Lawmaker email uproar

A job in return for a bigger majority?

By FRITZ MAYER

MONTICELLO, NY — Legislator David Sager wanted the story to be about a job. He wanted it to be about how members of the county government offered Legislator Leni Binder, a Republican, a county position so that the Democrats could achieve a supermajority in the legislature.

And while Sager wanted the story to be about the job, his manner of talking about it led to different results. He wrote a very direct and off-color email to county manager David Fanslau and county chairman Jonathan Rouis accusing them of untruthfulness and making reference to the male anatomy that he admits wasn’t in his own best interest. (Sager’s My View comments appear on page 7.) The email found its way to a media outlet and was made public. Thus, the story became the indiscretion in the email and not Sager’s accusations about the indiscretion of county Democratic leaders.

So here’s the story about the job and the suspected political maneuvering.

Legislator Leni Binder had been expressing her desire to get a job because of financial difficulties relating to the remediation of buried gas tanks on a family-owned property. In a published report, Binder said that she had been offered a job by the county, and was being asked to make a decision quickly, which she was not willing to do.

Sager, a Republican, accused the Democrats of conspiring to “lure” Binder out of her seat as a legislator. In Sager’s interpretation of the situation, the Democrats, in league with Fanslau, wanted Binder out so they could raise their majority from their current five to four to that of six to three.

An initial article about the job offer, published in the Times Herald Record, reported, “Rouis and Fanslau said they were not aware of any offers made to Binder.”

This is the part of the story that apparently triggered Sager’s electronic fury. Sager wrote, “You know damn well that you and some of your subversive cohorts have been offering Leni a job for many months.”

Ever since the contents of the email were made public on March 27, many people familiar with county government have been talking about the flap, but few will do so on the record.

Fanslau did not respond to requests for comments.

Regarding the language of Sager’s letter, Rouis said, “At some point, we have to be responsible for the words we use.” He said legislators are held to a higher standard than others and there’s no place in the county government for that kind of language. “He’s going to have to answer to the people,” he said.

To the point about the offer of a job to Binder, lawmaker Ron Hiatt said, as a member of the Democratic caucus, “I know of no job being offered at all.” He allowed that hearing that Binder might leave the legislature did not cause tears among the Democrats because they would be able to appoint a successor. But, he said, there is a big difference in observing such a change and engineering it for political advantage. He said Sager had declared the Democrats guilty “without bothering with the incidentals of evidence and that is just flat wrong and counter productive.”

Binder, who has a master’s degree in public administration, declined to comment, except to say in an email of her own, “I can assure you that I will never apply for or take any job for which I am not qualified. I am still involved with the Woodridge Housing Authority as its executive director, and I am unwilling to desert that group until a new management company is on board.” That is not expected to happen until mid-April.

Some have questioned Sager’s assertion of the benefits and outcomes of a supermajority. Passage of some resolutions, such as the issuance of bonds, does require a supermajority vote. But in this county government, voting on such important issues rarely breaks evenly along party lines.

There is, however, a real debate that could be had about whether it is appropriate for an elected legislator to step away from office mid-term and become employed by the county in a job that offers a salary of two or three times that of a lawmaker, which is currently about $21,000.

But because of the way the story unfolded, it is doubtful that the debate will take place in the near future.