Shayne Gallo, on the night of his 2015 primary defeat. (Photo: Hugh Reynolds)
The “Spontaneous Demonstration” reached new heights of absurdity last summer when, as streets from Oakland to Brooklyn were boiling over with the birth of the “Black Lives Matter” movement, Gallo rallied members of Kingston’s black church community to show up at a council meeting to decry the rank injustice of lawmakers adding a $25,000 budget line to retain their own legal counsel in the event of procedural conflicts with the mayor.
As with other spontaneous demonstrations, I didn’t have to do much guesswork to figure out what was going on. Gallo had told me himself — he hinted that the Junior League was going to implore him to address Steve Noble’s alleged mishandling of a grant days before the letter hit his desk and, he claimed, he was “compelled” to address the situation publicly. If I wrote skeptically about his public pronouncements because he’d already told me his real plans and motivations “off the record,” well, that was just more evidence that I was in league with his opponents. I could point out similar inconsistencies all day and it never seemed to faze him. He could squash a fundraiser for the Queens Galley soup kitchen — which he detested — at a city park one week, claiming that such fundraising was forbidden on city property. The next week he could host a fundraiser for a charity run by his friend, Tibetan singer Yungchen Lhamo, in the Common Council chambers at City Hall and claim, in all sincerity, that it was an entirely different thing and how dare you question it. A lawyer by profession, he clung to obscure points of law when it suited him and discarded the most basic legal precepts when it didn’t. As one prominent local Democrat said, “He runs the city like a law firm — a law firm that goes after people.” If he wanted it, it was both right and legal. If he didn’t, it was not only wrong but a flagrant violation, justifying the harshest possible civil or criminal punishment. Gallo’s quickness to resort to legal action left a Collyer’s Mansion of documents on pending litigation as perhaps his most lasting legacy. There’s the former fire chief who Gallo insisted was so plainly guilty of various misdeeds that he was all but forced to fire him. But four years after he was fired and more than a year after a hearing officer ruled that the city proved no wrongdoing, Chris Rea’s case is still making its way through the courts. The city remains on the hook for a couple hundred grand in back pay that Gallo withheld in a move one judge wrote “eviscerated” the intent of state law.
Gallo’s shifting sense of right and wrong could swing so quickly that it posed challenges to the weekly journalism paradigm. Gallo ranted and threatened over Mike Hein’s Sophie Finn satellite SUNY Ulster satellite campus plan on a Monday. By the time my deadline rolled around on Wednesday, he was praising it. By year’s end he’d be speaking about it as if it was his idea. When a pair of artists put signs in support of gun control on city parking meters and lampposts as part of the O-Positive fest a few months back, Gallo, apparently tipped off by a pro-gun constituent, ordered them removed. City property, he said, could not be used for political speech. Within an hour, Gallo had reversed himself. He had the signs taken down because he mistakenly believed they bore an anti-gun control message. Meaning, presumably, that political speech on city property was fine, as long as it was speech approved of by Mayor Shayne Gallo.
If Gallo acted like the city was his and his alone, that propriety interest did not extend to taking the blame when things went wrong. He would continually blame underlings for any failure in his administration, seemingly unaware that the buck stopped anywhere except somewhere below his pay grade. Four years after he took office, Gallo was still blaming his predecessor, James Sottile, for the still-yawning Washington Avenue sinkhole. In the midst of his re-election campaign, he waged a vicious smear campaign accusing his opponent of rank incompetence in his Parks & Rec job. The question of why as mayor he kept around and promoted such an allegedly rotten employee didn’t seem relevant to Gallo.
At his best, Gallo’s forceful personality and fervid mind could inspire hope and fierce loyalty. But those hopes usually ended up dashed on the shoals of his inability to restrain his instinct for the groin kick and the sucker punch. Early in his administration, he took on the task of reforming a federal block-grant process that had devolved over the years into a kind of dime-store pork barrel for the Common Council — an annual doling-out of small grants to favored institutions with no clear overarching purpose. Gallo developed a plan in line with the grant program’s intended purpose to help the city’s worst-off residents and declared that henceforth, every dime of that federal money would go to support it. It was a good move, an overdue one and an example of the virtues of Gallo’s hard-line style.
