sunshine again, another morning, another long night

The state police officer said, in audio, "I don't know what your agenda is."

(more audios to come)

Now, I should be able to report a crime in a purple thong, a full length Indian feather headdress, holding a picture of Che Gevara. If the crime is a crime, the police should take my statement and investigate.

I walked in business attire with a stack of invoices fingering the county attorney's office in hundreds of separate alleged counts of filing false financial instruments and grand larceny, with the local district attorney clearly aware of the activity. But, as I also had this blog up and running, maybe I had some kind of agenda that was preventing the State Police from investigating, as gathering evidence of criminal activity would be stunningly easy for a guy with a badge and although the alleged crimes involve invoices, the basic outlines of the fraud are completely easy to understand: you got paid for 30 hours a week every week for nine years to be at 401 State Street. There is no log that allows you to work somewhere else. You were never in the office. You had another office where you were. You made calls and sent bills to other clients from that other office. You did no work for the County to justify your pay and your pension. This is an easy matter to investigate.

Although the office states in the audio that there is plenty of evidence to start an investigation, he does not start an investigation. So I take down my blog, just to get any "agenda" problem out of the way. I go away for seven months.

As I explain below, I stopped blogging to give the State Police and the Comptroller a chance to do something about alleged ongoing felonies in Columbia County government without me bothering them, as they indicated they intended to do in recorded phone calls. The Comptroller was supposedly on the case. Okay fellas, do your thing. I'll give you some time and leave you alone.

But, once I stopped blogging about corruption, once I stopped thinking about Robert Fitzsimmons, I found I was happier. I wrote a novel. I did oil painting. See more here. I worked with kids in my home school group, inventing imaginary lands and writing stories in the worlds they invented. Here is the book we made (it's great fun, high recommended great kids: available in the Kinderhook and Chatham libraries). I wrote some other stuff. More. More. I learned to play guitar a bit. I started milking my sheep. Nice time, no blog.

Sunshine on the Hudson, sorry, but I didn't miss you. My life is not perfect and neither am I, but as you can see, I do not need this blog or getting into a rough and tumble with the Costra Nostra government of Columbia County to have a good life.

For the record, I am not interested in punishing individuals. I want a better system. I have other things I'd rather do. I get nothing out of any of this. But, well, the bad guys are not supposed to win. I just don't like that ending. And I'd like my tax money not to be stolen. And left alone by grasping government. That's my agenda. That seems to bother the State Police.

I was literally minding my own business (Glencadia Dog Camp) when local government knocked on my door. I fought back. I found that the government had listed their private boat club as a state park so they wouldn't have to pay property taxes. The town was giving away money to the lawyer with no paperwork what-so-ever. Then I found Sleepergate.

So here I am, back. When I turned this blog off, I said I would come back when the authorities did their job and pat them on the back or when I went to federal court to bring a 1983 action against the county myself. Niether of those two things happened but I'm back anyway. I have other news, below, but I haven't filed the suit yet. I just decided I had to come back.

Hi.

Again,  the biggest example of corruption reported on this blog, is Sleepergate, five no show (or almost no show) attorney jobs over at least three and likely many more years. How much cheating is this scandal? A lot. Millions.

I'm pretty sure that most of the larceny in monetary value that goes on in Columbia County happens in town halls and county offices. As per the value of stuff stolen in Columbia County, Sleepergate is probably a significant percentage of all the crime in the county.

The police don't exist to investigate them guys. The police exist to arrest poor people who are not friends of powerful law enforcement officials.

The State Police are not alone in this way of being. The New York State Comptroller, the FBI, the county sheriff: they all know that the story that ran on the front page of the Albany Times Union means there is criminal activity likely ongoing at 401 State Street. But they don't care.

I mean, seven dudes, two desks. 26 hours on one "day." Something is definitely wrong. You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure this sucker out.

Just look at the paper. It's all on the paper. I have the paper. I gave them all the paper. Officials all over New York are wiping their asses with invoices showing fun and games at the Columbia County attorney's office. Good thing I sent them paper.

Rich, well connected lawyers with a license to steal your tax money. Republican and Democrats stealing together. Why? Because there is no cop on this beat. I got a lot of recorded calls and meetings. They are all going up here. I'll get my ducks in order, then post more audio and court docs.

District Attorney.

