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Dear Editor:
Fact: After I was appointed to our County Legislature's Budget, Finance, and Personnel Committee in 2004, and that committee used to meet a dozen times every November at 2 pm in the afternoon to review the county budget (it now meets later in the afternoon), and after the principal at my school in NYC told me I had to make a decision between being a county legislator or continuing my teaching job in the Bronx, I made my decision to quit teaching there and instead teach closer to home.
Gannon attacks me as "disruptive" without providing the full context for what's really been happening for years at County Legislature meetings (and especially the Sept. 7th Budget, Finance, and Personnel Committee meeting)-- the fact is that county legislators in the GOP majority have repeatedly literally interrupted me and tried to shut me down in an effort to attempt to stop me from exposing illegal county government actions.
Yes-- I am unafraid to stand alone to protect taxpayers in Rhinebeck and Clinton from higher property taxes from Dutchess County having to pay for extra legal costs to defend itself from lawsuits-- over blatantly illegal county government actions (most recently, violation of Title VI of 1964 Civil Rights Act and Section 119-0 of NYS General Municipal Law re: county takeover of Poughkeepsie bus system-- completely illegal because Poughkeepsie Common Council never voted to approve this takeover-- look it up for yourselves, folks).
Yes-- I left that job because even my first term in office I found that I was (still am) doing research/advocacy on issues that no one else was doing-- finding/publicizing corporate welfare waste and corruption in our county's Empire Zone program, uncovering serious MTBE contamination of our drinking water in communities across our county (even in Rhinebeck and Clinton), and massive pay-to-play conflicts of interest regarding literally millions of our county tax dollars going in Dutchess contracts to the same firms making thousands of dollars in donations to Steinhaus and Dutchess GOP.
Get the facts @ http://www.KeepJoel.org -- keep this workaholic watchdog legislator in office.
Yours,
Joel Tyner
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