Conflict III: The Mayor Strikes Back (sorta)

Just as ye olde blog published the second post in what is now a full-fledged series on Mayor Colin Read's potential conflicts of interest, I spied an email from the City of Plattsburgh clerk updating my initial Freedom of Information Law request regarding the mayor's business dealings.

It contained a letter in which the mayor fesses up to various business interests, while pointedly stating he is under no obligation to disclose them under New York State law. We'll let lawyers, or voters, decide whether that's the case. What's important for the city is that Read has now disclosed in a public record some of his other jobs.

At first glance, he's taking the high road, but his answer about avoiding conflicts of interest in city business is, shall we say, lawyerly.

Here's the text of his letter, sent to City Clerk Sylvia Parrotte on Jan. 12, the same day the clerk sent me an email saying there were no documents on file regarding potential conflicts of interest:

So, the mayor sits on the board of the hospital, one of the biggest employers in the city; the local public TV station, which covers him; and the aforementioned (in this blog) communications and banking firms that have contracts with the city.

But because he doesn't own 5% of any of these companies, one of which, Arrow, has $2 billion in assets, it's all good. And he's under no obligation to recuse himself from any decisions involving these organizations, says he. The logic seems to be that because the city and state have no emoluments clause, there are no potential emoluments.

Good to know.

Another conflict zone

Thanks to reader input (who knew this one-horse blog even had readers?), we can now report another instance of Plattsburgh Mayor Colin Read having undeclared business interests that could conflict with his mayoral duties.

Today's winner: Champlain Telephone Co., the parent company of PrimeLink--the city's internet provider. Every month, PrimeLink earns a decent chunk of change (more than $5,000 a month) through its contract with Plattsburgh taxpayers, a contract the company won in an open bid before Read took office in 2017:

Mayor Read, as of December 2016, following his election, was listed as a director of the company. The readily available information on Read's role with Champlain/PrimeLink is less extensive than for Arrow Financial Corp., the parent company of city contractor Glens Falls National Bank. That's because Arrow is publicly held and discloses more.

But deep investigative reporting (which involved Googling "Champlain Telephone Company and Colin Read") led to this from Champlain's 2016 filings with the State of New York:

No compensation amounts were reported on the company's 2016 filing, but Read appears to have been paid $5,000 as a director in 2011 (line 7 on the second screen shot):

Just as with his role at Arrow Financial, which coincidentally has another director, Bill Owens, to whom--at Read's behest--the city is now paying money, Read has not documented this potential conflict of interest for the Common Council or the citizens. Article 18 of the state's General Municipal Law says public officials are required to disclose personal financial interests in government contracts.

Read has multiple academic degrees, so maybe he knows clever loopholes in the letter of the law. But this is not a good look. Makes you wonder what else he's failing to disclose.

Our mayor is not conflict averse

UPDATES! As of 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 17, 2018, here and here...

The City of Plattsburgh government rang in the new year in the same way it rang out 2017--full of conflict. Councilor Mike Kelly lived up to his nickname, Hot Mike, when he melted down during the Jan. 4 meeting, accusing fellow council members who might disagree with Mayor Colin Read of insurrection bordering on treason.

Their heinous act? Some councilors didn't want to elect Read's choice as mayor pro tem. They didn't want to last year, either. It made Kelly sad.

Calling the democratic process, in which people get to vote on things, "a stunt," Kelly grew teary over the fact that not everyone in the city wants to accede to every Read whim. "The goal was then, and now, to disrupt city business," Kelly said.

That, or to put a governmental check on a mayor who likes to move fast and break things. And leave them broken.

Anyhow, Kelly literally wagged his finger at his opponents, which Councilor Becky Kasper took issue with. "Oh, I'll point fingers, Becky, as long as you keep being a divisive force on this council," Kelly answered. "You can count on that." The acrimony didn't quite rise to Korean Parliament level, but for a quiet little out-of-the-way 'burgh, it was kinda ugly.

But that was just round one. A few days later, Read announced he was hiring, at taxpayer expense,  former Congressman and current high-powered attorney Bill "Billable Hours" Owens, to shore up the mayor's legal flank in his war on the Town of Plattsburgh.

Phew. At least an older, cooler political head like Owens will step up and resolve this nonsense, right?

