The Chickens Came Home To Roast

“What is said on the tapes is theatrics -I’m acting!”  County Legislator Frank Sparaco
"Acting is a childish profession - pretending you're someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself"  Katharine Hepburn

In an article published by the Rockland County Times we learn further details of the continuing disgraceful politicking that goes on behind the scenes in Clarkstown. The Clarkstown Town Board members all voted unanimously to:

a) Re-hire Jay Savino into a patronage job from which he had to be fired when arrested by the FBI and
 
b) Voted to create a $75,000 part time position for Wayne Ballard to hire County Legislator Frank Sparaco from which he should be fired for recording conversations in which the FBI have shown no interest.

The chickens have now come home not to roost but to roast!

Savino betrayed all of them by accepting a bribe to give the Republican election line to a Democrat in the New York City Mayoral race.  

Sparaco betrayed all of them by surreptitiously recording conversations of Town employees in which one councilman, Frank Borelli, refers to his Republican Party colleague on the Clarkstown Town Board, George Hoehmann, as a "lying bag of s**t".

Savino is gone - trapped by an undercover operation run by the FBI. Sparaco is still here claiming that he is the greatest undercover detective ever to have supplied tapes to the FBI since Inspector Clouseau graced us with his malapropisms in the movie 'The Pink Panther'.  

"I was playing a role in these tapes. I am undercover” Sparaco says, adding that when he "doesn't know what to do he turns to Vinny".   

But Sparaco wasn't undercover with the knowledge of any law enforcement agency, certainly not the FBI, and the Town Board of Clarkstown must have been unaware of these activities too unless of course part of Sparaco's job description as "Constituent Services Representative" was to conduct surreptitious recording of calls made by "constituents".  Sparaco claims he was "undercover" with the knowledge of his "mentor" Vinny Reda and his "boss" Wayne Ballard which explains why the only "undercover" people can see here is a somewhat soiled hirsute rug. 

As further revelations are made known it is becoming increasingly suspicious that Sparaco was actually highly interested in getting a bigger and better paying patronage job.  The Rockland County Times editor, Dylan Skriloff, who wrote the article mentioned above and who is presently a candidate for Supervisor of  Stony Point running on the Independence Party line, admits Sparaco's legal problem when he writes that there is a time in the tapes when "Sparaco appears to be the instigator of the deal-making". 

Now truth be told I always believed that the chief deal maker in Clarkstown was the Conservative Party leader and Town employee, Ed Lettre, who makes only a cameo appearance in the Sparaco tapes.  According to the Rockland County Times "at one point Borelli refers to Rockland County Conservative Party Chairman Ed Lettre as “the master” of such inside politicking, dealing with the trading of jobs for political support and the counting of pension years". Thus we have an admission from the Clarkstown Town Board that Lettre has 'undercover' control of the politicians in this Town.  Lettre is indeed 'The King of Diamonds' with Sparaco aspiring to be the 'Jack of Hearts' destined to be loved by few and despised by many. 

It now turns out that even the head of the Working Families Party, Robert Milone, is another 'Puppet on a String' being described on the tapes as an individual who is "up for sale" especially for a "cushy patronage job" for his wife.

Clarkstown's politicians are totally under the control of a few individuals to whom they sell their souls and expend our taxes keeping these functionaries financially comfortable in return for being given their party line at election time.  Need I tell you who is running on the Conservative Party line in November? Supervisor Gromack, Stephanie Hausner, and George Hoehmann.

In Sex, Lies and Videotape I published the first report indicating that the Sparaco tapes existed and I gave some background around which they were expected to be released. Rumors had run amok for several months in Clarkstown about what was on the tapes and it was only a matter of time before this sad and sordid tale about these sad and sordid people would become public. 

When you read Sex, Lies and Videotape and The Republican Party's Inspector Clouseau ask yourself if these are the kind of people you want leading your local government, deciding how much taxes you should pay, deciding to whom contracts will be given, and deciding who should get patronage 'make-work' and 'cushy jobs' in the Town?

Peter Bradley did a timeline analysis of Sparaco's tapes in the manner that is performed by any investigatory agency including the FBI.  Read it and come to your own conclusions. His rigorous research of what was said and when, and the pictorial representation of what sections of the tapes were missing, reveals Sparaco's story to be the fabrication that the FBI may have realized it to be.  

You see, in the footage where he and Borelli are in a hallway next to some soda machines, Sparaco is trying to persuade Borelli to convince Malone to let him keep his $75,000 part-time job.  Malone has already left the meeting with Sparaco and Borelli, yet Sparaco, while claiming he has been promised a promotion by Malone, is seen to be still begging Borelli to help him retain his job if Malone is elected Highway Superintendent.  

Sparaco also had a prolonged conversation with Borelli in the street and it is again clear Borelli is trying to convince Sparaco that he "might" get Malone to go along with the deal that Sparaco is asking for even while Sparaco says on other parts of the tapes that he "knows" Malone is going around saying he is going to fire him if he is elected. 

Ask yourself, members of the voting public, do any of you believe that if this deal had been made for Malone to provide a continuing patronage job for Sparaco these tapes would ever have surfaced?

