In Prospect

*SATURDAY’s special GreeneLand events commence at dawn with a shot. Or a fusillade. It’s the start in New York’s southern tier of deer hunting season; and thousands of whitetails, according to Outdoors columnist Dick Nelson, are likely to perish by the end of the day.
-----Meanwhile (key word signaling topical leap) restoration of the venerable eLittle Red School House in Jefferson Heights (Catskill) will be celebrated officially at 10:30am. In the afternoon, at theVillage Square Bookstore in Hunter, GreeneLander Stephen Foreman will sign copies of his new novel, Watching Gideon. Back in Catskill, many art galleries will be open in the afternoon and evening, and the Arts Council’s galleries (downstrairs and up) will feature small works by members, with a reception commencing at 6pm. Elsewhere on Main Street, at 6pm the Community Theatre will screen the documentary “Freeing Sarah Baraldini.” at 6pm. (The film, about 1960’s domestic radicals, received an award called a Stiffy, in the “Most Principled” category. To see a trailer: : http://stiff.bside.com/2009/films/freeingsilviabaraldini_stiff2009. At 7pm, anyhow, the Community Center will house a second performance of the original GreeneLand play “Olive Cheritree.”

*”O’Sullivan Stew” is the likely name of a new musical show to be performed next Spring by a teen Greene troupe. It will be a sequel of sorts to this year’s triumphant “River Of Dreams”: original story based on a book by GreeneLnd author and illustrator Hudson Talbott; original music by GreeneLand composer Frank Cuthbert; sets and costumes designed by GreeneLand-based artists Carol May, Tim Watkins and Jared Aswegan; produced and directed by a GreeneLand-based show business veteran Casey Biggs, performed by students from at least three GreeneLand high schools. Instead of celebrating Hudson River-based history, however, this show will bring to the stage what Mr Talbott calls “A Tale Cooked Up In Ireland.”

*TUCKED IN? According to a report in today's Daily Mail, a single bid for the Friar Tuck Resort was submitted and accepted yesterday at the bankruptcy auction. The $4.5 million offer came, via realtor Win Morrison, from a Joseph T. Abbo of Caterpillar Law Service in Oklahoma City. But the Abbo telephone numb er (405 767 3391) seems to be disconnected, and the company is not listed in telephone and business directories. Googling yields no information. Anyhow, if the deal does close, GreeneLand tax revenues will swell by around $450,000, as unpaid taxes first bit at bankruptcy sale money. The major creditor, Ulster Savings Bank, along with the many other creditors, would get some fraction of what they are owed.

*“The General Electric Superfraud. Why the Hudson River Will Never Run Clean” is the title of an article in the coming December issue of Harpers magazine, written by by David Gargill, with photographic illustrations by GreeneLand’s Susan Wides.

*Food Stuff. Silver Spur Steakhouse & Saloon may open soon at 2540 Old Kings Road, Catskill—unless that is just the business address. Falvey’s popular steak house in Windham, having overcome a liquor license problem, will reopen soon. Jerry’s Deli will move from its present hard-to-find Boulevard Avenue location, off West Bridge St, Catskill, to the heavily trafficked site that for many years was The Whole Donut and for a few weeks was Souper Sammys. (Another luncheonette, Sunny Jim’s Sandwich Emporium, opened formally in Coxsackie last Wednesday, and sports a remarkably apt telephone number: 731-SOUP).

*HOSTELRY. Recent sale of a spacious East Catskill property, (house, pool, tennis court) may pave the way for establishment of a Bed & Breakfast that is particularly advantageous for the Thomas Cole Historic House (formerly known as Thomas Cole National Historic Site; and the change of name only hints at a great story).

*ZIPLINE will be added to toys for tourists in Hunter, thanks (in part) to a $200,000 economic development loan. Get a grip.

*"AN ANGEL BESIDE ME" is not the name of a prospective new GreeneLand business. It's in Rhinebeck.

*FOR SALE by auction, December 2 at 11am, at the temporary county courthouse on Woodland Avenue, Catskill: the former golf driving range in Windham. Creditor plaintiffs in the action are Paul J. and Mary H. Mademann. Defaulting debtors named in the court order are Adam Okonski, George and Antoine Flouty, and the Mademanns’ older son David.

