Resident scandal

Jason West, it turns out, lives across the street from the village he is tasked with running.  It's the latest chapter in the continuing story I like to call Game of Chairs, until I realize that I'm not funny enough to be making up names for things.

The drama does have all the elements of fun political fight, though:  a charismatic mayor who inspires strong feelings one way or the other, a cadre of retirees seeking a return to the glory days when they were in power, a district attorney on the case, dueling legal arguments, elected officials too focused on their dislike of each other to ever get around to governing . . . who likes popcorn?

I've never met Ms Danskin -- I wouldn't know who she was if she cut me off with a shopping cart in Stop & Shop.  I do know that she counts herself among a group of people who never forgave Mr West for winning his 2003 election, people who have sought ways to get rid of the guy ever since.  And he's practically gone out of his way to give them the chance, it seems:  breaking the law early in his first term, getting ousted after only one term, fighting consolidation with the town . . . and now, by leaving the village entirely, albeit "temporarily," in his words.

Residency requirements seem like they shouldn't be too tough to enforce, but once you ask lawyers to write the very laws they will one day argue in court, nothing is simple.  An attorney I was once friends with taught me that if you don't want to have to commit to something, put it in writing.  Simple laws could be simply enforced, but time and again we've seen that the residency requirements for elected officials are slippery.

• Brian Kimbiz wandered off for three months, justifying it by not taking pay, and the board found that booting him would be more trouble that it's worth.
• Stewart Glenn bought a new house in Gardiner, and rented an apartment in the one he sold until his term expired.
• Susan Zimet had her house for sale before she ever ran for her present stint as supervisor, and uses an apartment in the village to fulfill her residency requirement.

Common sense says that a person either lives here or doesn't, but common law is an entirely unrelated concept.  So the desire to chase after the mayor, when these other recent examples have been largely unchallenged, is clearly fueled by a dislike of the man or his policies.

Okay, I get that.  Mr West has described himself as impatient and short-tempered, qualities which have inspired no small number of allies to abandon him, at least temporarily.  I share those qualities with him, meaning that my clash with him was all but inevitable.  If you're a short-fused jerk in public office, you make enemies.  And if you make enemies of a landlord, and then move into a place outside of the village, expect your enemy to find out about it.

But the extra wrinkle here is the dimension of voter residency.  That's the part that actually got the Mr West targeted.  Voter law, says the village attorney, hinges on whether the relocation is temporary or not.  That's why we have absentee ballots, and mechanisms to allow homeless people to vote.  He signed candidate petitions, and voted, using his old Church Street address.  According to at least one attorney, that's okay.

On the other hand, we have the argument that using his old address is tantamount to fraud.  If and when he returns to a village address, it won't be that one, so isn't it a lie to claim he lived there when he didn't?

This is where we return to fun with attorneys, the game that everyone not wearing a Brooks Brothers suit loses.  West has, finally, retained his own counsel; based on past history and the mayor's current pay level I suspect it's a pro bono arrangement.  The village attorney is likely to continue to represent the village clerk and board, so he will probably be diverting some of his tax-funded time to this issue.  The district attorney's office, also paid for through taxes, will also be devoting energy to this investigation, which will surely take up the time of a judge or two along the way.

My guess is that, a year from now, we will know if Mr West will be allowed to complete his term of office or not.  What a utter waste of my tax dollars.

To Ms Danskin, Mrs Rhoads, Mr Dungan, and the many, many people who wish to see Jason West removed from office:  there is a tried-and-true mechanism to achieve your goal, called democracy.  Please use it.  I completely sympathize with your desire to get Mr West out of this village, and I understand that he keeps giving you opportunities to try again, but seriously, stop it.  This is wasting my money on a legal case that is by no means clear, because we keep letting lawyers write the laws.  I'm sorry you haven't gotten him out of office permanently, but if you'd find a decent candidate, I and many others would line up to help.  But don't grind my village government to a halt, and pick my pocket, because you don't like him.  Be a grown-up, and use the electoral process to unseat him.  If you can't get behind a single candidate in 2015, maybe it's time to find a new hobby.

Seeing Red

Did you know that postal service machinery can't be used to scan red mail?  They use a red laser to read bar codes, so putting a bar code on a piece of red mail is a waste of time.

