the inexplicably mismanaged performing arts center was in financial disarray. The combined salaries of patronage king Herb Chesbrough and his wife Kathy were bilking nearly a half-million dollars from the public benefit corporation. So when Chesbrough finally departed, SPAC was drifting through dire fiscal straits, with the only possible rescue lying in the executive director’s ability to raise money for the nearly bankrupt venture.

Enter White, Bruno’s former press secretary, who had positively no experience running anything, much less a performing arts venue. Critics immediately jumped on White’s appointment, arguing her remarkable ascension from spokeswoman to executive director was yet another patronage dump, simply compounding the folly SPAC’s board committed when it basically handed Chesbrough an outlandish contract.

But SPAC’s powerbrokers quickly fired back, foisting White as someone connected in lucrative money circles and with the ability to harness some of that green to bring the performing arts center back in black. Lo and behold, they were right –or at least partially. Within her first year on the job, White managed to pull SPAC back to safe financial footing, something that was roundly lauded by her allies in a very ‘we told you so’ sort of way.

Well all this is ancient history now and SPAC seems to be drifting back into the same problems it had when White first took the job. Not surprisingly, that main problem is White’s bloated compensation for being what amounts to a social cheerleader who mails out fundraising announcements every other week.

Four years ago, members of SPAC’s Board of Trustees listed as “between $150,000 and $175,000” when White was first appointed. By the time she took over for Chesbrough, that figure was at $175,000. Come to find out today, her salary was a whopping $205,000, which pales in comparison to the more than $244,000 she made in 2006, as dutifully reported by the Daily Gazette Wednesday.

But wait. That’s not even the best part. SPAC doesn’t even know how much she made in 2007 or 2008. And they certainly weren’t prognosticating what she’ll make this year. So given the salary history and the fact that her salary increased by more than $25,000 before she even started the job, it’s not a far stretch to think she may be making close to what Chesbrough was earning before he was tarred and feathered in the news media for almost ending the annual New York City Ballet performance due to revenue losses.

The fact that White is even approached a quarter-million dollar salary after four years is even more astonishing considering it took Chesbrough –SPAC’s director from 1978 until 2005 –more than a decade to reach that mark. Also figuring into all this is the fact that no other comparable venue in the northeast pays their executive director as much as White. When confronted by all this, board chairman William Dake seemed to stammer a bit.

“We are an $8 million business,” he told the Gazette. “We interface with national organizations and it’s complicated. We have to deal with five different groups who we have to beat to death to get them to focus on the programming. And she started in a complex time. We didn’t have a lot of staff. She works her tail off.”

Beat to death? Works her tail off? Started in a complex time? One can almost imagine Dake stuttering with angst as he tries to come up with an applicable excuse for White becoming a millionaire at SPAC’s expense. What he’s really saying is things are back to normal at SPAC. Nothing has changed since the state released a scathing audit back in 2004. That’s really all there is to be gleaned from his stream of gibberish.

Worse yet is that Bruno, White’s main benefactor, is no longer in office. Nor does he seem in much of a position to throw around what little political clout he has remaining, thanks to a recent federal indictment. For the first time since she took office, White is alone in her endeavors at SPAC.

All this seems rather glower news considering the recession, one week being trimmed from the ballet this year and yet another Live Nation concert slate that doesn’t appear to be wowing the concert goers that do have money to dump on over-priced lawn seats. However, there is a simple solution to all of this: Dump Live Nation and let White earn her paycheck for a change.

Dake claims “[50] percent of the job is fundraising,” but doesn’t hint at what White does with the rest of her time at SPAC. Perhaps if she was working the phones and making connections, she could be hauling in concerts, soliciting vendors and running the operation so that SPAC gets a bit more than the paltry $1 million Live Nation offers them every year for throwing some of the worst concerts Saratoga Springs has seen over the past four decades or so.

Some argue Live Nation is the only way SPAC will ever book truly big-name acts. But the problem with this thinking is that SPAC must put on at least five stinkers to get just one big name. Even when the big names do come to perform, Live Nation is the one that makes off with the big payday, not SPAC. After all, they’re the ones that hit real pay-dirt with concession sales. Think the profit margin this company makes on just one 16-ounce Budweiser they sell for $8 in the industrial cattle pen some call a beer garden.

The best part about all this is that Live Nation’s contract expires this year and apparently they’re not all too keen on keeping the terms the way they are. So basically, it’s time to put White to the test. If she’s interested in getting paid like a major promoter, then it’s high time she start acting like one. SPAC is locked into this year’s program, but now is the time to start placing feelers for next season. And if she’s not up for the task, then perhaps it’s time for SPAC look for a new comprehensive director that will earn such a lofty paycheck. Either way, it’s time for the plug to be pulled on one of these experiments.

Is there anybody out there?

2009-03-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

This just in: The race for the 20th Congressional District is still on! Yes folks, rub the winter out of your eyes and take a gander at this gallop as it comes down to the wire! Excitement, fancy, thrills beyond your wildest expectations! Hold onto your seats, because we’re only getting started!

At least, this is the impression most voters would get if they picked up a newspaper these days. But they don’t. And the battle for the 20th has really slipped off the radar for most people after they realized the two candidates vying for office really aren’t that different once the preposterous attack ads on television are tuned out. The main and perhaps only one is that they place different consonants behind their names, which is hardly a difference that rallies up the masses.

So far, the most exciting moment of the race was when the Democrats were trying to lure Stanley Cup winning goaltender Mike Richter into the fray. When they couldn’t land the former Ranger, there was a bit of curiosity over who they would put up against a showboat Jim Tedisco, who might as well pick up the ‘Hollywood’ moniker Joe Bruno used to carry so well.

Since then, this race has been a snoozer. And it’s not a surprise either. Winter is perhaps the worst time to conduct a campaign. Volunteers are sparse, and the few that do turnout hardly feel like tromping around in two feet of snow getting doors slammed in their faces.

So everything comes down to press coverage and sound bites. The charred crater that was once the Republican Congressional Committee has jazzed things up a bit by trying to help Tedisco’s campaign. Yet when this comes in the form of knocking Scott Murphy for an essay he wrote as an undergrad bashing President Eisenhower, it’s a real stretch calling this help at all. In truth, the best campaigning Tedisco could have done is no campaigning at all. Had he continued to be the ceaseless mouth of the state Assembly, he’d undoubtedly be running away with the race today.

Instead, the media is filled with ludicrous attack adds basically making Murphy out to be the second coming of Bernie Madoff. Assuredly, some conservative think-tank in Washington thought it would be a groovy idea to link these two names, thinking the fickle troglodytes of northern New York would surely buy it and wander out of their Adirondack caves to thwart the next big Ponzi scheme.

Unfortunately, these aren’t the people Camp Tedisco needs to win over. Even if they were, they’re a shrinking minority these days, hardly the folks that would sway an election in one direction or another. The 20th District race is all about the centrists, and these aren’t the type of voters that buy into the trip the RCC is shoveling. These are educated, middle-class people populating the city centers in the district. And they see through attack ads like granny’s underwear.

Proof of this lies in the polls, where Tedisco has taken an utter beating recently. He’s still bringing home the Republican vote. However, Murphy is making serious strides toward seizing the independents. Siena College placed Murphy a sparse four points behind Tedisco, who should theoretically be running away with the race. After all, he’s going up against a guy that has no name recognition and has never bothered with politics in New York. When the Democratic Committee announced Murphy would be running, the pundits answered with a as a round chorus of ‘who?!?’

Now, polls are tricky thing that should always be taken with a grain of salt. In fact, the only they really are good for is giving a race the appearance of being close. The print media seems to think they’re also good for selling papers, but this is a misnomer. Polls are all about giving the American public the carrot it needs to get out and vote. But if the polls aren’t close, they’ll probably stay home and watch American Idol or something even more frivolous –say reruns of Baywatch.

These same people will make a concerted effort to cast ballots if they think there’s a bona fide race afoot. Close polls tap an instinct that is learned very early on in life, that makes us thirst for the gut-wrenching feeling of the bottom of the ninth and the bases loaded; the field goal attempt at 50 yards with the game tied; the neck-and-neck race that has darkroom analysts inspecting photos to determine which hair on the horse’s nose crossed the finish line first.

So maybe a close poll is what this race needs to get people charged up. Maybe a narrow margin is the spice to give this otherwise milquetoast campaign some zing. After all, it’s kind of tough to get excited about the whole affair, when the winner will pretty much sit around Washington and stagnate for the next 16 months before starting a re-election campaign in 2010. All the while, voters can regale over how nice it is to burn through nearly $1 million of tax dollars just to throw such a worthless race.