*TOUTED by billboard for sporting goods store at Albany's Crossgates mall:

So it's Friday the 13th

RETIRING from office at the end of this year: long-serving County Ttreasurer Willis Vermilyea and his long-serving deputy, Madelyn Brandow. The latter departure means that there will not be an obvious or ‘logical’ successor—a person who would be appointed by the legislators to complete Mr Vermilyea’s present term and then, perhaps, would stand for a full four-year term at the November 2, 2010, election.

-----Mr Vermilyea, 64, a trained accountant, was a county legislator (R-Coxsackie) before being elected in 1979 to the Treasurer’s office. He subsequently left public service briefly to be chief financial officer of the (now former) Greene County Memorial Hospital, then returned to the Treasurer’s office in 1994. In addition, he has been a County Industrial Development Agency board member for 20 years, some of them as chairman.

-----IIn a generally circulated statement, Mr Vermilyea voiced particular satisfaction over the facts that during his tenure the county’s unrestricted fund balance rose from less than $1 million to more than $8 million, that a “fully integrated accounting and budget system” was put in place, and that GreeneLand’s credit rating has risen from close to the bottom among New York counties to the top fourth (a change that “relates to thousands of dollar in savings on future interest payments”).

-----The Treasurer’s job pays $74,000 in yearly salary plus liberal health and retirement benefits.

FORCED OUT by a Stiefel Laboratories announcement of plant closings will be, barring a reversal, 260 employees of at Stiefel's Oak Hill plant, along with the same number in Sligo, Ireland, plus 100 in Singapore and another 60 in Coral Gables, Florida. Such is the news that was passed down Wednesday night from GlaxoSmithKline, the giant pharmaceuticals company that bought Stiefel last spring, and gave what some locals took to be assurances that the Oak Hill plant would remain in operation (especially in light of various tax concessions). The announced closings would be phased to completion in 2012 or 2013. No word yet on the fate of other Stiefel/GSK employees in Canada, Brazil, Mexico, and Pakistan, as well as elsewhere in the U.S.A.

UNEARTHED by archaeologists working at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill (the estate known as Cedar Grove) last week: the original stone foundations of artist Thomas Cole’s “new studio,” which was opened back in 1846, was used by the artist until his death in 1848, then fell into disrepair until being demolished in 1973. The revealed foundations now are covered in plastic, to be shown on educational occasions and to await the accumulation of capital that is sufficient to fund the studio’s restoration (in period style on the outside, but with interior arrangements ensuring the health and safety of exhibits).

POST-ELECTION NOTE. Heated as they were in some towns, the GreeneLand elections of last November 3 did not attract heavy participation. The turnout figure, according to the Board of Elections, was 9327. That's a lot less than the turnout of voters for the 2008 presidential-on-down elections: 17,259. It's also a bit less than the turnout for the local elections in 2007: 9791 voters.

OF CHURCH & STATE. Does the use of church premises as polling stations in civic elections mark a breach of the principle of separation of church and state? Rev. Victor Nelson of Cairo’s Resurrection Lutheran Church uses that question as point of departure (in a Daily Mail letter) for thoughtful reflections on related matters. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution, he reminds us, does not prescribe church-state “separation.” It prescribes, rather, that Congress shall neither make a law respecting the establishment of religion (making one denomination the official or preferred denomination), nor make a law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Within that framework, Reverend Nelson notes, “Cooperation and interaction” do take place, what with churches being obliged to get building and signage permits from local governments, public authorities renting church spaces for voting and other secular purposes, churches renting school auditoriums for worship services, Congress and the Supreme Court opening their sessions with prayers, chaplains serving in prisons and military units at public expense, and our national motto being is “In God We Trust.” The Constitution, says the cleric, prohibits the removal of God from every aspect of life and forbids our government to be religious. Both restraints, he affirms, are good things. (Not addressed by Reverend Nelson: implications of churches' exemptions from property taxes, with attendant issues of deciding what qualifies to be classed as a “church”).