Then came the sucker punch. When a group of parents and volunteers asked for $10,000 in grant funds to build a “natural playspace” at George Washington Elementary School — and won aldermanic support for it — Gallo came down on it like a ton of particularly angry bricks. It wasn’t enough to simply say the proposal wouldn’t fit his overall plan. Its proponents were misguided, on the wrong side of the law, they were endangering the entire block grant. The poor optics of the city’s chief executive engaging in a public feud with a parents’ group over a playground seemed to bother Gallo not in the least. He could never see the difference between rhetorically flogging a power-hungry political elite and a nonprofit group trying to build a playground or feed the needy. He never learned the old public-relations adage, “Never punch down.”
In time, Gallo’s paranoid ramblings about a “shadow government” would become self-fulfilling prophecy. Under his relentless attack from day one, Gallo’s political opponents hardened into personal enemies. Former supporters turned into political opponents; people who’d never given a damn about municipal or any other politics started asking what they had to do to vote against “that Gallo guy.” I fielded a lot of those questions behind the bar at Snapper Magee’s and they all had a common thread. These people asking could cite a moment, a threat, a tirade or an unpleasant personal encounter that transformed the mayor of Kingston from a title into a person. A person they loathed.
His dwindling corps of supporters, meanwhile, were sounding more and more like family members making excuses for a wife-beating relative. Gallo, they said, was “passionate” about the city he loved. He was too sensitive; he hadn’t developed the thick skin needed for politics. His opponents provoked him, they’d learned which buttons to push to set him off and make him look bad. The city needed a strong leader — so what if he was a little rough around the edges?
Entering primary season, Gallo seemed entirely unaware that he was headed for ignominious defeat. He derided his opponent as “the kid.” His campaign efforts were lackadaisical, consisting mainly of press releases from City Hall and street-corner press conferences touting some new investment of Broadway. He curried favor with key constituent groups that he could tick off like a grocery list. When local clergy complained about a city detective’s aggressive — they said brutal — style, Gallo had the cop assigned to duties outside the city, then counted the ministers into his re-election equation. When, in what can only be termed a colossal screw-up, he failed to turn in forms that would have qualified him to run on a pair of third-party lines — effectively making the Democratic primary a make-or-break proposition — he brushed it off. Actually, true to form, he blamed someone else: the county board of elections for not sending the documents in time.
Perhaps after four years of steamrolling dissenters, there was no one left in his inner circle to tell him he was heading for a fall. Or maybe he saw it coming all along and decided that four years of fighting the good fight was enough. Either way, when the numbers rolled in on primary night he found someone else to blame. God, he told supporters, had turned his back on Kingston. Later he would back off of God and blame “hipster elitists” waging a campaign of “political hatred” for his ouster. The “campaign of hate” line was my favorite. Every time he used it I tried to recall a single conversation I’d ever had with him in four years that didn’t digress into an attack on somebody. I couldn’t.
Three and a half months after that fateful primary night, I stood on North Front Street covering what may well be Gallo’s last official act (Actually it wasn’t. As it turns out his last official act was to file a lawsuit against those who carried out the Pike Plan canopy redesign.) A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the reopening of a staircase to a parking lot, a staircase he’d ordered closed back in 2013. As the small crowd of Uptown dignitaries and a few barflies from Uncle Willy’s broke up, I moved in on City Engineer Ralph Swenson to get a few facts and figures. As I headed back towards the office, I passed Gallo walking away head down, hands in pockets. He muttered something along the lines of “thanks for getting a quote from me.” I could have told him that I didn’t need a quote for what was going to essentially be an extended caption or that if he’d felt like being quoted he should have made some remarks before cutting the ribbon. But I just kept walking and so did he.
And so ended my engagement with the mayoralty of Shayne Gallo. Unless those rumors of a blizzard of slander suits to be filed by Gallo against anyone who ever said anything bad about him are true, in which case I expect the words you’re reading now to show up somewhere between “Exhibit A” and “Supplemental Filing aa.” If that’s the case, Gallo might want to consult New York Times v. Sullivan which sets a pretty high bar for proving libel against a public official. The toughest hurdle — the one that keeps celebrities from running to court every time The Star labels them a closet Satanist — is proving “actual malice.” Actual malice was an intentionally vague term enshrined into law back in 1964 which says essentially that for a reporter to libel a public figure they must knowingly write something untrue because they hate your guts. I’ll stand by the truth of everything I’ve ever written about Shayne Gallo. Hell, he was my source for some of the most damning stuff. Nor do I hate his guts, or any other part of him. He’s just another really angry guy in a world full of angry guys. After all, he never actually did sic the cops on me, shutter my place of employment or even curse me out to my face. Sure, my reporter’s heart detests bullying and abuse of power. But that same heart loves, above all things, good copy. Shayne Gallo made good copy.
