The Supervisor Now Has a Second Set of BooksJuly 12, 2010 We had submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Town Clerk the week before. We asked for a copy of the memorandum of understanding between Ramapo and the baseball team for St. Lawrence's Project Grand Slam. In the morning interview streamed live over LoHud, St. Lawrence proudly told the paper it was the best memorandum of understanding one analyst had ever seen. That was 11 a.m. That same afternoon, at 3:10 p.m., a message was left on my answering machine. It was the Town Clerk's Office: "Regarding your request on the memorandum of understanding between the town and baseball, there is no such memorandum of understanding between the town and Bottom Line Baseball or the Can-Am League." Somebody's Lying
" We have crafted this memorandum or understanding with the team that will pay one dollar for every fixed seat. . ." "The interesting thing about this MOU (memorandum of understanding), and it comes out very clearly in the study done by Fishkind of Florida, is that this is the best MOU that they've seen. . ." And: "That's because they didn't put a memorandum of understanding putting the municipality at the heart of it. That's what we did." Contrast that performance with the denial of our request that claims, "There is no such memorandum of understanding." In the absence of any evidence that someone had experienced a complete free-slide away from reality, it was apparent that the document did exist, and that it contained arrangements for fees, payments, and other obligations between the town and the team. And since Preserve Ramapo has been stonewalled on every request for specific financials on this project, this seemed to be just more of the same. The difference now though, was that the Supervisor and/or the Ramapo Town Clerk seemed to be willing to take a serious hit to their credibility by taking a position that might not sit very well with the taxpayers. Then another suggestion came from a person who had apparently spoken to someone at Town Hall. The record we were looking for might be held by the Ramapo Local Development Corporation and it might not have been shared with the Town of Ramapo. This would not be good, because it would mean that there are two sets of books being kept for this $25million project, and Christopher St. Lawrence controls both. Before we go any further, maybe a short explanation of the Ramapo Local Development Corporation would help. Back in 2008, the Ramapo Town Board set up a quasi-governmental agency called the Ramapo Local Development Corporation (RLDC). It's supposed to be a separate entity operating for the good of the Town by taking on development projects. The RLDC has the power to borrow unlimited amounts of money to fund the projects it chooses to pursue. The Ramapo version of this kind of corporation is, we believe, legally flawed in a very fundamental way. Rules for this kind of agency demand that the members of the RLDC remain separated from the town in a very important way. No board member is allowed to influence legislation in any way. Well, Christopher St. Lawrence is not only a member of the board of the RLDC, he is the Chairman of that board, and he is also President of the RLDC. He not only influences legislation at the town level, he designs it, argues for it, and votes on it. The Ramapo RLDC has at its very center a fatal conflict of interest. This situation not only allows St.
Lawrence the opportunity to act as a separate developer in Ramapo,
but also he is able to have the Town Board pass resolutions that
give multimillion-dollar properties to his agency as well as
guarantee the funding of his projects by guaranteeing the bonds his
RLDC will float. But back to the immediate problem of two sets of books for the ballpark and the refusal by the Clerk's Office to provide the public with any meaningful disclosure of the financials of the project. We called Mr. Robert Freeman, Director of the New York State Committee on Open Government to get his advice about the denial for, and existence of, the memorandum of understanding. The two sets of books were not an issue, Mr. Freeman explained. St. Lawrence had negotiated the document, he quoted from it publicly, and he obviously has a copy. He is the Town Supervisor, and those records in his possession that deal with town business, including the ballpark (for which the town had passed the original resolutions) were available to the public. The Town Clerk should know that, and should have released the document with the original FOIL request. We resubmitted the FOIL with this legal opinion attached, and then went down the hall and presented the Executive Director of the RLDC, Aron Troodler (a Ramapo Town Attorney), with a specific list of 12 Freedom Of Information requests, including a demand for a list of what documents are held solely by the agency and withheld from the Clerk’s Office. We expect that any documents that are or have been in the possession of the Supervisor/President and Chair of the Ramapo LDC (St. Lawrence), would be available to the public and not tossed behind the second wall that St. Lawrence has erected with his development company. The Reason for a Town Clerk’s Office Or: The Role of a Town Clerk is to keep public records out of sight, and to demand that the public submit Freedom of Information Act filings for information that they own and have a right to see. Further, take the opportunity to obfuscate, or deny a request by torturing the language when you can do so. (Plan B) Over the years that Preserve Ramapo has been covering local news, there have been no problems with numerous FOIL requests made to other agencies, including the Rockland Board of Health, Rockland County Sewer District #1, the District Attorney’s Office, numerous villages, Airmont, Montebello and others, the East Ramapo School Board, and so on. Not a single incident or glitch. Ramapo, on the other hand, has frequently stonewalled requests, giving reasons that were not legally acceptable to the State’s Committee on Open Government. Here are a few recent Preserve Ramapo Freedom Of Information Law requests made at Ramapo Town Hall that were problematic: 1. We FOILed the EZ Pass records for the Supervisor's Town Vehicle. We were told that the Town didn't have these records. We then filed for a legal certification that the records did not exist anywhere at Town Hall, even though the Town somehow paid these bills every month. Suddenly, someone located the files. 2. We FOILed the Ramapo police records that the Town had submitted to the FBI as the basis for the annual crime statistics. We were told they were lost and could not be located. 3. We FOILed the Supervisor's appointment calendar and were told that he does not have one. What an odd waste of time to force an executive to memorize a complicated schedule of meetings, months at a time. I guess, either he does this, or the exact wording of what his assistant calls a "record of meetings" was not met in the FOIL. We get a lot of "Depends on what the meaning of is is" kind of thing from the Town. 4. We FOILed the Supervisor's cell phone records for a few months, and what was returned was a sheaf of dozens of pages of phone records with virtually every number blacked out. The excuse we were given was that the calls blacked out were all from unlisted numbers. How the Supervisor knew that literally hundreds of these numbers were unlisted was never explained. Director Freeman called this particular response outrageous and illegal. 5. We FOILed the business plan for Project Grand Slam. Although St. Lawrence claimed that this plan did indeed exist, we were not given a copy. (Incidentally, we asked one of the business partners of Bottom Nine Baseball if they had a business plan and would they be willing to share it with the public. Their answer was "yes, there is one" and "no, the public can’t see it". 6. We FOILed the quarterly financial reports for the RLDC, supposed to be filed with the Town of Ramapo Finance Department, and we haven't been given those. 7. We FOILed the Annual Financial Disclosure forms (required by State Law) for the Supervisor and several other personnel, and they have not been provided. 8. And, of course, we FOILed the memorandum of understanding and we have had the Clerk’s Office playing games with wording and the Supervisor, illegally withholding information that is in his possession. If you’re getting the idea that the Ramapo Town Clerk's Office has opted for plan B as their guiding philosophy for handling requests for "public records," welcome to the shadowy world of Town Hall. This is unacceptable, especially when you consider how other village and county FOIL officers professionally conduct themselves. But now that St. Lawrence has his own development company, the situation has become even more ominous. The documents are not forthcoming from the town, but the message has been clearly, and publicly, sent by Supervisor St. Lawrence and Attorney Michael Klein: We are going to build this thing, and you are going to pay for it, whether you like it or not.
Michael Castelluccio
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