MURPHY DISSENTS. U.S. Rep. Scott Murphy, who won his special Congressional election battle here last April, was one of 39 Democrats who voted AGAINST their House leaders’ big health care reform proposal, which passed on Saturday by a vote of 220 (all Democrats plus one Republican) to 215. In voting Nay, Mr Murphy broke with all but two of his fellow Democrats from New York State (including the newly installed Bill Owens, victor in last Tuesday’s special election in the far-north 23^rd district). The other dissenters were freshmen Eric Massa (29^th District, in north country) and Michael McMahon (13th District, in Staten Island and part of Brooklyn). Mr Muphy’s rationale, as conveyed in a public statement (accessible on his official web site, www.scottmurphy.house.gov , then click News Releases) dwells on “an unacceptably high price tag.” The bill

makes a number of important reforms, …including the elimination of the lifetime caps on insurance benefits and the pre-existing condition exclusion, invests in prevention and primary care, creates a health insurance exchange to force insurance companies to compete and offers a public option for people who want to get away from for-profit insurance companies.

----However, I have consistently said that any bill that Congress passes must curb costs and keep health care affordable in the long term. During these difficult economic times, an unacceptably high price tag will stress our already overstretched federal budget and place even more burdens on our hard working individuals, families and small businesses. We need to fix the system now, and not put off the hard choices for another generation. Furthermore, I am deeply frustrated by the last minute addition of over $50 billion in taxes on the two largest private employers in the 20^th District – medical device manufacturers and paper mills.

----As a small businessman, I am also concerned that H.R. 3962 falls short of making health insurance affordable for the small businesses of the 20^th District; it fails to reform the fundamentally flawed incentives in the system, which continue to drive costs upward; and it fails to restrain the monopolistic practices of private insurers, which allow them to continue to increase premiums already weighing on families and small businesses.

Most of Mr Murphy’s fellow Nay-voting Democrats represent “conservative” districts that had until recently been held by Republicans or that gave majorities to the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, in 2008. (For details, see The New York Times of Nov. 8). Also dissenting, however, was Rep. Dennis Kucinich. (For his rationale, see www.denniskucinich.house.gov and News Release for Nov. 7)

-----Mr Murphy’s decision has triggered attacks from MoveOn.org, from The Huffington Post, and from Citizen Action of New York, whose organizers planned to hold a protest rally on Thursday (11/12) outside Mr Murphy’s Clifton Park field office. The published protests so far have not addressed the terms of Mr Murphy’s explanation.

PROTESTS against the State Government's recently enacted License Plate Reissuance Act take the form, in GreeneLand among other places, of petitions imputing to it economic hardship, "waste of natural resources" and incompatibility with the cause of having "a green environment." The Act mandates that when renewing two-year motor vehicle registrations, owners must buy new blue and gold license plates ($25, vs. $15 previously) and, if they want to keep an old plate's number, they must pay an additional $20. Moreover, up-State leaders damn the Act's discriminatory effect, since there are many more cars and pickups, per head of population, north of subway- and taxicab-rich New York City.

WEEKEND SPECIALS. On Friday night comes the opening gala for the Fortnightly Club’s annual Festival of Trees (at Anthony’s in Leeds; 943-2044). The festival (decorated Christmas trees and wreaths; crafts; gifts…) is open to the public over the weekend. “Santa Clause [sic] will be there too!” says the advertisement. On Saturday morning, at the Oak Hill-Durham Firehouse, an all-you-can-eat breakfast will be served in conjunction with a vintage snowmobile show and swap event (966-8628). On Saturday and Sunday, the Greene County Historical Society presents (at 11am, 1pm, 3pm) Chilly Willy Winter’s Eve tours of the Bronck Museum site (dwellings dating from 1663 and 1738 in Coxsackie), spiced with ancient legends and period Dutch refreshments; www.greenehistory.org. On Saturday night in Hunter, at the Catskill Mountain Foundation’s Doctorow Center, the Lyric Piano Quartet plays chamber music (www.catskillmtn.com ) while in Catskill, at the Community Center, the Soup To Nuts troupe gives the opening performance of “Olive Cheritree,” a play about an Oak Hill-based landscape artist of the 19^th century, and at the top of Main Street, in the BRIK gallery, from 7pm, lots of talent will be on show in support of our embryonic community radio station, WGXC.

ADVERTISED by a GreeneLand firm, on a Route 9W billboard: “Our gift certificates are gift wraped!” Not forcibly wraped, then.

