Residents who want to sit on one of the 15 town Democratic committees in the county are supposed to carry a petition and get a certain number of signatures. However, if not enough residents go through the petition process to provide a town committee with a sufficient number of members, the chair of the committee has the authority to appoint new members. Those new members, it is assumed, are likely to vote as directed by the chair of the town committee, or sign over their proxy to the chair.

The Sullivan County Democratic Committee held a meeting on September 24, and the election of new officers was on the agenda. Before voting began, Bruce Ferguson, chairman of the Town of Callicoon Democratic Committee, asked that the agenda be changed so that new members who would be appointed by six town committee chairs would not be counted in the voting.

Ferguson argued that counting the votes of the newly appointed members gives the chairs of some of the town committees–those who appoint a large number of new members–a large amount of power to control the affairs of the county committee.

Daryl Kaplan, the chair of the county committee, which is comprised of the 15 town committees, said he was not going to grant Ferguson’s request to amend the agenda. Kaplan said, “I’ll tell you the reason why, we have never done it that way. Never, never. You might be right, it might be the right thing to do, but I’m not going to start at this time, my last meeting, and start changing things from the way we’ve been doing it for years and years.”

The election for chair was between Gene Benson, a Sullivan County legislator, and Donna Schick, who has been very active in the Democratic Party for a long time. Schick won the vote handily, and the results would not have changed had votes of the newly appointed members not been counted.

In two other races, however, the results would have been different had the agenda been changed. The election for associate-chair, which was between Fallsburg supervisor Steve Vegliante and former Town of Fremont supervisor Jim Greier, went to Vegliante, who had just appointed seven members to his committee. Had the votes of the appointed members not been counted, the result would have been different.

The same thing happened with the election of the new vice-chair of the party, which was between attorney Kirk Orsek and Garrett Gabriel. Gabriel won in a vote where 17 newly-appointed members voted.

The question of process also came up during the nomination of Schick as chair. A woman who said she represented Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther read a prepared statement from Gunther to nominate Schick.

Bensen said, “Point of information, is Aileen a member of this committee?”

Town of Neversink supervisor Mark McCarthy, who is running for the legislative seat currently held by Republican Kitty Vetter, responded saying, “To dispense with the malarkey, I’ll nominate Donna Schick.” The nomination was quickly seconded by legislator Kathy LaBuda in the Town of Mamakating committee.

After the nomination, Ferguson again asked that the proxies of appointed committee members be set aside, “because they were not filled out by committee members, and the proxy process is for committee members only.” (As the appointments had taken place just moments before, the proxies necessarily had to have been filled out before the appointees were members.)

McCarthy said, “That’s bulls**t.” He questioned how Ferguson could know what was going on with proxies in Neversink.

Then Ken Hilton, a member of the Town of Callicoon committee, requested that the vote for the chair be taken by roll call.

Kaplan declined the request saying a “secret ballot” was central to voting in the United States.

Hilton responded that congress often votes by roll call.

Kaplan said, “I don’t want to duplicate congress. They’re not a good example of the way America should be running.” Roll-call votes are often taken at town and county meetings.

As the ballots were being counted, Jill Wiener of the Town of Callicoon, said to Kaplan, “You standing up there and saying ‘maybe this is right, maybe it’s not right’, that is not acceptable.” She said Roberts Rules of Order should be followed so that outcomes would not be challenged in court. She said Kaplan had been running the meetings incorrectly for the past four years.

Kaplan said, “You’re probably right, you might be right, so that’s why I’m not going to do it anymore.”