Compounding tragedy

2009-03-04T09:22:00.000-08:00

The Fay family was waiting for their comatose daughter to expire this weekend when an anonymous person decided to add to their misery. Using an article posted on The Saratogian’s Web site, the nameless online denizen decided to weigh in on the situation.

“I hope she dies,” the poster wrote, clearly without thinking too much about the impact of those four seemingly innocuous words as they traveled through cyberspace.

Just a day earlier, 30-year-old Erin Fay was driving down Jones Road when she hit a patch of ice. Her Subaru Forester careened off the road, plowed through a snow bank and hit a tree. The young woman was mortally injured. Doctors indicated she was brain-dead and would never recover. The Fays made the gut-wrenching decision to remove her from life support so at least someone could benefit from her healthy organs –the gesture would extend nearly a half-dozen lives.

Meanwhile online, a battle was erupting. Police at the scene of Erin’s crash sensed the presence of alcohol and charged the woman with driving while intoxicated, long before anyone knew of her dire condition. The Saratogian rightfully reported the news they were given and the hot-button term sent ripples of rage through the paper’s online site.

Even when the Fay’s daughter finally died Saturday afternoon, online readers were viciously ripping each other. Some argued about the DWI laws. Some offered spiteful thanks that she only killed herself. Some argued that all the arguing was only twisting the rusted screws that had impaled those who knew and loved the girl.

Astoundingly, the battle raged on for nearly two days after the death. Finally on Monday, editors at the Saratogian put an end to what had clearly grown out of control. The comments section on the original article and two subsequent articles were disabled and the trolls that had besmirched an already tragic situation disappeared into the dark recesses of the Internet.

Those who knew Erin Fay describe her as an all-around amazing woman who seemed destined for success. She carried a stunning beauty and was outgoing. But in black in white and to those who see the world in similar absolutes, she was just another DWI; a faceless person that embodied everything that’s wrong today. Hopefully in wake of the tragedy, there are a handful of overzealous keyboard jockeys re-evaluating their outlook on life.

Tragedy is tragedy, and the still somewhat tight-knit community of Saratoga Springs has seen too much of over the past week. The larger lummox-like Times Union and Daily Gazette were just warming to the Fay story Tuesday when a body mysteriously appeared along the dog walk trail in the State Park.

Quickly, the word spread across the Internet. The Times Union took the brashest approach by labeling the death of a male in his “mid-20s” a “homicide.” Though the TU was technically correct in their terminology –police investigate any unattended death as a homicide –the term also seems closely linked to the concept of ‘murder’ in the CSI-crazed eye of the generally uninformed public. And it’s looking like this characterization couldn’t be further from the truth in the case of in 19-year-old Alex Carsky-Bush.

Fortunately for the Carsky-Bush family, the internet hasn’t erupted into a frenzy of rants and pontifications about the death of their son. But unlike the Fay family, they now have to deal with a number of front-page articles focusing on their loss. At this point, the death has become so public that it’ll get broad media attention if it does turn out to be a case where no criminal wrong is found.

Update: The TU went out on a limb Wednesday evening, claiming police had linked the deceased boy’s apparent overdose to a Oxycotin robbery at CVS in Wilton Monday. The bombshell was dropped, but then curiously and quickly removed from their online site within a couple of hours. There was no mention of the link in Thursday’s web or print edition. That didn’t stop the Saratogian from jumping on what the extremely fragile limb the TU mashed. They were the lone paper to have anything about the connection in print.

Were iSaratoga to lend its expert counsel, all papers would be advised to drop this story until something official is released. There’s no glory in scooping anyone on a story like this. Accuracy is far more important than timeliness when it comes to the needs of a grieving family and there’s no immenent threat to the community.

Sadly, police can usually determine with a good deal of accuracy the direction an investigation will turn within the first hours of a body being found. And the word is they already have in this case. But rather than ease the hyper-coverage of the media, they’ve kept things quiet. Now, the TU has a special ‘death investigation’ site that’s eagerly awaiting the autopsy results; the Saratogian, perhaps still stunned by how out-of-control their Fay story became, markedly downplayed their online coverage of the story Wednesday.

Like any new technology, the Internet has revolutionized human perceptions; the way we view ourselves and the way we view our peers. In a sense, the Web has depersonalized tragedy much in the same way that newspaper objectivity did back when people still bought them. The nearly instantaneous delivery of information has made pundits out of everyone and brought to the surface a new, grayer brand of callousness.

Police agencies continue to struggle with internet news. Just as they were learning to deal with newspapers, the Internet touched down. Now they seem inept when it comes to releasing all the information they have or none at all. For instance, it made little sense for the state police to charge Erin Fay with DWI, much less release this information to the Saratogian while her family was contemplating whether to take her off life support. Likewise, they would have certainly benefited from the police downplaying the death of Carsky-Bush, rather than baiting the media by calling it ‘suspicious.’

More in need of a manifesto are the free-wheeling anonymous legions of online media hounds. The advent of newspaper discussion sites first encouraged unfettered and unique discussions. These discussions can be enlightening and a good barometer for the issues that truly rile up a readership.

But they’re also giving birth to a new brand of callousness that seems to be replacing the now-stigmatized vitriol that swirled around issues of race, religion and sex. While you won’t catch too many of these righteous pseudo-pundits and quasi-trolls calling their targets ‘fag’ or ‘nigger,’ they won’t bat an eye about calling for someone’s death or worse, which can be just as hateful and sometimes even more hurtful that these slurs.

This is the ugly side of the First Amendment; the dark corner of free speech that shields and even promulgates shades of hate. Hopefully, a common ground can be found between all these elements before the courts and absolutests decide to stop the tide of free flowing information altogether. After all, free speech is a right that can quickly go up in smoke under the flames caused by its abuse.

Demolition man

2009-02-25T09:32:00.000-08:00

Building a structure from scratch is almost never as easy as taking one down. Toppling even the most stalwart of frameworks usually only takes a couple of well-placed charges in the foundation and enough dump trucks to haul away the debris. But demolishing something in this fashion is finite. Once the framework begins to topple, the only way back to a standing structure is to start anew.

And in the case of a not-for-profit ambulance service, there simply is no rebuilding it after a demo crew has done its work. But don’t tell this to Public Safety deconstructionist Ron Kim, who seems hell-bent on tearing down the frame work that has allowed the Saratoga Emergency Medical Service to flourish in the Spa City.

Kim has waged an aggressive campaign to ditch the city’s main ambulatory service in favor of hiring one of two for-profit companies that answered the bizarre request for proposal he issued last month. There is no apparent rhyme or reason for the sudden decision, other than to generate a bit more revenue for the city.

“SEMS is going to come in and say that people will die in the streets if we don’t do this. I haven’t made up my mind, but the reality is that Empire and Mohawk do this in several cities, and there aren’t people dying in the streets in those cities,” Kim told the Saratogian Tuesday.

Naturally, there have been a number of emergency-related personnel who have argued against privatizing the city’s ambulance service. The comments have varied in their content and validity, but they all seem focused at the same point: Snuffing SEMS out of business would create a looming fiscal disaster for the city.

Here’s the math. The city may be able to bilk $100,000 in rent from one of the private companies that would use space at the Westside fire station. This service would then provide residents with what is called ‘basic life support’ care aboard their rigs. City firefighters responding to emergencies would supply paramedics, who would ride aboard the private ambulances in cases that required ‘advanced life support’ services. Under these circumstances, the city would be reimbursed for the care.

It all sounds pretty good up until the for-profit service’s bean counters discover how much more lucrative their business would be if they simply stationed an ambulance crew in Saratoga County instead of paying the city’s ludicrously expensive rent on what amounts to a garage bay. Then if they’re wise, they’ll consider staffing their own paramedics aboard the rig, meaning the city could quite easily find itself with no revenue from the company at all or possibly even worse.

Once SEMS is omitted from the city’s ambulance contract, the company will quickly head toward insolvency. In fact, giving the city contract to anyone other than SEMS would ring the death knell for the four-decade old ambulance company. With the not-for-profit ambulance company liquidated, the city will have to choose between fulfilling any demands the new service may have; or establish their own city-funded service.

