A Meeting With Former NYAG Cuomo's Staff

  "Those damn Cape Vincent people are still a pain in the ass!!!

Wait till I ram Article X down their pesky throats!!

Maybe I can scare that  CV zoning committee into a compromise!!"

In  July 2010 my Cape Vincent  phone rang and the rest of the day turned into one of the more interesting experiences in my life and in the CV wind battle. Most people like me only participate in the political game by putting an X next to the name of our favorite candidate. For a brief time myself and a few others got to look behind the big political door.

The gentleman  on the phone was Henry Greenberg.   He said he was a top council to NY AG Andrew Cuomo. My first private thought was, well it’s about freakin’ time!   Initially he wanted me to stop a protest planned in Watertown against Cuomo and about the CV ethics mess. Why I was called was never really explained. Later some AG investigator told me that the AG’s office was very closely following the blogs about CV (As Rick Wiley at JLL has verified) so maybe that  is why because I was on the blogs a lot back then. Kudos to Rick Wiley on that one.  I have a lot of disagreements with him and K at Pandora’s but fair is fair, and these blogs got a lot of attention from the NYAG’s office, and it made a big contribution.

Cuomo was coming to Watertown for a campaign stop, and the protest was  focused on his lack of attention on the CV ethics mess. He knew this was not good for his govt integrity campaign. Cuomo probably  instructed Greenberg to try to stop the protest.  I told Greenberg  it was not my protest, it was another group.  I only made some signs for it and was going to attend. I told Greenberg it was doubtful the protest could be canceled on such short. He agreed to call the group and I thought that would be the end of the discussion, but he stayed on the line. So his initial call was to try and put out a fire.   Then I sensed there was something else coming.  I was frantically waving to my wife to get a pad and pen so I could transcribe what might be coming. Then he said,  “ Art…don’t you think there is a better way to get your message across than screaming on the streets and on the blogs..  Don’t you think we could sit down in and have a quiet meeting?”   My reply was,  ”Well I don’t know since we have been talking to your office for 3 years and haven’t gotten any results, so I guess we should be screaming on the streets…and it is election season after all.”  I suggested that since Cuomo was going to be in Watertown he should make a little side diversion to meet with some of us who had worked hard at our own ethics investigation.  He made some excuses and then assured me if we were talking to him we were talking directly to Cuomo

It was agreed that a meeting would be set even though the protest went on.   He made it clear, for whatever reason, he wanted me there in this meeting.  Now for all you critical readers, that is not ego,  that just what he said. I don’t even know why he was so insistent I be there.  He probably just wanted to shut my big mouth, and nothing more. But it could have been that I had prepared a thick document for a meeting with the Jefferson County DA Cindy Intschert and I know that was forwarded to the AG’s office a year previous. The meeting ultimately took place in a location well away from CV with a couple other CV people involved, even though the news article linked below says it was in CV.  It was held in an attorney’s office, the best WPEG had ever hired in my opinion.

It was interesting who showed up from the AG’s office.  Mr. Greenberg was there as well as Cuomo’s Deputy Chief of Staff John Howard, and another assistant AG. All very nice gentlemen.  It was obvious these guys were heavy hitters and could actually make or break our case with Cuomo. They assured us they would have an answer for us in a week as to what if anything they could do. 

A week went by, then two.  We figured we’d been had.  Since I figured we have been taken for a ride, I created the ad below and sent it to our group for input. 

         Ad from 2010 about the Cape Vincent industrial wind ethics mess, sent to Cuomo's staff.

