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Part 3: 'A Man Is Known by the Company He Keeps'

Holbrook and taxpayers’ money


If taxpayers’ money appeared to be no object for Holbrook politically, it also appeared to be no object for Holbrook personally. For some time—until a legal resolution put a stop to the practice—Holbrook simultaneously held the position of full-time Town Supervisor, was earning a handsome salary as a highly-paid Clarkstown North High School social studies teacher, and was also pulling down a paycheck as an elected County legislator, all the while moving toward three government retirement packages—and living life in the good lane. County records show that Holbrook was able to pay off outstanding mortgages in 1989, 1991, 1994, and 1997. The day before Christmas 1998, he and his wife, recently divorced, sold their house and paid off their last mortgage.

Yet, shortly thereafter, Holbrook declared bankruptcy, claiming, according to Sluys (Peter Sluys, editor of The Rockland County Times), “more than half a million dollars” in charge card debts and other liabilities. Of course, bankruptcies were far easier to come by in those days, especially with good legal and accounting advice, which Holbrook no doubt had. But was anyone asking such seemingly obvious questions as: 
     * What happened to all his money and his multiple salaries? 
     * How did he happen to ring up such large charge card debts in such a relatively short period of time, and on what?
     * Was he paying off any of his mortgages with charge card cash withdrawals, at prohibitively expensive rates, possibly in anticipation of filing for bankruptcy just beyond the point at which the bankruptcy trustee would become suspicious?
     * How was he able to obtain the consent of the bankruptcy trustee to walk away without restructuring and repaying at least a reasonable portion of his debt?
     * How was he able to maintain his home and property throughout the bankruptcy, which he shortly thereafter was able to sell free and clear for $600,000 to a major developer, Israel Herskowitz, who would be found guilty of bribery—who was shortly thereafter granted permission to build a large and highly profitable development—and walk away with the money?
     * Did Holbrook, or his bankruptcy attorney, happen to know the bankruptcy trustee politically, socially, or in a business context?

Whatever the answers to these questions, this writer is unaware of The Journal News running a single story on this matter. Or on any other highly questionable matter pertaining to Holbrook, ever—for  example, the free pass he received on his extremely close personal, and possibly business, friendship with wheeler-dealer Paul Adler, who on Holbrook’s watch flipped a golf course deal “costing Town taxpayers $1.5 million,” according to Sluys, while simultaneously walking away with a million-dollar-profit—in a single day. Yes, the same Adler who hobnobbed with the Clintons, was a major behind-the-scenes power broker—and still is—and who eventually did time in The Big House after being charged by the feds with corruption, mail fraud, and tax fraud. 

While Holbrook also received a free pass from The Journal News on other dealings involving taxpayers’ money, Sluys and his 16-page weekly had no trouble digging up all manner of dirt, charging Holbrook with being “not only a financial bankrupt, but a moral bankrupt as well,”  identifying his largess as a “cesspool of corruption and patronage deals,” and “his governance of a town so corrupt that it would make a Louisiana governor blush with shame.”

Sort of makes one wonder what kind of a hold Holbrook might have had on The Powers that Be at The Journal News. Or were they simply professionally incapable of investigative reporting, as occurred over a 15-year span with our matter? 

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One of many questionable matters where Holbrook placed himself in the eye of the storm occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd, the savage storm of September 1999 that downed numerous trees, phone, and electric lines; broke drainage channels, backed up sewers and storm drains, created significant flooding, and was responsible for more property damage than any other storm in Town history. It also created unstable slopes in certain areas, including the Mountain Shadows development on Route 9W, where some condo owners awoke the following morning to find mud slides, literally, in their livingrooms.

Under pressure from outraged condo owners, Holbrook personally recommended and urged the Board to authorize $300,000 to clean up their units, remediate the property generally, and install a retaining fence along the steep mountain that backs directly onto their property. There was only one small problem: Article VIII, Section 1 of the New York State Constitution expressly prohibits such an authorization: “No county, city, town, village or school district shall give or loan any money or property to or in aid of any individual, or private corporation or association, or private undertaking…”

Problem? Not for Holbrook. After all, one of the private developers of Mountain Shadows was none other than Edward Lettre, power broker within the Clarkstown Conservative Party. Holbrook, although a Democrat, had ties going back many years to both Lettre and his father, a power broker in his own right. One of those ties had apparently been a promise by Lettre the son to throw the full weight of his party behind Holbrook for the 1998 Town supervisor’s election. 

Holbrook felt he needed Lettre’s support due to the confluence of two specific and troubling matters: first, there was a widening federal investigation into corruption and influence peddling, specifically within Clarkstown; and second, Holbrook’s opponent was Ted Dusanenko. A popular math teacher at Clarkstown North High School, former Town Councilman, Supervisor, and County Legislator, and a Republican-Conservative with a long political history and significant local support, Dusanenko posed a serious threat to unseat Holbrook that November. 

Lettre’s support effectively undermined Dusanenko’s campaign, and Holbrook was handily re-elected. But in local politics, perhaps even more so than in state or national politics, there is an unwritten expectation of quid pro quo, or, you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours. That quid pro quo, according to a $275 million suit subsequently filed by Mountain Shadows condo owners against Holbrook, Lettre, and the Town, was designed to bring into stark relief their allegedly shady dealings and understandings. Among them, the suit contended, was that Holbrook promised Lettre, in return for his political support, that he would remediate the property and existing substandard soil conditions at no cost to Lettre or the homeowners. 