Here is a recorded meeting with DA Paul Czajka, 45 minutes of audio. He said Sleepergate looked bad. He said it looked like a crime. What did he do? Promoted Tal Rappleyea after seeing the depth of the problem.

Look at this article. Last line: "Columbia County District Attorney Paul Czajka has authorized town Attorney Tal Rappleyea to prosecute violations of Austerlitz town laws."

Why did Paul Czajka, the top law enforcement officer in Columbia County promote a guy after telling me he looks crooked? And the guy is the husband of his own secretary, Holly Rappleyea, as he says in the audio (at the end, after I gave him all I had).

What's the problem with that? Czajka knew Rappleyea might have helped himself to a half million he didn't earn when he authorized the same guy to prosecute poor folks in town court. Tough on crime. If you are poor. And have the wrong friends.

More Audio

I got Andrew Howard on the phone admitting he did not do his hours at 401 State. I have Robert Fitzsimmons from 2011. More of that kind of thing. No one wants with a badge is interested, so it goes online.

The calls, the audio, along with the invoices and other documentary evidence, paints a picture of open criminality not being investigated by the authorities because the guys involved seem to know the right people.

FBI

In New York City, a ridiculous bribery scheme involving much less money than Sleepergate was busted up by the FBI. Meanwhile, in the Northern District, the local FBI guys, based out of Albany, have busted absolutely zero politicians. You would think an FBI office in Albany could be quite busy busting politicians.

Here is the FBI's list of public corruption cases. Any cases out of Albany, New York? Here is the list of cases out of Albany. See any political corruption on there?

Why is the Albany office of the FBI not prosecuting public corruption? Why does the Trenton office bust a guy? The downstate guys bust someone? Wait, those are black guys. Does the FBI only bust black politicians, and any white guys who get swept up the scheme? Or do they ever wire white guys?

Other priorities? Racism? Incompetence? What is the problem? There is a problem. Albany FBI. Albany, New York. No political corruption convictions. Please explain. Are the politicians not guilty of stuff? No, that's not the answer...

Comptroller

The New York State comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and his chief investigator Joseph Fiore don't mind going after the unconnected lone wolf who cheats the pension system, some cat being sneaky on his own, but a whole gang of them? No.

No, that's not what the Comptroller does. Here is a phone call. Here is another. Stringing me along. Letting well connected lawyers cheat the pension system. The comptroller exists as kabuki theater for the voters, pretending to be watching the store. In fact, there is no system to deal with corruption. So, guess what, there is a lot of corruption.

The Governor

In a state lead by Andrew Cuomo: Shaking rich people down as Attorney General and politicizing law enforcement to benefit himself you don't think there should be a system, do you? Cuomo knows the way power in New York, and now is generalismo.

The County Sheriff

In fact, if the County Sheriff wants new cars, a raise, who do you think they ask? Pat Grattan and Robert Fitzsimmons. Guess who is at the center of this scandal? Here is sheriff's office response. How does this make any sense? But, they were ready to arrest me for gathering evidence of an alleged ongoing felony racket.

Here are some salaries over there for this rural county with low street crime: Michael Merante $127,081 Brendan Filli $109,790 Louis Bray $106,400 Michael Stelling $101,092 Paul Graziano $100,716 Dave Barlett $95,328 James Sweet 92,931 John Davi $92,553

Fitzsimmons can get the sheriff to do what he wants, seems like. He controls the supervisors, and through them, the sheriff's salaries. The lawyers in this scandal are critical to the system of corruption.

Other stuff going on

The county is spending a million dollars on an airport expansion that makes no sense and involves bad figures. The county has millions in uncollected taxes but has to hire an outside firm to do title searches. But, of course, they have seven lawyers on the books in the office. But those guys? What do they actually do? Not title searches.

The county attorney's office is involved in these issues. The Times Union ran a front page story about how one of them billed 26 hours on a single day is the tip of the iceberg. The lawyers in that office represent most of the towns and villages in Columbia County and some in Greene County.

Tip of the iceberg. Costa Nostra government.

The senior center in Valatie and the HUD money seems fishy. Mayors of Chatham and Valatie villages: PROPS! Good elected officials, I think. Thanks. Stay strong.

Message to the rest of the elected officials in this county (and maybe state): If you aren't trying to do something about the crooks running this place, you are helping them.

Costra Nostra in charge. Tax money for the taking.

