Using a classic–and some would say fitting–Thomas Nast illustration of Boss Tweed as a background, Democrats have launched a website using the name of County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef. The site, “The Truth About Scott Vanderhoef” resides on the domain scottVanderhoef.com and provides the opposing viewpoint to the spin put out by Vanderhoef’s own campaign.

Highlights of the site include a blistering denunciation of Vanderhoef’s fiscal acuity, highlighting that the County Executive had proposed a 60 to 84 percen property tax increase for 2011, and backing it up with official Rockland documents about the County’s cash flow problems.

Other items on the site highlight the $17,000 pay raise Vanderhoef weasled through last winter, his pay-to-play schemes with County contractors, and Rockland County’s spiraling taxes.

The site is a must-read for every undecided voter in New York’s 38th State Senate District.

This is good news for the Hall campaign, which had trailed Hayworth in past polls. A Public Policy Polling/DailyKos poll had Hall trailing Hawyworth by 2 percent, and the New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog had previously given Hayworth a 73 percent chance of winning the 19th Congressional District and has revised that number to 69 percent.

FiveThirtyEight now has Hayworth projected to take 50.7 percent of the vote to Hall’s 47 percent.

Becoming increasingly more important to this race are the write-in candidacy mounted by Hayworth’s former Republican primary opponent, Neil Di Carlo. Di Carlo, unhappy with Hayworth’s position on social issues such as abortion, has asked his supporters to vote, but to select a write-in candidate. Republished from previously given Hayworth a 673 percent chance of winning the 19th Congressional District and has revised that number to 69 percent. FiveThirtyEight now has Hayworth projected to take 50.7 percent of the vote to Hall’s 47 percent. Becoming increasingly more important to this race are the write-in candidacy mounted by Hayworth’s former Republican primary opponent, Neil Di Carlo. Di Carlo, unhappy with Hayworth’s position on social issues such as abortion, has asked his supporters to vote, but to select a write-in candidate.

Republished from Left of the Hudson.

Perhaps because of Nan Hayworth’s pro-abortion stance, Di Carlo refused to endorse her in the upcoming race against John Hall for Congress. And while Di Carlo hasn’t quite came out and say to vote for him come November, Di Carlo is adamant that voters select a write-in candidate in the race.

On his campaign website, Di Carlo won’t go a step further than recognizing Hayworth’s primary victory. There is no concession, no congratulations, and certainly no endorsement. But this Di Carlo does say:

To endorse or vote for Nan Hayworth, however, would require me to place profound moral principles beneath mere party expediency – a price neither I nor any candidate should be required to pay. Our differences on social issues fall within these bounds.

I believe that forsaking our moral American heritage is to blame for much of our country’s downfall.

To those who feel that neither candidate represents their concerns, I encourage you to still vote on November 2nd and write in a candidate of your choice.

We cannot assume that right-to-life voters will swarm to a write-in candidate, nor can we even assume that these voters will sit on their hands because of Hayworth’s stances on abortion and other social issues. This we can say: Don’t doubt that the votes gathered by Neil Di Carlo’s Quixotic quest won’t peel away from Nan Hayworth’s tally.

Versions of this article also appear on Plan Putnam, DailyKos, Left of the Hudson, and The Albany Project.

While John Hall stayed home in his district last night, donating his time and talents to save the Beacon Theater, Nan Hayworth was living the high life out of State, partying at her fundraiser thrown by Hedge Fund Kings Steven Shapiro and Charlie Parkhurst in tony Greenwich, CT.

Shapiro and Parkhurst have worked for both large investment banks and for so-called salon firms, tiny entities which can still hold billions in investor assets. Shapiro headed Intrepid Capital Investments, which managed to lose nearly 90 percent of investment capital between 2007 and 2009. Parkhurst, a former managing director at Smith Barney, moved on to Archeus Captial Management, which shut down when its hedge funds went from $3 billion to $700 million in assets in three years. After helping to form Centerlight Capital Management in the dust of Archeus, Parkhurst has gone on to be a trader at the British Investment Bank Barclays.

