WESTERLO — What would otherwise have likely been an uncontroversial and even welcome law drew significant criticism from Westerlo residents before their town board passed it on Tuesday in a 3-to-2 vote. 

The law, which allows the town to hire applicants who live outside of Westerlo for certain positions, was designed to formalize what had already been a long-standing practice of hiring nonlocals for certain positions, as is the case in several neighboring towns. 

New York State Town Law holds that various positions within a town’s government are to be held by electors of that town, unless the town passes a law that says otherwise. Westerlo’s law applies to the court clerk, town attorney, building inspector, assessor, dog-control officer, deputy highway superintendent, and deputy town clerk. 

Westerlo’s law opens up the applicant pool for those positions to all of Albany County and the counties adjacent to it (although because appointed assessors like Westerlo’s, and dog-control officers in general, aren’t subject to residency requirements, it seems that their inclusion in the law is redundant). 

The law was recommended to the town by Katie Hodgdon, an attorney with the New York State Association of Towns, according to an email presented by Supervisor Matthew Kryzak at the meeting, under the circumstance that the town has already appointed non-residents.

Hodgdon said that “any action can be ratified after the fact so long as it has the ability to do so in the first instance.”

But the inclusion of the town attorney on the list of positions upset some residents who feel that the current attorney, George McHugh, does not deserve to earn the benefits that come with being a town employee as opposed to an independent contractor. 

When McHugh was brought on as the town’s attorney in August of 2021, it wasn’t made clear that he was hired as an employee and not a contractor, and was therefore eligible to receive retirement benefits. 

It complicates the justification Kryzak gave at the time for hiring McHugh and ditching the town’s previous counsel, Javid Afzali, of Knox, who represented the town as a member of the law firm Harris Beach. 

Kryzak had told The Enterprise that the decision came down to cost, since McHugh was paid a flat rate (or salary, as it turned out) of $24,000, plus $4,000 in contractual fees, while Afzali charged hourly. Paying on an hourly basis meant that legal costs could potentially outpace what was budgeted, and this is what Kryzak said had been happening when the town board opted for McHugh. 

“With as much legal work as we’ve needed done with the new [comprehensive] plan and all the zoning work that we’re doing right now with the three renewable energy laws — the solar, battery storage, and wind energy — we’ve gone over budget with legal fees on an hourly basis,” Kryzak said at the time. 

In the few years before McHugh’s arrival, the budget for legal fees has been around $27,000, but by the first half of 2021, with Afzali as counsel, Kryzak suggested that the town was on track to spend $32,000, if not more, since the town had already spent $16,000 in the first six months. 

McHugh still earns $24,000, but $4,000 was added in this year’s budget for contractual fees. 

Kryzak said at the May 2 meeting that he didn’t know how much the town has paid toward McHugh’s pension so far, and that the information would have to be obtained from the state. 

The Enterprise is awaiting a response to a Freedom of Information Law request to the Office of the New York State Comptroller for that information. 

One woman in the gallery at the May 2 meeting noted that the town has not had any problem securing outside legal counsel in the past, and that therefore there is no reason to change the category Westerlo’s attorneys fall under, except to benefit McHugh by making him eligible for retirement benefits. 

“The town does not need to change the definition of attorney in order to obtain legal counsel who is able to practice law in New York State,” she said. 

Another woman said she worries that McHugh, who is the supervisor of Coeymans and is counsel to the Albany County Sheriff’s Office, may be too involved in other roles to avoid conflicts of interest and may not have “our own town’s interests at heart.”

McHugh declined to comment after the meeting.

It’s likely that some of the thorniness toward McHugh stems from recent, unflattering media coverage he has received as Coeymans’ supervisor.

While there have been no official findings of misconduct, The Times-Union reports that residents and some town officials in Coeymans have concerns that McHugh has conflicts of interest with different developers who appear before the town. 

Most notable is Carver Companies, which owns the Port of Coeymans, and for whom McHugh served as legal counsel before taking public office. Long Energy, meanwhile, has reportedly accused McHugh of interfering with its proposal on behalf of the town’s planning board chairman, who has a competing propane business. 

The Times-Union Editorial Board has called for an investigation into McHugh, though made allowance for the fact that the controversies there may be “small-town petty politics.”

Kryzak told The Enterprise last month that he’s fully behind McHugh despite the coverage, and attributed some of the attention McHugh has gotten to the fact that it’s an election year. McHugh’s term as supervisor ends at the end of this year, according to the Coeymans website. 

Other concerns

Some misgivings about Westerlo’s law, however, were based on misunderstandings or misinformation. 

For instance, the first woman noted that the law uses the term “dog-control officer” and “court clerk” instead of “dog warden” and “clerk to the justices,” which are how the positions are referred to on the town site. A man followed up by wondering if the law could be voted on in that form, and said that it was “clearly copied and pasted from the Coeymans law.”

All the positions listed in the law are positions within Westerlo, despite the semantic differences between Westerlo’s site and how they are referred to in state texts. 

Other people were simply concerned about taking jobs from Westerlo residents. 

Planning Board Chairman Beau Loendorf told the board that the town should “do our very best to offer the [jobs] to residents and market to residents first, before moving forward.”

He said that a statement Kryzak made about the town giving preference to Westerlo residents in spite of the law did not hold much water because of the way the town board has handled appointments in the past. 

One woman said, “Once this law passes, anyone from Albany County, Greene County, Schoharie County, Schenectady County, Saratoga County, Rensselaer County, and Columbia County can apply for these positions. If the town board passes this law, they are taking jobs away from those in our community.” 

Board members Amie Burnside and Lorraine Pecylak voted with Kryzak in favor of the law, while board members Josh Beers and Pete Manahan voted against it. All of them are GOP-backed.