Tuesday's Elections: Some Results

-----In GreeneLand’s most closely fought election battles, two county legislators survived strong challenges in yesterday’s voting while one went down to defeat.
-----Forest Cotten, the lone Democrat among Catskill’s four county legislators, campaigning in a field of six candidates, survived with 1038 votes, behind Keith Valentine (1367 votes), Joseph Izzo (1328) and Karen Deyo (1307), but ahead of Linda H. Overbaugh (1003) and Robin DePuy (592). (Those unofficial figures were released at midnight by the county’s board of elections. For updates, click http://greenegovernment.com, then click Departments and then Board of Elections).
---Durham’s Sean Frey survived a tight three-cornered race, gaining a plurality of 385 votes to 353 for Elsie Allen (Republican) and 176 for Les Armstrong (Grass Roots of Durham).
Veteran Athens legislator Ray Brooks, however, was out-polled by challenger Chris Pfister, whose 674 votes gave him a winning margin of 57.
-----In partisan terms, those results add up to a victory for GreeneLand’s Democrats. They coincide with the unopposed re-elections of three other Democratic legislators-- Larry Gardner of District 7 ( Halcott/Lexington/Hunter), James Van Slyke of New Baltimore, Harry Lennon of Cairo--along with the unopposed re-elections of five Republicans: Charles Martinez and Wayne Speenburgh of Coxsackie, Bill Lawrence of Cairo, Jim Hitchcock of District 6 (Ashland/Jewett/Prattsville/Windham), and Mr Valentine and Ms Karen Deyo of Catskill. In addition, two Republican candidates, Kevin Lewis in Greenville and Mr Izzo in Catskill, won campaigns to succeed retiring Republicans. Numerically, the former Republican majority of nine seats to five has been reduced to 8-6.
-----Also heartening for Democrats was Kevin Lennon’s bid to join the Catskill Town Council. In a three-cornered race for two seats, Mr Lennon, with 1354 votes, out-polled both of the Republican incumbents: Robert Antonelli (1043) and Joseph Leggio (1000).
-----In other respects, the county’s elections yielded victories for Republicans. In Jewett and in Lexington, Democratic town supervisors were replaced by Republicans. In New Baltimore, while the Democratic candidate, Susan O’Rorke, managed by 14 votes to edge Republican Councilman Arthur (“Property Rights!”) Byas for the office of town supervisor (previously held by Democrat David Louis), the two Democratic candidates for Town Council went down to defeat. In Greenville, moreover, a strong, cohesive Democratic campaign for county legislature, town supervisor and town council seats went down to crushing defeat.
----------[More to come]

-----Republican campaigning in Greenville for town offices (as distinct from the county legislature) was waged with explicit reference to the national scene. Peter O’Hara, the Democratic candidate for town supervisor and principal author of a proposed comprehensive plan, was branded in Republican campaign literature as a local copy of a “control”-bent President Barack Obama. “At the national level," according to a mass-mailed Republican tract, the Obama-led Democrats "are pushing for control of business, banks, health care and even what you watch on TV…. At the local level they (Peter O’Hara and friends) are pushing for control of your very basic freedoms of choice with your personal property rights.” Greenville residents, by way of their votes, need to “Take back your country and take back your town.”

Local Elections IV: The Athens Case

ATHENS’s elections this year are distinctive in GreeneLand on account of a formidable challenge to a sitting county legislator, a tight contest over who shall succeed a retiring Town Supervisor, and a four-candidate, two-slates race to fill two Council seats. Among episodes and aspects::

----- *Press for Pfister. The Daily Mail’s editorial writer opined that the non-incumbent candidate for county legislator, offers to Athenians a desirable “new direction.” The paper’s endorsement went to Chris Pfister, 62, a retired technology professional and former Village Trustee (2002-09; deputy mayor during 2007-09) standing as the Democratic and Independence party nominee, over incumbent Ray Brooks, 69, a retired prison corrections officer and a prominent Mason, standing on the Republican and Conservative lines for election to a third term.

----- *Press for Lubera. Coinciding with its endorsement of the Democratic candidate for county legislator came a Daily Mail endorsement of the Republican candidate for county supervisor. Here the contestants, aiming to succeed incumbent supervisor Al Salvino (Democrat) are John Lubera, who has spent eight years as Town Councilor (including two as Deputy Supervisor) and Lee Palmateer, who is an attorney with an engineering background, a veteran school board trustee, and the bearer of a locally resonant family name. Both candidates, the editorial writer opined, “are impressive and would make an excellent supervisor.” Although they are “evenly matched” Mr Lubera's greater depth of experience puts him ahead.. (In addition, the author mysteriously anticipates that “If elected, Palmateer plans to take the unorthodox measure of developing the village.”)