Well and good. And lengthy. And a bit revealing. You got a lot off your chest.
This coverers a 4 year term and a reader might wonder if the mayor actually did any work, had department meetings, met with businesspeople and there were people that absolutely opposed Mr Gallo from the start… “just because you’re paranoid does not mean they are not picking on you”.
Personally, I saw a lot of that behavior. And I also saw a man devoted to the city and putting out plans and ideas that met with little opposition and certainly no competing programs: your editor was at several of the Comprehensive Plan meetings and could see for himself, and did see, poorly done work.
The notion that Gallo sent out people that supported his view? I counted two: his secretary and her husband… there might have been someone else..
I surely wish the Times had actually written about the transgressions it witnessed, chapter and verse. Early on, the Times had an excellent opportunity to weigh in on the firing of Jennifer Fuentes. And separated that from actual reporting about the city government.
I’m lot less concerned, however, with whatever treatment you hit the mayor with but rather the damage you did to Kingston…
Again, you have written a personality piece. You have not written anything like that about the work done in this city.
I’ve written about this before: everything that happens in the city, every shop that opens, street repaired, park upgrade, the energy bills, the garbage, the schools, library, fire department, shop closings, rental housing, city properties, etc… doesn’t even matter what he inherited… it’s his. Whether he supported it and failed, opposed it and lost, the citizens deserve more than entertainment from the paper: they deserve to know about the government and services they paid for.
What do you think the condition of the city of Kingston is as it is picked up by Steve Noble?
I see no reason not to anticipate a delightful term of service in this new administration, looking forward to some real communication as he outlined in his pre election meetings: simply outstanding and I think he demonstrated a real ability to speak clearly, authoritatively and with real understanding…
It’s late for you to do the hard work of writing about the departments, the quality of the work done, the various grants prepared and funded… still, you could try: match the column length of you editorial on the personal failings of Gallo against the work he actually did. And list, if you will, the real shortcomings you find…
One more thing:I’m familiar with several of the more contentious events in the administration that you bring up… there are other sides to that presentation, but that would make the people you’ve brought up pawns in the game.
“He made good copy”,but he also made a helluva good civics lesson. How did someone that was not only unqualified, but unworthy of being a mayor get elected? Why was he not seen for what he was by the press and community leaders during his tenure and not called out for his behavior? Someone once said that ‘you get the government that you deserve’ and whole heartedly agree. If we, as citizens, don’t demand more from the people we elect, we’ll never get it.
Everyone excused his behavior as being ‘passionate’, or just ‘hot-headed’, when it was pretty obvious that he was far beyond either of those. The ‘Blaber incident’ was a clear indication to anyone with a functioning brain that we had a mayor that was unfit for office, and the public never reacted. And yes, I do fault the media for not tying all of the incidents of his paranoia and vindictiveness together and exposing this mayor for what he was. I guess we need to figure out how to demand more from our media as well as our government.
I’m pretty sure sanity has been restored to some degree in City Hall, but if the cadre of candidates that are running for election right now doesn’t scare the beJesus out of everyone, we’re in store for a disastrous fate at the national level.
A well written piece of journalism. Actually, you gave Gallo more credit than he deserves. Berkes comments are his normal rhetoric from from next to Attila the Hun. Berke should run for office and see what reality is. Gallo will go down in history as the worst mayor in Kingston history!!!!
Man, you seem to reflect the reputation you earned with this post. Characterizing Gerald Berke as “Attila The Hun”? (Maybe he is off base, but “Attila the Hun”??!!) You have the perceptual acuity of Jim Sottile after 20 drinks. Perhaps you should go off and form your own fire department with him. One of you can fight fires–that would be you– and one(that would be Jimmy boy) run into the building hoping to be a hero and get some press out of it. LOL P.S. Do you happen to know who Atila the Hun was, by any chance, or how that person relates to Gerald Berke? Oh…I can see it now…a political debate….and you make this claim….and my response is:”I knew Atila the Hun…Atila the Hun was a friend of mine….man, Gerald Berke is NO Atila the Hun!!”