FOIL

About FOIL (Freedom of Infomation Law): The story in the Times Union was based on stuff I FOILed and wrote about here on this blog. First, I FOILed invoices and pension records and minutes. Next, I requested a piece of paper produced by assistant county attorney Tal Rappleyea. So that's a bit of news: I asked for, exactly, "any document that shows that Tal Rappleyea did a lick of work." The county didn't give me anything, not a single piece of paper. I went to court.

I lost in court. Here is the decision and my response. I appealed to the Appellant Division. Memos and decisions here for those that want to see all the filings (soon).

I mean, I know he claimed 30 hours a week from the county to get his pension. 30 hours a week and he didn't make any paper? 9 years? No paper?

Tal Rappleyea has another office in Valatie. I have an audio recording of his secretary saying he never worked in any other office in any of the years she worked there. I'll dig that out and post it.

I have invoices and minutes of meetings from towns that place Rappleyea elsewhere than 401 State Street on hundreds of days when he submitted timesheets saying he was at 401 State Street. I have a letter from Pat Grattan stating that they did not keep logs, and, according to Comptroller rules, you have to be in the office if you don't keep a log.

They didn't keep a log of work. And none of them came into the office for anything like the 30 hours they claimed. Rappleyea is the easiest to catch. He is not the most guilty.

News

Here's the political news that is not covered elsewhere: 1) I lost a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) lawsuit against Pat Grattan and Columbia County and appealed; 2) my main claim against Stuyvesant survived a challenge in Federal Court; 3) the state police, the FBI and the New York Comptroller think it's fine for rich, white politicians to steal; 4) I am still getting bothered by the town of Stuyvesant.

Administrative note: wikicoco.com is now http://columbiacounty.wikispaces.com/ -- this will help with a number of broken links.

While you're waiting for the other audio, here is what I have up so far.

top to bottom pension fraud

I found some at the bottom. Here is the top:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/27/nyregion/group-backing-cuomo-aided-by-firm-he-investigated.html?ref=nyregion&_r=0

Small town missing big money

Small town missing big money - NEWS10 ABC: Albany, New York News, Weather, Sports

Czajka and Rappleyea, February, April and November 2012

I am a small business man who paid a kickback to my town's attorney. I eventually FOIL requested all of the attorney's invoices and found that the guy billed as much as 26 hours per day. And he is not alone. It's a racket at the heart of local government involving many attorneys. The 26 hours thing was front page news. There is a lot more to this than a few 26 hour days and more than just this one lawyer, Tal Rappleyea.

I went to the local DA, the local chair of the county government, the BAR association, the comptroller and the story ran on the front page of the Albany Times Union. Here is the outline of the whitewash from the bad local paper that is in the tank with the local DA.

You can't bill 26 hours per day on many occasions without there being a serious problem with your billing. Tal Rappleyea's "job" with Columbia County is obviously a complete farce. After nine years paying Rappleyea, the county is unable to produce any paperwork prepared with the services of Rappleyea. Rappleyea maintained a private office in Valatie and made called calls and sent emails from there, not from 401 State Street. The county kept no log of hours, as required by law for offsite employment.

Tal's guilty of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars and he did not do it alone. The investigation of this crime (a real investigation) will likely touch every supervisor in Columbia County and many in Greene County. Every lawyer who has worked at the County Attorney's office in the past nine years is a potential suspect.

The grand larceny at the county attorney's office is among the crimes documented on this blog involving Rappleyea. Tal Rappleyea is clearly a criminal.

I gave the Columbia County District Attorney Paul Czajka a couple hundred pages of documents and met with him for two hours on February 15, 2012. In our meeting in February, Czajka said his former secretary was Rappleyea's wife, Holly.

There is no information in the November 11, 2012  Times Union story that I did not already give to Czajka in February 2012. The Times Union editorial staff reviewed the evidence and ran the story on the front page.

In April 2012, Czajka granted Rappleyea prosecutorial authority in Austerlitz. Here is the quote:

During the meeting, [Austerlitz Supervisor Jeff] Braley noted that Columbia County District Attorney Paul Czajka has authorized town Attorney Tal Rappleyea to prosecute violations of Austerlitz town laws.

So Czajka had substantial evidence Rappleyea was a criminal in February. In April, he gave him authority to prosecute.

Czajka cannot investigate Rappleyea. Rappleyea's crimes involve the acquiescence, approval, cooperation and/or participation of the board of supervisors (CCBOS), Robert Fitzsimmons, Barret Mack, Andrew Howard, Charles Hoag, Christopher Watz, Patrick Grattan, and many more, all of whom aided abetted these felonies, which continue.