Members of the voting public, had Sparaco secured a deal to ensure his future employment either under Ballard (if Ballard was re-elected) or under Malone (who was to throw Ballard's assistant Nancy Willen out of her job and give it to Sparaco if he was elected), would we be listening to this whole shabby videotaped four-letter-laced 'intercourse' between these individuals today?

Perhaps blackmail might have been Sparaco's true intention?  Let us consider a scenario in which Sparaco had indeed secured a deal with Malone who intended to renege on the deal after the election? Would such tapes not have been used to refresh Malone's memory of his promise by saying: "Hey, Dennis, I would like to show you some tapes before you fire me"?  It might have been more difficult for Malone to tell Sparaco after the election that he is "going to make Sparaco happier" by sending him back to the tanning salon and vending machine businesses from whence he came if faced with evidence of a shabby deal previously made.

While Sparaco claims that he was "acting" and simply performing a script there are better scripts that can be written that explain the "acting" more believably than the one being "hawked" or should I say "chickened" to the press.

One interesting revelation from this immoral affair is to note that the only person mentioned as doing any real work in the Highway Department is not its leader, Wayne Ballard, or his part-time $75,000 telephone operator, Frank Sparaco, but Ballard's assistant, Nancy Willen, about whom we learn from the tapes that the Highway department couldn't function if she was not at the control helm. 

It is said that behind every successful man there is an unappreciated woman.  So it is with Nancy Willen! 

When the outrage over Wayne Ballard's hiring of Sparaco was boiling over, Willen was the only person who stepped up in front of the Nanuet Civic Association to defend Ballard and to try, though unsuccessfully, to convince skeptical listeners that Sparaco had something useful to offer them and for which they should be happy to pay him.  

Ballard and Sparaco lay low to see if the cloud of stench they had jointly created would dissipate but unfortunately for them it didn't. Willen stood up and took the heat until Ballard was eventually forced to come out of hiding and destroy his own personal credibility in a later farcical performance before the Bardonia Civic Association.  As I listened to the conversations of these apparent misogynists discussing Willen and her work in making the Highway Department function, I thought they sounded like a bunch of pimps prepared to sell even their most valuable asset to keep themselves in power and their own patronage jobs in existence. 

The bottom line is that no deal was made to give Sparaco a bigger job. The marriage was discussed, the dowry was reviewed but the groom walked away. Malone said before and after the one and only meeting with Sparaco that if he is elected by defeating Sparaco's Independence Party Candidate, Wayne Ballard, Sparaco will be fired.  

Savino, now the ex-Head of the Bronx GOP is gone into the arms of the FBI prosecutors. Before he was arrested he was caught on FBI wiretaps telling his colleagues not to help a Federal Judge with some work the judge needed done.  The Clarkstown Town Board were warned about Savino's poor ethical behavior but the warnings went unheeded. 

Why?  Was it because Supervisor Gromack wanted to do a favor for the GOP so that they would not run a viable candidate against him in the 2013 election?  Who is on the Republican line to oppose Democrat Gromack this year?  Answer: No one. 

The Clarkstown Town Board members were asked to eliminate the position created for Ballard to hire Sparaco for $75,000 part time.  They knew of the warnings from the leadership of the Democratic party that Sparaco's conduct in accepting campaign contributions from people associated with the mob created questions about his poor ethical behavior but the warnings went unheeded. 

Why? Was Sparaco given a job over 260 other applicants because Supervisor Gromack, Councilwoman Stephanie Hausner and Councilman George Hoehmann wished to ensure that Sparaco's Independence Party would give them the Independence Party line in the 2013 election. Who are the candidates on that line for the coming elections?  You don't need three guesses to figure out this one. 

The Clarkstown Town Board is clearly dysfunctional; its wheels have come off.  Does anyone believe that Borelli and Hoehmann can ever work together in the interests of the voters given this vitriolic relationship? Supervisor Gromack should resign immediately. It is his leadership that has permitted this rotting system to perpetuate. Were he the CEO of any non-governmental organization he would be removed immediately for: 

1) having hired Savino despite warnings that the then head of the Bronx GOP was the subject of an FBI investigation and 

2) for having hired Sparaco who has had to defend himself for taking campaign contributions from the mob and who now has surreptitiously recorded members of his own administration, including possibly others.  

This is not the first time Gromack's actions have been so egregious as to warrant a call for his resignation. Is there any decency left in the Town of Clarkstown?  The lying, cheating, stealing and dealing has to come to a stop.

"Sins, like chickens, come home to roost" - Charles W. Chesnutt

Michael N. Hull is a retired senior citizen who writes opinion pieces on local political issues. He is presently a Director of Clarkstown Residents Opposing Patronage with Tom Nimick and Ralph Sabatini and is President of the Residents Association of Bardonia. Hull contributes periodically to the Facebook page Clarkstown: What They Don't Want You To Know and he is assisting in setting up the 'Preserve Rockland' election line so that the electorate may be offered an alternative slate of candidates in the 2013 local elections for Clarkstown Town Supervisor, Town Board, Highway Superintendent, and for County Executive.