Sapir alleges Talerman continues to advise BOH despite conflicting interests
Credit: By Bradford Randall | March 16, 2013 | kingstonjournal.com ~~
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KINGSTON- Dan Sapir, the longest tenured member of Kingston’s Board of Health (BOH) has been accusing Jay Talerman, Kingston’s Town Counsel, of conflicting interests since last November.
Now, Sapir (pictured) believes he’s found a smoking gun.
“It is absolutely a conflict of interest,” Sapir said as he held a printed copy of an email authored by Talerman and sent to both BOH Chairman Joe Casna and acting-Town Administrator Nancy Howlett.
The letter, which was dated February 21, informs Casna and Howlett of a lengthy correspondence Talerman received from Mary O’Donnell’s attorney earlier that day warning Kingston officials not to “capitulate to mob mentality and shut [the turbines] down” at a BOH meeting scheduled only hours later.
Talerman, who was in Grand Cayman on holiday at the time, did not leave his work at home.
“In reviewing the [BOH] agenda…I see a ‘discussion pertaining to flicker’ but see no reference to a specific turbine or to enforcement,” Talerman wrote to Casna and Howlett. “As consequence, it is my opinion that the BOH’s agenda is insufficient to provide notice of any alleged enforcement action.”
“The conflict is so clear in my mind,” Sapir said during a Friday afternoon interview with KingstonJournal.com. “He’s already said he can’t advise the BOH…and us, like damn fools, we’re asking for [Talerman’s] advice.”
Sapir, who has also long requested the hiring of a special counsel to assist the BOH without conflict, may be right.
“Indeed, I cannot give any legal advice to the BOH at all,” Talerman wrote last year as reported by WickedLocal:Kingston reporter Kathryn Gallerani in November.
Sapir said he believes that Kingston’s top lawyer has ignored his own words and thinks Talerman’s February 21 email to Casna and Howlett amounts to Talerman’s giving of legal advice regarding wind turbines to BOH Chairman Joe Casna.
Back in January, months after Talerman told the BOH he could not provide legal counsel, the Journal’s cameras were rolling as the BOH talked turbines when we caught this sentence trip off of Talerman’s tongue.
If at any point and time the [BOH] felt that abatement of a nuisance is appropriate, and I don’t think it’s appropriate yet, then the [BOH] could make that order.”
Talerman, who has been restricted from providing legal advice to the BOH since the turbines came before the health board last year due to a conflict of interest with the Kingston Wind Independence (KWI) Turbine, has been cited as one of the legal forces who helped “hammer out the lease agreement for the [KWI Turbine],” according to a Boston Globe report dated January 20.
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