Some say this is what Kim wants. The destruction of SEMS would allow him to slowly build a city-owned ambulance fleet. He may even be brazen enough to purchase some of the spoils that will hit the market once he chokes the company out of existence. Some are alleging this is his diabolic plan: Expand the control of the Public Safety Department over to one part of the emergency system it doesn’t control.

But there’s a more logical reason for Kim’s sudden affinity for all things ambulance. Both Empire and Mohawk aren’t shy about dipping into their coffers when campaign season comes around. And while Kim says he hasn’t made up his mind, it’s clear he’s not pulling for SEMS, which most assuredly won’t be bankrolling anyone’s campaign this or any other year.

Mohawk, on the other hand, has a distinct record of getting into the political fray. More specifically, they have a number of curious links with the Albany County Democrats. One of their head spokesmen served under Assembly Majority Leader Ron Canestrari, while another was a campaign spokesman for county Legislator Phil Steck’s unsuccessful run at Congress. Kim, who will surely face a tough election this fall, could probably use all the cash he can muster.

As usual, the victim of this mindless dickering will ultimately be the city’s residents Kim swore to serve. SEMS is an asset to Saratoga Springs and a model other municipalities have viewed as a very well functioning model for an ambulance service that doesn’t require taxpayer funding. But also, SEMS is Saratoga’s ambulance. It’s staffed by professionals who were raised in the community and know the difference between making a buck and providing emergency care for someone who could very well be their neighbor. Let’s hope this is a message Kim gets through his unconscionably thick skull this evening when the three ambulatory suitors give their presentations.

Told ya' so

2009-02-11T08:12:00.000-08:00

Give them a bus and they’ll flock into the city. Give them a club and they’ll start to drink. Give them one goddamn inch and they’ll take over everything. Pretty soon, pools of blood will eddy in the streets, Broadway will host an all-night gang-style shooting gallery and businesses will be cloaked behind veils of stainless steel bars.

Skeptics needed no more proof than the stabbing that occurred around the witching hour just outside Club 388 on Broadway two weeks ago. Two of the bar’s patrons from Schenectady –both of them coincidentally black –peppered a Ballston Spa man with knife wounds after a pre-dawn fight by the club’s entrance.

The assault sent a news shockwave through the embattled television media, which has spent the cold winter months searching desperately for something to dramatize.

“This scene is smack-dab in the middle of Broadway, so for people walking down the street, taking a look on the sidewalk and seeing blood makes them nervous,” said FOX23 News reporter Kristin Lowman, sounding the first media alarm. “Others say it can happen anywhere –even police.”

And then there was Capital News 9, which always had a morbid fascination with stories that involve injury. They tried the ‘what if I told you that you’re standing on blood’ approach to the story in trying to convince out-of-town residents they should be scared to walk down the rough-and-tumble streets of the Spa City.

“What if I told you that you’re standing on blood right now,” queried reporter Dave Detling.

“I wouldn’t believe you,” replied the Ballston Spa man

“Well take a look down.”

Unbeknownst to these reporters, their perfect interview was festering in Corinth, just one news release away. Michael DiGioacchino, a Republican hoping to primary the longest tenured sheriff in New York, was furiously tapping up a statement to say he was right all along. Several months ago, the Schenectady County Sheriff’s deputy said he’d lay down the law in lawless Saratoga County. He’d stop the gang train at the Glenville border and make sure to the suburban enclaves of Clifton Park and Ballston wouldn’t become the crime zones that have plagued Schenectady.

So what better opportunity to strike fear in the hearts of voters than a stabbing involving two black fellows from Schenectady? Well, none if you're the guy arguing for a larger drug task force, more road patrols and commitment to monitor the tide of ‘gang activity’ flowing up from all points south.

“When I first announced, I was told that I was crazy, that Saratoga County has no crime problems or gang problems,” he told the Post Star last week. “The stabbing in Saratoga Springs is a prophecy fulfilled as far as gang activity moving into Saratoga County.”

The statement goes on to accuse “at least one” of the assailants of having a “known affiliation with the Bloods.” Watch out, south central Saratoga. Here come da’ gangs.

Of course, the news-starved television media and DiGioacchino aren’t alone in ringing the alarm. Recalcitrant Saratoga County Sheriff James Bowen has been hammering on the damn thing since he was elected into office 37 years ago. Every year, crime is getting worse. And every year, Bowen asks for more deputies.

Under Bowen’s administration, the sheriff’s office has experienced unprecedented growth. Spending has increased by more than 40 percent since 2004 alone. He claims the increased spending and staffing is due to the population rise and anticipated explosion with the creation of the Foundry facility in Luther Forest. Yet there doesn’t seem to be a scrap of evidence to suggest Saratoga County has or will see a 40 percent spike in population.

That’s alright, Bowen insists, because crime is on the rise. Last month, Bowen grudgingly turned over his crime stats to the Post Star, but has since gone mute on their meaning. The paper learned that calls for service went up 20 percent in 2008. Felony arrests increased by 19 percent and misdemeanor crimes increased 15 percent. Curiously “for whatever reason” the jail population decreased by 8 percent.

Well, here’s a bit of explanation. Bowen hires a slew of new deputies, many of whom don’t know the law or good policing from the curious orifice in their posterior. In as much, they file spurious charges when a warning would have done; they make errors in collecting evidence that allows cases to go unprosecuted; they’re oblivious to the legal process so they can’t even build a case against even the most egregious criminals.

But as keystone as these cops might be, they can make money for Saratoga County, Bowen assuredly tells his bosses on the county Board of Supervisors. More road patrols equal more bull-shit cases that percolate through the justice system and pump money into the county’s towns and villages. The idea isn’t to get deputies to crack down on crime; it’s to get them to write as many violation tickets as they can fit into their shift.

See most law-abiding citizens don’t mind violations, especially if they have little bearing on their record. They’ll unwittingly take a financial kick in the teeth just to avoid the unpleasantly of spending an evening in a courthouse or having the ominous scepter of the law hanging over them day in and day out.

Take for instance the recent citing of 22 underage drinkers who were knocking back a few at a house party late last month. The citations are about as meaningful as a parking ticket, in that they only carry a fine. That fine will eventually land in the spending coffers of the town of Ballston, which will greedily accept the money as a sort of quasi-tax.

Then there’s the ‘diversion’ route county District Attorney James Murphy will undoubtedly offer the teens. This way, they can avoid paying their money directly to Ballston. But they’ll still have to pay something to certify they’ve reformed and will wait the four or five years before they can responsibly drink alcohol in accordance with the law. These programs are often funded with either county or state tax dollars and wouldn’t exist in the first place were it not for a couple dozen pimple-faced teens trying to get their drink on just like ol’ pappie did back in the day.

To add insult to injury, these glorified mall cops can’t solve real crime even if it means there’s a murderer on the loose for more than three years. Just ask Christina White. She certainly stands testament to the investigative skills of the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Office, which treated a homicide like a missing persons case until a hiker found her bones seven months later.

In other words, the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Office exists almost solely to levy an additional tax on generally law-abiding people. And the two candidates proposing to guide it into the future only want it to grow more omnipresent. One offers a random stabbing in Saratoga Springs –well outside the sheriff’s jurisdiction –is reason to add more road patrols and a gang violence unit. The other can’t seem to explain the fact that his office exists primarily to reign in speeders and underage drinkers. As the saying goes, voters will have to pick the lesser of two evils this November.

Park Place

2009-02-04T08:51:00.000-08:00

It’s hard to get the full flavor of the Spa City’s parking debate unless you’ve once endeavored to dance upon a wet rooftop holding aloft a 15-foot metal rod amid the fury of an early spring lighting storm. Needless to say, the experience is about as electrifying as the local conversation stirred by something as seemingly mundane as a collection of lines painted on a stretch of pavement.

During its previous incarnations, the debate focused almost solely upon building immense concrete parking garages and securing more tracts of asphalt to prevent chubby city consumers from walking three or four blocks to their destination. Forcing these little pork chops to do this –say during an early spring lighting storm –might scare them into taking a traffic-filled journey to the paved paradise of Wilton. Pretty soon, the downtown shops would shutter, the lights on Broadway would dim and the criminal element would move in.

So for nearly a decade, the impetus in the city was to pave just about every patch of downtown not impeded by buildings and to construct massive multi-million dollar poured concrete structures to add a handful of spaces to the waning inventory. This carried on fine up until the second and last of these behemoths was completed in 2005. By that time, the City Council was poised to fall to the Democrats, who decided it was better to fight among themselves rather than finding new ways to shoehorn parking spaces into areas where they have no business existing in the first place.

