Jan 9, 2013 10:58 AM
Former Southampton Town Supervisor Patrick “Skip” Heaney is again roaming the corridors of Town Hall.
The Southampton Business Alliance announced this week that Mr. Heaney will be the small business-advocacy group’s new legislative director, responsible for keeping tabs on town government and ensuring that local business owners have a voice in the crafting of legislation that could affect economic development.
“I’m looking forward to using my skills and experience on behalf of the town’s business community as we work to achieve consensus with our local and regional government on how best to preserve and protect our environment while fostering a thriving economy,” Mr. Heaney said in a release.
Mr. Heaney was a Southampton Town Trustee for two years before being elected to the Town Board. He served nine years as a town councilman,... more
The Southampton Business Alliance announced this week that Mr. Heaney will be the small business-advocacy group’s new legislative director, responsible for keeping tabs on town government and ensuring that local business owners have a voice in the crafting of legislation that could affect economic development.
“I’m looking forward to using my skills and experience on behalf of the town’s business community as we work to achieve consensus with our local and regional government on how best to preserve and protect our environment while fostering a thriving economy,” Mr. Heaney said in a release.
Mr. Heaney was a Southampton Town Trustee for two years before being elected to the Town Board. He served nine years as a town councilman,... more
OK, no surprise there, and no need for NTiger to get his knickers in a twist over it. It's distasteful, of course, and maybe should be a hanging offense on one level, but in this case, no harm, no ...more foul. What I mean is, for all the reasons cited in the posts below and then some, Skip has zero credibility, on anything. Any Board member who'd honestly listen to Skip is a Board member who would have voted the SBA's way even if Skip hadn't been born.
Unfortunately, there could be two, maybe three, such individuals on the present Town Board, but if so, they're so biased in this respect that Skip Heaney's not going to make them any worse.
To be serious, you're right that there's a problem. I personally believe that the solution is not more ethics rules as you suggest, nor is it the term limits that some ...more advocate, but instead we need radical campaign finance reform, i.e., 100% government-financed campaigns. That will eliminate the need at the heart of the disease.
You're also right to identify this ailment as afflicting all levels, all parties, all candidates, across the board. Just be a good boy and keep it broad-based -- don't revert to using this as an instrument of any of your tiresome vendettas against various individuals. You've gone there before, and I don't want to see any more of it.
Our Hidden History of Corporations in the United States
When American colonists declared independence from England in 1776, they also freed themselves from control by English corporations that extracted their wealth and dominated trade. After fighting a revolution to end this exploitation, ...more our country’s founders retained a healthy fear of corporate power and wisely limited corporations exclusively to a business role. Corporations were forbidden from attempting to influence elections, public policy, and other realms of civic society.
Initially, the privilege of incorporation was granted selectively to enable activities that benefited the public, such as construction of roads or canals. Enabling shareholders to profit was seen as a means to that end. The states also imposed conditions (some of which remain on the books, though unused) like these*:
■Corporate charters (licenses to exist) were granted for a limited time and could be revoked promptly for violating laws.
■Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
■Corporations could not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that was not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.
■Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their authority or caused public harm.
■Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.
■Corporations could not make any political or charitable contributions nor spend money to influence law-making.
For 100 years after the American Revolution, legislators maintained tight controll of the corporate chartering process. Because of widespread public opposition, early legislators granted very few corporate charters, and only after debate. Citizens governed corporations by detailing operating conditions not just in charters but also in state constitutions and state laws. Incorporated businesses were prohibited from taking any action that legislators did not specifically allow.
States also limited corporate charters to a set number of years. Unless a legislature renewed an expiring charter, the corporation was dissolved and its assets were divided among shareholders. Citizen authority clauses limited capitalization, debts, land holdings, and sometimes, even profits. They required a company’s accounting books to be turned over to a legislature upon request. The power of large shareholders was limited by scaled voting, so that large and small investors had equal voting rights. Interlocking directorates were outlawed. Shareholders had the right to remove directors at will.
In Europe, charters protected directors and stockholders from liability for debts and harms caused by their corporations. American legislators explicitly rejected this corporate shield. The penalty for abuse or misuse of the charter was not a plea bargain and a fine, but dissolution of the corporation.
In 1819 the U.S. Supreme Court tried to strip states of this sovereign right by overruling a lower court’s decision that allowed New Hampshire to revoke a charter granted to Dartmouth College by King George III. The Court claimed that since the charter contained no revocation clause, it could not be withdrawn. The Supreme Court’s attack on state sovereignty outraged citizens. Laws were written or re-written and new state constitutional amendments passed to circumvent the (Dartmouth College v Woodward) ruling. Over several decades starting in 1844, nineteen states amended their constitutions to make corporate charters subject to alteration or revocation by their legislatures. As late as 1855 it seemed that the Supreme Court had gotten the people’s message when in Dodge v. Woolsey it reaffirmed state’s powers over “artificial bodies.”