- *Pro-Brooks mailer. Included in a campaign tract mailed to Athenians was a picture of Greene County Judge Daniel Lalor, presented in a way that suggested an endorsement. Judge Lalor responded with a letter to the Press, saying that the deed was done without his permission, and that if permission had been asked it would have been refused.Also contained in the mailer was language characterizing Mr Pfister, in effect, as a neophyte on matters of substantive policy. That line offered a counter of sorts to Democrats who kept harping on the multiple, time-consuming services rendered by Mr Pfister (and his wife Carol) to the community.

---- *Anti-Brooks Lines. Exemplifying the Democrats’ preferred lines of attack against Mr Brooks was a letter in The Daily Mail, accusing the legislator of excessive partisanship and of inattention to home town matters. According to Athens resident John McInerney, Mr Brooks habitually sticks uncritically to his Republican colleagues. (That accusation indirectly belittles passages that Mr Brooks included in his campaign statement to The Daily Mail, deploring “partisanship and divisive actions…. I will not participate n that activity,” and “I have the courage to equally represent all people with unparalleled energy and dedication.”

Mr McInerney also voiced the claim that Mr Brooks has never attended a session of the Town Council or the Village Board. This factual claim works rhetorically, in context, as an accusation. It draws accusatory force from two implied, unsupported, claims: (i) a functional claim, that attendance at those local council meetings is vital for solid legislative performance, and (ii) a comparative claim, that most other county legislators do, more or less frequently, attend local sessions.

*Deerslayer charge. In a letter to the The Daily Mail, Republican County Chairman Brent Bogardus dealt with the Pfister candidacy by way of a recollection that some Democratic leaders have made legal moves “trying to take your vote away from you.” “Why,” he asks, “would anyone do that?” “Well, “ he answers, “if you had candidates like Chris Pfister in Athens, who allegedly beat a fawn to death in his backyard with a hammer and then had the Village crew come clean up his handy work [sic],... you wouldn’t want anyone running against them either.” That bit of Bogardistry offers a memorable example not just of delivering a less-than-conclusive indictment, but also of rhetorically confounding what somebody allegedly said about what happened with what actually happened. (In Athens, BTW, deer hammerings hardly ever happen--and the Pfister case was not an exception).

*Cop-Outs. All Athenian candidates for office in Tuesday’s election were invited to a candidates’ forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters. The Democratic candidates attended. The Republican candidatesdid not attend. None of them gave to organizer Fawn Potash an advance notice of unavailability. None sent a post-forum apology or explanation.

Moreover, all Athenian candidates for Town Council, like Town Council candidates elsewhere in GreeneLand, were invited to fill in questionnaires and to supply candidate statements to The Daily Mail, for inclusion in its Election 2009 guide. Two of the four candidates accepted the invitation. They are Phyllis Dinkelacker (Democratic and Independence parties), and April Paluch (Republican/Conservative).

Local Elections III. Case Notes

LEXINGTON’s election can be of special interest to outsiders on account of an incident mentioned briefly in The Daily Mail (10/20, by Michael Ryan, a persistently lucid source of information about mountaintop matters).
-----What does “to represent” mean? What is the duty of an elected official toward her constituents? A reason to ponder those questions was provided on the occasion of controversy over whether the erection of a big cell tower—of specified dimensions, in a certain place, under specified conditions—should be authorized by Lexington’s governing council. Dixie Lou Baldrey, the incumbent Supervisor (and a candidate for re-election this Tuesday) voted No. She did so, she said, despite a “personal” judgment that the tower project, on balance, would be good for Lexington. Since most of Lexington’s people evidently were opposed to the project, she said, her negative vote fulfilled her duty to represent the people.
-----The episode deserves sustained classroom discussion.
-----Ms Baldrey is being challenged for re-election by Republican Greg Cross, who lost the supervisor’s office to her in 2007 by 48 votes.
-----Seats on Lexington’s Council are being contested by Democrats Maurice Nelson and Mary Cline, and by Republicans John Berger Jr and Glenn Howard, as well as Susan Jo Falke, on the Conservative line (along with Berger). In The Daily Mail’s “Election 2009” guide, only Ms Cline and Mr Howard are profiled (probably because the other candidates did not submit material).

