Hugh Reynolds: How things actually work

Hein’s explanation was, as they say in the orthopedic business, pretty lame. True, we dropped a few spots, said the advocate of creating “the healthiest county in the state,” but we went up in a few categories. We’re making progress.

This is like a baseball manager saying, yeah, we dropped from third to fourth last year, but our uniforms looked better.

It could get worse when the state factors in this year’s wholesale razing of the mental health department.

Under a formula approved by the legislature last week, the county will receive about $155,000 from the $433,734 net sale of the Ulster County Community College president’s official home in Stone Ridge. The rest will go to the college foundation and the state. The county executive plans to use his share to rehabilitate a 19th-century home in Downtown Kingston for use as a veterans’ shelter.

Big bro

I wonder if it crosses anybody’s mind how former mayor T. R. Gallo would have reacted to his brother Shayne’s handling of Kingston’s fire department scandals now devolving toward their unpleasant end. This ugly affair began with the newly installed mayor announcing he had accepted the retirement of Chief Rick Salzmann. Citing what he called “time and attendance” issues accompanying “a culture of entitlement,” Gallo perhaps too quickly installed Salzmann’s chief deputy, Chris Rea, as chief, only to suspend him for similar alleged violations uncovered by the state comptroller’s office.

Last week, Salzmann came clean, sort of, in admitting in city court to taking some $21,000 in pay for time he didn’t work. Salzmann offered neither apologies nor explanations as he pleaded guilty to four misdemeanors for official malfeasance.

T.R. Gallo. (Photo by Beth Blis)

Shayne Gallo showed his displeasure with the outcome by demanding a pound of flesh, not merely an ounce. Neither did Gallo buy the notion that the chief was “only following orders” from former mayor Jim Sottile in juggling his time records. “If the mayor told him to go out and rob a bank, would he do it?” Gallo asked.
T.R. Gallo might have handled this one quite differently, but I think the outcome would have been similar.

Shayne Gallo had called Salzmann into the office for an explanation of his payroll records, which by long tradition were kept by the chief. The chief asked for time to review the city comptroller’s report on his records, soon admitted the discrepancies, and then came up with time owed that almost exactly matched the time he would have had to pay back. Gallo, with one of the shortest fuses in mayoral history, promptly blew his stack and called the DA.

The Chris Rea business was similar in some respects. Rea’s records appeared to show him in two places at the same time and collecting two salaries. Rea’s case is pending, though the district attorney doesn’t predict criminal charges. DA Holley Carnright says he detects smoke but no fire (crime), which seems to me fairly consistent with the way this district attorney generally operates.

T.R. Gallo appointed Salzmann fire chief in 1998 (four years before Gallo died in office) and considered him one of his closest confidants. Shayne Gallo wasn’t even a confidant of his brother at that point in their long, troubled relationship, which was repaired, happily, shortly before the younger Gallo’s death.

Here, we reveal for the first time in print, the “cone of silence” devised by the late mayor. A take-off on the old Get Smart TV series, Kingston’s cone of silence encompassed three men in a rolling SUV: Gallo, Salzmann and former DPW chief Steve Gorsline. Within the cone, there was no rank or privilege, and no holds were barred. Anyone could say anything to anyone, about government, about each other, about anyone, with no repercussions.

Alas, the cone proved more sieve than cloak. As Ben Franklin once observed, the only way to keep a secret between two men would be if one of them was dead. While I would have given anything to have been a fly in that glove compartment, word of what was said in the cone often leaked. It was great stuff, though largely unprintable.

The first Gallo, I think, would have handled this situation by confronting Salzmann in the cone, detailing the payroll discrepancies, and saying something like, Listen, Cuz, (he called everyone Cuz), we have a serious situation here. You’re going to give the time back one way or the other, work weekends, a few extra shifts, whatever, and turn the bookkeeping over to the comptroller. After things get settled, let’s give some thought to retirement.

Salzmann would have been spared the public embarrassment and an ignoble end to a seemingly stellar career. Gallo would have freed up a seat in the cone. And no one would have been the wiser.

On balance, the second Gallo did the right thing. He has sent out an unmistakable message that this new Gallo is quite a different cat.

And finally

Condolences to the families of two old buds.

Amos “Mack” MacCreery, 78, ran a small automotive repair shop out of his garage a few doors up from the American Legion Post on West O’Reilly Street in Kingston. A Seabee veteran, he was an honest mechanic who gave good value for his work. We spent many an evening solving the city’s problems around his potbelly stove in the garage.

Norm Bohan, 91, of Ulster Park was a veteran’s veteran, a captain of a Navy ship off the Normandy landing beaches, and a lifelong veterans’ advocate. Norm was my first Legion commander at Esopus Post 1298 during a time of great turmoil in our country. World War II and Korean War vets at the time couldn’t understand protests over the Vietnam War, and a few were averse to allowing “those long-hairs” to join the Legion. “Listen, boys,” Commander Norm said in that quiet way of his, “we’re all veterans here.”