The Wine Wars: Who’s Paying the Piper?
The financial relationship between Collins and Williams over the years is significant, as I imagine are the town’s growing legal bills around FOIL requests.
I wonder at times what happens when a person is elected to office and reason seems to fly out the window. I suppose it’s that same mental switch that allows them to think that if they ignore something or fight against it long enough, it means either it never happened or it’s settled business. We’ve seen it with the Epstein Files, and in Chatham this seems to be the strategy with FOIL requests.
Today the town reached out, as they did over a week ago, to tell me...wait for it...nothing. Not a denial and not the files I asked for in my FOIL request. The emails follow this article.
I was not surprised. After all, this is the strategy that the board is on the record talking about this past January related to another FOIL request. The plan (and a Band-Aid solution at best): delay.
This is not going to land well in the 12037, well, at least for those who are bothered by the town’s legal meter ticking with more unnecessary FOIL-related costs. Just last week in the town board meeting, the costs, delays, and appearance of not being transparent were discussed. The board said that they had real legal answers to FOIL now and moving forward. I guess just not enough answers, or the ones that pertained to 509 Bashford Road. Not for nothing, the legal answers to those other FOIL requests: release documents to the public. Hmmm, go figure.
I was planning on breaking down exactly some of the missing links in the Fox Hill Vineyard (a.k.a. EF Williams LLC) application and requirements of a “tasting room” today, but I’ll need a few days to digest some of the new documents that have been uploaded to the town’s website. But I did want to explain just why Donald Collins is required to disclose his relationship, and just why this may be the most consequential ethics question facing the town government in recent memory. This is not a discretionary issue the town board can pretend does not exist.
Public records show that Ed and Cherie Williams have taken an agricultural tax exemption on the property. That single fact, unremarkable on its face, has set in motion a chain of legal obligations that Supervisor Donald Collins may not have met.
Start with the law. Under New York Agriculture and Markets Law § 301(4), “land used in agricultural production” is defined as “not less than seven acres of land used as a single operation in the preceding two years for the production for sale of crops, livestock or livestock products of an average gross sales value of ten thousand dollars or more.” That is the floor. The annual gross sales of agricultural products must average $10,000 or more for the preceding two years. No exceptions. No wiggle room. The Williams family has taken the exemption. Which means, by operation of law, someone has been producing at minimum $10,000 in average annual gross agricultural sales from that land. The exemption cannot exist without it.
This means that Collins’ relationship with the Williams family carries a legally quantifiable financial value of at least $10,000 annually, established by the very statute under which the Williams family has claimed their tax benefit. He has farmed their land. He has sustained their exemption. A direct, measurable economic benefit. That is not an opinion. That is arithmetic backed by law.
New York General Municipal Law § 803 does not ask whether that arrangement is corrupt. It does not require a smoking gun. It requires disclosure. The statute is explicit: “any municipal officer or employee who has, will have, or later acquires an interest in or whose spouse has, will have, or later acquires an interest in any actual or proposed contract, purchase agreement, lease agreement or other agreement, including oral agreements, with the municipality of which he or she is an officer or employee, shall publicly disclose the nature and extent of such interest in writing to his or her immediate supervisor and to the governing body thereof as soon as he or she has knowledge of such actual or prospective interest. Such written disclosure shall be made part of and set forth in the official record of the proceedings of such body.” Under GML § 800, an “interest” means “a direct or indirect pecuniary or material benefit accruing to a municipal officer or employee as the result of a contract with the municipality which such officer or employee serves.” An oral arrangement to farm private land in exchange for pasture access (the exact arrangement described here) is the kind of agreement § 803 was written to capture. Disclosure must be made as soon as the individual has knowledge of an actual or prospective interest, publicly, to the individual’s immediate supervisor and to the municipal governing body, which must include the disclosure in the official record of its proceedings. It is also worth noting that Public Officers Law § 74 goes beyond contracts entirely, prohibiting conduct in which private interests could compromise official duties and stating that even the appearance of a conflict can be considered a violation. Under GML § 812, the annual financial disclosure categories require any reportable value to be identified by range, with Category B covering amounts from $5,000 to under $20,000. A farming arrangement generating the statutory minimum of $10,000 lands squarely in that range.
It is also a matter of public record that this relationship between Collins and the Williams property predates his time in office. That is not a minor detail. It means that when Collins took office, he carried into his public role an existing, economically active arrangement with private landowners, an arrangement that the law required him to disclose from the moment he was sworn in.
One small fix. Remove the comma after “partner” since “and ex-town board member” is part of the same appositive phrase, not a list:
Last week, his live-in partner and ex-town board member, Abi Mesick, posted on Facebook. Writing about the prospect of the land at 509 Bashford being developed or changed, she wrote plainly: “We [sic] would hate to see that because we would lose a great pasture.”
We. Would. Lose.
That is not the language of a bystander. That is a declaration of shared material interest, made voluntarily, publicly, and in writing. And under New York law, it matters enormously. GML § 803 does not limit the disclosure obligation to the official’s own interests. It explicitly extends to the interests of a spouse or partner. New York Public Officers Law § 73-a goes further, requiring officials to report financial interests held by a spouse, domestic partner, or unemancipated child, and the state’s own disclosure forms require officials to identify interests held by a domestic partner in any contract or agreement connected to a state or local agency. A “domestic partner” under the statute means a person who is formally a party in a domestic partnership or similar relationship, or registered as the domestic partner of the other person with any registry maintained by the employer of either party or any state, municipality, or foreign jurisdiction. A live-in partner who publicly declares that we would lose a pasture is precisely the relationship that language describes.
The disclosure obligation here does not run on one track. It runs on two. Collins has worked land that he makes money on and no one knows the terms or how much, and the Williams family clearly benefits. His live-in partner has declared a shared stake in the continued use of that land in a public post anyone can read. Either fact, standing alone, triggers the requirements of GML § 803 and Public Officers Law § 73-a. Together, they make the absence of any public disclosure record not a bureaucratic oversight, but a legal problem. For the board that is not addressing this, it is both a legal issue and an ethical one
Now look, I get wanting to kick this can down the road. I do. A lot of people know each other and this can be challenging. Tempers can flare; I heard someone was so mad “they could kick down a middle school banister.”
That’s just a saying. Right? Or maybe a colloquialism.
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