Owens says this process could take years and there is no guarantee it won't result in a lawsuit.

Right.

Thing is, amid all this ridiculous fighting, there appear to be some actual conflicts--of interest. Read sits on the board of directors of Arrow Financial Corporation, a company that owns a bunch of North Country businesses, including Glens Falls National Bank. The mayor is paid quite handsomely for this, according to Bloomberg.

And Glens Falls has a contract with the city that predates Read, but continues to this day, in which the bank is paid to hold city receipts in a lockbox. Once a month, the payment, usually around $1,500 to $2,000 a month, shows up on the city website, like so:

Of note? Bill Owens also serves on the Arrow Financial Board of Directors. Owens, like Colin Read, is now making money off the city and Arrow simultaneously, while Arrow has ongoing business with the city. Certainly, in small towns, people wear multiple hats. But New York State law explicitly states that government officials such as Read must disclose when those hats come into contact with each other and could influence the public's business.

With certain limited exceptions, if you or your spouse has, will have, or later acquires an interest in a contract with your municipality, you must disclose the nature and extent of that interest in writing. You must make the disclosure as soon as you become aware of the actual or prospective interest. The disclosure must be made publicly, to your immediate supervisor and to the governing body of the municipality, which must include the disclosure in the official record of its proceedings.

I did a FOIL request a couple of weeks ago to see if the city had any documentation of Read revealing these or other potential conflicts of interest. The city clerk responded that no such documentation exists.

Let's review:
-Read, scourge of those who sit on the back of garbage trucks, is paid $50,000 to sit on the board of a company that does banking business with the city.
-Read just hired an attorney to fight what looks like a quixotic legal battle, and that attorney is also paid to sit on the board of the same banking company.
-The mayor has not revealed how much the city is paying this attorney, who claims his lawyering on the quixotic case could go on for years.
-In fact, the mayor has not revealed any of this, even though, likely by law, and definitely by any ethical standard of public transparency, he should reveal it all, and probably step down from the Arrow Board, if he actually wants to build trust with his constituents and the council. Because the situation, to borrow the mayor's own hot-mic phrase, "stinks to high heaven."

No doubt the mayor is conflicted about it.

"Garbage guys" and efficiency

"That guy sitting on the back of a garbage truck--is he getting more productive? Probably not..." Colin Read, Mayor Plattsburgh, Dec. 15, 2017

In that infamous hot mic video (the money quote is around 9:35 on the link), the mayor and Councilor Mike Kelly muse all intellectual-like on whether public workers, with their cost of living increases and unions and junk, are really as "efficient" as their private-sector brethren, and whether labor without optimal financial efficiency is "sustainable."

Propublica.com produced some data points on that one last week.

In New York City overall, private sanitation trucks killed seven people in 2017. By contrast, city municipal sanitation trucks haven’t caused a fatality since 2014.

Pedestrians aren’t the only casualties, and Action isn’t the only company involved in fatalities. Waste and recycling work is the fifth most fatal job in America — far more deadly than serving as a police officer or a firefighter. 

So, yes, the private sector in this case is far more efficient, if your metric is killing cyclists, pedestrians and workers. Defining sustainability depends on what you actually want to sustain: your money, or someone else's life.

About those Plattsburgh workers

The city's staffers at the Municipal Lighting Department offices were nothing short of heroic this past week. Forced to deal with the GOP tax bill confusion, the office was swamped with requests to pre-pay 2018 tax bills before 2017 expired, as well as the usual utility-bill drop-offs.

The city workers responded with professionalism and good humor, and I was able to get in, clarify my billing, pay and go on my merry way, all within 15 minutes.

Contrary to what some may think, the staffers were, in a word, productive.
I hope they're all enjoying a great New Year's weekend. They earned it.

