Waffling challenges to Law

“I voted for it before I voted against it.” These words of Senator John Kerry may be the recipe of the ultimate political waffle having taken place on a presidential stage. Yet North Greenbush Supervisor Mark Evers maybe eating from the same recipe tonight as he turns town hall into a political waffle house. The Supervisor is expected to vote against setting a date for a town wide public referendum he sponsored which in effect bails out much of the cost over runs in Water District 14 by making the entire town pay for it.

The total cost of the proposed referendum is $830,000 of which $740,000 has already been paid unlawfully to the Conservative Contractor, Casale Excavating. $83,000 of that sum was in the form of an illegal hand delivered check by the Supervisor without Town Board approval as required by law.

Tonight, facing an angry public itching to send Evers and his political benefactors in Casale Excavating a message, Mr. Evers is likely to argue against obeying the law by setting the date for the referendum and reversing his earlier vote in support of the referendum.

Some 200 town residents signed a petition opposing the proposed bail out and demanding the right to vote on it. That’s something Mr. Evers didn’t bank on. As a result, expect him to argue against obeying the law, against the right to vote , and against his own referendum. That’s a mouthful of waffles if ever there was one!

Another item on the agenda also begs the issue of respect for the law again caused by a Supervisor who discards legal advice, if in fact he ever asks for it, and discards the law to achieve his political goals. That resolution asks the town board to affirm the composition of the Comprehensive Plan Committee. The underlying issue of this resolution however is much larger. It is founded on respect for the legal authority of the town board itself as the appointing and executive authority of a town.

This resolution became necessary when the Supervisor decided to hijack this non partisan committee, late in the game, by stacking it with numerous political hacks from the reform Democrats and their Conservative Contractor allies. Mr. Evers claimed the right to unilaterally appoint the members without town board approval. He is wrong, just as he was wrong to illegally pay his contractor buddy $83,000 in town funds without town board approval. Just as he was wrong to mislead the county civil service into believing a clerk had been appointed off a list by the town board. Wrong to send an incomplete application to civil service for the town engineer who had left his job to work for this town only to have him rejected and fired by a reckless Supervisor.

Both of these resolutions are about fundamental respect for the law by those who have taken oaths to uphold those laws as they execute the public business. But like the bailout of a politically juiced contractor, the Comprehensive Plan Committee is just another example of being for something before he acts against it.

The Irish political philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke once observed that “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.” As a general election looms, these words may sufficiently inspire the normally passive to action. For tonight, the question to be resolved is whether there are three men on the town board who respect the rule of law sufficiently to stand up to the reckless acts of an elected equal who tries to govern like a tyrant. Will the law or the waffle be triumphant?