Dueling press conferences in Greenburgh today
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- September
- 14
Greenburgh Town Board candidates Kevin Morgan and Sonja Brown will hold a 2 p.m. press conference at Town Hall, 177 Hillside Ave., to refute accusations that they are not “real Democrats.”
Their opponents, Steve Bass and Eddie Mae Barnes, mailed out a campaign flyer this week saying that Morgan and Brown were not “real Democrats” because they are not “100 percent” in support of abortion rights or “100 percent” against Indian Point. Read the story here.
Meanwhile, Barnes and Bass announced via e-mail this morning that they will hold a 3 p.m. press conference at the Greenburgh Health Center, 330 Tarrytown Road, “to illustrate their opponent’s anti-choice record.” Bass will not attend because he is observing Rosh Hashanah.
UPDATE: Bass and Barnes changed the location of the press conference to the Planned Parenthood office, 175 Tarrytown Road.
Morgan and Brown are running on a slate with eight-term Town Supervisor Paul Feiner in Tuesday’s Democratic primary. Bass and Barnes are running with Suzanne Berger, the chairwoman of the Greenburgh Democratic Committee who is trying to unseat Feiner.
In an e-mail, Morgan described the flyer as a “gross misrepresentation” of his and Brown’s positions on abortion. He and Brown will be filing a formal complaint with the Greenburgh Ethics Board against Barnes and Bass, the incumbents.
UPDATE: In another e-mail, Brown fumed about having to explain the negative flyer to her distraught 8-year-old daughter: “I did my best to explain … that only the most despicable politicians would knowingly lie and try to scare innocent families. I could tell that my eight-year-old’s sadness was quickly turning into anger.”
This entry was posted
on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 10:01 am by Rebecca Baker.
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If any members of the press are there, they should ask Brown, how often she has voted in the last 10 years. A real Democrat votes. They should ask Morgan did he carry petitions for a Republic judge, who is not pro-choice.
They should also Morgan his position on parental consent for minors seeking abortions.
It turns out that no one from any media showed up for either of these dueling press conferences, including the Journal News reporter who thought it newsworthy enough to blog about them.
What’s really too bad, though, is the absence of any coverage by the Journal News of the real issues in Greenburgh. For example, on the eve of a hotly contested primary, the town’s comptroller, Jim Heslop, has just quit—making him the third comptroller in four years to leave. The other two who left were quoted in the New York Times two years ago as saying they found it impossible to work with Feiner. Greenburgh operates a $70 million budget. There have been huge controversies this year over a $500,000 slush fund, the town’s failure to record most of the WestHELP rent as revenues in the town budget, and the town’s inability to reach consensus on what gets charged town-wide and what gets charged to unincorporated area taxpayers only.
Doesn’t the Journal News think voters should know about Heslop’s quitting and his reasons for doing so?
There are other stories that could be reported too. For example, Feiner has flip-flopped on the issue of whether he spent any of the slush fund money. A few residents, however, have FOILed the town’s disbursement ledger for the period immediately after the town received its first big WestHELP payment in August 2003 and found a number of unusual disbursements to a series of individuals and even to Radio City for tickets! Some think this looks like “walking around money.” But nothing gets reported in the Journal News.
The same is true about the problems on East Hartsdale Avenue. Most of the businesses that were affected have filed notices of claim against the Town for millions of dollars based on alleged negligence. They’re relying on documents showing that the Town has known for years about the inadequate drainage infrastructure serving that area. But the Journal News makes no mention of this huge potential liability. Don’t you think voters have a right to know about this?
In fact, the businesses on East Hartsdale Avenue are just as vulnerable to a flood today as they were on April 15, when the nor’easter hit. The person who knew the most about this was the town engineer—Mike Lepree—but he quit two months ago, and hasn’t been replaced. Here, too, the Journal News never bothered to report either his leaving, his reasons for leaving, his recommendations for what should have been done, and the fact that he hasn’t been replaced.
Instead of writing about important matters like these, we get non-stories about candidates complaining about unfair compaigning which even the media doesn’t care about, much less the public.
the media has its favorites just like you do….and
paul feiner is one of them…for some reason young
journalists identify with him..of course journalists
don’t have the responsiblity of running anything…they
don’t have to sit on a town board and listen to
feiner drone on for hours….they don’t have to deal
with inrangience in the face of incompetence, and they
don;t see the backroom deals that paul has made with
active democrats who are also members of lawfirms reaping
the benefit of paul’s largess…..that will all end tuesday
The Journal News also failed to report that an ethics complaint was filed against Feiner last month showing that he had taken tens of thousands of dollars from developers and their consultants with active applications pending before the town. The complaint named the individual developers, their specific applications, and the dollar amounts involved. In just one case alone, which required the town board to approve a zoning change, Feiner received nearly $10,000.
When asked by an angry resident why the Journal News didn’t report any of this, the reporter responded that these were just allegations and that she’d just wait to see what the Ethics Board does before reporting anything. Sounds maybe reasonable unless you know that the Ethics Board, of course, is still debating what to do about an inquiry made in the fall of 2004 about a March 2004 Feiner fundraiser. In other words, the Journal News felt this was information about Feiner its readers should not have.
Yet this same reporter has no problem reporting Feiner’s own allegations—not just against other town officials, but against private citizens too. Even the reporter’s blog entry above gushes about allegations that Morgan plans to make before the town’s Ethics Board.
But should residents of Greenburgh be told that a resident has now documented the fact that Feiner received tens of thousands of dollars in contributions from developers with active applications? Not if they read the Journal News.
well here is where the reporter is dead wrong..whether or
not its an ethics violation..it is a fact that he took
the money from developers…a fact that the greenburgh
public has a right to know…particularly since they
were named, and they had applications pending before
the town…maybe you can enlighten us on who they
were and WHO THEIR LAWFIRMS WERE
Here is the answer, fellas. And it isn’t complicated.