JEWETT on Tuesday could undergo, as journalist Michael Ryan says (Daily Mail, 10/30/09), a political “seismic shift.” Local Democrats refused at their August caucus to re-nominate long-serving Town Supervisor Michael Flaherty, their own chairman and a mountaintop party leader. So Mr Flaherty was forced, in effect, into retirement. His replacement as nominee for Supervisor, Georgette Kraus, falls short of the Republican nominee, Carol Muth, by every standard test of qualification.


CAIRO is noteworthy in the 2010 election season for what is not happening, namely, conflict. Both occupants of the Town’s two seats in the legislature, Harry Lennon and William Lawrence, are standing for re-election, are unopposed and, while being Democratic/Inde-pendence and Republican standard-bearers, are both listed on the ballot on the Conservative line. As for the offices of supervisor, town justice, town council and tax collector, each is a one-candidate election, most of the candidates are incumbents, and all the candidates appear on the Republican and Conservative lines.
-----The apparent political harmony is out of character. Cairo residents are seasoned political brawlers (intra-party, inter-party, extra-party). The absence of electoral competition this year can be traced mainly to a decision by the organized Democrats, under new chairman Mike Coyne, to pass up this year’s trials. That decision puzzled observers, and it caught Town Councilor Alice Tunison by surprise. Ms Tunison had announced her intention to not seek re-election, and had assumed that her fellow Democrats would endorse a replacement candidate. When she learned that there would be no Democratic candidate for Council, she opted back in, to the extent of launching a spirited write-in campaign. (See www.tunisonforcairo.com )
Mr Coyne’s puzzling decision to avoid the local fray in 2009 cannot be ascribed to a paucity of party spirit or combativeness. Mr Coyne is a veteran campaigner on the Democratic side, including salaried full-time operations. Stay tuned.

DURHAM shares with Greenville and Catskill the distinction of hosting a super-heated November election battle. At the same time, Durham differs from all other GreeneLand towns in that, while six kinds of offices are to be filled on Tuesday, only one is subject to contest; and that one contest is three-cornered.
-----Incumbent county legislator Sean Frey is standing for re-election while at the same time all the other elective local offices (now Republican-held) are uncontested. Mr Frey, as the Democratic and Independence Party nominee, is being challenged byElsie Allan, the Republican and Conservative standard-bearer, and by Leslie Armstrong, champion of the Grassroots of Durham Party.
-----Mr Armstrong ran for the seat in 2006 as the Republican nominee (in a three-way contest), but was edged out by Mr Frey by 11 votes. He sought to be renominated by the local Republican committee for this campaign, but was edged out by Ms Allen. He then circulated petitions aimed at bringing about a Republican primary election contest in September. Republican Party chief Brent Bogardus challenged the validity those petitions, and won the case. Mr Armstrong then collected signatures, with all procedural requirements observed, to establish his Grassroots candidacy.
----Among features of recent campaigning is an unsigned mailer attacking Mr Frey’s “record of fiscal responsibility” chiefly by citing his own parlous personal finances. The Frey campaign responded with a recorded telephone message damning the mailer and ascribing it, more or less explicitly, to both of his rivals. Mr Armstrong in turn put out a message dissociating himself from the mailer, imputing it to Allen headquarters (its mailing permit number, he noted, was the same as the number on an earlier ‘positive’ Allen mailer), and damning the Frey camp for implicating him in “this smear piece.”
-----For his part, Mr Armstrong has circulated a Durham Deserves Better tract that is most immediately an attack on the performance of recent Town Councils. The attack consists of drawing a contrast: “Durham taxes are higher and the services provided are lower then in comparable communities across New York State.” On behalf of that thesis, Mr Armstrong cites figures on local Durham taxes per capita relative to the “upstate New York small town average” and dollar outlays by Durham’s governors for various services (health, sanitation, recreation…) compared with averages for the other small towns.
-----Durham’s dismal record, Mr Armstrong argues, discredits the Frey and Allen candidacies. Mr Frey “in 2007 actively campaigned for the Town Board members who have been doing this to us -- and now in 2009 his party failed to give us a single candidate to run for a Town Board seat to deal with this waste and greed.” Ms Allen “is the chair of the [Republican] party that is responsible” for the history of misgovernment.
-----The figures cited in Durham Deserves Better are ascribed to the State Comptroller’s office, but they are not properly sourced and they can be faulted as indicators. What is more, making an incumbent county legislator and a local Republican chairman equally culpable for the alleged failures of local governance is a stretch. But the basic effort here—approaching candidates by looking at local government performance, looking at performance by comparing a community’s tax burdens per capita and services delivered per capita relative to other communities—surely is rare, and rational, and admirable.
-----Mr Frey has been endorsed by Daily Mail management, on the basis of the grants for Durham projects that he helped to procure, along with “some good ideas and a pugnacious style.”
-----Mr Amstrong’s presence on the ballot could prove to be Mr Frey’s political salvation.

