Skippygate II: Electric Boogaloo

The other shoe has finally dropped in the Skippygate saga:

United States Attorney Glenn T. Suddaby announced today the Indictment of two Oriskany area men on fraud charges.

James M. Kernan, 59, of Utica Street, and Robert J. Anderson, also known as "Skip Anderson," 64, of Utica Street, were named in a fifteen count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Syracuse on January 30.

Kernan the President of Oriska Insurance Company. Kernan and Anderson are charged with one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud in addition to ten substantive counts of mail and wire fraud.

The Indictment charges that Kernan and Anderson engaged in a scheme to defraud by marketing workers compensation insurance policies through Oriska Insurance Company which they knew Oriska was not authorized or licensed to write. It is charged that Kernan and Anderson represented that Oriska could provide insurance coverage for workers in states where Oriska was not licensed.

Further, the Indictment alleges that Kernan and Anderson marketed workers compensation policies with high deductible endorsements during a time period when Oriska was not authorized by the New York State Insurance Department to issue policies containing such terms.

Hopefully, during this year's election someone will finally ask how Congressman Arcuri's campaign got their hands on a copy of the FBI search warrant for Oriska.

If you remember, Arcuri steadfastly refused to return thousands of dollars in dodgy donations from Oriska's owners and staff right up until the FBI actually started hauling documents out of the building, and then he only returned the donations from Anderson and Kernan. It wasn't until over a week later, again after repeated refusals to even consider returning all the money, that he finally rolled over and coughed up the cash.

Curiously, for reasons that still escape me, Ray Meier never made an issue out of Arcuri's odd behavior during the 2006 election. The timing of the refunds, and the specificity of the funds returned, makes it clear that Arcuri's campaign had a copy of the FBI warrant the morning of the raid. Since the federales aren't in the habit of faxing legal documents to political campaigns it seems obvious that Arcuri himself, or his staff in the DA's office, used the named targets of the search warrant to decide which donations were too hot to keep.

The ethics, or lack thereof, of using your official position to protect your candidacy from embarrassing political revelations should be obvious.

Letters, We Get Letters...

A reader writes regarding the shenanigans surrounding the continuing saga of the Oneida County sales tax hike:

RoAnn Destito sponsored the bill but stuck it in under the Rules committee and asked to have her name withdrawn on the text of the bill. So, even though she is the sponsor, and under Assembly rules, she controls the legislation, her name will not appear when you search for it. So, she is hiding the fact that she is raising taxes. So, yesterday the bill came to the Assembly floor for a vote under "Assembly Rules" committee without her name. She and Bill Magee are the only Assembly members from Oneida County who can sponsor this bill. Bill Magee was not part of it.

She voted no.

Then, she furiously ran to the Majority Leader, Ron Canestrari, to drum up yes votes for the bill because it looked like it was going to fail. She was able to drum up 76 yes votes to pass the bill. Incredible isn't it?

She got her NYC pals in the Assembly to take the heat to maintain the largest sales tax in our county where they aren't elected. She can now run around and say she voted against it. Too bad she's the sponsor, and without her, the bill never would have reached the floor.

Ray Meier did the same thing last year.

This is our political class in Oneida County, God help us all.

2008 Rematch?

It's deja vu, all over again.

It could be Meier vs. Arcuri again in 2008.

Former state Sen. Raymond Meier, a Republican from Western, says he's considering a rematch against the man who defeated him in last year's race for Congress, former Oneida County District Attorney Michael Arcuri.

"I haven't decided yet," said Meier, who is now a private attorney. "But I do think it's a decision I would probably make before the end of the summer."

If he does run, it's likely he'll have the backing of the Oneida County Republican Party.

"I'm sure Ray would certainly be my first choice," Republican Chairman Mark Scheidelman said.

Upon reading this, I'm almost tempted to invoke Ronald Reagan's Eleventh Commandment and just let it slide. Luckily, Mr. Arcuri provided me with the motivation to go on:

"The things I promised, I delivered on," Arcuri said. "NYRI, minimum wage, doing what I could to oppose the war, I've done that. Education, student loan reform. All of the things we've talked about we've done."

Er..no. You haven't. Not a single piece of legislation dealing with any of these issues has been enacted into law. Bills have been passed, to be sure, but despite having complete control of both houses of Congress Mr. Arcuri's party has been unable to send a single finished bill regarding any of them to the President's desk.

Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zip.

They're all trapped in legislative limbo, that terrible emptiness between the House and Senate where legislation just kind of floats around until congressional staffers get around to hammering it into shape. About the only legislation they have been able to pass is the emergency appropriations bill for Iraq, and that ended up being larded with so much pork that even many Democrats were embarrassed by it.

But I digress.

I think Ray Meier is a good and decent man. I also think he's considerably smarter than Mike "New York is not a border state" Arcuri. That's why I found the total meltdown of his campaign, primarily at the hands of the NRCC, so damnably infuriating. I, and a lot of other Republicans, never felt like we were anything more than a source of funds during the 2006 race. The campaign never generated a sense of urgency or excitement and, as far as I know, never made any attempt to reach out and motivate party members at the local level. I don't blame Mr. Meier for that, since I think it was an inevitable result of the kind of top-down effort the party was running, but I think he needs to take a good, hard look at what happened in 2006 in order to avoid having the same thing happen in 2008.