Bloomingburg lawsuit settled for $555,000; Challenged voters avoid testifying [updated]

Posted 8/21/12

MONTICELLO, NY — The Sullivan County Legislature has voted to accept a consent decree to settle a lawsuit brought by Hasidic voters from the Village of Bloomingburg. The lawsuit charged that two …

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Bloomingburg lawsuit settled for $555,000; Challenged voters avoid testifying [updated]

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MONTICELLO, NY — The Sullivan County Legislature has voted to accept a consent decree to settle a lawsuit brought by Hasidic voters from the Village of Bloomingburg. The lawsuit charged that two Board of Elections (BOE) commissioners, the late Rodney Gaebel and Anne Prusinski, discriminated against Hasidic voters by issuing a determination that they were not eligible to vote because they were not residents of the village.

The vote came on January 28 and was opposed only by Catherine Owens, the legislator who represents Bloomingburg in District Four.

The agreement marks the second time that a group of challenged voters claiming Bloomingburg residency has avoided explaining in open court why they should be allowed to vote in the village after an investigation by the county sheriff’s office and the BOE have determined that they are not eligible to vote there.

The first time was after the village election in 2014, when 90 Hasidic voters challenged the BOE determination. When the time came for them to appear in court, none decided to do so, despite subpoenas, and instead opted to pay fines.

This time around, the voters opted to settle the case before they would have been required to explain under oath why they should have been qualified to vote in the village.

The consent decree calls for the county to pay attorney’s fees of $550,000 to the plaintiff’s attorneys. It also provided for a special monitor to be appointed to watch the BOE regarding future voter challenges. The consent decree also calls for the BOE not to discriminate against Hasidic voters or voters of any religion, which the BOE says it did not do, a position that is acknowledged in the document.

The consent decree lays out a number of steps that must be followed if voters in Bloomingburg are again challenged; the steps are mostly related to closely adhering to state election law and involving input from the monitor. The county attorney’s office has admitted that a couple of procedural lapses occurred in the past.

The consent decree said that the BOE denied the Hasidic petitioners who were registered in Bloomingburg the right to vote, but the consent decree did not address the question of whether the voters actually live in the village, which has been a matter of significant dispute by village residents. One told The River Reporter there will probably be more voter challenges coming before the next vote in March.

The second vote in which Hasidic voters were challenged involved the matter of whether the Village of Bloomingburg should be dissolved. Developer Shalom Lamm, who built the controversial 396-unit development Villages at Chestnut Ridge in Bloomingburg, and those allied with him, wanted the village to remain as is, which will allow residents moving into the development enormous control over village government. The other faction, those opposed to Lamm and his development, want the village to be dissolved, thereby diluting political power of the people living in the village.

The vote in the Sullivan County Legislature to allow the county attorney to negotiate the consent decree came one week after the board voted to hire an outside attorney to represent Prusinski in the ongoing lawsuit, after the county determined that the county’s legal department would no longer represent her. Under the agreed terms, had she been found to have discriminated against Hasidic voters, she would have had to pay for the defense out of her own pocket.

Other lawsuits remain regarding Lamm and the development, including one accusing the developer of fraud under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, which was thrown out by a federal judge in September 2015, but was recently appealed.

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