The prosecutor should be from somewhere other than Columbia or Greene counties. And the Comptroller must protect the pension system. Letting rich, well-connected lawyers steal from the pension system is not an option available to DiNapoli's office. Participating in a cover up is not an option.

reading my book

I will be reading from my book, Juba, and hope some folks can come... thank you. 

Will 

(http://willpflaum.com)

Inquiring Minds Bookstore, 65 Partition Street/ Saugerties, NY 12477 (845) 246-5775 

whitewash

Here is the whitewash article: "unwanted attention to the county Attorney’s Office." Definitely unwanted. I mean, if you're stealing millions of dollars, you usually don't want attention, right?

This "article" is the press release for the whitewash in the works by the "joint investigation"of the comptroller, the DA.

Czajka has no business on the case because of his close connections to Fitzsimmons and Grattan and company. Every supervisor in Columbia County and many in Greene County are potential targets of the investigation. Why did the supervisors let Rappleyea steal from the taxpayer, both in their roles as town supervisors and as voters at the CCBOS? Would Czajka ask that question? And the comptroller seems not to want to bother stirring the pot. So they are willing to kind of sort of participate... not really going to push it if the DA isn't interested... and he most certainly is not interested in the rule of law when it comes to his friends.

Czajka and Grattan and Co. essentially called the Register Star. The bunch conspired to write the article the cronies wanted. No self-respecting reporter would agree to put their name on a whitewash/non-journalism exercise this blatantly biased against the basic facts. But the self-respecting reporters already quit, so there you go.

You will note that Patrick Grattan was willing to speak to the Register Star but not the Times Union. Why? When you talk to your employee/lap dog/step-and-fetch-it reporter, you can control how your quote is used. When you talk to a journalist, he might just report the truth. Grattan does not want an open discussion of the truth. He refused to meet with me to discuss the ONGOING criminal activity under his watch. Rappleyea quit in a panic after I posted the first Sleepergate blog post but others are stealing as surely as he did.

Here is the comment I submitted to the Register Star. Watch and see if they run the comment:

As the guy who broke this story after two years of work and many thousands of dollars spent on FOIL requests and two FOIL lawsuits, I can assure that this article misses the whole point and is the ground work for a whitewash. The first fact to consider is "part-time" = 6 hours? That's just the beginning. A terrible piece of journalism. Will Pflaum, author of Sunshine on the Hudson blog, where the story first broke on January 12, 2012.

If the Register Star uses my research for a story and then does not let me comment, to call this operation something journalistic would be ridiculous. You have to use my name in the story and you have to let me comment if you don't note that the whole issue is based on my work.

UPDATE: They ran the comment.

The Times Union used my name.  The Register Star did not. The Register Star did not mention the Times Union, who was two weeks earlier on the story.

The Times Union was a fair piece. The Register Star shows me how the cronies are going to try to spin their way out of this, but if I get to a fair trial, that won't work. I know the corrupt and willfully incompetent law enforcement forces who are working with the Register Star to spike the investigation think they can get out of this.

Tal Rappleyea is guilty of many counts of fraud, embezzlement, larceny, filing a false instrument and he is not alone.

The evidence of criminal activity is overwhelming.

Jurkowski and Everett, together again

Here is an article from Canaan. Key points:

The developers were also represented by attorney David Everett of the firm Whiteman, Osterman & Hanna LLP.... The town’s engineering consultant, Ray Jurkowski, of Morris Associates...

Can anyone say Gravy Train? Town attorney for Canaan? Andrew Howard, assistant county attorney, the guy who defends this guy, as they are both submitting false timesheets to the county. Andrew Howard was paid $15,000 by the town of New Lebanon for 45 minutes of work, to add on to the $70,000 in benefits and wages he gets on a false basis from Columbia County for many years. He is still getting all that money for nothing.

I wonder who the bookkeeper was/is? Not Fitzgerald? Or is there another bookkeeper in the pack?

Same guys everywhere you turn. They rove as a pack. Tal Rappleyea, Andrew Howard, Jurkowski, all part of the gang. The county attorney scandal involves more than a million in ongoing fraud involving five attorneys, not just Tal Rappleyea, as reported on the front page of the Times Union. Howard is as guilty of grand larceny as Rappleyea and Fitzsimmons. But back to the other guys in the gang...