It was planned for numerous papers and the  Albany Times Union and it would have cost a fortune.  It was never published but that doesn’t mean it didn’t go somewhere important, and have an impact.  It was sent to AG’s staff telling them in about 48 hours this ad was going to the papers and to the Paladino campaign who Cuomo was running against for Governor.  Well, several of us got calls that day.  My call first came from a CV colleague in a panic saying DO NOT send the ad to the papers, something big is happening!!!  The next call came from Cuomo’s Deputy Chief of Staff Howard asking if we could just “backoff” for another couple days. He was not happy and was pretty insistent.  I was too, and said I saw no reason to “ back off ” since I thought they were jacking us around.    He then confided that the investigation was on, and would be announced soon if we could just hold off. We agreed.  So this ad went back in my computer files where it has rested ever since till now. Petty good bang for the buck, since the next day Aug 14^th the investigation was announced.  Link below  to the WDT article.

http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20100814/NEWS03/308149960

Interestingly, Howard called after the WDT article came out, and asked what I thought.  I told him I was happy… but would wait to see what happened. We are still waiting Mr. Howard, Mr. Cuomo,  and Mr. Schneiderman!

"So long you suckers up there in Cape Vincent...I'm Governor now! 

But I'llll beeee baaackk baby...with an Article X siting board,

 so enjoy your home rule rights for a little longer before

I trash them for my new wind buddies!!!"

 Psssst....Hey Darrel...you need a job? (See link below)

http://www.nasda.org/cms/7195/9474/8916.aspx

Maybe it’s time to get the ad out again since the AG investigation appears to have been a political sham. A brief look behind the BIG political door, then it slammed shut when Cuomo was elected Gov.  But I didn’t walk away without learning very  valuable lessons.   Lessons we could apply today too, but people don’t listen to me much anymore because some people want you to believe some of us are just hysterical marginal voices with no experience who want to prohibit turbines in CV….we are radical and crazy… so it is what it is.  Lessons we could apply to Article X. and prohibiting turbines.  Because someday I believe Cuomo is going to run for President, and we now have some first hand insights..   I will go back to putting an X by some politicians name on Election Day.  But I can smile, knowing that for at brief time we had the attention of some plays on the big  field.

And the ad above??? Well I pull it out once in a while and feel proud of the long hard work we did that did bring the NY AG, potential Governor, and potential President to investigate our town.  I know even if the new AG never completes this investigation, the PR value alone for our cause was invaluable. An AG investigating  a whole town govt. over wind power ethics issues.  I believe  that is unprecedented in NY. I‘m  proud to have been a part of that with others.  I think the new CV govt we have  exists at least  in small part because of the attention given the AG ‘s investigation that continued to expose the wind ethics “mess”.  It further  exposed the fact how desperately we needed a new CV govt.  CV became a media poster child for bad govt  and how  industrial wind was directly attached to it.

 Mr. Hirschey and other candidates got handed a lot of opportunities via that investigation. If you are running on ethics, like last fall’s CV elections, there is nothing better than for your opponents to still be  investigated on potential ethics violations by the NYAG. So even if the investigation faltered we gained good mileage from it. Which for me at least was actually part of the strategy. No matter were the investigation went I figured if we could get our foot in Cuomo’s door it would pay off somehow and give us great PR leverage and I think it did.   But after all this, and some of us going to the mat on this issue it still bothers me that two conflicted people still sit on our planning board, one who is technically still under investigation from this investigation and this investigation has gone nowhere.  That is really sad.  

Thanks to the many people in CV and around the State that contacted Cuomo as AG on this wind ethics matter. It helped bolster our case. Many people don’t know this but before the AG meeting one of our CV people attending surveyed numerous anti wind groups facing the same mess, and asked them what they wanted us to ask the AG staff.  That input was prioritized and given to the AG staff in that meeting.  We were there to represent every NY town under siege by wind developers, but fortunately we had made so much nasty political noise in CV for Cuomo that we got the meeting to argue our case from the front row seats.  

People can say whatever they want about me or my approach, that’s fine. But we didn’t get our foot in Cuomo’s door by playing nice, and my approach served me quite well going into the AG investigation.  They can never take this away from me or diminish it. 

A commenter on my blog  the other day said I should stop “stealing” news from the other blogs and do my own stuff. I will comment on that some time but this IS my story, and the story of the other people intimately involved, even though their names don’t show up here this time, I don’t think they would want that right now…and I didn’t “steal” it from anywhere…we lived it!

 I will have a few more comments about this investigation in an upcoming post.