Ethics in Greenburgh
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- April
- 20
Greenburgh’s town supervisor, Paul Feiner, is once again in a battle with the rest of his town board, this time over potential campaign finance reform. Feiner wants even stricter limits on donations, while the rest of the board thinks he wants too much. Check out the story “here”:http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070420/NEWS02/704200375/1026/NEWS10.
This entry was posted
on Friday, April 20th, 2007 at 1:52 pm by Rebecca Baker.
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Rebecca Baker’s story leaves out the most important detail—that Feiner’s practice of soliciting contributions from developers with active applications pending before the town – in violation of the town’s Ethics Code—has netted him more than $140,000—none of which he intends to give back.
Readers need to know that fact in order to understand why Feiner, who wouldn’t even recuse himself from the matters on which he took the money, now says he’ll support ethics reform in Greenburgh – but only if it also includes a ban on candidates accepting contributions from political parties, political action groups, unions, and any other interest group that wants to give money in Greenburgh.
As Rebecca’s story should have made clearer, what Feiner really wants is to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to keep his ill-gotten $140,000, and at the same time make sure Suzanne Berger can’t raise a dime.
In fact, Feiner is so determined to find ways to keep Ms. Berger from raising money,that he doesn’t realize or care that restricting the rights of political parties, unions and other political action groups to give to the candidates of their choice violates their First Amendment rights.
He also doesn’t seem to understand or appreciate that New York state law only permits towns to regulate what public officials may receive in the form of political contributions.
Fortunately, the town’s Ethics Board sees through all this. They’ve already demanded the production of Feiner’s documents pertaining to a 2004 fundraiser that raked in more than $32,000, mostly from developers and their lawyers and consultants—and they’re planning to ask the town board to authorize the hiring of outside counsel to pursue the matter further.