Despite investors losing their shirts on Archeus and Intrepid investments, times must not be too bad for Shapiro and Parkhust, neither of whom are residents of New York State or the 19th Congressional District. Prior to last night’s high-price soiree at Shapiro’s mansion (just check out this Google maps image), both have donated $2,400 to Hayworth’s campaign.

Nan Hayworth is a multi-millionaire herself and largely a self-funding candidate in her campaign’s early stages. Hayworth’s husband runs the mammoth Mount Kisco Medical Group of more than 200 physicians in Westchester County.

A version of this diary is posted at Left of the Hudson, The Albany Project, and Take 19.

Using Pearl River’s Pfizer Plant as a fitting backdrop, Clarktown Clerk David Carlucci insisted that New York cannot draw or retain businesses without creating incentives for them and streamlining how the State attends to economic development.

Pearl River, a hamlet in Orangetown, has been devastated by the ongoing loss of jobs since the pharmaceutical facility was bought from Wyeth a little over a year ago. Pfizer has been using employees at the state-of-the-art plant to train workers elsewhere and abroad while gutting the operations in New York.
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Carlucci seemed especially upset by the job losses in Orange and Rockland Counties, and chastised the State for not creating the right environment for businesses. Once a State known for drawing leading-edge businesses, Carlucci said that New York has fallen behind in the information age, where businesses can much easier spread their employees about the globe. And other states have already recognized this and have created environments to draw and retain such employers.

New York’s method of attracting businesses was simply, “We’re New York, move to New York,” said Carlucci, which is a tactic he doesn’t think will attract businesses anymore.

In his speech, Carlucci acknowledged that a combination of out-of-control taxes, a lack of business development leadership, and a stubborn denial by our State’s leaders that the business climate here is not up to snuff has lead us to the brink of financial ruin.

An decent-sized audience of supporters and curious onlookers listened as Carlucci spelled out a sophisticated plan to bring jobs to New York State on this brisk Labor Day Morning. The plan includes offering businesses that increase their workforce payroll a tax refund of up to $3,000 per employee, as long as these employees are New Yorkers that have been unemployed for more than 60 days. In addition, Carlucci called for an 80 percent tax rebate of New York State Personal Income Tax withholdings on jobs created for 10 years or longer.

Carlucci also said that New York can help protect jobs by expanding the Department of Labor’s “Work Sharing” program, which enables companies looking at layoffs to reduce hours instead and letting employees keep their benefits. The difference in income to these employees’ paychecks will be made up with a small contribution from unemployment insurance. To help pay for it, Carlucci called for the end of so-called economic development monies that are doled out to various agencies and through the State Assembly and State Senate. All State economic development efforts would then be put under the authority of a single office that reports directly to the Governor. Anchoring Carlucci’s plan is the streamlining of business creation resources by making it easier for businesses to apply for licenses, permits, and certificates.

All in all, it was a substantial speech by Carlucci, who deftly used this day to actually talk about labor, rather than mutely marching in Labor Day parades. We’ve scoured the Internet for such a plan from David’s opponent, Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef, including his campaign Web space, and have not yet found any substantial job plan (but we did find some rehashed, meaningless bullet points on his site and calls for deregulation).

Regardless, Vanderhoef sure did show he had a jobs plan when he filled the post of County Tourism Director and gave a substantial raise to a political ally last month.

So here’s my Labor Day message to Scott Vanderhoef: Patronage appointments in your County government fiefdom does not qualify as a jobs program. Giving a six-figure salary to an unqualified crony to run an unneeded Tourism Department does not aid in our economic development. In fact, it is a crude slap in the face to the former workers at Pfizer and other unemployed Rockland County residents when they see their tax dollars wasted in such a manner.

This article is cross-posted at Left of the Hudson.

Carlucci is serving his third term as Clerk of Clarkstown. As an early adopter of information technologies, he has brought the town into the 21st Century by digitizing hundreds of thousands of documents and using advanced medias to make municipal government more efficient. As a candidate for the New York State Senate, Carlucci faces County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef in November.

