To the Editor:

In recent weeks, some very deceptive material has been published as letters in The Enterprise and on the official “Town of Berne Highway Department” online page. This deceitful propaganda was published to attack my credibility and misrepresent an important safety issue.

The access issue is very simple. Closing the intersection near 182 Stage Road leaves no access during snow and wind conditions because the highway superintendent cannot keep the other access open. Plenty of dated, time-stamped photos are available to illustrate this.

These “experts” say the alternative access is safer. Does that matter if it is not possible to get there from 182?  Is this somehow too complex for these guys to understand? The posted intersection has been plowed since the 1930s without incident; no accidents have been reported there and it doesn’t drift in as quickly. This seasonal posting is pure political retribution at the expense of safety.

The superintendent’s deceptive posts on the official highway-department page resulted in characterizations of me as a jackass, a vulture, that one guy who always bitches, etc. The official postings by the superintendent of highways are simply not true.

The assertions by those two flatlanders recently published in The Enterprise are also simply not true.  They don’t care about truth, facts, or access. They want to disrupt government at someone’s expense. What an admirable goal.

I grew up in a Republican household and was a Republican for many years. These people don’t reflect the Republican values I learned growing up in the Helderbergs.  The Berne Republican Party has been co-opted by two unscrupulous flatlanders. Don’t believe anything these three guys say, write, or post.

These “Republicans” are characterizing the decision to seasonally post the intersection as an action evaluated and supported by state engineers and they indicate there are opinions from multiple departments documenting concurrence with the decision along with a bunch of other hogwash too ridiculous to dignify. They claim there is a declaration that the intersection is “the most dangerous road to turn out from” in Berne.

Their goal is to make it appear that my opinion is in direct conflict with the judgment of multiple professional engineers in multiple departments. That is just incredibly dishonest. These three clearly do not operate in the best interests of the residents or the town.

The Berne Records Access Officer has no documentation that the decision was investigated or evaluated by anyone at any time and there is no documentation that an outside agency or department has ever offered any documented opinion about the decision at all. Albany County’s resident engineer for the state’s Department of Transportation told me no such documentation exists, to his knowledge, and the regional director at the DOT told me it has not documented an opinion on this local decision and doesn’t currently plan to.

According to my recent Freedom Of Information Law request, the results of which I shared with The Enterprise, all the town has received to date are some accident and sight-distance data for three intersections. There was an intersection-related accident at one of the other intersections.

That accident study found no accidents related to the posted intersection! Who declared the intersection with no accidents more dangerous? There is no speed study documented as the superintendent claimed in The Enterprise and no supporting opinions or declarations documented as he claims online.

Then, these “Republicans” have repeatedly said, implied, and published that I am the only person protesting this seasonal posting. This is also very clearly not true. As reported in this paper, the superintendent attended a board meeting where more than 20 people sacrificed their personal time to go to the meeting to protest the posting of this intersection.

They raised their hands to be counted and some offered statements. The superintendent also knew at the time of his deceptive posts, that the town board passed a resolution stating that it also feels the intersection should remain unposted.

There was a petition submitted to DOT with dozens of signatures protesting the seasonal posting that he was also aware of. His characterizing me, in an official post, as the only one while watching me personally attacked for that very reason in the following posts was just incredibly dishonest.

Residents of Berne also need to be aware of the fact that the superintendent records his constituents and other officials without their consent, hoping to catch statements he can use against them or his other victims. Don’t let him on your property. He cannot be trusted.

He’ll play his recordings of you to entertain his extremist friends. He actually advertised the recording he made of both my father-in-law and myself  (without consent and in the “privacy” of our home).  He invited people to come see him if they want to hear his unscrupulous creation, and allowed The Enterprise to publish it on its site. [The newspaper chose not to since both parties did not agree to it]. He promised to publish it on the Berne Highway Department page and then, on the department page, claimed he records people this way regularly!

This is an outrageous, inappropriate violation of the privacy of his constituents.  Is someone who is capable of such unscrupulous violations of his constituents’ privacy, in their homes, who also deliberately publishes fraudulent material on an official town media outlet to personally attack a constituent’s credibility and misrepresent a situation regarding safety of his constituents really fit to hold that office? Should he get a raise?

He’s visited some of my neighbors recently on “official business” related to the seasonal closure. I have to assume he is sharing these new recordings and laughing with his political friends now. I’ve talked to him twice and he has two recordings of me. He visited my father on official business and I believe he has recordings of him.

I think he taped an oil-spill investigator from the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation without consent when I filed a complaint. He wrote a painfully inarticulate account of his “conversation” with the investigator and sent it to the town board to “document” the situation. I FOILed the email and shared it with the investigator who assured me it did not represent the actual conversation (the email was provided to The Enterprise).

The superintendent, according to his own posts, should now have an extensive archive of recordings of constituents and officials made without consent and in his official capacity.

Should all these recordings should be provided to the Berne Records Access Officer? In my opinion, these recordings document “official town business.” He obviously chooses to share only the recordings he thinks benefit himself or “the party.”  In my opinion, this should no longer be his choice.

P.S. I have to apologize to the residents of Berne for voting for this “Republican.” It won’t happen again. In fact, I will forever now hesitate to vote on that line no matter who is running.

Joel Willsey

East Berne

Editor’s note: Robert Freeman, executive director of the New York State Committee on Open Government, pointed out that, under the state’s Freedom of Information Law, “all government agency records in any physical form whatever,” including recordings made by a town highway superintendent doing town work, are accessible under the law. They need not be housed at the town hall to be provided, he said; the town clerk, as the legal custodian of all records, must provide them upon request. “It doesn’t matter where they are kept,” said Freeman.