JOURNAL NEWS EDITORIALPort Chester refuses to heal
It is disappointing but not surprising that the conservative-minded majority that controls the Port Chester government would vote to reopen an old and costly wound: the 4-year-old legal battle with the U.S. Justice Department over the village's system for electing trustees. Fighting ideological demons and good sense, several trustees over many months had made plain their aim to reopen the case, notwithstanding the uncertainty inherent in any appeal and the dim chances for improving either local governance or civility.
What is surprising is that the trustees driving this community-splitting train — Republican Joseph Kenner and Conservatives Bart Didden, Sam Terenzi and John Branca — so glibly sent the village on this course, which could cost Port Chester more than just dollars and cents.
The four trustees on Tuesday ignored sound advice from a host of taxpayers and village leaders who implored them (1) not to waste their money and (2) to move on. "I wouldn't vote for 10 more cents" to be spent on the case, former Republican Trustee Domenick Cicatelli told the board Tuesday.
"This is a black eye on Port Chester," resident Gary Sullivan said of the Justice Department's successful challenge, under the Voting Rights Act, to the village's system for electing trustees. "It is healed. So now you're going to pay to walk into another punch in the eye?"
Apparently so. By a 4-2 vote, the board agreed to pay a Washington, D.C., law firm as much as $775 an hour, up to $225,000, to appeal a U.S. District Court ruling that forced the village to change its system for electing trustees. This followed a trial in which U.S. District Judge Stephen C. Robinson, after hearing evidence of a litany of wrongful conduct, found the village unlawfully disenfranchised Hispanic residents. At the time the suit was filed, the village had never elected a Hispanic candidate to anything — neither to the village board nor school board — despite Hispanics making up about half the population.
Among Robinson's findings was that during the 2007 mayoral election, a blatant racial appeal was made to voters — in the form of an anonymous flier distributed to 1,000 homes — disparaging of Hispanics and crudely complaining of their influence. One factor routinely considered in voting rights cases is whether past political campaigns have included overt or subtle racial appeals.
It was subsequently learned that the flier was written by Didden, who was elected to the board last year and now is the GOP candidate for mayor. He now wants to spend another $225,000 in taxpayer money — on top of the $1.2 million spent so far — to continue a community-dividing legal fight he helped create.
Although speaker after speaker spoke out against the appeal, Trustee Didden insisted that there was significant public support to reopen the case, albeit not all of it in Port Chester. "Not only here in Port Chester, but at the state level, at Washington, if you don't agree with the progressive left, you get labeled," Didden said. "And I think there's a faction of people out there that are scared to come out." Terenzi accused taxpayers who spoke against the appeal of being supporters of Mayor Dennis Pilla, who is seeking re-election. Pilla, along with fellow Democrat Luis Marino, opposed the appeal.
Ironically, the revised election system suggested by Port Chester and OK'd by the court ended up producing the most diverse village board ever elected in Port Chester, including Marino, the board's first Hispanic, and Kenner, the first elected black. The spirited campaign featured an unprecedented amount of involvement and participation by village residents who often exist on the fringes of civic life. While the overall result left much to be desired — as the decision to appeal might suggest — it was something to build upon.
Tuesday's vote marked a sharp turn right, then backward and into the dark.
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