To the Editor:

Guilderland Town Justice Richard Sherwood has been charged with stealing $4 million from the estates of very elderly women, money that had been targeted for charities. You can read the criminal complaint at the state attorney general website.

Even after his arrest, town Democrat leaders are still offering support … Shouldn’t their first concern be for the charities that lost millions of dollars for their noble causes? Shouldn’t they be concerned about how town Democratic leadership has served as enablers for Sherwood?

I understand many town Democratic leaders have a close friendship with Mr. Sherwood, but that does not justify the leadership’s long-standing reflex to look the other way when some of their friends are involved.

Town Democrats had a chance to deal with Mr. Sherwood nearly a decade ago and did nothing. In 2008, when I was a Guilderland Town Board member, Sherwood negotiated a $540,500 assessment reduction for Walgreens at routes 20 and 155. This reduction cost Guilderland School District taxpayers alone more than $10,000 a year.

[See The Altamont Enterprise, Oct. 30, 2008, “Ethical dilemma: Walgreens assessment still an issue,” and Nov. 20, 2008, “Walgreens worth what?”]

The man who signed the mortgage for the Walgreens property was listed then as a lead partner in the law firm where Sherwood was a counsel. Sherwood did not disclose this connection to the board.

When Sherwood was asked to justify this questionable deal, he said he did not have the file with him. The three Democrats on the board (Council members Paul Pastore and Pat Slavick still sit on the board) voted to move the deal forward anyway, refusing to even table it.

When it was uncovered months later that there was this secret connection between Sherwood and Walgreens, I called for an ethics investigation of Sherwood. The town supervisor then, Ken Runion, had his hand-picked lawyer “investigate” the matter and the whole affair was whitewashed. The probe, financed with Guilderland taxpayer money, was a total farce.

That unfortunate episode makes these recent remarks even more troubling. Town Democratic Committee Chairman Jacob Crawford told The Altamont Enterprise, Sherwood was “always nice, funny, easy to talk to, and very well-liked by the folks he interacted with.” Town Attorney James Melita said this week Sherwood has “always seemed to be an upstanding guy.”

If those in authority had acted more responsibly then and held Sherwood accountable, perhaps the future might have been different. It is a lesson still lost on those in charge. Sherwood’s alleged victims can give you four million reasons why we need to pay much closer attention to how our town board operates.

Mark Grimm

Guilderland

Editor’s note: Mark Grimm, a Guilderland Town Board Republican member from 2008 to 2011, now represents Guilderland in the Albany County Legislature.

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