Tuesday's Election II

GO FISHING?

---- Voting is a civic duty, right? Every vote counts, right?

---- For residents of five GreeneLand towns, however, voting on November 3 would be an irrational act. In Windham, Ashland, Halcott, Hunter and Cairo, there are plenty of offices to be filled. They include, just as is the case in the other Towns, legislator, supervisor, council member, town clerk, justice, highway superintendent and tax collector. But for every one of those offices in those towns, Tuesday’s ballot offers just one candidate. The only choice presented to voters in those towns will be a choice between candidates for Supreme Court Justice in the State’s multi-county 3^rd Judicial District. (The contenders are Jill Dunn, Republican, and James Gilpatric, the Democratic, Independence, and Conservative [!] candidate).

----- In other GreeneLand towns, voters will actually settle some contests, but contested elections are abnormal events. Thus, 12 of GreeneLand’s legislators are seeking re-election, and seven of them cannot fail; they face no opposition. In the 12 Towns where the office of Justice is subject to election this year, there are 12 candidates. (All of them are incumbents). Of the eight Town Clerkships that come up for election on November 3^rd, two (in Prattsville and New Baltimore) are subject to contest. Of the nine Highway Superintendent offices, three are subject this year not only to election, but to electoral contest. (They are in Coxsackie, Greenville and Lexington). Of eight Tax Collector races, seven are one-entrant affairs. (The deviant case, offering a choice between candidates, is in Prattsville).

This plenitude of choice-free elections does not attest to system health. In cases where the sole candidate is the incumbent—that is to say, most cases—the absence of a challenger does not attest reliably to general, informed satisfaction of voters with services received. It does not betoken excellent performance by the incumbent, or the opposite. With regard to most kinds of local elective offices, it attests to ignorance of what these office-holders do and of how to evaluate their work.

That ignorance is shared among office-holders. Town Supervisors and Town Councilors can scarcely monitor, much less control, the work of local judges, tax collectors, highway superintendents, and clerks. Some arrangements (such as mandatory outside audits) shed light on the performance of those officials. But direct popular election gives these officials a basis for independence from the legislative ‘branch’ of local government. Election without contestation fortifies that independence. Town highway superintendents do not file periodic reports that are open to public scrutiny and shed light on cost-effectiveness of performance. A tax collector who runs up needless expenses, or who collects selectively, cannot be fired--if, perchance, her malfeasance or nonfeasance were known. A town clerk who thwarts the will of town council members (even with regard to keeping the minutes of council meetings) cannot be fired.

Our superabundance of choice-free elections can be blamed in good part on bad laws. The offenders are the peculiar New York State laws creating our superabundance of types of local offices that must be filled by direct popular election. The intention may have been to facilitate popular control. The effect is the reverse.

Tuesday's Elections I

THE PROSPECT
-----Voters in GreeneLand on Tuesday could change the county legislature’s present Republican 9-5 majority into a bigger majority, of 11 to 3, or into a minority of 6 to 8. Those arithmetic possibilities, and limits, are grounded in the facts about alignments, contests and the absence of contests.

----Of the Town of Catskill's four seats on the legislature, three are currently held by Republicans and one by a Democrat. Six candidates are vying for those four seats. Four are Republicans (including two incumbents) or proto-Republicans. One is an incumbent Democrat. The other is a proto-Democrat. Thus, the Republicans could lose one Catskill seat, or gain one.

-----Elsewhere in GreeneLand, four seats are currently occupied by Republicans who are standing for re-election and are unopposed. They are the two Coxsackie seats along with one from Cairo and one from the four-town Ashland-Jewett-Prattsville-Windham district.

