At the Planning Board meeting of Jan. 11,2012, 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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As of January 26, 2012, it became official Supervisor Hirschey wrote a letter informing the law firm Whiteman Osterman and Hanna that the Town of Cape Vincent has ended its contract with the law firm.
Letter that Supervisor Hirschey sent to Whiteman Osterman & Hanna
3 comments:
Gebo should be next!!!
Is there anyone who doesn't believe that some of that escrow money did wind up in the pockets of Edsall, Rienbeck and M. Mason, as "payment for services rendered."
"Public service" and abuse of office became pretty much indistinguishable in Cape vincent before January 2009 to the point that it still makes your head spin to contemplate it.
It is only because "wind power" has been such a politically correct proposition that such abuses were allowed to go uncorrected by higher officials and the courts. It happened just as brazenly in other NY communities too.
AG Cuomo's disclosure requirements were only partially helpful and came along after much damage had already been done.
The process of corrupting local officials (as easy as it was) eventually became so visible to the public, that even the wind lobby started to become a bit uncomfortable over the mess of their own creating.
So -- they lobbied for Article 10 -- hoping to make their prospects less dependent on their local office holding "partners."
We'll see how that works for them.
I would think Gebo, who has a vested interest in the North Country, would be happy to answer any questions that might be asked by the Town board regarding what has been going on around here during the previous administrations.
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