This is all ancient history now. Today, the parking debate has nothing to do with bringing more cars in. Rather, it’s focused on how to squeeze dollars from the same lazy drivers who insist walking two or three blocks is overrated and potentially bad for the economy.

Ask any pundit in city government at this point and they’ll tell you that paid parking is more of a certainty than it is a debate. Mayor Scott Johnson mentioned it in his state of the city address, and didn’t get any biting response from the city Democrats, who literally relish the thought of tearing the Republican a new orifice in his posterior. After all, they need to support paid parking. It’s the only way Ron Kim, their sole voice on the council, will get the new public safety facility he’s pined for since his first term.

All of the proposals for a new facility include a paid parking component. Some are more creative than others, but all of them include sections of downtown that will be dedicated to those who don’t mind throwing a fiver down for several hours. In other words, get ready to feed the meter Saratoga.

Unfortunately, this whole concept of paid parking is inherently flawed, as other state and regional agencies have shown. Once the beast of paid parking is unleashed downtown, the city will be creating something that will one day grow far bigger than anyone could have ever envisioned.

The first step is simple: put a gate and a parking attendant in front of a few choice lots and watch the ducats role in. This cash will initially be used for its intended purpose to fund the behemoth police and courts building. But as the building’s maintenance costs rise, so will the city’s thirst to establish an increasing number of paid parking spaces throughout the land. Pretty soon, all of the spaces downtown will be paid.

Yet such a plan would surely need a permitting system, which would obviously require some sort an administrator. And this administrator will need an office in the new public safety building. The tedium of answering calls at the office will require an administrative secretary. After awhile, the administrator would need an assistant to help out the finer tuning of the whole system.

However, the administrator, the assistant and the secretary will be wholly unprepared to audit the whole bureaucracy. In steps the private auditor, who will cook the books and find that the parking system isn’t nearly as efficient with its collections and maintenance. He or she will suggest a new computer mainframe to oversee the system, taking some of the stress of the administrator and assistant; individual Blackberries for parking attendants so they can expediently upload fines to the aforementioned mainframe; and Segways for parking enforcement officers, so they agree to the new union contract.

Pretty soon, the collection of parking fees will go to feed the growing beast. When or if revenues decline, the beast will growl and parking fees will increase. Is this far-fetched? Perhaps. But so was the concept of collecting tolls to the state legislators who created the Thruway Authority in 1949. They originally though the public benefit corporation would dissolve once the towering cost of the superhighway was paid in full.

Well, that day came and went more than a decade ago. And since that time, the Thruway Authority has continued to take tolls. Worse yet, they continue to raise them unabated.

This is what can happen when artificial revenue streams are created to fund bloated projects. Of course, not many would argue against building the Thruway retrospectively. At least that structure has the ability to generate commerce. The only things a towering new public safety facility will generate –and the new paid parking system by extension –are more ways for a ballooning justice system to levy tax-like fines on the general public.

Fumble

2009-02-01T16:21:00.000-08:00

With seconds left on the clock, on their own 10-yard line and down by a fairly sizeable margin, the Democratic leaders of the 20th Congressional District decided to attempt a Hail Mary pass to the end zone in hopes of somehow landing a viable candidate in Washington. But something went dreadfully wrong. The wide receiver stumbled, the quarterback double-clutched, and the football trickled from his fingers to the ground. Now, it’s just a matter of seconds before one of the gorilla-like linemen runs it back for a touchdown.

That heavyweight just happens to be state Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco. The Democrats might as well have ceded the 20th District to the Republicans Sunday, when they announced Scott Murphy as their candidate for the soon-to-be-announced special election.

“A lost job is more than a statistic – it is a family facing the loss of health care benefits, a steady income and a future for their children,” Murphy said in a prepared statement. “The 20th Congressional District needs innovative leadership that will bring smart economic development and good jobs to our communities. That’s what I’ve done in the private sector, and that’s what I’ll do in Congress.”

The Glens Falls venture capitalist was pretty much the party’s last great hope for position, after the other two front-runners dropped out. Both former network anchor Tracy Egan and AFL-CIO director Suzy Ballantyne dropped out of the running late Saturday evening, according to the Post Star. They joined former New York Rangers goalie Mike Richter –the one candidate who could have handily beaten Tedisco –in declining a run for the office.

For the many who don’t know Murphy, he’s the director of Advantage Capital Partners, a venture capital group that manages more than $1 billion of assets. A Harvard grad, he once served as aide to two Missouri governors and once acted as chief executive officer of Small World Software. Some right-leaning blogs are questioning a curious omission from his bio, namely the mention of Baazee.com, an e-Bay clone that was sold to the tune of $50 million.

While Murphy isn’t necessarily a bad candidate, he doesn’t really stand a chance against an established politician who is well-liked in his district, has remained largely unchallenged in state elections, and happens to be enrolled in the party that holds a roughly 90,000 voter advantage in the district. Sure, anything can happen. But to say Murphy is an underdog is a major understatement. Outside of a colossal meltdown in Camp Tedisco, Murphy will soon become a footnote in district history.

So why pick a candidate that’s destined to lose? Well, Murphy has money for one. That means the Dems can save their ducats for races that will certainly require a lot of cash –namely the re-election of Gillibrand in 2010.

The 20th Congressional District is also in flux. There’s a chance it won’t even exist in the near future, depending on regional population trends. Even if it does, house seats come up for election every two years, meaning they’ll be more than ready to challenge for the district in 2010. Perhaps then a better know candidate –or even Murphy himself –will be apt to thwart the somewhat powerful Tedisco.

Also keep in mind Gov. David Paterson hasn’t even called the election yet. That means the absolute earliest a new congressman could take office wouldn’t be until sometime in late March. That gives the victor of the race a paltry 20 months in office. If the governor decides to delay –which he could as a politically strategic move –he might be able to whittle down this number even further.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Tedisco’s Assembly seat is –or was –one of the last Republican bastions in Schenectady County. The GOP will be hard pressed to find anyone capable of winning his district, considering the Democrats are firmly entrenched in both the county and city governments. In fact, the Republicans have been a bit like the red-headed stepchild of Schenectady County politics as of late –they’re beaten often and badly. Tedisco leaving the district will be a godsend for the Dems, who have eyed his seat for many moons.

So it’s tough to say whether the Dems have truly dropped the ball on this one, even though Murphy might as well be bleating lamb being led up to some sacrificial alter. There is undoubtedly some method to all this madness, which should reveal itself in the coming weeks. But in the meantime, it’s safe for residents of the 20th to brace themselves for Congressman Tedisco.

Weekend Update

2009-01-31T11:30:00.000-08:00

Watching the never-ending procession of Dems vie for the 20th Congressional District is sort of like watching Jimmy Fallon’s career plunge after he left Saturday Night Live: Sad, but still funny in a way. Mere days after Kirsten Gillibrand was slated to be New York’s next senator, nearly three dozen Democrats from all over the sprawling 10-county district were said to be interested in her seat, ranging from little-known lawyers to a former National Hockey League goalie.

The scramble continued all week, as candidates ebbed and flowed into the race. Mike Richter, the most obvious candidate, pulled his name from contention by mid-week, claiming he wanted to spend more time with his young family and environmental business enterprise in Manhattan. Then on Friday, party leaders announced they had whittled the 30-something names down to a mere half-dozen. Or at least that’s what they’re telling the media.

Democratic insiders say union organizer Suzy Ballantyne will be the candidate to challenge state Assemblyman Jim Tedisco, a Republican juggernaut in his own rite. In choosing the director of governmental affairs for the New York State AFL-CIO, the party will have a candidate they hope will be able to tap the district’s strong labor union contingent. Officially, the party won’t announce their choice until Sunday afternoon, right before the Super Bowl.

But to choose anyone aside from Ballantyne would stand against all political logic. First and foremost, she’s the top pick of Saratoga County Democratic Chairman Larry Bulman –a union man himself –even if he won’t outwardly admit it. Second, she’s not Tracy Egan, who isn’t exactly in the best graces with the 20th District’s state committee representative. Mind you, the former network anchor’s father was a major proponent of Patti Southworth, the wife of the fellow who tried to oust Shawn Thompson last fall. And let’s not go into the myriad reasons city Public Safety Commissioner Ron Kim won’t get the nod.

True, Ballantyne doesn’t have nearly the name recognition as Tedisco. Yet she’s anything but a political neophyte. She’s a grass-roots organizer with an extraordinary network of supporters that may have the ability to raise the kind of dough needed to win the district. She’ll be going up against the GOP’s last great hope in New York, who also happens to hold the key to the Republican Assembly Committee’s war chest.