Send your questions for David to lefthudson@gmail.com, and click here to tune in.

The integrity of a Republican candidate’s congressional campaign came under fire this week after news emerged that three notary publics she used in gathering petition signatures admitted to professional misconduct.

Nan Hayworth’s campaign manager, John Hicks, along with other notaries, admitted to misconduct on a court witness stand on Wednesday in regards to the handling of Independence Party petitions. Hayworth, a retired Mt. Kisco ophthalmologist, is one of two potential Republican opponents to Congressman John Hall (D-Dover) in the mid-term elections.

During the court review of the petitions, Hicks admitted that the charges by Congressman’s John Hall campaign were true, and that he didn’t uphold the law “in the traditional sense” when gathering signatures.

As a small, fusion party in New York, the Independence Party, must use notaries, when party members are not available to carry petitions. This helps to reduce errors and petition mishandling. More importantly, notary publics must swear each person in before they sign a petition sheet. The lawyer for Hall’s campaign alleges that Hayworth’s campaign did not meet the legal criteria and that her volunteers and staff consistently perpetuated fraud when gathering signatures.

While Hicks, along with two others, admitted to not following New York law, Hicks attempted to distance his personal petition practices from the campaign he manages. On the stand, he denied coordinating the campaign’s petition process, first insisting that he did not know who was responsible and later making the claim that nobody had coordinated this important step of ballot access.

A few weeks back, Nan Hayworth’s campaign had denied any wrongdoing in an email to Left of the Hudson:

The Hayworth campaign categorically and vehemently rejects the allegations that any campaign staffer, notary or others engaged in deliberate fraud regarding Independence Party petitions.

I now wonder if that email message was a deliberate parsing of words by Hayworth’s campaign. While they’re now admitting to mishandling the petitions, they’re denying their culpability, insisting that they did not do so  deliberately. This does not absolve them; Hicks as a lawyer, former Orange County Republican Committee Chairman, and notary, must have known better.

John Hall’s campaign responded to Hick’s admission:

“I’m glad that Mr. Hicks came clean that he never swore in signers, despite a clear legal requirement for him to do so. He’s an experienced attorney and this is not his first election. He should have known better than to break the law,” Hall campaign manager Patrick McGarrity said. “However, his efforts to deny that anyone in the Hayworth campaign coordinated their petition efforts is disingenuous at best. Somehow, a petition arrived at the New York State Board of Elections in Albany.”

One other Hayworth campaign worker, a notary, testified to not swearing in petition signers as required by law. Other Hayworth notaries defended their petition practices, even despite the insistence of signers who claim they were not sworn in.

One politician, a Yorktown Town Councilman, Vishnu Patel, admitted his involvement in the mishandling of petitions, saying that he gathered a signature for his wife and then turning the page over to her to notarize. Councilman Patel is not a member of the Independence Party or a notary and cannot carry Independence Party petitions.

The notary section on a petition page is a written legal declaration. The document attests to the identity of those signing it as well as the identity of the person carrying it. Notaries are not just identify petition signers, but witness that signers wish for the candidate to be the party’s nominee; thus notaries must swear in petition signers. Notary publics who violate this process are found to have committed fraud.

Patel’s wife, Dipika, contradicted her husband during her testimony, claiming that she gathered more than 70 signatures all by herself. The Hall campaign, however, has collected several affidavits from  signees regarding the Patels’ conduct, which disputes both their claims. Hall’s campaign maintains that the Patels systemically committed fraud.

In a press release, Hall’s campaign backs up this claim:

“It seems more than suspect that the only instance of fraud that Patel admitted to is the one that was extensively covered by News 12 in the days preceding his appearance in court,” Hall manager McGarrity said. “Patel went into the trial knowing specifically of one signature that we had evidence against. There is absolutely no credibility to his claim that this one ‘mistake’ is the limit to the fraud he perpetrated.”

