Vacation time for Gary Kriss
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- June
- 5
In a telephone interview this afternoon, Westchester Board of Legislators Chairman Bill Ryan confirmed that his top aide, the embattled Gary Kriss, is taking a vacation.
“He’s on vacation now,” Ryan said. “I had a discussion with him about that. I just said fine, at this point, I think it would work out for both him and the board if he took vacation time at this point, but we’ll take it one step at a time.”
Ryan said the board will cooperate fully with the probe launched by Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore into more than $12,000 in taxpayer-financed purchases made by Kriss. Still, Ryan said he believed Kriss was acting “within the scope of his responsibilities.”
Kriss has not returned repeated telephone calls seeking comment. He also declined to speak with a reporter during the board’s meeting Monday night.
Ryan, again Thursday, said Kriss activities were part of an ongoing effort to bolster the board’s technology. He also re-iterated his disappointment with a “rush to judgment” on the part of some legislators.
“This a good healthy direction that I think (legislators) have an opportunity to move in,” Ryan said about the use of new technology. “But they shouldn’t be afraid of it and they shouldn’t mis-characterize it when they start to see evidence of things they’re just not familiar with. The smart thing to do is maybe ask some questions before you rush to judgment.”
This entry was posted
on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 6:10 pm by Glenn Blain.
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if in fact it turns out that the expenditures were
not authorized or that Kriss misappropriated them
and the Ryan approved of it and in effect knew
that the expenditures were to be used for personal use
then Ryan should step down
This is what happens when your former county chair wins 3.5 seats after running 4.5 candidates for 19 jobs.
Kriss shoulda taken SwineRyan with him…
I am sure Kriss has enough time in the pension system to reire and enjoy his pension and SS if he selects, it is time. Ryan must cut the strings now or forever pay the price.
Vacation? No—“away.” Pennsylvania, on Route 81.
When I was growing up in Los Angeles, there was a man named Baldo Kristovich, who was County Administrator when I was a young clerk in Exec, Asst. Vincent Bugliosi’s DA’s office.
Kristovich was accused, then convicted and shamed from office over a matter of a few dollars. In retrospect (that was 1972), it was nothing.
But then, in the 1990s, my favorite US Senator of the 20th Century, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, wrote a great book, which was perhaps his twelfth, “Defining Deviancy Down,” in which he elucidated how corruption is dismissed easily in our modern times.
These crooks—Kriss, Ryan, et al—would be sentenced to prison in our good old days. They are reminders of Dan Rostenkowski, Bobby Baker, and all the slime of our past in American politics. They are fallow human characters in our modern American drama.