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March 02, 2011
To the Editor:
Trustee Kane has said I should recuse myself from ethics complaints against Trustees Edsall and Vatter because I’m asking tough questions about the legal fees issue. In my opinion this is the way the current majority operates. Instead of answering the questions being asked, they go on the attack. This way the actual issue gets obscured and they don’t have to give any real answers.
I volunteered to be on the Ethics committee because I believe in good governance. I believe that our elected officials should have to answer to the public for their actions. If you ask a politician a tough question and they don’t like it, that doesn’t make it bias. Maybe these trustees think they don’t have to answer to the public, but I believe it’s their obligation. In my opinion, their silence speaks volumes about how they are governing this village. You can’t be the majority and blame everything on the minority. At some point, you have to take responsibility for what is not getting done.
The reason the legal fees are over budget by $25,000 to potentially $75,000, is because Trustees Kane, Edsall and Vatter apparently did not negotiate a monthly retainer when they hired the current law firm. If they had told the current law firm that our budget is only $5,500 a month, there would be no legal fee issue. Why didn’t they negotiate a retainer? I don’t know, because they won’t answer that question. Will they now ask for a monthly retainer that would be retroactive back to the beginning of the contract? I don’t know, because they won’t answer that question either.
Say what you will about Mayor Gross, but he has been out there fighting so we wouldn’t just blindly pay these excessive fees. He could have taken the easy road and just paid them and avoided the public relations hits that have probably hurt him politically. But he stood up instead.
Harmony in government might be desired but it doesn’t always make for good governance. If there are no checks and balances, then you can get things like buildings not being built to code or paying $500 for a hammer. Sometimes tough questions have to be asked.
Tom Bailey
Cornwall on Hudson
(Bailey is chair of the Cornwall-on-Hudson Ethics Board.)
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