While John Hall’s campaign may be more focused on getting Hayworth knocked off the Independence Party line; the issue for many following this issue is not this particular election but Hayworth’s campaign’s integrity. Her staff and volunteers were caught red-handed in election misconduct and their response is basically, “oh well, who cares?”

In addition to this muddying the election waters, this misconduct degrades the trust the public seeks in the notaries. How can New York State residents trust notarized documents when it’s OK—at least according to those who may potentially work one day for a federal lawmaker—to not follow the law when handling legal documents. How could anyone feel comfortable with having a notary engaging in misconduct later handling their documents, especially critical ones like those in regards to estate planning or property titles? The office of the notary, as a whole, becomes suspect and falls apart if you can’t find people to honestly verify signatures.

Supreme Court Justice Michael Lynch is scheduling further court proceedings on this issue. Hall and his campaign intend to show that these instances of misconduct, and others, reveal a systemic problem in the Hayworth campaign where notarial fraud was prevalent.  It is possible that this may invalidate many of Hayworth’s Independence Party petitions.

Variations of this article are posted at The Albany Project, Left of the Hudson,andPlanPutnam.org.

The Marcellus Shale, which reaches beneath the southern tier of New York and into Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia is one of the largest fossil-fuel reserves in the Western Hemisphere and could yield as much as 20 times as our natural current output of natural gas. You might think that such a large energy reserve seems too good to be true, and perhaps it is. It gets its name from a town in Western New York where there the shale formation juts out above the ground. The region’s energy richness has been known for decades. But extracting the natural gas from the pores in the shale in a way that would be cost effective and efficient has always been a problem.

Hydraulic Fracturing (mostly shortened to hydrofracking) was determined to be an efficient way of extracting the methane gas from the shale. The process is not new, it has been used in the oil industry for more than 60 years. Only in the past several years, with the rising cost of fossil fuels, has it been determined by the energy industry that the Marcellus Shale is worth hydrofracking’s high cost.

Hydrofracking removes fossil fuels from shale by pumping a pressurized cocktail of toxic liquids, diesel fuel and water, into the shale to fracture the rock, which would in turn release the fossil fuel, in this case natural gas. These fractures are then maintained after the injection by introducing materials such as sand, ceramic, or other particulates, that prevent the fractures from closing when the fluid injection is stopped. The water, diesel, and other chemicals that is left over is stored in pools, sometimes unlined, above the surface until it is hauled away for treatment or disposal.

Some landowners in the Marcellus Shale area are experiencing a modern day gold rush. Energy-industry representatives are paying princely sums, rumored to be as high as eight figures in some cases, to obtain drilling rights beneath private property.

But environmentalists are warning that hydrofracking is not only bad for the region, it can cause a catastrophe in New York as great, if not greater, than the ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil spill. They’ve presented evidence that it can provoke earthquakes and above-ground explosions, and that it can pollute our groundwater and create dry beds out of our streams, ponds, and rivers, which are used to supply resources for the hydrofracking process.

In Pennsylvania, where hydrofracking has been taking place in the Marcellus Shale, wells have been ruined, tainted with salt, benzene, and other toxic and volatile chemicals. There is evidence that these compounds have also entered into nearby streams, not only affecting fish, but nearby farms that use this water for irrigation.

The problems with hydrofracking in have been outlined in the documentary Gasland, which is currently playing on the premium cable network HBO. The most famous segment of the film shows a resident near a hydrofracking well setting his methane-infused tap water on fire in his kitchen.

Environmentalists point to evidence from hydrofracking regions in Wyoming, Colorado of people and wildlife being made sick from the process. Diseases such as rare adrenal tumors and cancers are attributed to the extremely toxic compound “2-BE” that’s used in the process. There is no list of the chemicals used in hydrofracking, but clean-up sites left in the wake of the process have shown excess levels of toxins such as hydrochloric acid, benzene, toulene, and xylene (the last three toxins are commonly found in diesel fuel).

Why is the list of chemicals used in hydrofracking kept secret? Perhaps it had to do with a conflict of interest between the Bush Administration and the energy corporations, specifically Halliburton.

