September 27, 2011 In the New York State Comptroller’s report on money and Ramapo Town governance, the examiners described the Town Board as ineffectual and often ignorant of the issues on which they voted. "In fact," the Comptroller’s Office reports, "Board members told us that they did not know how much the baseball stadium would cost the taxpayers or how it would be paid for." None of that seemed to bother Board Member Daniel Friedman who, more than any other councilman, hustled quite a pile of donations from those involved with Project Grand Slam (the ballpark). He might not know what it would cost the taxpayers, but he certainly knows what it was worth to him.

Council Member Daniel Friedman has been outspoken supporter of Project Grand Slam from the beginning. In fact, there were times at some of the public meetings when you might have mistaken him for a marketing shill for Bottom 9 Baseball.

At this point in time, the season is over for the next to last place Boulders. And the Ramapo taxpayers, who have recently appeared on an analyst’s spreadsheet as having the fourth highest taxes in the country (not a typo—it’s country not county), are left with a staggering collection of debt and an apparent cash-flow problem developing at Town Hall (Read A Financial Mess, Cluelessness, and Criminal Violations Uncovered in Comptroller’s Audit of Ramapo ).

Now as we wait for the final draft of the NYS Comptroller’s Audit, as well as the long-overdue written decisions of Judge Jamieson’s court on the legal issues surrounding Project Grand Slam, we have been notified by the executive director of Christopher St. Lawrence’s Local Development Corp that in two weeks time they will finally provide us with the ticket sales and parking receipts for the ballpark this season, as well as the utility bills for the stadium. We might soon get a little sunlight on how this project has been faring.

While waiting for these other shoes to drop, we opened up the New York State Board of Elections list of contributors to politicians to check out how the individual political participants made out with Project Grand Slam. We were primarily interested in where the checks came from and how big were the "thank-yous."

What we found was not unexpected. The people who made truckloads of money on this thing were more than happy to write big checks to two people on the Town Board—Daniel Friedman and Christopher St. Lawrence. In this article, we’ll begin with Friedman’s take at the ballpark.

Daniel Friedman was not elected to his position on the Town Board. He was appointed to fill a vacancy on April 14, 2010. He has been filling in for 17 months now, but that doesn’t mean he has been sitting back and waiting for this year’s fall election to take advantage of his position.

Not bad for a political newbie. But if you want really hard evidence of how little time it has taken Friedman to get up to speed with the Ramapo political gratuities system, you need look no further than the HIKO power contract.

In his short time on the board, Daniel Friedman has not only functioned as a full-time pom-pom flagger for Project Grand Slam, he has also pounded away at three of his own "initiatives": finding a new supplier for power for Town Hall; incorporating a number of fire houses; and switching over to hybrid vehicles.

The first of these initiatives has reached the point of a trial period contract. On September 16, 2010, Resolution No. 2010-547 was moved by Councilman Friedman and adopted by the Board. In part it read: "The Town of Ramapo has received a proposal from Premier Energy Services, LLC, 386 Route 59, Monsey New York for provision of natural gas and/or electricity service to the Town of Ramapo at rates which may be less than that now charged by the Town’s existing natural gas and/or electricity provider." The Board voted to compare the Premier proposal to the existing Orange and Rockland contract. (Premier also goes by the name HIKO.)

The evaluation was done quickly, and at the November 23, 2010 Town Board Meeting, Resolution No. 2010-673 was moved by Councilman Friedman and seconded by Supervisor St. Lawrence. In essence it accepted the proposal by Premier Energy Services, and a one-year contract was committed to and the Supervisor was authorized to execute an agreement with Premier Energy. Friedman’s first major initiative had been successfully acted upon as the Town engaged in a one-year trial period for HIKO. The contract says that "Premier will supply electricity to Customer (Ramapo) at a price which shall be [at least 1% lower] than the combination of the equivalent electricity "Supply Charges" that Orange and Rockland Utilities would have charged."

There are a couple of questions that linger with this contract. First, what happens after the one-year trial? The resolution does not specify consequences of not meeting the savings after one year, nor does the contract. And second, the copy of the contract that was returned in our FOIL request has no date in the space provided for it on the agreement. The signatures of the principals also are not dated. In fact we could not find a date anywhere in the four pages sent to us. A little odd for a contract that’s supposed to define a timed trial period.

The Domestic Limited Liability Company known as Premier Energy Service is also known as HIKO ENERGY LLC. The two companies have the same address in Monsey, and the Registered Agent for both is Boruch Gottesman. The name history of the two in the NYS Department of State listing shows a Dec. 15, 2010, filing date for HIKO Energy, which the DOS assigns as the current name for the energy service.

In other parts of this Democracy handing over payments to politicians like this is illegal. It’s called "Pay to Play," and it so closely resembles an out-and-out bribe, just one that’s paid after the fact rather than before, that many towns, counties and states forbid vendors making these kinds of payments. In Ramapo, however, it’s institutional politics. There was a time when Preserve Ramapo pointed out to an executive of an engineering firm that the large campaign donation his company made to a Ramapo politician came at the same time the firm was trying to land a contract, and that looked really bad. The executive explained he had nothing to do with the scheduling of those payments. His firm got the requests and some functionary regularly sent out the checks. Maybe the most egregious thing about the incident was the fact that these payments to the Ramapo politician were "scheduled" and part of a regular financial program for the company.

If you find that repugnant and dangerously corrupting, welcome to Ramapo. And if you’re thinking of appealing to the politicians for a way to fix this, don’t bother. Consider this: Councilman Daniel Friedman has doubled his annual salary with the donations he has received so far from vendors who do business with the town and employees who work there. His salary for the year 2011 as Councilman is $35,129. His contributions for the first 16 months in office have been $35,248 (through Aug. 2011).