There’s more behind the choice of Ballantyne than simply her ability generate cash for the party. First and foremost, it’s her appeal to woman voters that makes her an ideal choice for the seat. Don’t think Camp Tedisco hasn’t taken note of this either. The minority leader appeared on the Saratoga Springs Public Library stairs with about two dozen ‘Women for Tedisco’ Saturday afternoon, amid the cold and throngs of masticating chowderheads.

Tedisco’s message wasn’t much different than his normal spiel. Cut taxes...blah..blah…blah…create jobs…jobs…jobs…’I stood up to the steam roller’...yadada… yadada... Really, he said nothing outside of what he normally says, and certainly nothing to convince anyone that woman voters will come out for him in droves. Perhaps that’s because they won’t, especially with a candidate like Ballantyne on the ballot.

In short, Ballantyne is the party’s only hope to defeat the immensely popular Tedisco, who ran unopposed in his Assembly district just a few months ago. So why did they wait so long to make a choice? Well Richter for one. The goaltender that helped the New York Rangers win their first Stanley Cup in more than four decades was clearly the first choice, thanks to his name recognition. But when he quashed all the rumors of a congressional run, the party decided to pick another hockey player.

That’s right. Ballantyne, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, can play hockey. She was leading Clifton Park’s Arctic Foxes several years ago and was even featured with the team on the nationally syndicated Today Show. Not that this matters for voters. Ballantyne will still be viewed as an underdog to Tedisco, regardless of her acumen on the ice or otherwise.

But stranger things have happened. After all, not too many pundits predicted a low-profile attorney from Hudson would have a chance against Congressman Kickass. So who knows? With a name like Ballantyne, she may even garner a few votes from the malt liquor contingent. And they’ve got the tallies that no one can predict.

A world without Google?

2009-01-31T07:54:00.000-08:00

Watch out. You too could be infected if you surfed across the World Wide Web and happened onto the malicious Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce Web page. Bad news, folks. Malware. Spyware. Maybe even soiled underwear.

And those looking to access the Saratoga Springs public portal via the Internet could be at risk too, according to Google.com. Rumor is your computer will turn into a ticking time bomb, which will detonate with the force of a 10-megaton warhead if you don’t heed the warning offered by Google.

Droves of Saturday morning Web crawlers were greeted with warnings when they happened to use the Internet’s largest and most prolifically used search engine. Millions of trusted sites were arbitrarily listed as harmful by Google’s interface, spurring unmitigated panic among millions of information seekers prone to using their service.

“This site may harm your computer,” the brief warning stated.

Clicking on the site kicked you to another warning page, which informs the user they can continue to the malicious site, but only if they really want too. With the address effectively blocked by Google’s protection software, the only way to access any given site was to manually punch the address in the old fashion way.

In mere moments, sites like Yahoo.com lit up with questions from confused surfers wondering whether they should nail a cross through their hard drive, or perhaps shoot the curious screen with a silver bullet. Some said it was hackers. Others blamed it on a suspected plot by Google to finally take over the world, big brother-style. One page on the site amassed nearly 100 posts from Google refugees in a matter of 15 minutes or so.

Google was quick to correct the problem. Within about an hour, their search engine was up and running. But the sheer terror caused by the brief outage shows how dependent many are on Google’s various tools. Even a good number iSaratoga’s devoted readers rely on Google to guide them to the blog, even though the Web address is pretty darn easy to remember.

In fact, 10 out of the past 60 readers that logged onto this site were directed there by Google’s trusted search engine. Several of these searchers are those persistent ones overly excited by an image of marijuana posted here three years ago. Others are still coming for a picture of Kristina Krawchuk displayed back in 2007. And some are just flat-out too lazy to type out the full URL or link to the site.

Nevertheless, it’s amazing how dependent the world is on Google. Perhaps we should all should have been alerted to this when the mere term ‘Google’ was added to the vernacular in most spoken languages, and even Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. Imagine for a moment the utter chaos that would befall the Web –the world even –if suddenly Google vanished.

Piss and vinegar

2009-01-28T09:39:00.000-08:00

Pissing into the wind is a tricky business, but it’s one the Democrats for Change seem to be employing now that they’re in charge. The group that has hijacked the city’s Democratic Party and prone to political sniping is making it their practice to piss and piss often, even if there’s bound to be some splash back.

This week, the piss has come in the form of a spiteful and prattling diatribe about Republican Mayor Scott Johnson’s state of the city address. The group under the auspices of Al Turkheimer issued a ‘rebuttal’ to the mayor’s speech Sunday, basically lambasting him for everything they could fit into the nearly 1,000 word statement.

Of course, they didn’t bother to craft this so-called rebuttal until more than two days after the mayor’s speech, long after any media attention toward the event subsided. And the fact that they did offer a rebuttal is somewhat unprecedented, as the State of the City address is often one of the few times the city’s politicians put their partisan differences aside.

For those unfamiliar with this speech, it’s typically used as a rallying cry by the city’s mayor; a sort of pep talk to get the community buzzing and the commissioners moving. Although the address typically includes a lot of party back slapping, seldom is it marred by partisan rhetoric and party dogma. This is exactly why a rebuttal is sort of pointless, especially after the mayor spent a good deal of his speech urging cooperation on both sides of the aisle.

But these Change-ocrats aren’t the type of folk that allow petty things like precedent, reason or calls for cooperation get in the way of their progressive march to righteousness. Their rebuttal is steeped with much of the rhetoric that has dribbled from Public Safety Commissioner Ron Kim’s lips after he’s had a good whisper from his deputy, the bitingly partisan Eileen Finneran.

“The small crowd and the half empty seats were an apt metaphor for the presentation itself,” the rebuttal states. “What Mayor Johnson gave us was a ‘small and half empty’ presentation unworthy of Saratoga Springs.”

Obviously the author –or authors –didn’t pay much attention to the embarrassingly monotone speeches given by Johnson’s predecessor. But why digress into semantics? Let’s talk content. The Democrats for Change roundly chided Johnson for conducting his politics in the shadows and behind closed doors, citing the recent ratification of a $270,000 settlement with the Department of Environmental Conservation, even though he is only one of five votes on the council.

The statement also blames Johnson for loading the city’s land-use board with his own partisan cronies and for being a wastrel with city spending. How soon they forget the reign of Keehn, where these boards became dumping grounds for her campaign workers and the city’s mostly empty coffers were treated like never-ending source of financing that could be arbitrarily spent.

Sadly, the anti-state of the city address did include a nugget or two of sensible questioning. For instance, a mention of the Johnson Administration’s over-reliance on outside council, while two perfectly capable attorneys in the mayor’s office. However, any sort of reason to be gleaned from the diatribe is lost amid the partisan piss and vinegar.

In all, the statement shows how petty the party has become under its new leadership and how they are hell-bent on bringing back the fruitless city council battles of bygone days. Unfortunately, this sort of sniping is basically neutering the party and will likely scare away the centrists they so desperately need to gain seats on the council.

That doesn’t seem to be a concern for the Changers, as they appear ready to roll out a slate of candidates that is bound to roll some eyes in both parties. Among the forerunners of the slate is Kim himself, who is rumored to be making a run for the mayor’s seat once he realizes there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that he’ll get the nod to run for the 20th Congressional District. Most would say he only stands a marginally better chance at winning the mayor’s office, even though the nut jobs in his party seem to think otherwise.

You can’t keep a good scam down

2009-01-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

As the saying goes, you can’t keep a good man down. Or in the case of the Spa City’s very own professional con, you can’t keep a good scam down.

Dave Silipigno is at it again. After bilking millions of dollars from Bears Stearns and still waiting to make his mark in the film industry, the mortgage lender has decided to go Madoff with something that looks suspiciously like a pyramid scheme. Only this time, it’s legit. No seriously, it really is.

Hey you over there. Yeah you, the one who just can’t seem to make ends meet. Did you ever want to cut out the middleman? Did you ever wonder why you can’t have a slice of the more than $200 billion dollar online shopping industry?

Well then take a look at ShopWurld, the exclusive online service that is guaranteed to make you money while you shop. There’s no money down. There’s no investment. There’s no risks. Just shop like you normally do and watch the money roll in!