On the other hand, selecting red as the color of your mailer means you don't need to use a bar code that will contain the sender's return address.

I got this tidbit from Hector Rodriguez, a county legislator for New Paltz who has a lot of experience in the mailing business.  His mailing experience comes from working for Cornerstone, the source of the red card, and his political experience includes working on Jason West's 2003 and 2011 campaigns, and he admits that he has some biases in this case. He's also an expert with knowledge in all these areas, which is why I picked his brain regardless.

I find the direct mail regulations to be daunting, but Hector assures me that nobody broke any laws with that mailer.  However, while I have maintained that Cornerstone failed by simply taking the business, Hector believes that their expertise was critical in making it a success:  he does not believe that anyone in New Paltz could have sent that mailing and kept it legally anonymous without expert help.  Not only was red a good choice to avoid having to use a bar code, the permit used also has two standard formats.  The other one would have disclosed the name and address of Cornerstone's client.

The red card was cheap to produce and inexpensive to mail.  It probably wasn't greed that led Cornerstone to take the job, because profit margins are razor-thin and Hector assured me that no one got rich off of this job.

While the mailing itself was cheap, Hector believes that the anonymous culprit didn't get his or her money's worth with the list they bought. He's been trying to reconstruct it based on his knowledge of mailing and the board of elections. The BOE will provide lists for free, but adding in a charge for acquiring the data is one of the ways that Cornerstone makes money off its clients.  (I don't think there's any ethical problem with that; if Cornerstone does the work they deserve something for it. Hector disagrees, feeling it's a form of fleecing.)

Based on the people dead and alive who received the mailing, Hector doesn't feel the sender got a mailing which was very well targeted.  Like many people, he believes that West's campaign may have benefited from it.  And I didn't ask him if the campaign did it themselves, because he volunteered that information: "We couldn't have come up with a strategy like that if we tried."

My gut is to believe that statement.  The idea of someone pulling a massive switch like this to garner votes by appearing to drive them away fails to meet the Occam's razor test.  I will remain skeptical of any such charges unless evidence is produced to back them up.

My gut further tells me that no mayoral candidate was involved, but time will tell if my gut needs a checkup.  Evidence is far more effective than speculation.  Readers have been kind in providing me with five or six suspects, at last count, but all I've been able to compile is one piece of extremely circumstantial evidence to implicate one prominent New Paltz resident.  I won't insult my readers or risk libel charges by claiming I am anywhere close to reaching an answer, but I thank the readership for helping.  This is not a mystery which can be solved by only one of us.

Other readers encourage my boycott of Cornerstone until they apologize, and complaining to the USPS itself.  Interested citizens may call the Newburgh office at 567-2331 or complain using this form.

Please keep your theories and evidence coming, but remember that evidence is what drives any investigation.

A look at the red card

If you don't live in the village, or you weren't on the special mailing list, you might be curious what the "red card" is all about.  I've scanned in what arrived in our mailbox on Saturday. Click on the image to see a larger version:

Red card front:  The use of ALL CAPS immediately drew my attention to the amateurish design

Red card back:  note the spelling errors ("in block" and "Dugan")

The permit is owned by Cornerstone Services, a New Paltz-based mailing business, which employs local people.  The owners will not release client information due to confidentiality concerns, which I support.  What I don't support is Cornerstone's policy of accepting political mailings without a valid return address, regardless of legal requirements.  I would like to see the company publicly apologize for doing so, and agree to review that policy.  Just because you're allowed to do something doesn't mean you should.  I have fired clients, and refused to take others on, because of ethics concerns; I for one prefer the companies I do business with to do the same.

I would feel this way no matter who the candidate named on the red card had been.  It's the anonymity of the mailer which annoys me, and I am very interested in exposing the culprit.  There are a number of opinions floating about, implicating every single mayoral candidate (yep, I meant all four) and a number of non-candidates as well.

I didn't allow the red card to affect my vote, although I have it good hearsay that other people decided to vote for West after receiving it.  The hearsay did not tell me if these alleged enraged were changing their votes, or were polarized to vote when they otherwise would not have done so.

Please, do not accuse any specific individual of mailing the red card unless you are willing to provide your name and your evidence.  Libelous comments won't be permitted.