Jurkowski did the highway garage project for Stuyvesant -- a salt shed and a new roof for the garage the town spent up to $700,000 to do when other towns have built the same size salt sheds for $70,000 and the garage repair should have been nothing really... the roof didn't leak or anything. It was fine.

Anyway, Jurkowski collected $70,000 for himself as engineer when the whole project should have been about that much. Meanwhile, by sheer co-incidence, he also found time to try to write some kind of idiotic nonsense against me, as the person trying to stop his garage/salt shed boondoggle.

Then there is David R. Everett of the firm Whiteman, Osterman & Hanna LLP. He wrote this letter, a bit on the nuts side. I know law is adversarial, but you have to wonder what the guy was thinking, if he was thinking at all.

David Everett is also the chair of the Zoning Board of Appeals of Chatham. Guess who is the attorney for Chatham sitting next to Everett at the ZBA hearings? Tal Rappleyea.

When Stuyvesant had trouble with me calling Tal a crook and needed more fire power to hurt me for revealing more than a million dollars in ongoing fraud, they called in Everett to beat me up.

Everett collected $200,000 from Stuyvesant to pursue a dog barking complaint that does not involve an allegation that the dogs were actually loud. He broke some laws to get his money in secret, in violation of a bunch of laws.

Everett, Rappleyea, Howard, Jurkowski, Fitzgerald... Stockport, Stuyvesant, Chatham, Canaan, New Lebanon, the county. A criminal syndicate is running Columbia County and robbing the taxpayer blind. $250,000 from Stockport, much more from Stuyvesant, million from the county...

Starts to add up to real money.

saying the pledge in the 1930s and 1940s

Back in the days of Americans doing this quite familiar salute, people were killed for sitting the pledge out. That picture, all those kids doing the "Nazi" salute, that's America.

And the supreme court said that you could be kicked out of school. Some took that decision as a green light to lynch the refusniks. 

In my experience, the ones who say the pledge the loudest have the least idea what the constitution actually means.

How many people know this chapter in the history of the pledge? Knowing what the constitution means is not something you can achieve with mindless pledges. In fact, mindless recitation is the opposite of understanding the fundamental principles that make the principles behind the US constitution a major step in the history of humanity learning to live with itself.

Another commentator said, "When Bellamy originally wrote the pledge in 1892 it said 'I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.' In 1942 the US Congress formally recognized the pledge with the following wording I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Still no "God" mentioned. Then in 1954, during the cold war, the phrase "under God" was introduced into the pledge as a way to differentiate the US from the atheist communist states. At best this form of the pledge is outdated, and at worst it's unconstitutional. Thus I won't stand for it."

pflaum v. casey, blueingreene.org

Here is a post on the blog BlueinGreene.org. Thanks for paying attention, Greene County. Sleepergate is a two county scandal.

Next, here is a lawsuit I filed last week. This suit is technically about the zoning equivalent of a traffic ticket. The zoning officer gave me a ticket and punished me at the same time, revoking my business permit. I appealed to the town zoning appeal board. Instead of ruling on the ticket, they revoked my permit again for a bunch of different reasons. They knew the ticket was not true so they came up with a different reason to do the same thing they wanted to do all the time, revoke my permit and put me out of business.

So I went to state court. The court said no to the town zoning board: you can't do that, make up a new charge and get him for something unrelated to his appeal. Just rule on his appeal. The judge threw it back to the town zoning board. The board voted against me again the second time around. So I went back to state court.

In the petition linked above, I explain that this is a first amendment, free speech case. There are some 800 pages that are linked to the petition, plus a lot of video and audio.

sleepergate and Register Star chaos

If the Register Star wants to improve their image as a news source and not a propaganda outlet, they should cover Sleepergate, as it ran on the front page of the Times Union already. It's in Columbia County. It's never been mentioned in the pages of the Times Union. Do the editors think a guy not standing for the pledge is news but the county attorney justifying more than a million dollars in ongoing fraud and larceny is not a story?

Here is the story about the Register Star in the Times Union. Here is another take:
http://jimromenesko.com/2012/11/14/hudson-register-star-reporter-fired-after-refusing-to-allow-byline-on-story/

Tal, lawyer on call 26/7

Here is the article in the Times Union again. And here is a quote:

Asked how it's possible to work over 80 hours a week and not collapse from exhaustion, Rappleyea said, "I'm in pretty good shape."