I’m very pleased that several Kingstonians stuck to the facts… this bodes well for a better and better Kingston.
“we must all hang together or we shall surely hang separately…”
Mr Smith et al are shaking their might fists at the back of a departing train. That poorly serves the community.
It might show the importance of print media, and what happens when it’s not there.
Mr Hokeystuff says Gallo wan’t qualified? You couldn’t say that based on his resume, education, work experience, or indeed his successful negotiation as mayor.
Others will continue with ad hominem tantrums… and hinge it all on one really really stupid event with Blaber while corporation counsel was present… that is breathtaking.
I have a lot less of a problem with venality than incompetence, lack of involvement and a failure to stop up to a perceived problem.
4 years? Is this the earliest it could have been written? What purpose can it serve now: more like the petulant complainers in Oregon occupying an empty Nature Preserve in off season.
I recall a bit of a dustup between Tynan and Capote, over “In Cold Blood” and a very angry note from Capote, Mr Tynan wrote “Capote seems to have invented yet another art form: after the non-fiction novel, the semi-documentary tantrum.”
The train has left. Mr Smith has shown up 4 years late for the job: he’ll get no points from me on that.
Enough.
But it is not enough that the Times write and fume about personality. There was work to be done…
BEAT that made a big splash and disappeared, a Police Station that was to be relocated and there was no movement in 4 years, a 1 mile joint venture of $4million for a pathway along the Hudson with AVR, a BBB plan that seemed to miss some seriously concerned “stakeholders”, a Comprehensive Plan that was really late and gets very very little play so much as to be completely ignored by Rupco…
Meantime, fabulous work on the Greenline, a very much improved police department with a professional presence in social media…
Are Hoffay and Donaldson the paragons of open civic leadership?
Where was Gallo on the fabulous farm work to the YMCA? For that matter, where were the aldermen? The Times?
Did the Times approve of the changes to the web presence for the city? Was more needed? Did Mr Green not do a fine job with tourism for Kingston? After 4 years, does Broadway look different? Happy with the 11th hour fix of the Uptown Parking lot.
All this too reminds me of an editorial about some dog poop that the time wrote: the editor has walk past it for a week and nobody had picked it up! (How many editors does it take to pick up a bag of dog poop?) Why do something when you can write about it?
OK. Trains gone. Move along, nothing to see here.
I’d call the lack of any management experience of any kind a definite lack of qualifications. The fact that he won the nomination when his opponent actually HAD those qualifications and many more is what REALLY needs to come into question. What role did the Democratic Party leadership have in allowing that to happen? What were the Democrats that voted in the primary thinking? Seriously, did the name ‘Gallo’ have that much clout that people were blind to rational thinking?
This is not an indictment of this media outlet specifically but about the state of journalism in general. The media in general has ceased to be the watchdog for the public that it once was and we are no longer an ‘informed public’ which is a death knell for a democracy. Consequently, the lack of trusted information is what leads to the polarization that we see in our political environment today. With such a lack of information, people fill in the blanks with whatever they want that supports their own belief systems. How else can you explain the lunatic fringe of the GOP party?
I wish I could propose a specific solution, but the bottom line is that people have to take it upon themselves to be more informed and to be openminded enough to think objectively and not get sucked in to supporting people or issues without asking some tough questions and demanding answers.
Finally being rid of Gallo is one of the best things that has happened to this city in recent years. The man was a walking disaster. Is there a constituency that he didn’t make enemies of? As the article states, even his most ardent supporters were embarrassed. And now we have a new mayor, who, despite his tender years, knows that you have to reach out and build bridges, not burn them, if you want to get things done. It’s a breath of fresh air compared to Gallo’s take-no-prisoners style. Let’s hope this is the last we see of Shayne Gallo as an elected official. He clearly doesn’t have the temperament for this type of work.
As I recall, the Kingston Times endorsed Mr. Gallo. Stories (true or untrue) were circulating about him at the time, and this was the reason he was not endorsed by the Democratic Party.