----In all of GreeneLand's legislative districts, the only incumbent Republican who is seeking re-election is being challenged directly; he represents Athens. On the Democratic side, two incumbents who are seeking re-election are being challenged; they represent Catskill and Durham. Meanwhile, in Greenville, retirement of the Republican incumbent has given rise to an intense two-party battle.

-----If the two embattled Democratic incumbents survive, if the two open (Republican-held) seats go from Republican to Democratic, and if the one Democratic challenger to a Republican incumbent were to win, along with the three unchallenged incumbent Democrats, then next Tuesday’s GreenLand election would, with regard to party affiliations, be transformative. It also would be, to all knowledgeable observers, astonishing.

----Meanwhile, voters on Tuesday could bring about a modest change in the Republican and Democratic shares of Town Supervisor offices. Larger swings are precluded by the absence of a supervisorial election in one town (Catskill's election comes at another time) and of electoral contests in most others. In all but five Towns, the incumbent Supervisor is seeking re-election and (whether Republican or Democratic) is unopposed. Actual contests are being waged in Greenville, whose current Republican supervisor is seeking election to another office (county legislator), and where a Democrat and a Republican are competing for the succession; in Athens, where a Republican and a Democrat are contesting an open seat; Prattsville, whose Democratic incumbent is being challenged by the Republican who lost the seat to her (by 6 votes) in 2007; Jewett, where a Republican and a Democrat are vying to succeed the Democratic incumbent, who was not re-nominated by his co-partisans; and New Baltimore, where two candidates are contending for the open seat.

THE SELL
----The foregoing sentences, while delivering information about an impending bunch of elections to public offices, also deliver a sales pitch. They steer receivers in the direction of a judgment about what is most important, most portentous, about election results. They prod receivers to believe that, of all ways of appreciating the significance of the present election contest (and perhaps all public elections), the foremost is party affiliation.

----That suggestion is arbitrary. It is no less arbitrary than other categorical choices, such as gender ratio, race, turnover rate, religious denominations, national origins, occupations or hairstyles of contestants. It is no less arbitrary, and it is probably more insidious, because it is journalistically conventional.

----My treatment of the GreeneLand legislature and Town Supervisor races reflects standard practice. I have given it extra emphasis by means of surgery: dwelling on party affiliations while stripping away every other aspect of the matter, including even the contestants' names.

-----Party affiliation-focused accounts of popular elections reflect common practice, and they reinforce it. They also promote an illusion about intelligibility. By dwelling descriptively on the party affiliations of candidates they endow that variable with primary importance on and with seemingly clear meaning (for town and village and county elections as well as State and national elections). Thus, a change in the party affiliation of the majority of county legislators would be transformative—and the nature, the legislative meaning, of the transformation is self-evident.

----Such miseducation can be blamed in part on bad laws. The electoral laws of this State, and of many others, prescribe that every candidate whose name appears on the general election ballot (for clerk or tax collector, for judge or highway superintendent, for town or village or county legislator, for Representative or Senator or Governor) must be listed on a party “line.” To earn placement on a party line, a candidate must round up a prescribed number of signatures by voters who not only endorse her candidacy but also, specifically, endorse his Republican, Democratic, Conservative, Independence, Working Families, and/or Common Grass Voice Sense candidacy. Thus, focus on party affiliation is imposed on the voters by State law.

----For voters and for news-givers, this irrational, costly regime is treacherously convenient. Citizens want to make rational voting decisions, but it would be irrational for them to spend big resources for that purpose. They welcome informational shortcuts. They are receptive, accordingly, to suggestions that a bit of readily available information-- party affiliation--serves to differentiate candidates (local, regional, national...) and may differentiate them in a substantive, programmatic way. That bit of information could yield a rational vote--a choice that is the same as what wouild emerge from arduous study of candidates' positions on various issues, in relation to one's own arduously determined preferences.

----Voters look to the media for help in shaping their choices, and news providers want to help. But they too are constrained by information costs. Rarely can they afford to make deep studies of candidates' background and positions. They dwell on readily available, low-cost information: : name of candidate, age, home town, occupation, family ties, office-holding experience, and party affiliation. The latter information differentiates the competing candidates.It is uniquely highlighted on the ballot. It enables reporters to group together many candidates for many offices, and thus to generalize about election results. It appears to be impartial and objective (in contrast to "liberal" and "conservative," for example. It gives the voters a basis for choice that appears, however wrongly, to be a basis for rational choice.