While there will be — and should be — a great deal of public discussion about what took place last night at City Hall, there was another vote last night that flew under the radar given the theatrics surrounding the Echo Bay votes that suggests far broader implications of what has been transpiring on City Council in 2013.
The City Council voted last night, 6-1, to record, broadcast, stream, and archive to the web, meetings of the Municipal Civil Service Commission. The Municipal Arts Commission and the Historical and Landmarks Review Board were also covered under the resolution but the real action was on the CSC. Barry Fertel was the lone “nay”.
Combined with the first Echo Bay vote and a vote last February, these three votes show a new bi-partisan majority has emerged on the New Rochelle City Council.
This “Gang of Four”, comprised of Republicans Al Tarantino and Lou Trangucci and Democrats Ivar Hyden and Shari Rackman is now running New Rochelle with Noam Bramson, fresh off a drubbing in the Westchester County Executive Race, now, effectively, a lame duck Mayor.
The effort to put Civil Service meetings on TV and on the City web site, was led by Shari Rackman with support from Ivar Hyden.
There is a significant back story to the resolution approved last night, originally brought forward for discussion in September but the most important element of the vote was the four Council Members who came together to push the resolution through. Jared Rice and Noam Bramson only supported the measure after the vote was a fait accomplit.
The short version begins with the idea that, supposedly, CSC Chairman Domenic Procopio, by many accounts a man largely unable to read English, does not want his functional illiteracy exposed. Mayor Bramson lobbied Council Members behind the scenes on grounds that the public should not be able to watch Civil Service Meetings on TV or online because Procopio is “embarrassed” to be on TV because he has an accent. In reality, he cannot read the documents placed in front of him during the meetings.
Procopio and his brother-in-arms, Police Commissioner Patrick Carroll, worked hard to defeat the effort to put the Civil Service Commission meetings on TV. The real reason has less to do with Procopio’s command of the English language and a lot more to do with Procopio and Carroll not wanting an easily accessible video archive record of the shenanigans that go on with the CSC.
The resolution significantly curtails Procopio and Carroll’s power and influence in New Rochelle and sets the stage for their inevitable departure from City government.
Talk of the Sound has been video taping CSC meetings for the past two years in an effort to force the shady dealings of Domenic Procopio into the sunlight.
Talk of the Sound first got onto Procopio in 2009, when City records showed that he was taking illegal property tax exemptions intended exclusively for Combat Veterans. Procopio never served in the United States armed forces. After our reports, Procopio was forced to pay back thousands of dollars for the improper tax exemptions but not required by the City of New Rochelle to pay back tens of thousands of dollars in illegal STAR exemption. At the time, City officials excused Procopio on the grounds that he was unable to read his tax bill and thus did not understand why he was getting thousands of dollars in tax exemptions on an investment property he owned.
The Municipal Civil Service Commission, which controls both civil service for the City of New Rochelle and the New Rochelle Board of Education, is arguably the single greatest source of corruption in New Rochelle: job specifications tailored to specific individuals, playing fast and lose with eligibility lists, suspect proctoring of exams, hiring people with criminal records and otherwise advancing the interests of the “friends and family” network in New Rochelle.
For years, CSC meetings were routinely not noticed publicly, the locations not disclosed and held in locked rooms as can be seen about eight minutes into this 2011 video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdoJxL82M8w
When Talk of the Sound first broke the story that the Police Commissioner Carroll was attempting to eliminate the position of Police Captain in the New Rochelle Police Department through a secretive process, it was because I was there video taping the Civil Service Meeting where the job specification for a new position, Assistant Police Commissioner, was approved. The ploy was designed to increase Carroll’s power by allowing him to circumvent the civil service process by promoting Lieutenants to the new civilian position. The move would also allow Carroll to significantly increase the salaries and pension benefits for current Captains and allow them to remain on the job well past the mandatory retirement age of 62.
After that effort was defeated by the Gang of Four, I made the case often that CSC meetings, and all other official City meetings should be video taped, archived on the web and broadcast on TV: An Open Letter To The New Rochelle City Council: Broadcast Civil Service Meetings; Archive Video of All Official Meetings
Three times this year, the Gang of Four has come together to oppose a full court press by Mayor Noam Bramson to advance some attempt to benefit his cronies. Although that effort got undone in what may have been an illegal vote last night with regards to Echo Bay, the Gang of Four pushed through Rackman’s NRTV resolution.
I expect that by next week, the Gang of Four will join forces once again to reinstate their decision to table all discussions and votes on Echo Bay until 2014.