Breaking Up is hard to do

At last night's Planning Board meeting, a resolution was passed to make a reccomendation to the Cape Vincent Town board that the the town of Cape Vincent sever all ties with the law firm Whiteman Osterman and Hanna .
During the discussion, concerning this resolution- Planning Board Chair Richard McSherry mentioned that there was no signature on the contract initiating the relationship between the town of Cape Vincent and Whiteman Osterman and Hanna.

The relationship between Whiteman Osterman, Hanna, and the Town of Cape Vincent officially
began in NOVEMBER of 2006, Cape Vincent planning Board Chair Richard Edsall told the Watertown Times, “we have the right to outside professional expertise, and we intend to use it.”
The Law firm Whiteman Osterman & Hanna (WO&H) has been providing their "professional expertise" to the Town of Cape Vincent ever since that time, assisting with the wind development site plan process.
Payment for the "professional expertise" of Whiteman Osterman & Hanna was arranged through two escrow accounts set up by the Town of Cape Vincent, Acciona and British petroleum. All expenditures from these escrow accounts are dependent upon approval By Acciona $ British Petroleum.

Additionally, July 8, 2008, Whiteman Osterman & Hanna rendered a developer friendly legal opinion about the Cape Vincent board members conflicts of interests.
However, there is no copy of this opinion on file with the Town of Cape Vincent and an invoice for this legal opinion does not exist.

If the Town of Cape Vincent commissioned this legal opinion, there should be a copy on file and an invoice for services rendered, but neither exists. Why isn’t there a copy on file? Did someone other than the Town of Cape Vincent commission this legal opinion? Did the developers commission this legal opinion?

In the legal opinion, Whiteman Osterman and Hanna wrote that for the Town Board, there appears to be no prohibited conflict of interest and the full town board may deliberate and vote concerning a draft law of general applicability to regulate wind projects in the town.

The Whiteman Osterman and Hanna opinion states that the law would affect all proposed and future wind development projects making it a law of general applicability.

Additionally, Michael Sterthous of Whiteman Osterman and Hanna Successfully defended respondents ~ WPEG v. Town of Cape Vincent, 60 A.D. 3d 1282 (4th Dep’t 2009) establishing wind power generating facilities as public utilities for zoning purposes.


This is what Supervisor Hirschey had to say about Whiteman Osterman & Hanna's accounting records.

Very soon after taking office I looked into the Escrow accounts which up to then were not available to the public. Over the course of the next few months, I took steps to make accounts more transparent and to have more than one signature approving the invoices. Nonetheless, the brevity of the documentation astounded me. There was neither a correspondence folder nor one piece of written correspondence pertaining to the expenditure of over 100000. Billed by lawyers and engineering Company on the SEQRA process! Upon making inquiries to Whiteman Osterman and Hanna, I was told that there was not much written communication and that it was mostly just talk. Nonetheless, they would send me what they had. To this date even after several reminders, I have not received any copies of emails or written correspondence.

Urban Hirschey
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The escrow account payments were authorized by Rienbeck with no accounting of the specifics of what was done and the costs.

Link here for the legal opinion written By Whiteman Osterman & Hanna

Acciona ~SLW~ Escrow Account Document



British petroleum escrow account document