Into Silipigno’s pockets that is. Call him an entrepreneur or brand him a scam artist, but he always seems parachute out of the crashing airplane with a bar of gold in one hand and get-out-of-jail-free card in the other. He avoided a 10-year prison sentence after more-or-less embezzling $5.6 million from his mortgage banking company before it dissolved and left nearly 400 people without work or paychecks before Christmas. The impetus for allowing him to remain free largely stemmed from the idea that he couldn’t repay the money he bilked –and then conveniently hid –unless he was free.

Why let one measly felony arrest scare you away from a startup company founded by a local philanthropist and movie maker? Of course, the movie he made at the Batcheller Mansion more than three years ago has yet to be released, despite persistent claims that it would in 2008. Or was that 2009?

Let’s also overlook the fact that ~~Silipigno’s new company~~ the business he advises was featured prominently in the news after a highly publicized drug raid in 2003. It seems a cell of telemarketers, loan officers and supervisors were somehow finding the time to deal massive amounts of cocaine from the downtown offices in between draining equity from people’s homes with assorted adjustable rate loans.

Don’t let it sour you to the idea of ShopWurld. And don’t even think for one minute that Silipigno’s venture into the world of online media has anything to do with Wurld Media Inc., the peer-to-peer company that also left its employees holding the bag when it went belly-up last year.

Silipigno’s Partner Paul Bardwell claims the choice of names was simply because ‘ShopWorld’ was not available. Bardwell, an unindicted investor in the Wurld Media scheme, points out that the defunct company has absolutely no relation to this new online shopping network focused “on assisting Charities here and abroad.”

So let’s get this straight. Charities are supposed to trust the guy who made his millions offering subprime loans; had his fiancé deposit in her account more than $300,000 he removed in cash from his own Albany bank; avoided a 10-year jail sentence for a wire fraud conviction; didn’t know anything about the pounds of cocaine moving through his Saratoga Springs business in broad daylight; made a B-movie that still hasn’t surfaced in a theater and is partners with an Wurld Media investor. And that’s not even mentioning the fact he’s suing the city for over valuing his 20,841-square-foot mansion, which is reportedly the second largest residence in the city.

Simply put, Silipigno’s business ventures seem about as genuine as the offers of untold riches promised in email from some deposed Nigerian prince or dignitary. It’s a god-given miracle that he wasn’t run out of the city with a fresh coat of tar and feathers. Even more amazing is the fact that he somehow still has the capital to start companies like ShopWurld. But like P.T. Barnum once said, there’s a sucker born every minute.

Skid row

2009-01-14T10:20:00.000-08:00

Location, location, location! These stylish town houses are located near all of the Spa City’s amenities. You’re just blocks away from a state-of-the-art YMCA, grocery store and retail center and just a short walk from the Saratoga Performing Arts Center!

These units are priced to sell! Attractive incentives for first-home buyers are aimed at getting you out of that dingy old apartment and into these luxurious homes.

Overhead power transmission lines offer easy utility connections, and drainage from the nearby asphalt jungle will create scenic nature ponds plus all the fauna associated with them. Allow the soothing hum of the nearby HVAC systems lull you to sleep in this beauty, or just take a deep breath of the carbon monoxide fumes wafting over from idling tractor-trailer trucks. Don’t worry! It’s in line with federal guidelines!

These are low-maintenance properties. Years of oil contamination from the former Delaware and Hudson rail yard will ensure no weeds grow on your perfect lawn. Are you an art lover? Just step out your back door to see all the wonderful street art masterfully painted by anonymous artisans late at night.

So what are you waiting for? Are you worried about taxes? ‘Cause these pads come with a price guarantee that you’re property assessment will never increase! This is a once-in-a-lifetime offer!

“This will be an improvement,” property owner Bill McNeary told the Planning Board, trying his hardest not to smile while counting the digits on the proposed sale price of his 7-acre lot. “It’s not going to be a ghetto. It’ll be nice housing for young people.”

And hopefully the city’s Planning Board push it where it belongs: In the trash dumpsters behind the Ballston Avenue Price Chopper. You can’t blame Developer Gary Olsen for trying. After all, a good number of city residents have spent years harping for so-called affordable housing. Some even fault the issue for giving rise to one of the most vapid mayoral administrations in modern city history.

But the planned urban development Olsen designed for this slender swath of industrial-zoned property between Railroad Run and the Ballston Avenue shopping plaza is almost destined to be a disaster; more so than the derelict-laden scrubland that exists today. Olsen’s company will build these shoe-horned structures and then walk away as they turn into the newest incarnation of what locals refer to as ‘the Terrace.’

Certainly, every city needs affordable housing. Pricing residences within the economic grasp of young professionals can help recharge the demographics of an increasingly homogeneous municipality such as Saratoga Springs, where most of the working class can only rent. However, Olsen’s plan is ill conceived even if one ignores the fact that the stock of so-called affordable houses in the Spa City is higher than it has been in almost five years.

Moreover, the whole plan sounds like a boondoggle for anyone who would be in the market to buy one of the homes. Price controls will be placed on all 86 units jammed into this small property, meaning any buyer with half a brain won’t give them much consideration. Those that do face the very real possibility that they could one day be selling their property for significantly less than what they bought it.

This isn’t even taking into consideration the average lot size for each unit, which happens to be less than a tenth of an acre. Or the fact that the development will all but drain the equity from homes recently constructed along the recently-developed Empire Avenue and St. Joseph Street; properties that don’t have federally controlled values and were likely purchased with some sort of investment in mind.

The sum total of all these factors seems to indicate the project will be a quick moneymaker for the developer, a nightmare for those goaded into buying the homes and a long-term eyesore for the community. In other words, if it’s designed like a ghetto and priced like a ghetto, it’s hard to argue that it won’t eventually become a ghetto.

Up in smoke

2009-01-07T09:31:00.000-08:00

Righteous people, unite! Fire up the torches, bust out the medium-sized flog, dust off the rack and head to the Clifton Park Ice Arena! Justice must be exacted upon these heathen scoundrels! They must be made accountable for their sins!

Members of the Shenendehowa High School’s varsity hockey team caught smoking the marijuana got off easy. Back in the day, even the ones that weren’t smoking would have gotten 30 lashes at town square. And the ones that did? Well, let’s just say water boarding is too good for them, but pulling out fingernails might be a good start…

…Wait a second. It appears as though another bull-shit news story has flipped iSaratoga’s sarcasm switch. This always happens when more than a half-dozen area news agencies form a lynch mob for a story that is hardly worth the press or airtime it was generously given throughout the Capital Region. Of course, the media needed to do something to fill the void left after the year-in-review pieces and before the next spate of winter weather hits.

The dozen Shen hockey stoners were an obvious target. They’re a group of top-performing athletes who were caught doing…well…what many high school kids do when they’re staying with a bunch of their peers in an out-of-town hotel room: They passed around the peace pipe. Unfortunately, these players must not have known the tried and true subterfuge needed to toke up undetected among the legions of parents and coaches standing guard in the hallway.

Techniques such as using the ‘spoof’ – exhaling through a cardboard tube stuffed with dryer sheets –and the age-old ‘towel the door’ technique would have surely prevented Coach Juan de la Rocha from detecting this hard-to-miss essence. The notion that these students didn’t use these devices suggests they are either lacking in ingenuity, devoid of intelligence or simply don’t puff herb often enough to familiarize themselves with the finer points of undetected teen marijuana use. Shame on them.

Immediately, the coach punted six players from the squad. He threw another six from the team after the team finished their Morrisville road trip. The dearth of players almost immediately touched off a swirling miasma of media coverage, which has hovered around the rink ever since.

Naturally, the monastic throngs of anonymous Internet chatterboxes also found the need to chime in on the debacle at the Saratogian’s Web site. The indignity, the nerve, the shear gall of these…these…ingrates, to violate the code of conduct and tarnish the good name of Shen athletics.

“Send them packing for the season and future students under this iron fist of a moral code of conduct will know there are consequences for their actions,” posted one frothing reader. “That is the real issue here: The continual degradation of our society's moral code of conduct by not holding people responsible for their actions.”

The Times Union, the Daily Gazette and the Saratogian all featured front-page articles on the team, with all varying substantially in their content. The Times Union –a paper known for its brazen ability to pat itself on the back –managed to wait until the second graph in their story before bragging about how they “first reported” the earth-shattering story Monday. They didn’t bother to mention how any sports reporter with half a brain would have realized something was amiss when a third of players didn’t dress for a tournament game.

The most lacking was from the Daily Gazette, which regurgitated everything printed in Tuesday’s addition. The only new information included was from the district flack, who spuriously claimed the school wouldn’t release information about the players’ punishment.

