When Sir Dick swaggered into office last
January, a central point of his inaugural speech was his promise to end
backroom deals and curb the influence of the good ol’ boys that he claimed had
been the foundation of town politics in the past. However, no sooner did his
pimply butt-cheeks kiss the supervisor’s chair than Dick declared spring
cleaning was over and put his broom back in the closet.
Consider, for example, the town board’s
consultants. The town hires outside experts such as engineers, lawyers, porta-potty
companies, and tiara polishers (for the town board), and Dicky just could not
abide the shenanigans that he felt accompanied those appointments. Both the
prior engineering firm and prior law firm had lavished bags of cash on the
town’s Republican club over their ten-year tenure, for example. To be clear:
there was nothing illegal about those payments, but to Dick is smacked of
pay-to-play, and if it wasn’t benefiting him, he was dead against it. So in
January, Dickaroo and his motley crew appointed new engineering and law firms.
How were they chosen? With the help of
Big-Vin Bettina, who has ample time on his hands due to not actually doing his
job, and who coaxed the new law firm into making sizable donations to
Councilmen Beale and Kuzmitz, as well as the Town Republican committee–all documented
in finance filings with the Board of Elections. Their head attorney was spotted
cozying up to board members and party bigwigs prior to his firm’s appointment,
including golf dates with town Republican prez, Alfred “Albert and” Cossella as
well as squiring Councilman Kuzmitz to Rangers and Giants games on at least eight
occasions.
(For those keeping score at home, Dick, a
rabid Trump supporter, convinced the town Democratic party he was actually one
of them by the simple, time-honored expedient of lying through his teeth. The
Dems, desperate for a candidate who could stand erect long enough to be
elected, swallowed this piffle and now sit impotently by, while Dick oversees
Republican appointments left and right. Dick has no concerns about which side
his bread is buttered on as long as it gets him what he wants.)
Meanwhile, the new engineering firm is run
by yet another member of the Republican committee. (There’s a veritable
infestation of Republican committee members.)
This member is also, by sheer coinkidink, Big-Vin’s engineer on the new
220-unit development he’s erecting Lagrangeville. You don’t need a crystal ball
to see where this is headed: the bingo game is still going on, but now Bettina
is pulling the numbers.
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