On a number of occasions, as I walked past your uptown office, the employee you reference in your article who had a personal relationship with the Mayor was on the phone. I tried not to listen to her private conversation being conducted in a public space. The gist of what I could not help from hearing? “I can get the Mayor to (do this or that)”, pardon me for leaving out the specifics. This is a conflict of interest, the staff member should have, at the very least, been put on leave. I know your publisher was aware of this because I told him. His lame excuse was that she was not involved in any reporting at City Hall. How much longer was she on the payroll?
My conclusion: you share some of the responsibility for not reporting the truth, and the whole truth at the time. Your ‘tell all’ article is a bit disingenuous.
Hi Steve – almost three years ago, you raised a similar question, and almost three years ago, this was my response, which still stands. “Hey, this is Dan Barton, editor of the Kingston Times. Since I do speak for the paper, I would like to address The Red Dog Party’s post. Carrie never wrote about politics much prior to her relationship with Mayor Gallo and after she disclosed to us that she was having that relationship (immediately after it began) it was resolved – and held to – that she not cover stories having to do with politics or Shayne Gallo.
As far as whether having the mayor’s girlfriend on our staff has made us take it easy on the mayor or has resulted in preferential treatment from the mayor, I will say this: you can judge a straight shooter by the straightness of the shots. Looking back on our coverage, I am not seeing any evidence of tilting things to make Gallo look better. (If anything, it made us more mindful of keeping our coverage above board.) If this were not true, perhaps the mayor back in March would not have called me up and – after expressing his extreme discontent with a story Jesse wrote about a firefighter suing the city – say he was never speaking to the Kingston Times again. (This is not the first time he has asserted – and then retracted – his unwillingness to participate in our stories.) I offered him a letter to the editor to rebut Jesse’s story, the accuracy of which we stand by, but the offer was never taken up and we did not hear from the mayor or Andy Zweben for a solid month, until they wanted their side of the story in our piece about the track-blocking dumptruck. If this is preferential treatment, I would hate to find out what happens when he gets angry at us.”
We did find that out; Jesse’s piece breaks it down very well. And yes, we did endorse him back in 2011. I thought he had a lot of potential, and didn’t actually know anything about his rep for poor anger management, etc. In general, I look at Shayne Gallo’s mayorality as a wasted opportunity and a tragic level of squandered potential. – Dan the editor.
Steve has it right. And any communications and offers to the mayor ought to have been done in the open, in public, in the editorial page. If the mayor complained, if he contacted you, and if you made offers to him, that was the subject for a simple and short article. Simple and short. And the paper could have reasonably asked questions about governance, policy, communication, the paper could have submitted questions to the mayor in writing if you were too scared to be hollered at, and you could publish and comment on the answers.
If you had done anything like that, there would be no reason for the Kingston Times to be hurling brick bats at a guy who isn’t even the mayor.
Come on Dan, that’s silly. This is just circle the wagons stuff: you guys did not do a good job. I think Geddy would weigh in on this. I suppose he’s going to be compelled to back his troops now… The staffs writing was nowhere up to the quality of the stuff that Geddy himself wrote, stuff of substance.
As to the employee in question: did anyone suggest that that employees behavior was inappropriate and ought not to be done at the Times offices with Times equipment and within casual earshot? Were you all sitting around soothing hurt feelings, commiserating what a bad boyfriend the mayor was.
Do you need this stuff to be submitted for print? That’s easily done.
Steve is right, and looks like Jesse was working with Barton’s full approval..
Let’s here from Geddy.
Over and out.
Isn’t it time to move on Boys? Stop whipping a dead horse. This rag is part of the problem with small town politics and you have thoroughly trashed Gallo. Satisfied?