Based on its clearly established pattern, the Journal News
should be busted for impersonating a newspaper.
A copy of the 21-page ethics board complaint against Feiner, which was sworn to under oath, and which identifies the developers, the lawyers, the specific applications that were pending and the specific amounts of money that changed hands (identified by date and amount) is posted on the Grassroots for Greenburgh website. Feiner, of course, would never allow such information to be posted on the town’s own website. To find the website, just google “Grassroots for Greenburgh.” You might also want to give the lawyer who prepared the complaint a call. There are about 200 pages of supporting documentation that goes along with the complaint.
i just reviewed the 21 page complaint…it alleges that there were many instances in which the community oppoosed a development plan feiner voted for it and thereafter received contributions from the developers or their lawyers
which is apparently prohibited by the greenburgh ethics law.
if true and feiner actually had a vote on the project
that in and of itself is news and should have been covered
the fact that it wasn;t would lead one to the conclusion
that the reporter whose job it was to cover the complaint
and the underlying facts was either disinterested, lazy
or simply in feiner;s corner….which is it
The same newspaper didn’t cover the Restiano-Amicone mayoral primary debate in Yonkers, and it doesn’t cover many other newsworthy items. As for the Consultant’s
three options about the paper’s failure to cover legitimate Greenburgh news, take your pick.
there is a little inside baseball being played by the paper
and news 12…now that rnn and the journal news have their
own nightly news they are viewed as rivals for the same
audience…so in the past where the journal news would
attend and cover the debates..they were not invited this
year to participate for the first time..notice….jeanine
rose…some guy from the westchester business journal
and a wfas poltical reporter…where was the JN….absent
because they were not included as a member of the panel
so of course they would not cover the debate..never
mind that the people reading the jn needed to hear about
the debates….that doesn’t matter in their fight
for tv audience….wouldn’t it be interesting
if the JN news people offered a real job to one
of the poltical commentators on news 12….that
would throw things into a cocked hat…..what do
you think ethan?
The real inside baseball is in the choice of panelists for the News12 Greenburgh debate. Not only was the Journal News not included, but the representative from the New York Times was the former Journal News reporter, David McKay Wilson, who broke the WestHELP scandal. Feiner had illegally given away $6.5 million in town revenues from the WestHELP homeless shelter to the Valhalla School District, which was using the money for such things as overseas trips, trips to the Grand Canyon, nights at the opera, expensive restaurants, yacht trips up the Hudson, etc. Nevermind that the Valhalla School District serves mostly children from the neighboring towns of Mount Pleasant and North Castle, and never mind that the state comptroller found no evidence to support Feiner’s argument that the money was needed to compensate the school district for educating homeless kids (none attended Valhalla schools) and no evidence to support Feiner’s contention that money was needed to compensate the neighborhood. Wilson also broke the news that Feiner was keeping $500,000 of the WestHELP revenues in an off-budget “slush fund” so that Feiner could dole out the money to the neighborhood without any town board oversight. Those favoring the WestHELP deal lobbied the Journal News to get Wilson replaced on the story and took credit for his leaving the paper. So in the turnabout is fair play department, it was terrific to see Wilson ask the first question of the debate—about WestHELP. And who replaced Wilson on the WestHELP story—none other than the reporter who thinks it’s more important to blog about town board candidates whining about unfair campaigning by their opponents. Since Wilson left, there hasn’t been one accurate story in the JN about WestHELP.
david mcKay Wilson I thought was replaced because he
pursued jeanine pirro a little to harshly..but I see
that there may have been another reason….
why doesnt someone do a press release on the
whole affair including the news 12 jn aspect
maybe the times will pick it up
Consultant,
You asked a question about RNN hiring a News 12 political commentator? LOL. RNN-JN TV has not one clue about how to do a newscast. I’m afraid it would take more than your opining to irrigate that wasteland of a program.
Not that News 12 is much good either, mind you. But the JN’s not covering a real news story because it wasn’t invited to sit on a TV debate panel shows how juvenile and self-interested it is. At the same time, Cable News should have been less immature itself, and invited a JN reporter to participate.
Bottom line—- the public is consistently ill-served by both “media” outlets.
Thanks for NOT mentioning the Guardian, which falls into its own category—- lowest of the low.
Of course there is no irony in the Consultant speaking ill of Feiner receiving money from developers who have business before the Town.
Not that his Yonkers client would ever do anything like that.
By the way, I don’t support either one accepting the money.
All I have to say is Dick Ottinger for congress!
What about Ogden Reid?
Adding to its reputation for journalistic “excellence,”
today’s Journal News editorial says Phil Amicone was on
the Yonkers City Council with Vincenza Restiano.
Nice going, JN. Amicone was deputy mayor for eight
years—- and was NEVER a member of the City Council.
What does Andrea Cousins have to say about what is happening in Greenburgh?
Stewart-Cousins is supporting incumbent Town Council members Eddie Mae Barnes and Steve Bass, but declined to support Feiner, which underscores that no Democratic elected official wants to touch Feiner this year with a ten foot pole. However, many of us in Greenburgh feel that, having gone all out for Barnes and Bass, Stewart-Cousins should have taken the next step, spent the political capital and joined the rest of the state and county delegation of Democratic elected officials all of whom announced earlier this summer that they were enthusiastically behind Suzanne Berger.
The JN is a newspaper? When dealing with the accusation that Greenburgh Council candidate Sonja Brown has not voted in 10 years, their response is to ask the candidate, they just report they could not get a response. What happened to calling to check with the Board of Election? Oh yeah, you would need a reporter to do that.
You all sound like fools now that the election is over. How sad for you all.