But the men running corporations pressed on. Contests over charter were battles to control labor, resources, community rights, and political sovereignty. More and more frequently, corporations were abusing their charters to become conglomerates and trusts. They converted the nation’s resources and treasures into private fortunes, creating factory systems and company towns. Political power began flowing to absentee owners, rather than community-rooted enterprises.
The industrial age forced a nation of farmers to become wage earners, and they became fearful of unemployment–a new fear that corporations quickly learned to exploit. Company towns arose. and blacklists of labor organizers and workers who spoke up for their rights became common. When workers began to organize, industrialists and bankers hired private armies to keep them in line. They bought newspapers to paint businessmen as heroes and shape public opinion. Corporations bought state legislators, then announced legislators were corrupt and said that they used too much of the public’s resources to scrutinize every charter application and corporate operation.
Government spending during the Civil War brought these corporations fantastic wealth. Corporate executives paid “borers” to infest Congress and state capitals, bribing elected and appointed officials alike. They pried loose an avalanche of government financial largesse. During this time, legislators were persuaded to give corporations limited liability, decreased citizen authority over them, and extended durations of charters.
Attempts were made to keep strong charter laws in place, but with the courts applying legal doctrines that made protection of corporations and corporate property the center of constitutional law, citizen sovereignty was undermined. As corporations grew stronger, government and the courts became easier prey. They freely reinterpreted the U.S. Constitution and transformed common law doctrines.
One of the most severe blows to citizen authority arose out of the 1886 Supreme Court case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. Though the court did not make a ruling on the question of “corporate personhood,” thanks to misleading notes of a clerk, the decision subsequently was used as precedent to hold that a corporation was a “natural person.” This story was detailed in “The Theft of Human Rights,” a chapter in Thom Hartmann’s recommended book Unequal Protection.
From that point on, the 14th Amendment, enacted to protect rights of freed slaves, was used routinely to grant corporations constitutional “personhood.” Justices have since struck down hundreds of local, state and federal laws enacted to protect people from corporate harm based on this illegitimate premise. Armed with these “rights,” corporations increased control over resources, jobs, commerce, politicians, even judges and the law.
A United States Congressional committee concluded in 1941, “The principal instrument of the concentration of economic power and wealth has been the corporate charter with unlimited power….”
Many U.S.-based corporations are now transnational, but the corrupted charter remains the legal basis for their existence. At Reclaim Democracy!, we believe citizens can reassert the convictions of our nation’s founders who struggled successfully to free us from corporate rule in the past. These changes must occur at the most fundamental level — the U.S. Constitution.
You can prohibit former elected and appointeds from serving as lobbyists and you can impose significant jail time for corruption. Deterrence is real there and no 8th Amendment problem.
My viewpoint, your viewpoint.
I don't like Citizens United but on the law it could have gone either way. My big ...more problem with it is the whole concept of corporation as person. Don't see that except in civil or criminal trials. You can't vote you can't contribute. That would be my rule. Also eliminates foreign money coming in.
Fairwaind, my recollection is that a gentlemen went to the Governor's special vacation spot upstate for a few years for that conviction. Is my mind going quicker than I thought?
"But jury confidence in town officials has not been soaring either. Last week, a Federal grand jury acquitted a Southampton businessman, Eric Ferrara, of charges of trying to bribe town officials to approve a 360-foot-high radio broadcast tower he sought to construct.
In reaching the verdict, the jury was not persuaded by tape-recordings of Mr. Ferrara offering money. Nor was it swayed by testimony from Town supervisor Vincent Cannuscio and ...more council members who said Mr. Ferrara tried to bribe them.
The furious town officials said last week the verdict left the impression that they solicited the bribes."
It's a shame that this is your perception of that outrageous event. Mr. Ferrara was not only acquitted of all charges, but it was increasingly apparent as testimony was heard that the wrong person was on trial!
This will be the third decade Skip Heaney wiil try mighty hard to destroy Southampton. He succeeded exceedingly well as Supervisor cooking the books, presented in horrifying detail as presented by the Town's forensic accountants trying to untangle the deceptive mess that took more than a year to fully expose.
To this day, the Town has not recovered from his fiscal shenanigans that doubled the budget in a little over 5 years, causing huge tax increases to plug the deficits created and ...more artfully concealed by Charlene Kagel and exposed by forensic accountants that cost the Town hundreds of thousands of dollars, adding insult to injury.
He was helped by that Charlene Kagel, that master of single entry accounting systems who creates trouble and mess every Town she happens to infect with her unique "skills".
Now Skip wants to do it all over again after destroying Southampton's fiscal health and flaming out spectacularly in a patronage job in Suffol County in charge of IT for which he never ever got any training or expertise.
This man is a walking disaster who will once again do great damage.
That was my favorite part... he was in Riverhead with 0 employees underneath him and as you say had no expertise. Talk about bloat!
he's made a career out of roaming the halls.