Actually, the worker, Tim Cronin, did not refuse to permit the signs on his property. When an oversized 4 x 8 plywood sign bearing St. Lawrence’s name was dug into his front lawn without his permission, he took it down and returned it to Town Hall. He agreed to have smaller signs put up, but the 4 x 8 reappeared days later, again without his permission. After a second removal, he received a phone call from St. Lawrence and the Supervisor, his boss, asked him, Don’t you support me?

When Cronin was forced out of his job months later, the jury decided that the vindictiveness of the Supervisor was a proximate cause, and they found St. Lawrence guilty. The pathetic part of the outcome was that the court would not allow punitive (money) damages. Yes, St. Lawrence, acting as vindictive boss was guilty of taking an employee’s constitutional right of free speech, but his only penalty was the embarrassment of having one of his serious personality flaws exposed in a public court. You can read more about the details of the case here.

Sept. 22—New York State Supreme Court The signed decision from the New York State Supreme Court of Linda Jamieson was delivered to Preserve Ramapo and four other plaintiffs. Judge Jamieson found the Supervisor and Board did not follow municipal law in several of the causes of action, but she dismissed all of the complaints with toothless warnings about the need for the Board and Supervisor to be more scrupulous about following state law in the future.

We will highlight two of the 16 causes of action here. For those who want to read the full text of the 25-page ruling, you can download the PDF here.

When the Supervisor and Town Board decided the Ramapo Local Development Corp. did not have the resources or fiscal credibility (credit) to build St. Lawrence’s Project Grand Slam ballpark, they simply assumed the voters would have to back a $16.5 million bond to pay for it. They wrote and passed the resolution at a regular board meeting.

When this information was published, Preserve Ramapo organized a successful petition campaign to get a referendum vote on the $16.5 million, and on August 24, 2010, the public voted on what they thought about paying for a ballpark. They responded with a resounding NO! The referendum vote was 7,166 against and 2,979 in favor—71% to 29%.

In public, St. Lawrence mouthed the same words over and over again, There will be no public funds spent on this project. Don’t worry, we’re going to get private investors for this.

When the investors didn’t show up—they obviously had far more sense than those sitting on the board—a different scheme for getting taxpayer funding was hatched. Just steal it. Say nothing this time, and be damn sure the public doesn’t get a second chance to vote on whether they should have to pay for it.

What happened next is perhaps the key issue at the heart of the lawsuit filed in Jamieson’s court. In the written decision just handed down, this particular issue is the first that the Judge deals with. She writes: "The Court is deeply concerned about the meeting of February 17, 2011, at which the Town Board of the Town of Ramapo approved Resolution 2011-155 unanimously. That Resolution resolved that the Town of Ramapo ‘shall serve as guarantor of such short-term obligations to be issued by’ the RLDC (St. Lawrence’s development corporation that built the stadium) ‘with a maturity date not to exceed five (5) years and in an amount not to exceed twenty-five million ($25,000,000.00) dollars."

A little background here might help. There were two public Town Board meetings scheduled for the month of February--one on February 9 at 8pm and one on February 23 at 8pm. There was no meeting announced or posted for February 17—the one the Judge is discussing. That was a Thursday. There is no record of any memo sent to the board members from the supervisor two days in advance of this meeting. (A FOIL request produced no written notice to the board.) This two-day advance notice is required by the State Municipal Code. And the seven-day notification period for the press also passed without a mention of a Thursday meeting. And when the required 72-hour window for public notification had closed, this notice was faxed to the Journal News and Rockland County Times:

There are specific requirements in Section 104 of the Open Meetings Law in New York State, and Judge Jamieson is very clear in her description of how the law was breeched at this meeting. She writes in the decision:

Keep in mind, what was discussed at this hidden meeting was no trifling matter—there were two resolutions passed in the dark that day. One was for $25 million to build St. Lawrence’s ballpark and another was for $13.5 million to pay for the other RLDC project, Elm Street. Both resolutions passed with 5-0 votes.

So, they broke the State Municipal Law in the way they scheduled and did not properly publish notice of the meeting, they lied about the purpose of the meeting, and then they hid the notes from the proceeding. So, what should the Judge have done to punish this behavior?

What do you think? Twenty five million—twenty five years? Of course not. But what about sanctions? What about removing all of them from the board for malfeasance, or malpractice? We’re in the middle of a relentless recession and the taxpayers have been hammered with tax rates that place them the fourth highest in the nation? And they had already made it abundantly clear that they wanted no part in paying for this ballpark.

Judge Jamieson simply passed off the entire matter with a "Please don’t do this again," and then she moved quickly to the next item. That’s not an exaggeration. Here’s exactly what she wrote in her decision:

What amounted to the secret appropriation of $25 million taxpayer dollars was met with a judicial "Tut, Tut."

But at least there was the warning that from now on the board "must exercise care to make sure that all the notices (for meetings) are sent properly, in more than adequate time, and all procedures are followed to the letter." Sounds like a pretty stern warning, so maybe finally the public could now expect that the town would publish notices of meetings according to the state laws in the Open Meeting statute.

Guess again folks. The very next public meeting after this decision was handed down showed no change in the behavior of this board and supervisor. The schedule said the next meeting, a special town board meeting, was to be held on October 5 to be followed by a workshop on the upcoming budget. October 5 was Wednesday and the meeting was supposed to begin at Town Hall at 6:00 pm.

Arriving that night on time at Town Hall, the parking lot was suspiciously empty. The meeting room was empty also and there was no notice on the doors. A check of the Supervisor’s office and that also was vacant. A quick check of the Ramapo website showed this message:

Well, at least we might find some perverse satisfaction in the fact that the contempt the Supervisor has shown for some of his employees, and the contempt shown by the entire board toward the taxpayers has been extended to the courts and its officers as well.

The second critical commentary in Judge Jamieson’s decision involved the problem of a conflict of interest on the part of Christopher St. Lawrence. As both the Town Supervisor and President of the Ramapo Local Development Corp (RLDC) that was developing the ballpark, St. Lawrence often was the deciding vote on key issues involving the project. Here the court turned to case law, explaining that "the critical point in determining whether there was a conflict of interest is whether the questioned official benefitted directly and individually from the action that was taken."

Judge Jamieson decided, "While Mr. St. Lawrence certainly had invested time and energy in the ballpark project, and likely was deeply invested politically in its success, there is no evidence whatever that he benefitted directly and individually from it." Had he personally benefitted, she seems to be admitting, then there would be a conflict of interest and a corruption of the process.

What appears in the table below was not revealed at the time of the hearings, because many of these checks written to St. Lawrence had not yet been reported. These payments were made directly to St. Lawrence for his personal campaign fund. Every one of these checks came from a vendor or party that worked on or were directly connected to the ballpark project.