He'd have to be... in order to work 26 hours in a day, he'd have to be moving at 20% of the speed of light. 

"When I submit (bills) to a town they go by at least six eyes."

Let's see, See No Evil, one monkey, two eyes, Hear No Evil, another monkey, two more eyes, Speak No Evil, third monkey, six total eyes. Yup, six eyes, all closed, unless I just saw one wink a bit when you passed him that envelope.

"I worked all these hours." Rappleyea said. "Yeah, I'm a workaholic. My wife and I talk about it all the time."

When would you see your wife? Unless your wife is the supervisor of Cairo and you're billing her for these phone calls. Working 26 hours a day does not leave a lot of time for pillow talk unless you're billing for it.

DA Czajka did respond briefly, saying only: "I can neither confirm or deny if I am conducting an investigation."

We are trying to determine if there are in fact only 24 hours in a day. 

Fitzsimmons said the office employed a "two-sets-of-eyes approach," where at least one attorney in the county office was aware of what another attorney was working on.

Does this other guy with these eyes have a name? 

"At the county level he did what he needed to do," Fitzsimmons said of Rappleyea. "He got the work done."

He must have worked in the highway garage repairing trucks because he did not produce a single solitary legal document of any kind. I FOILed and am in court and there is not one scrap of paper, no record, no memo, no court filing, nothing, indicating any such work.

Unless he was changing oil every Sunday for 15 hours. The guy just cannot stop working!

And when I say "what he needed to do" I mean to keep his trap shut. He did that. So we gave him so dough. If he keeps doing it, we'll give hims some more.

Fitzsimmons was asked if, as a county and municipal attorney himself, he felt working a 90-hour-plus week seemed plausible or even possible. "If you're willing to put in 90 hours, so be it," he responded, "I used to tell (Rappleyea), 'I don't know how you do so much but more power to you.'"

12 hours invoice is "more power to you." 

26 hours billed in a day is "you lying ass." 

"I never felt that we didn't get what we paid for," said Chatham Supervisor Jesse DeGroodt. "He's served us well."

Boy, does he regret this quote. If he could get in Tal's time machine and re-do this one...

In Germantown, however, Supervisor Roy Brown described his relationship with Rappleyea as "OK." 

And after this article it went from "OK" to "Tal who?"

"Certainly as a supervisor it feels like we're on call 24/7," Brown said. 

But Tal? Tal is on call 26/7.

welcome times union readers

http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Attorney-math-1-day-26-hours-4026396.php

Welcome, Times Union readers. The story is now online.

A couple of points: this billing 26 hours in a 24 hour period business is the tip of the iceberg. I call the no show job scandal at the county attorney's office Sleepergate. There is a lot of evidence, beyond the invoices. (The FOIL lawsuit, the phone records, the videos, the emails, etc.).

If Tal Rappleyea were defrauding welfare of say, $1,824, he'd be in jail. The District Attorney Paul Czajka has no trouble filing charges against these guys. But what about a connected lawyer?

I met with Czajka in February. He has known about the 26 hour problem for nine months. What did he do? Rappleyea stole 100 times more than the schmoes he prosecutes routinely for welfare fraud.

The story is not about one crooked lawyer. It's about the whole Columbia County Board of Supervisors, every elected official in Columbia County, Democrat and Republican, rubber stamping a million plus dollar fraud ring lead by the de facto county administrator, Robert Fitzsimmons. Unanimous vote, the elected supervisors let the gang of crooked lawyers do whatever they want. Five no show jobs in just the county attorney office. When you have this kind of corruption at the top, how hard do you think the rest of the people are working? Or showing up?

Here is an older Times Union story about my fight with Stuyvesant.

I am a small business man still under siege from the local government because I refused to pay them more bribes and kick backs, although I did pay Tal Rappleyea $437.50 in one kick back. Rather than pay them, I FOILed their documents. I'm in court defending my business (or will be soon). They came at me harder. They tried to lock me up, hired a special prosecutor (two actually) from Whiteman, Osterman and Hanna, the capital district's largest law firm to try to close down my small family dog boarding business. They spent $200,000 to close my business and lock me up. Criminal court in town on a false charge based on perjury, zoning abuse, planning abuse, sent the county sheriff to my house, they threw whatever they had at me.

Millions are being stolen in this county and, I'm sure, many counties in the state.

