Letter to the Editor: Unsavory Motives for Democrat Statements on Sparaco's Arrest

To The Editor - New City Patch

Re: Democratic Committee Statements on Legislator Sparaco’s Arrest

http://patch.com/new-york/newcity/rockland-democratic-committee-and-clarkstown-democratic-committee-statements-legislator-sparaco

For years numerous Rockland County Democrats have genuflected to County Legislator Sparaco when he was a rising star in Rockland’s political firmament.

Now it is somewhat amazing that Democrats Stephanie Hausner and Theodore Van Nahl Collins would ask Sparaco to do them one final political favor in this time of his meteoric fall into the political abyss.

Hausner and Collins would have us to believe they are concerned that the members of Sparaco’s district will not have a legislator who will be able to devote time to properly representing their views. They suggest that Sparaco should immediately resign his seat in the Legislature so that they may fill it with a Democratic appointee. Presumably that appointee will have plenty of time to assist Democrats Wolfe and Schoenberger in their continuing efforts to subvert the financial measures County Executive Ed Day was elected to take in returning Rockland County to fiscal sanity?

While I approve of Mr. Sparaco’s recent removal as a Town of Clarkstown employee, I would remind Hausner and Collins that his position as a County Legislator rests between him and the voters of his election district. Those voters can certainly petition to recall him if they so wish and they will also have an opportunity to reject him as their representative at the polls in November 2015. Being a County Legislator is a part-time job and Sparaco’s attorney will handle his criminal case. While any trial will not occur for months from now, the vote on the Rockland County budget comes in about three weeks; hence the sudden Democratic partisan rush!

It is derisive at best and disingenuous at worse for the Democrats of Rockland County to call for Legislator Sparaco to sacrifice himself on the altar of the Democrats’ changing whims of self interest. After all Sparaco put in Herculean efforts for their Party in a failed attempt to elect Democrat Legislator Ilan Schoenberger and later Democrat David Fried to the position of County Executive. In doing so Sparaco hoped to save a multi-million dollar contract for Schoenberger’s $50,000 campaign donor, Richard Brega and his bus company’s employees. One wonders with friends like these who Legislator Sparaco should now count along with me among his political enemies?

Ted Collins says that because Mr. Sparaco’s mother-in-law and his former lawyer, Bronx GOP Chairman and convicted felon Jay Savino, had legal issues of their own Sparaco is unfit to serve his community. Yet Collins fails to mention that his colleague, Councilwoman Hausner, voted to hire Mr. Savino as a Clarkstown patronage appointee despite saying that he came with “baggage” and she had concerns about his “character”.

At this year’s Independence Party ‘fundraiser and birthday bash’ for Sparaco held at Casa Mia on March 22, 2014 it was the Democrats who were predominantly in attendance. Among the Democratic luminaries supporting Mr. Sparaco financially and hogging out on his birthday cake were Clarkstown Supervisor Gromack, Deputy Supervisor Lasker, Town Clerk Justin Sweet (winner of a illegal shotgun raffle), Legislator Schoenberger, Legislator Aney Paul, Ramapo Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence and Sheriff Falco. Among the Republican luminaries who were absent we can name County Executive Day, Legislator Carey, and Councilman Hoehmann.

The Democrats’ call for Legislator Sparaco to step down is truthfully about only one thing - having a sufficient number of their own Party in the County Legislature that they can over-ride any Day veto and maintain Sheriff Falco’s prancing patrol.

Whatever one’s opinion might be of Frank Sparaco we all know that he will not support a tax increase above the 2% cap. The present budget presented by the County Executive adheres to the tax cap but the Democrats are still drinking the Brega Bus Washing and the Falco Patrol ‘KoolAid’ of broken contracts and bloated staff. Day’s budget cuts the fat but the Democrats would love for Sparaco to step down so they can appoint another ‘Kantrowitz’ to protect their veto, retain their wise-cracking fellow Democratic Sheriff and raise our taxes to wash a burning bus.

Rather, honor might have required the ingrates in the Democratic Party to consider a political fundraiser for Sparaco’s mounting legal costs as he responds to the criminal charges he now faces. But given that there is no honor among political thieves, Democratic or Republican, the former have opted to throw the latter under the wheels of a bus in an act of blatant political expediency.

Sincerely,

Michael N. Hull

Bardonia, New York