Thanks for reading, Susan. Were we a rag when we ran that feature story about your art, or did we become one after? – Dan the editor
Dan, why are you continually beating a “dead horse” by printing article after article about the same political infighting nonsense that brought Noble down and has plagued this town forever. Let it go! Let’s move on. Most of us are aware that you didn’t like him and the KT supported Steve Noble. You made your point. Kingston has worked to do. Susan
Part of what journalists do is shed light on the inner workings of government and politics so citizens can understand why what happens happens. If we didn’t do this, public officials would get away with even more than they do now; a look at any number of countries around the world without a free press acting as a “watchdog” bears out that thesis. There’s also a function of journalism being the “first draft of history” which is something we take seriously as well. – Dan
Susan’s comments are part of the counter-narrative that this story was intended- in part- to combat. Some Gallo supporters have consistently sought to characterize his actions as part of some ongoing and unremarkable “political infighting.” Describing the actors as “Kids in a sandbox” who can’t get along all equally responsible for the uncivil tone of civic discourse. But a cursory review of Gallo’s record shows something different. Namely, people- many with no connection to politics- who say they were bullied and intimidated into silence by someone who routinely threatened to use his power to hurt them in very serious, very specific ways. That is not politics as usual.It’s not kids in the sandbox and any effort to portray it that way is simply an effort to sweep the exceptional ugliness of the Gallo administration under the rug. Since this story ran I have received an outpouring of input from citizens, business owners and city employees validating its key points and its news value. Meanwhile, even Gallo’s staunchest supporters have not come forward on social media or anywhere else to argue that the story was in any way inaccurate in its details.As for beating a dead horse- I think the record shows that we beat this particular horse while he was very much alive and kicking. My reporter’s notebook was simply an attempt to sum it all up and try to make some sense of a very weird four years.
Jesse, the election two months ago. We have a new mayor, let’s move on.
Susan, why don’t you move on from your frenetic posting? The election was a while ago. Move on from your constant tut tutting.
Wow, we’ve only been rid of him for 10 days Susan. Everyone was completely terrified while he was in office, and so would you have suggested we had this conversation while he could still sic the cops,meter readers amd the building inspectors on us, have our cars booted or all the other wonderful things that he was known to do?
Great article Jessie. Thank you.
Thank you, Jesse, for your explanation, and I accept it. (I continue to have a very strong belief in that “appearance of conflict of interest = conflict of interest”.)
I believe in continuing to evaluate how our institutions operate and our own behavior. Otherwise, we will be held captive by our past deeds.
In my opinion, you did a service for our community by writing your column in such a straight-forward way. This is borne out by the responses you’ve received above.
Gosh, talk about flogging a dead horse!!
While the content of this piece may very well be accurate; there are also two very troubling things about this article.
First, clearly Jesse Smith has worked on this for awhile, so it should’ve been published a week or two earlier.
Second, basic journalism 101: an article of this type should have given the subject an opportunity to comment on it.
I expect better.
This is all a bunch of bickering reflective of the fact there is no focus in this town on what really matters– and evidently never will be.
The most glaring issue here is not how the local press treated or responded to Shayne Gallo–but instead, where the local press was(???) when his predecessor was behaving in much the same fashion–if not worse in some instances– and for far longer than one term(I would say “AWOL” and deliberately din of ear). Are we in the public to discern that the frustration was building, and conveniently dropped as it accumulated– in relatively late fashion— ALL upon Shayne Gallo? Perhaps that is NOT the ENTIRE story here…but I daresay certainly a BIG PART of the real psychodynamic here. Mr. Dan excoriated me for proclaiming this, proclaiming me “paranoid” as well, but unlike such knee-jerk journalism, I have facts to bolster my views. I have also, I might point out, never gotten out of my car to excoriate someone who ran a stop sign, much as I might have wanted to at some time or other. “For the record.”
The Reynolds story has it that Sottile was seen “singing “Happy Days Are Here Again'” upon leaving city hall on Inauguration Day. That is interesting, and formed a concern of those of us who felt that of “the two so called evils”–ie, Sottile and Gallo–Sottile was worse–which started in the last primary campaign with the nonsense of his sending a letter to Democrats pushing Noble as if he–Sottile–deserved a lick of a listen on anything after his “rather interesting behavior and performance” on many levels. Those of us who felt that way have not changed our minds. The anticipation remains of what role Sottile wants in this new administration. As does the trepidation over the notion that he wants something substantial…and thus this entire “New Kingston” concept isn’t quite as all-encompassing as those with their heads in the clouds now seem to think it will be.
So those who prefer not to think so may wish to order a drink(speaking of a “drunk who is called a bon vivant”), if not toss it into someone’s face. Happy New Year everyone!!! LOL
Whew! The more catholic males, from st. joseph’s, we are exposed to, the more “those stories” about what was going on up there are obviously fully VERIFIED! What a dysfunctional mess of psychotic, self important, know it all, oxygen wasters! Kingston deserves EVERY one of them as they are a perfect fir for it’s “environment.”