What do you expect? There is NO SYSTEM to enforce ethics (or even the penal code) at the local, municipal level. Comptroller: no jurisdiction.

The Attorney General thinks it's okay for local guys to steal. The Joint Commission on Ethics is a joke. The BAR association?   Local oversight? Right. The comptroller?

I'm in court looking for documents. I'm in federal court (Northern District New York) to stop assessment fraud and more lawyer invoice fraud (1:11-cv-00335-GTS -RFT Pflaum v. Town of Stuyvesant).

These crooks throw away what I send them in sales taxes in five minutes. Everywhere I have looked, I found nothing but crime. New York local government is completely broken.

We need a new ethics regime in New York. Not kabuki theater. A real, effective system. It's possible. The guys in Albany, the elected officials, don't want to pass a real law. They'll authorize a commission to study the issue every once and awhile and stack the commission with cronies then ignore the conclusions of the report, but no, the senators and representatives like it the way it is. They have friends at the local level who are doing just fine as things are now.

Do you want to stop the kleptocracy? Then throw up one of these signs.

The dog sign means you believe New York needs a real system of ethics that includes local and municipal government, that 1200 jurisdictions can not be left alone to police themselves.

Email me and I'll get you a sign. More corruption stories here.

last night's budget hearing

Links to come: video (below! verify for yourself), budgets, and salt shed/garage contract (this one piece of documentation may take awhile).

Here is the Register Star article on the same hearing you can watch in video below. No mention in the paper of the fact that the same accountant/bookkeeper in Stockport and Stuyvesant and that Stuyvesant's numbers don't add up. This article is from the same hearing. Also, not really what I took away from the meeting. The website had the wrong boat on it. A number of residents objected that this is The Half Moon,  Look at the boat on the website when it comes out and see if the one the town paid for looks historically accurate. This is in the public domain.

Otherwise, it seems like a waste of money to hire a firm to make a website with no more functionality than this blog that I spend $15 a year on ($10 for the domain name and $5 to have google use the domain instead of .blogger.com).

At the start of 2011 end of 2010, the town reserve fund was about $200,000. I found the preliminary 2012 budget passed in November 2011. UNEXPENDED BALANCE, last line of the 2012 budget page 7 says $100,000. In 2011 the town spent $100,000 of the reserve fund by November 2011, or so they reported.

Supervisor Ron Knott said $180,000 as of January 1, 2012. Not true. Less than $100,000 as of the beginning of 2012. Ron is clearly wrong. Not $180,000. Can't be. Less than $100,000. Must be.

See minute 5:00 in the video at the end of this post.

At the time the budget listed $100,000, November 2011, the town only listed $40,000 in the budget for Whiteman, Osterman and Hanna but had already spent or received invoices for $100,000.

Lines A8010.1, A8010.4, A8020.4.

I can post the 2012 budget and the invoices and I will, when I get the video of the hearing. The documents (video, budget, invoices) will confirm that 1) Knott said $180,000 when that cannot be true, 2) the budget listed $100,000 as of November 1, 2011; 3) that the town paid Whiteman, Osterman and Hanna in excess of $75,000 between the November 1, 2011 and February 1, 2012. 

The town wrote Whiteman, Osterman and Hanna a check for $75,000 after the November budget, meaning the reserve fund would have been $100,000 minus $75,000. Some of the $75,000 paid in late 2011 may over lap with the missing $60,000 from the budget but not all of it.

The tax increase only added about $65,000 according to the budget we received tonight.  I will scan and post that document too.

Look at the current revenue lines in the current budget.

The total amount billed by Whiteman and Better is more than $200,000 and it has never been fully listed in the budget. It mostly came out of the reserve fund. Only 150,000 is kind of listed at Lines A8010.1, A8010.4, A8020.4 this year but some money is missing, maybe $50,000 not reported. 

Next, the board announced they were planning to borrow $700,000 for the garage/salt shed project. However, the town only received one bid for this entire project and that bid was for $450,000.

I will post those documents too when I get them. 

The town sold a truck for $40,000 and didn't list it. The money went into and out of the reserve fund. 

Further, the town accountant, Fitzgerald, penciled in $2750 for Tal Rappleyea in 2009. There is no other paper justifying the money moving into Tal's pocket other than Fitzgerald writing the number on a list of payments on a computer print out. You can't just write in a number by hand on a print out and say "That explains it." 

