RENSSELAERVILLE — As three people run for two town board seats in Rensselaerville, two are running for one justice seat. 

Incumbent justice Gregory E. Bischoff, a Democrat backed by his own party, is defending his seat from Richard Tollner, who is endorsed by the Republican and Conservative parties.

Rensselaerville has two part-time justices, who serve four-year terms. Muriel Frasher, a Conservative, is in the middle of her term, having been re-elected in 2022.

Bischoff

Bischoff first took office in 2012, after an election, stepping down at the end of 2016. After his successor, Ronald Bates, died in 2019, Bischoff was appointed in an emergency meeting, and then ran again later that year for a full four-year term, uncontested. 

“It’s sort of a community-service type thing,” Bischoff told The Enterprise in 2019 about why he was running again. 

He has spent many years in education, having been a teacher for the Middleburgh school district for 27 years, principal at Camp Cass youth detention center before retiring in 2005, and a ski instructor. He also worked for AT&T and served in the United States Navy.

He told The Enterprise that his interest in being justice had been piqued after taking legal courses as part of his school administrator certification process. 

Richard Tollner

Richard Tollner is the chairman of the Rensselaerville Republican Party, and has been on the boards of the local library and Trinity Church, and also was Rensselaerville’s deputy supervisor.

Tollner will soon finish a three-year term as chairman of the Diocese of Rockville Centre Unsecured Creditors Committee, which represents “over 500 sexually abused children,” he wrote in a letter to the Enterprise editor this week. 

Tollner, who himself has accused a Catholic priest of sexually abusing him in his youth, lobbied the state assembly for 12 years to pass the Child Victims Act. 

He said in his letter that he is running this year “to continue my career of working for justice.” 

As chairman of the unsecured creditors committee, Tollner wrote, he worked with victims, courts, families, and attorneys on both sides. 

“That has empowered me to continue on, in a community service position,” he wrote, going on to say that he is not running “against” Bischoff, whom he describes as a “good man.” 

“The Town Justice position is not a political one,” he wrote.