Not true, as the Saratogian correctly reported today. Eight players were booted from the team, while another four were allowed to return. Like the Gazette, the Saratogian stopped short of identifying the players, claiming the district wouldn’t identify them because of privacy laws and whatnot. Of course, this is a load of horseshit.

The district did identify the players quite clearly on the varsity team’s Web site, albeit inadvertently. Is it a coincidence that only 16 players are now listed on Shen roster and statistics database? Conspicuously absent from the top of that database is the team’s lead scorer and his two linemates, among others. In fact, it’s pretty darn easy to pick them out by simply pairing the roster to the season advances printed in the various local papers –each of them also featured on the Web site.

But why name names? It’s not as if these kids broke into a private residence, had a raging kegger and then trashed the place. They smoked weed, which is something that will stunt growth, diminish sexual apetite, kill brain cells and cause a predisposition to spending long nights trying to pair Pink Floyd’s ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ album with video feed from the ‘Wizard of Oz.’ Marijuana, however, is not a performance enhancement drug, nor is it considered physically addictive. In fact, it’s probably less harmful than most of the prescription medication the typical suburban family routinely keeps in their medicine cabinets these days; and certainly not the type of thing teens use before going on a destructive rampage.

Even the long-held belief that it’s the so-called gateway drug is roundly questioned by most rational circles of researchers. Possessing amounts less than 25 grams is less of an offense than doing 20 miles over the speed limit. Incidentally, smoking or being under the influence of marijuana is not a crime in New York, unless one is caught doing it while behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. These are facts some editors and producers might want to consider before charging up the righteous masses that are too chaste these days to remember their own high school indiscretions.

Flying pigs beneath the falling sky

2009-01-06T09:37:00.000-08:00

Mark Monday down in your calendar: Ron Kim has made a valid point. The shoot-from-the-lip Public Safety commissioner sensibly griped about Mayor Scott Johnson’s effort to hire a private lawyer to bare-knuckle box a band of obstructionist semi-residents that have sued the city over the proposed recreation center.

The City Council narrowly passed a resolution authorizing a Glens Falls law office to spend up to $20,000 litigating a virtually frivolous Article 78 challenge filed by landowners abutting the proposed facility’s site off Vanderbilt Avenue. Kim, who is better known for his mindboggling ability to speak before his neurological impulses can move from dendrite to axon, objected to the hire under the reasoning that the city already pays its own legal staff, which could just as easily make a court appearance in an attempt to work things out.

“I think we should go to court and negotiate,” Kim told the Times Union. “Why immediately reach for a wallet and throw money at it, especially during these difficult economic times?”

For once, Kim’s knee-jerk assertion seems somewhat reasonable. Why is the city spending even more on this boondoggle of a recreation center? Aren’t there better uses for that cash?

Now, loyal readers of this blog are probably checking the sky to make sure it’s not falling; at the very least, they’re looking out the window for a migratory flock of flying pigs, headed south before hell freezes over. Kim seldom exudes even a hint of rationality when it comes to city politics, the public safety department or anything tacitly associated with them. His inability to grasp the basic tenants of government are legendary, and perhaps second only to a certain vapid one-term mayor who once served as his lone ally.

In this case, the commish has a very good point, even though it’s likely driven by politics instead of the aforementioned sensibility. Taxpayers already in the hole for $6 million and change and still lack even a foundation for the building, which is no closure to completion than it was when it was proposed more than a decade ago. Making matters worse, the city now faces a looming deficit that could balloon up to $3.4 million once the state Legislature is done whittling away at the Video Lottery Terminal aid.

Given all this, wouldn’t this money be put to better use if it went toward finding a way out of the recreation center quagmire; one of the last failed legacies of the Keehn Administration? The city can’t support a new recreations center anymore, especially if there’s any consideration for a new public safety facility. Simple logic dictates that the addition of close to 100,000 square feet of additional building space will be cumbersome for taxpayers to fund.

Sure, any decent attorney should be able to quash the flimsy argument offered by this band of landowners, which showed up at the planning table a dollar short and a day late. The whole premise of their suit is bonkers and will likely be thrown out of court after six months of litigation. Then the city can build and pay upkeep for a structure that was needed during the 1990s before a state-of-the-art YMCA facility was built within walking distance of most neighborhoods within the city proper. Sure. That makes sense, right?

In truth, Kim’s motives in criticizing the hire are probably more rooted in his own political ambition than any sense of rationality. The recreation center has become a political lightning rod for Mayor Scott Johnson, who has largely escaped intense public scrutiny over his first year in office. Interestingly enough, his ally –former Mayor Valerie Keehn –was the first to lob a stone at Johnson over the recreation center during a town hall-style meeting on the Westside last spring. Several weeks later, a vocal opposition swelled among the Southside neighborhoods.

Johnson has done an adequate job of defraying this dissent and has moved the project further toward completion than any of his predecessors. However, there seems to be a void of reason for completing the project, other than to ‘stop the bleeding’ so to speak. In other words, the city has already spent more than $500,000 on the project, so why not spend another $5.5 million and get something out of it. Try pushing that logic on an antsy investor after squandering a half-million dollars on a Ponzi scheme.

The other side note to be garnered from Johnson’s rec center push is that the city’s new mayor seems a bit over-eager to toss money at private law firms. Perhaps this is merely perception, or perhaps political enemies like Kim are simply making a bigger deal out of such allocations and thus garnering press attention. It’s still hard to ignore the fact that Johnson’s council has hired private attorneys on three occasions over the past month, each for about $20,000 and twice from the same law firm.

To say these issues are the first dings in Johnson’s otherwise unblemished armor is exaggerating both. However, don’t be surprised if they arise as campaign flash points if the newly installed Democrats For Change live up to a nasty little rumor that has circulated since they took over the city party. As the rumor goes, Kim will be their candidate for mayor this year, while a certain former mayor will be resurrected as the new public safety head. While the mere notion seems laughable, the fact that the rumor hasn’t dissipated seems offer it legs.

Best of 2008

2008-12-31T08:34:00.000-08:00

Reading these long and prattling articles about the year’s events is sort of like contracting that flesh-eating zombie virus all the B-horror movies so diligently chronicle. First, your eyes glaze over. Next, your voice goes hoarse and you begin to drool. And then finally, you get the undying urge to take a pound-sized sample of flesh from the nearest reporter working on the next post-Christmas wrap-up article to go off to print.

Let’s face it: If you can’t remember the top 10 newsworthy events of the year, you probably weren’t looking to know about them in the first place. At the very least, you weren’t looking to know about them six months after the fact. That doesn’t stop every newspaper and newscast in God’s creation from expending large volumes of valuable column space or news footage toward these hackneyed projects, which only serve as an ignorance barometer for those devoid of any interest in their surroundings.

Amazingly, the Albany Times Union has somehow managed to bring this useless proliferation of old information to the online format. The Capital Region’s media giant has been re-running their top-viewed news articles of the year as updates to their Web page and in print for some inexplicable reason. The whole concept is sort of like the 12 Days of Christmas meets Letterman’s Top-10 countdown, only with about 30,000 additional words added for your reading malaise.

The Saratogian followed ‘the year in review’ format with their 1,700-word twaddle through the events of 2008. Did you miss the more than two dozen articles about Jaliek Rainwalker? Don’t worry! Did you somehow sleep through the economic collapse of the past three months? No problem! Fluctuating gas prices, Joe Bruno’s resignation and the abrupt appearance of several new city high-rises slip your mind? The Saratogain has got you covered!

Needless to say, ‘the year in review’ approach hasn’t exactly burned up the Saratogian’s readership. In fact, the article didn’t even take a stab at the “most popular” articles listed on the paper’s Web site. To put this in prospective, the article didn’t even come close to as many reads as the obituaries.

This is not to say ‘the year in review’ or ‘the best of’ stories don’t offer a function amid the flotsam and jetsam of holiday coverage. Most newsrooms are decimated by holiday vacations, which start sometime after the turkey pops into the oven on Thanksgiving and end after the last champagne cork pops out of the bottle on New Year’s Day. Not to mention, a one-day holiday usually translates to a one-week vacation in the dialect of most state and municipal workers. In other words, there’s really no way to get news out there.

