Dialing For Dollars

Sparaco has been a great asset to me - Wayne Ballard

In early 2012 the Clarkstown Town Board approved a part-time position in the Highway Department which Ballard said was to hire a person when he was "overwhelmed with phone calls during hurricanes and snowstorms". Ballard used the position to provide a $75,000, 25 hour per week, political patronage job for County Legislator, Frank Sparaco. That job has turned out to be a three-in-one Town's amateur-hour videographer, undercover corruption seeker, and chief absentee ballot collector for the Working Families, Independence and Conservative parties on behalf of Wayne Ballard paid for at taxpayers' expense.

Not that this is surprising to anyone - however the Town Board members would like to pretend it is otherwise. One year ago, in October 2012 New City resident, Tom Nimick, asked whether the Town Board would consider rescinding its decision to establish the position given that the position as represented to the Board was clearly misused in a highly inappropriate way. Nimick went on to say that if the Board members chose to take no action their inaction would be understood as approval of the position and approval of how it was filled, as a part-time patronage position for County Legislator Sparaco.

Councilman Borelli on behalf of the Board replied to Nimick as follows:

I would disagree with that  .... Mr. Ballard as the 'appointing authority' has the right to fill positions and he has control over his budget. You recall last Fall the taxpayers had the opportunity to decide whether they wanted Ballard's position to be continued to be elected or to be appointed by the Town Board. Overwhelmingly, the public said "No, we want that person accountable to us ... we want it to be elected". You decide what you want to do. If you don't think it was the right decision you do what you do next year (in the November 2013 elections). That's what the public asked for.

Mr. Borelli's loyalty to Mr. Sparaco was repaid in full when the latter surreptitously videotaped the former claiming that Mr. Borelli was engaged in corrupt and unethical practices.  Borelli subsequently got the Town Board to unanimously support his resolution to have the Town's Ethics Committee examine Sparaco's behavior and Sparaco was required in the resolution to hand over the complete, uncut and unedited, copy of the videotapes to the Town Attorney.  It is unknown, but unlikely, that Mr. Sparaco has complied or that the Board will demand his compliance since he has provided the Independence Party's election line to all of the current Town Board members who are up for re-election on November 5th, 2013.

At the October 2013 Board meeting I addressed the Town Board saying that Mr. Ballard told the Congers Civic Association meeting 260 people had applied for the job and in Ballard's own words he said that he asked these applicants if they understood the job would disappear if he was not re-elected and did they understand the long hours they were going to have to put in to campaign on nights and weekends for his re-election. 

What has campaigning on nights and weekends got to do with hiring a person to handle the overload of calls in hurricanes and snowstorms? Why would anyone being interviewed for this job be led to believe that the need for the position would disappear if the Highways Superintendent were not re-elected? Why would any potential employee in the Town of Clarkstown be told that a job with the Town would entail election activities for one's boss? 
It appears that the taxpayers are now paying $75,000 per year to pay for Mr. Ballard's political campaign manager to operate in a position that the Town Board approved as being necessary to handle an 'avalanche' of phone calls during snowstorms and hurricanes. In an interview with Our Town newspaper Sparaco described his job as driving around to see if a mailbox has been knocked down by a plow and then knocking on the resident's door to "make my boss, Wayne Ballard, look good." 

This position that the members of the Town Board created is clearly an unethical use of taxpayers' money. Further, three members of this Town Board, Supervisor Gromack, Councilwoman Hausner, and Councilman Hoehmann are running for re-election in November on the Independence Party line which is controlled in Clarkstown by Sparaco and his high school friend, John Perrotta. The Town Board's collusion in the continuance of this job at taxpayers' expense raises numerous ethical questions as to whether they are also using this position to reward Mr. Sparaco for his assistance in their own re-election efforts. 

I repeated Nimick's previous challenge to the Town Board of a year earlier to move a motion that the 'Constituent Services' position they created in the Highways Department last year be rescinded as an improper and unethical use of taxpayers' funds.  The Board's response was a silent dismissal except to call for an immediate motion to adjourn which was carried unanimously.

Clarkstown's Town Board apparently chooses to ignore the fact that Ballard's Republican appointee, Frank Sparaco, has apparently spent most of last year in recruiting people to join the Democratic Working Families party and gathering absentee ballots for that party so that his Republican boss, Wayne Ballard, would represent the Working Families in the November 2013 election.  

Presumably the telephones were still being manned "part-time" for $75,000 when Wayne Ballard, Frank Sparaco, Nancy Willen (Ballard's executive assistant), and several members of the Highways Department spent three days in in front of a Supreme Court judge in New City detailing how Highway Department employees were meeting in parking lots in Bardonia and New City to pick up absentee ballot applications so people could vote "from the comfort of their own homes"? 

You see the Working Families primary was won by Dennis Malone with the votes cast at the polls but it was later won in court by Wayne Ballard after approximately 100 absentee ballots mysteriously were turned in 99% of which unsurprisingly supported Sparaco's boss, Wayne Ballard. 

It now appears crystal clear that Mr. Sparaco's real job has been 'dialing with taxpayers' dollars' for Mr. Ballard in the role of Ballard's campaign manager.

It is also crystal clear that, in providing the Independence Party's election line to Mr. Ballard and the members of the Town Board, this position is being used for a transparently unethical purpose. 

This blog is authored by Michael N. Hull, a retired senior citizen who writes opinion pieces on local political issues. He is a Director of Clarkstown Residents Opposing Patronage with Tom Nimick and Ralph Sabatini.  Hull contributes periodically to the Facebook page Clarkstown: What They Don't Want You To Know and on Twitter.