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General News: Sparks Fly Over Police Chief Selection Process
February 13, 2007
The town of Cornwall still does not have a new police chief, despite a heated debate about the subject at the town board meeting on Monday night that revealed the board’s displeasure with local media coverage of the selection process.
No names were presented to the board for a vote but members heard from three Cornwall residents, including Al Secor, who criticized the decision to offer the job to an out-of-town officer last week. After the town offered Chester police Sergeant Jim Thorton the position, they heard an outcry about Thorton’s record that led officials to change their minds and rescind the offer.
The town board may be moving cautiously now following the criticism of its selection process. Singled out at the Monday meeting was the Cornwall Local, which board member Randy Clark said painted the town board as “incompetent” and “untrustworthy.” Clark said the charges were “unfounded and uncalled for” and he tried to introduce a motion to take away the Local’s status as the official town paper.
Local editor Margaret Menge defended her right to exercise freedom of the press and charged the board with trying to punish the paper. “As elected officials you would want to consider how that might appear to citizens who go to the voting booths and vote every two years for supervisor and town board members,” she said.
Town supervisor Dick Randazzo said he supports freedom of the press but noted that there were factual errors in an article about the police chief selection process.
Randazzo also defended the board's record. “This board is elected by the people,” Randazzo told Menge, “and has been operating for three years and has made hundreds of decisions, good decisions. I think the offense we took is at your statement (in an editorial) ‘how can we trust this board to make good decisions in the future.’”
Councilman Clark said his proposal was not retaliatory but that he has been concerned for three years that the weekly Local could not get the news out as quickly as the twice-weekly Sentinel. The board agreed to study the issue and Menge asked that the Local be allowed to submit written opinions on the subject.
When the open meeting adjourned on Monday night, the town board went into executive session for more discussion on the police chief selection process.
On Tuesday, Cornwall supervisor Dick Randazzo said that the process was still moving ahead and that a special meeting may be held before the regularly scheduled board meeting in March to vote on a candidate.
The entire town board meeting was videotaped by volunteer videographer Lynda Parisi and will be shown in its entirety on Time Warner cable channel 23 on Thursday, February 15, at 8:00 p.m.
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