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Civitas No. 40-- December 3, 2003

     The Broadside of Local Politics and Civic Design

Our Motto: “You have to hack your way through a lot of lunchmeat in this world."

Quote of the Month:
"Politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.” —Charles de Gaulle

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Lying Liar Elected Mayor, and Other Tales of Election Turpitude

by Jim Kunstler

The Law of Perverse Outcomes states that: People don't get what they expect, but they get what they deserve.
By a slender 79-vote margin, Saratoga voters have elected a new Mayor, Mike Lenz, who ran a campaign saturated with deliberate, calculated lying, and now we'll all have to live with the kind of government that compulsive and reckless lying produces. Examples:

• Lenz claimed in campaign handouts that Mayor Ken Klotz "stood idly by and didn't protect Lake Lonely from being polluted by raw sewage."
  In fact, Lake Lonely never was polluted. The allegation was false and Lenz knew it. A lawyer in the Attorney General's office admitted that he had made an administrative error in reporting Lake Lonely as a pollution site. The truth is that over a 20-year-period - since the days of mayor Elsworth Jones - raw sewage had periodically shown up in Spring Valley, by the old ice rink off Excelsior Avenue, nowhere near Lake Lonely. Far from standing idly by, the city DPW finally found the source way over near West Avenue in two houses that had mistakenly hooked their toilet pipes into the city's storm sewer lines instead of the waste sewer.
• Lenz campaign handouts claimed he "led efforts to establish the Open Space bond referendum." In fact, he fought against the city's Open Space preservation plan tooth and nail while pretending to be in favor of it.
  When the proposal was first made in city council, Lenz counter-proposed that the referendum had to state explicitly that the people would be voting to have their taxes raised, and that open space purchases would be billed to taxpayers as a separate item in order to make the purchases untenable. He also wanted to require a "super majority" of council votes (4 of 5) to approve any land purchases. In short, he tried to make the program as ineffective as possible.
• Lenz claimed that the Democrats had foolishly agreed to sell water to Wilton.
  In fact, the contract was made in 1998 when Republican Mike O'Connell was mayor and was voted on unanimously by all council members including Finance Commissioner Mike Lenz. The contract was signed by O'Connell. The agreement was amended under Mayor Klotz and was again voted on unanimously in Council (including Lenz).
• Lenz opposed the Democrat's "risky scheme to turn Saratoga Lake into a reservoir." This was the Big Lie technique, Joseph Goebbels style.
  Both the State DEC and the engineering firm of Barton and LaGiudice had declared that the city taking water from Saratoga Lake would have no effect on the quality of the lake water or on boating and fishing there. Despite these official determinations, Lenz persisted in selling the lie to residents in the outer districts as a cynical ploy for votes.
• Lenz knowingly concealed, withheld, and distorted information about city sales tax. As Finance Commissioner, Lenz refused to disclose to the city council - including Mayor Klotz - pertinent information about the sources of city sales tax revenue. He also colluded with Republican county and state officials to restrict and conceal the flow of sales tax due to the city in order to make the city's revenue appear smaller than it really was for political advantage in an election year. The NY State Comptroller, Alan Hevesi is commencing an investigation beginning in January. It is expected to take 3-4 months to complete.
• The weekend before the election, Lenz called members of the news media to inform them, falsely, that Karen Klotz, wife of Mayor Ken Klotz, had been arrested for vandalizing a Lenz campaign sign on Putnam Street. In fact, Mrs. Klotz was home in bed when the alleged incident supposedly occurred. We're told that that Lenz called Duarte Geraldino of TV-News 9 and Robin Cooper of the Schenectady Gazette. Geraldino has since taken a job in another part of the country and Cooper declined to comment on the grounds that as a reporter he didn't want to become a subject of the news he had to report on. On election day, Republican poll watchers at the City Center were telling voters, falsely and scurrilously, that Karen Klotz had been arrested.
• Lenz lied directly to Civitas this past summer when asked in a phone interview whether he would support fully and unequivocally the request for a $20,000 grant by the Shakespeare-in-the-Park program. He said, yes, he would. We asked him three times just to be clear and Lenz said yes three times. Then he turned around and voted in council for only half the request, and made it a loan instead of a grant.

Skidmore Poll Monkeyshines

Having failed to dismantle the Skidmore election district by administrative chicanery last winter, the Republican party sent a goon squad of poll-tenders there, who far exceeded the boundaries of their prescribed role in the voting process. Instead of politely challenging the eligibility of voters at the sign-in table, in the presence of election officials, the goons intercepted voters before they reached the actually polling place, misrepresented themselves as election officials, and aggressively threatened voters by saying, "You could be thrown in jail for perjury!" "You could be thrown out of college!" and "I hope your father is a lawyer because you're gonna need one!"

Leader of the goon squad was one Matt Dill, a town of Malta resident. Also on hand during the morning hours was County Republican chairman Jasper Nolan, who was seen wagging and jabbing his finger at prospective voters in an opprobrious manner. By his side was a national Republican operator, one Brendan Quinn, part of a goon squad sent to intimidate Dade County, Florida, officials during the 2000 Presidential election recount.

At issue, supposedly, was whether students living in Moore Hall on Union Avenue were entitled to vote at the campus polling place. In fact, the college and the county Board of Elections had reached a prior legal agreement that all Skidmore students were entitled to use 815 North Broadway as their legal address. The Republican party could have contested this point in court at any time months prior to the election. The shenanigans at the polling place, therefore, were clearly calculated to disrupt voting there.

The day after the election, Dill bragged in the local newspaper, the Saratogian, about how effective he had been in turning away voters at the Skidmore polling place.

City Democratic chair, Shawn Thompson, has filed a request with NY Attorney General Elliot Spitzer to investigate the behavior of Dill and his goon squad. The result could range from criminal charges against Dill himself to criminal conspiracy including Dill, Chairman Jasper Nolan, and their associates.

Another Cute Election Trick

A Republican political appointee named Al Dewey, the County Emergency Planner, instructed city engineer Paul Male to change the house numbers in selected city neighborhoods - supposedly based on post-9/11 Homeland Security considerations. This angered residents, whose credit card billings and stationary all had to be changed. Since Male's department is offically under the Mayor's office, they blamed Mayor Klotz. Klotz then sent a memo to Male ordering him to stop changing people's house numbers. Male then went out to East Avenue and changed more addresses, ticking off more voters. Note, the margin of victory in the mayor's race was only 79 votes.

Notes on Our Rival Publication

A disgruntled employee of the odious rag known as the Saratogian tells Civitas that fellow staff members are red hot over Publisher Chad Beatty venally dictating the endorsement of Mike Lenz in order to keep Republican chairman Tom Roohan happy. Roohan's real estate office is a big advertiser. Beatty is regarded by employees as a near-moron. The publisher doesn't even live in Saratoga Springs.

 

The Atlantic Monthly Press
Cordially Invites You
To Celebrate the Publication of

Maggie Darling
A Modern Romance
A new novel by
James Howard Kunstler

Tuesday December 16
7 to 9 p.m.

at the Saratoga Arts Center
(Broadway and Spring St.)

Wine and Munchies

E-mail the editor: Kunstler@aol.com

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