Deputy Supervisor Clark interviews himself then provides answers previously heard elsewhere

Town of Greenport, NY, October 12 — The other day, a somewhat amusing post appeared on Clayton Clark's supervisor campaign Facebook page, one where he answered the questions I had asked his political rival John Porreca Sr. for an interview I published on September 30th.

Being aware that things can be a little unconventional in local politics, I was ready to move on until I realized that some of Clayton's answers appear to have been lifted straight from the Porreca interview published on September 30th.

I had initially, on September 17th, reached out to Clayton asking him if he was willing to do an interview. After a brief acknowledging response, I never heard from him again and thus went ahead and published the interview with Porreca.

What makes that interview not really an apples-to-apples comparison to Clayton's post is that Porreca provided answers to twelve questions, all but two unknown to him, at my house while I recorded the audio. The conversation took less than an hour. Clayton on the other hand sat on a known set of questions, including the answers from his opponents, for two weeks before providing his answers as a written Facebook post.

As a measure to reduce empty storefronts on Fairview Ave, Clayton proposes a "committee of residents and business owners [as] an opportunity for business, residents, and government to all work together". This sounds a lot like Porreca's proposal of an "economic development committee made up of business people, property owners, and ex-officio town board members".

Confusingly, Clark refers to this as a business improvement district (BID) and that is probably not what it is. A BID is a special district in a municipality governed by a dedicated not-for-profit with its own board of directors. In addition, BIDs generally require a special assessment on property owners within the district to provide an independent and sustainable source of funding for improvements. It's a tightly regulated framework provided by Article 19-A of NY State's General Municipal Law.

Maybe this is what Clayton has in mind but with the bureaucracy this would bring, it might be a case where the cure is worse than the disease.

There's a few other peculiar similarities in Clayton's write-up: Just like Porreca, he loves the idea of a grant-writer and appears a strong proponent for shared service agreements between municipalities. All good ideas for sure, but it would have been more believable if he had brought them up before reading the Porreca interview.

If elected, Clayton's plan for the first 100 days in the new year is nothing but a ferocious and unrelenting quest for transparency: remotely accessible and video-recorded town board meetings, signup sheets for audience members wishing to leave public comments, etc. Yet, when measuring this against his past actions as deputy supervisor, it is quite a big departure indeed.

Making Albert Eldridge's recusal letter discreetly disappear so that Greenport's code enforcement officer can take a second job with Hudson Valley Fisheries was not in service of transparency but only in service of Albert's mother, Supervisor Kathy Eldridge.

Clayton says he did it because that's what the Town Attorney told him to do. I asked him if Town Attorney Fitzsimmons also told him not to submit the letter to the town board. The attorney did not, Clayton admitted. Yet that most obvious and sensible of all ideas hadn't occurred to him. When voters are looking for a town supervisor, they are looking for a leader and not for someone who obediently follows when an attorney orders him.

In his nine answers, Deputy Supervisor Clark bemoans a political divide and that "too much time is spent on name-calling and finger pointing" on the town board—a thinly veiled reference to fellow council member Jim Dolan. When I asked Clayton what options Jim Dolan actually has other than tirelessly drawing attention to the Eldridge malfeasance and nepotism in public, he suggested that Dolan should have raised these issues internally to other town board members.

Jim Dolan has been doing exactly that since January. In May, he sent an email detailing all accusations against Kathy and her son to every member of the town board, including Clayton. It was met with silence.

Kathy Eldridge is no doubt the culprit behind all of Greenport's nepotistic malgovernance, but the Deputy Supervisor has not once publicly questioned the conduct of her. I am not sure how believable he is when Clayton promises he will clean house in January and become a beacon of transparency.