With Niagara County Sheriff Tom Beilein's expected appointment this week as chairman of the state Commission of Corrections, it will take a miracle for the broke, disheveled and dispirited county Democrats to hang on to the sheriff's department beyond November.
Republicans and Democrats alike are already lining up behind Niagara Falls Chief of Detectives Ernie Palmer, who previously served as chief of police in both the Falls and Youngstown, and is a two-term town councilman in Lewiston.
"Ernie would be a unique candidate to run on the Republican line because of his tremendous popularity in the western end of the county, which is traditionally a Democratic stronghold," one city Democratic committeeman told the Reporter. "With the big Republican advantage in the east, he looks pretty unbeatable at this point."
County Republican Chairman Henry Wojtaszek, who met with Palmer last week to seal the deal, said the candidacy would make his job a lot easier.
"Ernie's west county roots run deep," Wojtaszek said. "He grew up in the Falls, and in addition to his various official positions, is well known as a guitarist and singer in a number of popular rock bands here years ago."
Beilein will be replaced by his hand-picked successor, Chief Deputy James Voutour, who has never run for elective office and served as a graveyard-shift captain with the sheriff's department until about three weeks ago.
While he will likely be appointed by Gov. Eliot Spitzer to the sheriff's position, it is highly unlikely he will be approved by the state Senate, Albany sources confirmed.
"Are you kidding me? When this gets to the Senate it'll be like it disappeared into a black hole," the source continued. "It was a trade-off: The governor got Beilein and Niagara County gets a Republican sheriff."
Beilein was the first prominent law enforcement officer to endorse Spitzer during his successful run for state attorney general, a post he held until his election as governor in 2006. Most people thought he would have gotten the job several months ago, when Republican commission member Frederick Lamy's term expired.
And it would have been, had it not been for state Assemblywoman Francine Del Monte's attempts to "help" Beilein with the Albany approval process. Del Monte's relationship with Spitzer might charitably described as "strained," since she serves as one of the chief foot soldiers for Sheldon Silver, a longtime nemesis of Spitzer.
"Francine contacted the governor and red flags went up all over the place," one Albany insider told the Reporter. "It almost killed the whole deal."
Del Monte's bumbling left it to state Sen. George Maziarz to lobby hard for Beilein's appointment. Although he is a Republican, Maziarz is known to have the ear of the Democratic governor, who remains stung by a series of Del Monte betrayals dating back to shortly after he took office.
In addition to Voutour and Palmer, two other names have cropped up as possible candidates for sheriff: Deputy Brian Grear and Sheriff's Investigator Scott Eliot.
Grear, a Republican, ran against Beilein in 2005, managing to pull fewer than 20,000 of the more than 51,000 votes cast and alienate the entire leadership of his own party in the process. With no money and virtually no name recognition in the west end of the county, he would pose no serious threat to Palmer in a potential primary race.
On the Democratic side, Eliot has much in common with his possible primary rival Voutour -- most Niagara County voters have never heard of either of them. And given the fact that the county Democrats are virtually bankrupt, it is highly unlikely that enough resources can be mustered over the next 10 months to rectify that problem.
Democratic Chairman Dan Rivera, who was fired from his job as an insurance investigator after it was discovered he was using his position to dig up dirt on political foes, is a virtual non-entity outside of his North Tonawanda base, and even there his power to get candidates elected is suspect.
In sharp contrast to the Democrats' money woes, county Republicans are reportedly prepared to spend upwards of $100,000 to secure the sheriff's office. In the event that Palmer wins in November, Republicans will control the sheriff's department, the county legislature, the district attorney's office, the county legislature and the county clerk's office, in addition to having a lock on most of the important appointed positions.
Popular Niagara County judge Matthew J. Murphy III stands virtually alone in representing the Democrats here.
Beilein was first elected sheriff in 1993. His salary this year was to be $96,318, but he will earn $101,400 during the first year of his five-year term as commission chairman. Housing costs and transportation to and from Albany from his Appleton home are also included in the package, sources said.
While he was never seriously challenged in an election, Beilein's once-sterling reputation has become a bit tarnished in recent years amid allegations of political reprisals, numerous lawsuits and botched investigations.
An internal report, never made public and obtained exclusively by the Reporter, shows that between 1994 and 2004 the department shelled out approximately $1.1 million on judgments and settlements to resolve cases of wrongful death, assault, sexual assault, use of excessive force, false arrest and numerous "accidents" that have befallen suspects while in their custody. And the report noted many more were still outstanding.
Additionally, the awards covered in the internal report don't include those sought and received by sheriff's department employees -- deputies and jail guards -- who have gone to arbitration or sued in court on grounds of harassment, discrimination and other workplace issues.
Last August the Niagara County Legislature voted to award former jail guard John Hamdy $100,000 in a discrimination suit he brought after he left the department, and at least a half-dozen other such cases are currently pending.
Former deputy John Taddeo, who was terminated in June 2006 after his work on Brian Grear's campaign to unseat Beilein became a matter of public record, has brought some of the most egregious charges. Taddeo had five months and two weeks to go before his retirement and had accumulated four months and two weeks in unused sick time and leave at the time of his dismissal.
His attorney, Andrew Fleming of Batavia, said that his client was denied anything even vaguely resembling due process during the runup to his dismissal, but added that Taddeo was smart enough to realize what was happening and carefully document everything that occurred during the rigged process.
He is currently suing the county for unspecified but significant damages, Fleming said. And while Taddeo and others charge Beilein punished those who opposed him politically, he rewarded others for the most dubious of accomplishments.
Deputy Michael P. Dunn, who arrested prominent state Supreme Court Justice Amy Fricano after the respected jurist passed a series of field sobriety tests following a one-car accident in Lockport in April, was made an acting shift sergeant by Beilein shortly after the judge's acquittal on hit-and-run and driving-under-the-influence charges.
Dunn was not on the list of deputies who passed the sergeant's test at the time of his promotion, department sources told the Reporter.
The day after Fricano's arrest, Beilein took time out of his allegedly busy schedule to compose a lengthy news release, hold a publicized press conference and then sit for interviews with just about everyone in Niagara County carrying a notebook, microphone or camera. Unsurprisingly, the sheriff was nowhere to be found after his ridiculous case was laughed out of court last summer.
Virtually every factual assertion made by Beilein in the hours and days following Fricano's arrest was proved false as the case was tried before Lockport Town Justice Leonard O. Tilney, who was unequivocal in his rejection of the prosecution's case on charges.
According to Beilein, Fricano "fled the scene" of a Lockport traffic mishap, failed numerous field sobriety tests and "admitted" to taking powerful drugs just prior to the incident. Furthermore, Beilein led reporters to believe that no record of a 911 call could be found, despite the judge's insistence that she had made the cell phone call from the scene.
The sheer ridiculousness of the case, and its complete collapse in a court of law, led to speculation that the arrest of Fricano, a prominent Republican, was engineered in order to impress prominent Democrats who could influence his appointment.
Denise O'Donnell, the former U.S. Attorney in Buffalo who is now commissioner of the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, recommended Beilein to the governor.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Feb. 19 2008 |