Still, the editorial crew at iSaratoga sees a greater utility for the annual New Year wrap-up. Rather than reprinting or rebroadcasting old footage, these media outlets could discuss the top stories they didn’t bother to cover for whatever reason. Sure, there’s always a reason. Maybe there wasn’t enough staff. Maybe they missed the boat. Maybe the eds didn’t see it as much of a story.

So iSaratoga has decided to take a bite of humble pie and present some of the somewhere-in-the middle six stories that didn’t make it to the blog this year. Perhaps they aren’t the best of stories, but they’re ones where the snarky commentary here simply fell short:

Proctor’s Theater – CBS 6 Albany finally replaced the respective capacities of departed anchors Michelle Smith and Nicole Forige by hiring the amicable and attractive Carey Proctor. The station’s new morning anchor more than filled the shoes of Smith, the station’s mudslinging activist reporter, and Forige, who still ranks as the most sought after television bombshell on the internet. CBS almost immediately gave Proctor her own video blog, which offers foil for the one seasoned veteran Ed O’Brien has done for several years now. The station appears to have ended the new anchor’s blog. Maybe it was because she did feel like doing the 5 a.m. video blogs anymore. Or perhaps it was because Ed’s Head saw a precipitous decline in hits.

If a chip plant falls in the forest – Will anybody hear it? Many opponents of the proposed chip-fab plant in Luther Forest are asking this question as a sketchy gang of Middle Easterners arranges shell companies and offshore bank accounts. Despite blaring warning signs from the economy, original developer Advanced Micro Devices and just about anyone with a brain, state and local legislators continue to mash the rubber stamp on all of the plans for the chip-fab plant. They even gave the company another $28 million sales-tax break on top of the $1.2 billion already going toward the project. In other words, that’s about $1.5 billion in break –about a fifth of the state deficit –for a company that could leave in a decade without doing a third of what they said they would. Can somebody say Super Steel?

Put on your flak jacket – When municipalities or school districts hire what is called a “flack,” it often goes beneath the radar in both the news and residential communities. They answer all questions from the media, rather than have the media bother the real decision makers on a regular basis. These people are harvested from the media or are appointed as patronage positions. They’re paid decent, but usually not more than some advanced clerical positions. Yet the question remains why places like Colonie, the Bethlehem School District, Schenectady County and Clifton Park –which just added the position –all need a spokesperson to say and do the dirty work of elected officials and administrators. It’s another example of how the media is being cut out of the loop from a well-oiled propaganda machine and one funded by taxpayers.

Water under the bridge – Most would say the Saratoga County pipeline to the Hudson River is already in the ground, so why should it be of interest? Well, when the supervisor of the downstream town of Waterford is freaking out about the possibility of PCBs showing up in his community’s water system from the upstream EPA-ordered dredging project, it’s probably a good time to evaluate the situation. And that’s not even considering the fact that Supervisor John Lawler is the chairman of the Saratoga County Water Authority. The true test will be if Lawler signs his town up to drink from the Hudson once the pipeline is built.

Say it ain’t so Joe – While the esteemed Hollywood Joe Bruno was announcing his abrupt retirement, iSaratoga was asleep at the switch. Actually, the editor-in-chief was basking in the early summer sun with a trough of longnecks and a bottle of rum. Meanwhile the Capital Region’s media was bursting at the seams trying to nail every angle of Bruno’s illustrious career. What they lacked was the snarky, half-baked commentary the blogosphere so roundly offers. iSaratoga jumped into the fray a week and several cases of beer later, but the Bruno story had become hackneyed by that point. Oh well. You win some, and you lose some –at least this merry scribe predicted Bruno’s retirement far in advance of his announcement.

Carpetbagging - It’s clear at this point that Caroline Kennedy is the heir-apparent for the Empire State’s number-one senatorial carpetbagger. Kennedy has met with Gov. David Paterson and remains the one vocal candidate for Hillary Clinton’s seat, which must be filled in the coming weeks. She’s also received broad praise from some Capital Region pundits, who feel she would be the perfect complement to Chuck Schumer, the state’s ranking member and a power broker in his own rite. But Kennedy’s appointment would all but hand a very powerful position to someone who simply stood up and raised her hand when the governor was asking who was interested. Kennedy’s appointment would also overlook Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, who DID take off the gloves to earn her seat in office. The appointment would also further offset the balance of power so that the downstate Democrats would have an overwhelming share of influence over New York politics.

Certainly, many more issues were overlooked by this scribe in 2008. Some are worthy of mention, others will drop down the toilet of time for a flush into distant memory. Here’s to hoping we all have a merry 2009 and we all have full goblets to drink from when the ball touches down amid the chaos in Times Square. Cheers and pass the waissail!

Rescue Me

2008-12-23T09:43:00.000-08:00

As the old adage goes: If it’s not broken, then don’t fix it. And when just about every cog in the machine is showing signs of wear, it’s generally a bad idea to replace the only one that isn’t.

Such is the case in Saratoga Springs, where just about every city department has a fair amount of dysfunction in dire need of correction. So leave it to Ron Kim, the city’s Public Safety rube, to suggest replacing what some would consider the only piece of the department that seems to be working rather well.

In a brazen moment of stupidity, Kim suggested Monday the city bid out its ambulance service contract. Historically, the city has depended on the tried-and-true Saratoga Emergency Medical Services Inc., a private not-for-profit ambulance corps that has hauled patients at no cost to the city. Kim’s perplexing decision to send the contract out to bid –for the first time in city history –opens the door for a private for-profit ambulance company to come in and offer a pitch that SEMS would be unable to match.

Kim, in his infinitely dizzying intellect, believes the city can cash in on some of the business SEMS does. Apparently, he sees unclaimed cash racing up Van Dam Street every time an ambulance makes the mad dash to Saratoga Hospital.

“Our thinking at this point is that if we’re going to copy cities around us, they bid out the service, and the cities get something for it,” Kim told the Saratogian Monday. “It’s not unlike what you do with cable providers.”

The only difference is a cable provider brings shows like “Sex in the City” and “24” into homes, and the ambulance service brings semi-conscious profusely bleeding patients to where that can receive life-saving care. In short, the ambulance service is not a revenue cash cow, nor should it be viewed as one.

Saratoga Springs is one of the few municipalities in New York that has not suffered from the emergency medical services crisis that has wrought havoc on the state for more than a decade. SEMS, which was once an all-volunteer service, was among the more fortunate ambulance companies that made a successful transition to a paid, not-for-profit service. The fact that the city doesn’t subsidize the ambulance company with anything more than its rent at the fire department’s West Avenue substation is simply astounding.

Some will argue the not-for-profit model of the ambulance service is antiquated and in need of replacement by the for-profit model, which seems to be proliferating as operating costs choke the volunteer companies out of existence by. Generally, these folks are on the payroll of Mohawk Ambulance, a company listens carefully to the wind for the drivel now spewing from Kim’s mouth.

Simply put, Mohawk can quickly become the only option once municipality kicks a not-for-profit ambulance company to the curb. Once an ambulance company is liquidated, there’s no going back. The costs associated with creating such a service would be beyond the means of any town, city or village, much less one that’s facing a ~~potential~~ certain $1.9 million revenue shortfall.

Kim’s early talk has also spurred the city firefighters into suggesting they might start hauling patients from the east side of the city, where SEMS lacks any sort of rescue station. John Betor, an assistant chief with the city fire department, claims the firefighters could get into the business of hauling patients when SEMS is busy. He says the ambulance corps usually relies on outside agencies –a process called “mutual aid” –about twice a week. Because there is no other nearby ambulance service, mutual aid calls can sometimes take upwards of 20 minutes in response time, Betor explained. He suggested the city augment SEMS by having its own ambulance on the road.

“They do have times when they can’t respond and we have to wait for outside help to respond,” he said. “No one should have to wait for an outside agency.”

Here’s the problem: The city can’t afford to dabble in ambulance business. Even if there was a multi-million dollar budget surplus and property taxes were at or about zero, the city endeavoring into the meat wagon practice is a liability no sensible auditor would suggest.

In truth, the answer lies with establishing a badly needed substation on Saratoga’s eastside, and then stowing an additional SEMS ambulance at it. Strangely enough, the city has prescribed this in the latest firefighter contract, which Kim negotiated himself. But why bother getting bogged down with details.

The bottom line is tinkering with a functional ambulance service is a recipe for disaster. Once again, Kim has opened Pandora’s Box to cause a litany of problems and hassle for the city council to weed through, rather than focusing on the desperate needs at hand. As residents, we can all hope that the election November comes before Kim can get his fumbling fingers around the one cog that does appear to be working properly.