The same accountant/bookkeeper Fitzgerald did not notice $250,000 disappearing from Stockport. 

The truck covers the difference between the reported $150,000 lawyer expenses and the $200,000 actual expenses. The $700,000 bond covers the fact that they spent the whole reserve fund, all $200,000. They are borrowing to cover operating expenses.

pflaum v. grattan

Here is the latest filing in my FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) lawsuit against Columbia County. What I asked for was a single piece of paper produced by Tal G. Rappleyea before he quit one week after I posted the first episode of the Sleepergate scandal. You would think if the guy was clocking 30 hours a week for nine years, he would have made some kind of paper, being a lawyer and all, right? Apparently not.

So far, six reasons not to give me a piece of paper but no paper. Read the court filing for yourself. I can put the other papers up from the suit if anyone is interested. Thanks for following the case.

post election day blog post: 3 questions

1. How come a county that has gone consistently for Democrats presidents and governors has been so totally dominated by Republicans locally at the town level? Will the local Democrats ever get the Obama votes to the polls on an odd numbered year?

2. How will Republicans like Gibson in districts that went for Obama stick with their sometimes fairly extreme Republican leadership or will these kind of Republicans, particularly Gibson, work with Obama to pass the agenda the people of the county want: universal health care, higher taxes on the rich, funding for science research, no more wars, environmental protection, green energy, and an economy that works for the middle class, not the oligarchs?

3. Can the Republicans change? Will they listen to their reasonable members or will they continue to be dragged down by the nuts?

Columbia County: President

Barack Obama (D/WF) (inc) 14,068 55%

Mitt Romney (R/C) 11,059 43%

New York House District 19

Christopher P. Gibson (R/C/I) (inc) 135,328 53%

Julian Schreibman (D/WF) 118,358 47%

election day blog post

Here is an endorsement in a local court race. And meanwhile, here is an interesting blog from East Greenbush.

Now, I was in Brooklyn last night. I saw people waiting in line for gas. In Brooklyn, you have Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Secular, college-educated, high school drop outs, rich, poor, native born, foreign born, and yet Obama will probably carry Kings County with about 85% of the vote.

There is probably some rural, southern county, plus somewhere in Utah, where Romney will carry the county with 75% of the vote (but not 85%). The difference is that the Republican county will be all white, rural, all Christian, less than average percentage of college educated, etc.

The Democrats are failing to reach one piece of the electorate. The Republicans are failing to reach many parts of the electorate. If the Republicans cannot get some kind of divide and conquer thing going on in a place as diverse, with as little common ground, as Brooklyn, they are doing something very wrong. You can't write off this broad a swath of the population.

Meanwhile, of a different topic, whenever I hear local politicians discuss any issue, any issue at all, Democrat or Republican, I think: kabuki theater. I can imagine a sincere conservative speaking to a board of elected officials, talking about high taxes or something, then a sincere liberal talking about the environment of something, and I just imagine the internal dialogue in the head of the normal elected official in New York: "I can't wait until this naive peasant stops talking so we can do what we always do." The Democrats go around talking about some issue, then the Republican talk about another issue, and then you find some paper that one gang or the other is stealing. Silence.

More to the point, the bookkeeper in the Stockport case, the missing $250,000, is also the bookkeeper in Stuyvesant. While the fact that Stuyvesant Town Attorney Tal G. Rappleyea was part of a gang that stole more than a million dollars from Columbia County over several years should not mean we forget that he also stole $10,000 from Stuyvesant in 2009.  Other members of the gang include Robert Fitzsimmons of Fitzsimmon, Mack and Mills, Andrew Howard of Freeman Howard and a few others.

Bookkeeper Mark Fitzgerald or his partner and uncle penciled in $2750 for Rappleyea here:

There is no way to get to the amount Rappleyea received, $10,000 more than he billed, without Fitzgerald penciling in $2750.  Here are the monthly amounts billed and recieved:

Here is Tal's incoherent explanation. Here we have a linked between the missing $250,000 in Stockport, to the missing $10,000 in Stuyvesant to the missing 1.5 million in Columbia County through Rappleyea, Fitzgerald, Fitzsimmons, etc. Oh, and about $500,000 in assessment fraud, tangentially related. 

Same gang. Republican gang. Any Democrats care to complain? No. Why? They are doing the same crap here and other places.

Everywhere I looked, I found problems.

Vote for them today.