Why did these issues exist in the first place? Because the Town Board, Town DEC, and other Holbrook-endorsed employees had approved the Mountain Shadows development and its slope retention plan, which allowed some condo units to be situated within mere feet of the side of this unstable mountain slope, and because, as the suit alleged, Lettre was facing construction problems and financial difficulties.

Upon learning of the Town Board’s decision to use taxpayers’ money for this project, Sluys and The Rockland County Times sued in State Supreme Court. The Journal News, so far as we know, never ran a single article on this long-running, highly-contentious legal brouhaha. 

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Less than a year later, Holbrook and the Town found themselves embroiled in another suit. This one was filed by the owner of a stable, who had a lease through 2046 on a parcel of land in Ramapo, which was one of two distinct parcels totalling 200 acres that Clarkstown had purchased. By combining the two parcels into one, the stable owner claimed, the Town was effectively planning to sabotage his lease. The purpose? To create a public golf course spanning all 200 acres. 
     * Never mind that Clarkstown already had two highly-rated public golf courses, located in Rockland State Park in the Town hamlet of Congers, both owned and maintained by the Palisades Interstate Parkway Commission. 
     * Never mind that the proposed new course for Clarkstown residents was in the Town of Ramapo. 
     * Never mind that it would need to be built and maintained on the backs of Clarkstown taxpayers, who already had two beautiful public courses in their back yard. 
     * Never mind that there was significant local opposition to what many agreed was a frivolous expenditure. 

What was important was that Holbrook wanted it. And Paul Adler was selling it.

Although he never gained public office, Adler was a quintessential power broker. He was deeply involved in commercial real estate, especially in Clarkstown, dating to his father’s highly successful business. He was Chairman of the Rockland Democratic Party, and rumored to be a possible successor to the state Democratic Party chairperson. 

Importantly, Adler was one of Hillary Clinton’s earliest and most ardent supporters in her quest to become a U.S. Senator from New York, after she settled in upscale Chappaqua. He also had the honor of having her staying overnight in his house during several of her frequent trips to Rockland—considered a key county—caucused privately with President Bill, and was a guest of the Clintons for several days, with his family, in The White House.

A public figure, yes, but Adler had a few dirty little secrets of his own. In September 2000, a federal indictment charged Adler with public corruption by enriching himself through a series of real estate transactions tainted by fraud, bribery, and extortion. One of those transactions was the purchase and sale of the 200 acres in the Town of Ramapo, which Holbrook championed. 

In real estate parlance, Adler “flipped” the property, buying it for $3.5 million and selling it to Clarkstown for $4.5 million the same day. Under normal circumstances, this would simply have been a smart business opportunity. But according to Sluys and the unsealed federal indictment, Adler had engaged in a secret profit-sharing agreement with several parties regarding this transaction, and had not shared this information with the Town Board, which had the fiduciary responsibility of protecting taxpayers’ money.

Adler was also federally charged with conspiring to bribe a member of the Clarkstown Planning Board involving the transaction of property known as Smith Farm; having hidden a financial arrangement with the developer of the 1.8 million square-foot mega-mall, the Palisades Center; and having engaged in extortion, mail fraud, failure to report income, and a half-dozen other federal offenses. In a plea deal, Adler admitted to only two of the charges, and had to cool his heels for just a year in The Pen.

Another of Adler’s possibly ill-begotten gains resulted from the sale of property in Congers that his closest friend, Holbrook, had for more than a year been trying to sell. According to the federal complaint, Adler suggested that if Israel Herskowitz, a major local developer, bought that property, Holbrook might be grateful enough to aid in obtaining approval of a major residential development, called Smith Farm. 

As part of the conspiracy, according to the complaint, Adler promised that Herskowitz would get a third building lot from Holbrook’s property. To conceal their participation, they agreed to use the name of a fictitious purchaser. Holbrook is not known to have engaged in any illegal activities in this regard, although the Smith Farm development was approved near the height of the real estate bubble, at significant financial benefit to Adler and Herskowitz. 

In February 2001, under an agreement with federal prosecutors, Adler pleaded guilty to two of 12 charges. It wasn’t the first time that Holbrook’s closest friend would have a run-in with the federal authorities. In 1988, then a 29-year-old lobbyist for a major developer, Adler was tried, but acquitted, of bribery, conspiracy, and other charges relating to the relocation of state offices from the World Trade Center in the early 1980s.  In 2001, Herskowitz was found guilty in a federal probe of bribing a Clarkstown Planning Board member, Joe Mitlof, co-owner of Mountain Shadows, whose main road is named after him, backwards (Foltim), had also been the subject of federal charges, although unrelated and at a different time.

What were the common threads between Holbrook and Adler? They were both born and raised in Clarkstown, both Democrats, both politically connected, both wheelers and dealers, both loved power—and their paths crossed many times, socially, politically, and in who-knows-how-many-other-ways? 

According to Sluys, “Holbrook’s long and intimate connection with Paul Adler is a matter of record. When Adler was in his heyday—from 1996 to his arrest in 2000—not a day passed except that Adler and Holbrook conferred together. Holbrook’s campaigns were run by Adler, and Adler was Holbrook’s close friend and confidant.” 

The main difference between them? Adler was caught with his hand in the till; Holbrook never was. But you would never know any of this by reading The Journal News.

A man is known by the deeds he does and the company he keeps. 

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Next week, we'll take an inside look at Holbrook and his “hit men.” On our web site, townofclarkstownvgoldberg.org, you’ll find numerous fully documented articles on the malignant, deceitful, conspiratorial, contemptible, unethical, and illegal actions of Town of Clarkstown officials, Town and State judges, and others who have played with the Rule of Law and ethics like a child plays with putty.
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