Umm, no

This is the one where Mayor Doctor Professor Read doesn't look too smart. (OK, another one.) He staked quite a bit of regional political capital on getting $10 million out of the Town of Plattsburgh. That's $10 million that apparently doesn't exist, as Joe LoTemplio reports:

The original PILOT that was eventually agreed upon called for the city's share to be $850,000 per year for 15 years, Curtin said.
"They were lucky to get that," he said. "The property was never in the city, and they (city officials) were holding it hostage by threatening annexation. It was a money grab, that's all."
Curtin said the 15-year-deal was probably too long at the time, as most PILOTs are for only five or 10 years.
He noted that the plant has barely operated since the lucrative deal to sell electricity to NYSEG ended in 2009, and it isn't producing anywhere near the revenue it once did.
"There shouldn't even be a PILOT for that property anymore. It should be on the tax rolls, and the city would get nothing because it is not in the city, and it never was."

But by all means, Mr. Mayor, spend a bunch of what, by your own pants-crapping account, is a dwindling tax base on legal fees to fight for this money, which actually wasn't ripped off because it wasn't ever the city's to begin with.

Sustainable!

The mayor looks at life from both sides now

Give Plattsburgh Mayor Colin Read credit for this much: He can't be shamed.

At the first Common Council meeting since last week's viral (for Plattsburgh) hot mic moment, Read apologized to city workers, sort of. "Some of the workers who listened to that thought that somehow I didn't respect their value and contribution to the city, and nothing can be farther from the truth," he said.

This from the man caught on his own city video feed condescendingly mulling the merits of "the guy who sits on the back of a garbage truck all day," and concluding that guy was "probably not" getting more productive.

Somehow, people concluded that showed a lack of respect. In Read's world, those people are wrong.

And in a sense they are. Because Read is hard to pin down. Like an electron obeying the laws of quantum physics, he appears able to occupy two or more different places at once. He has a habit of saying one thing, then saying something completely contradictory, and proceeding as if there's nothing strange about that. He can respect city workers while saying utterly disrespectful things about them.

His multiple, simultaneous views on dissolving the city serve as another example. During his conversation with "Hot Mike" Kelly, Read embraced dissolution. In his City Sun column this week, he initially staked out the position that this was a brave stand.

Somebody took exception that I’m willing to utter the word *merger. I don’t find that word threatening. Indeed, perhaps a dozen people have since told me that they were glad somebody was willing to mention the unmentionable.

(*Read never uttered the word "merger" in the hot-mic video. Also, for those new to his oeuvre, Read's columns are filled with unknowable pronouns. "Somebody" is a frequent source, often a critic. So are "people." They are never named, but we are to assume they are trustworthy experts hewn from sturdy moral timber. Also, unspecified "things" often appear in his columns, many of which we should "do" to be "sustainable." Moving along...)

A brave stand, indeed! Read has grabbed with both hands the third rail of local politics--consolidating the city and the town!

Let's do this, then! What's his next sentence say?

Let’s be clear, though. The city is not going away... 

Oh. Buzzkill. The piece concludes:

Dissolution is unnecessary. Dialogue is. We all want a city for our next generation of workers and residents, and must plan accordingly today for a city forever.

What happened to the merger, and the brave stand at the ramparts? I'm confused.

But sowing confusion is the mayor's genius. Take the hot mic itself. He seems not to acknowledge  that the city's video stream, the city he ostensibly runs, caught his conversation with Kelly. He initially said "someone" (perhaps a close and evil relative of "somebody") put it on YouTube, trying to make it about nefarious enemies rather than his own failure to push the power button.

Read even doubled down, as NCPR's Zach Hirsch put it, on his hot-mic take in a conversation with reporters after the council meeting last night.

And, speaking with reporters after the meeting, he reiterated concerns about the fact that a private conversation was made public. He said the situation has even caused a “chilling effect.”
“Now my councilors are saying to themselves, ‘jeez is it safe to talk here? Should we go over here, should we go over there, is there a microphone in this room?’ We’ve completely chilled the ability of my councilors to have conversations and that really troubles me,” Read said.
(Read's private conversation with Kelly occurred in the Common Council's weekly meeting room, where there are microphones and cameras in plain view. All meetings are streamed live on YouTube. The video that's circulating was originally recorded on the city's own feed.)

Kudos to Hirsch for that necessary parenthetical paragraph. It's an antidote to the gaslighting that's been a fixture in city government for the past year.

The local press corps will need to do more of this in covering the Read administration, and its upcoming decisions on sales of city property, the now-contentious relations with the Town, and the state of the city's finances--which the mayor is making out to be an apocalypse.

Reality check, please.