In 2005, the energy industry was exempted from clean water protections by the Bush Administration. As part of Vice President Dick Cheney’s infamous and secretive “Energy Task Force” in 2001, the captains of the energy industry and the administration touted hydrofracking as the future of fossil-fuel extraction, while redacting any evidence of human health hazards caused by the process. Halliburton, the company that pioneered and continues to develop and utilize hydrofracking, benefited greatly from the Bush Administration’s deference to the energy industry. Thus, the lack of clean water provisions in regard to energy development are known as the “Halliburton Loophole.”

Vice President Cheney, if you need be reminded, was the CEO of Halliburton prior to becoming Vice President. He continued to be paid millions a year in deferred compensation from his vested financial interests in the corporation while serving in the Bush Administration.

Where does New York stand on hydrofracking? Right now, industry-supported State laws are in effect to disencumber hydrofracking in the Marcellus Shale and New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation has been busy stamping permits for drilling. But the DEC might be moving the process along too quickly: Instead of studying the environmental impacts of each individual well (which is typically needed under State law) the DEC has opted to hastily get through this process by only gauging the collective impact of the hydraulic fracturing process. Such generic evaluations are similar to the type of loose regulation used in deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. These evaluations can also be easily disputed by the legal departments of large energy interests. In effect, New York’s DEC has chosen to marginalize its impact as the lead regulatory agency and seems more than happy to perform a mediocre job of protecting our state’s environment.

But local governments are stepping up and taking action and there is particular concern in this region. While Rockland County is outside of the Marcellus shale, it is only a short 70 miles from its eastern boundary and our natural water systems are directly affected.

Rockland County may take action soon in calling on Governor Paterson to impose a moritorium on hydrofracking. The County Legislature’s Environmental committee has recently passed a resolution calling for this. County legislator Connie Coker, who chairs the committee is hopeful that this resolution will be passed by the full legislature after its referred to them in a meeting on July 6.

“This procedure presents many environmental, human and wildlife health concerns,” said Legislator Coker […] the prime sponsor of the resolution. “There is the potential to contaminate groundwater, the surrounding landscape and the quality of air. What happens to all that solid material that is no longer just innocent sand, but toxic waste? This resolution asks the Governor to impose a moratorium and to withdraw the flawed impact statement until the results of on-going studies are made available, studied and concluded. I believe it would be viewed as a responsible and prudent action on his part.”

Clarkstown Town Clerk, David Carlucci, who is running for State Senate in the 38th District, which includes Rockland County and parts of Orange County, is also calling for a moratorium, and says that in many respects hydrofracking is New York’s equivalent to the Gulf of Mexico’s deep water oil drilling process and must be treated with similar seriousness. A recent press release form his campaign makes some lucid points about further reviewing the hydrofracking process:

It is my belief that we do not know enough about either side of this issue to allow widespread hydro-fracking in the Marcellus Shale and the Utica Shale formations to begin. We need to thoroughly investigate and understand reports of ground water and nearby stream contamination as well as the health impact to local residents before we jump into this process, or we may end up with an environmental disaster on our hands. Such a disaster would make any economic gain offered by the gas companies seem small by comparison.

Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef, who is running against Carlucci for the open Senate seat, has worked as an environmental attorney in the past. Disappointingly, he has not issued a statement concerning the Marcellus Shale in either his capacity as the advocate for the county, nor as a possible future State Senator, which may have to make decisions about hydrofracking going forward.

There is bigger concern in New York City. It’s source of drinking water is in the Catskill watershed, some of it within the Marcellus Shale. New York is one of the few municipalities that gets its water untreated from its reserviors. Contamination of New York City’s water supply would be a man-made disaster of monumental proportions and affect the health of more than 8 million people.

Until we get some answers and perhaps some alternatives to the chemicals and processes used in hydrofracking, residents of Rockland and Orange Counties need to back resolutions to call for a moratorium of this process in New York State.

This article is based on a similar piece written for the Left of the Hudson blog.