By Michael Kaufman

What’s wrong with this sentence, which appeared the other day in a daily newspaper in our region? “The independent board formed last month to sell Orange County’s nursing home is expected to solicit offers from prospective buyers next week and have bids by mid-June.” If you haven’t figured it out yet the answer appears in the next sentence: “Meeting for the first time Monday since being appointed by County Executive Steve Neuhaus and legislative leaders, the six volunteers initially named to the Orange Valley View Development Corporation picked a seventh member and the officers for their board, as the attorney advising them laid out a rapid timetable for their work.”

A more accurate way to put it would be, “The bunch of toadies appointed to solicit bids to sell the 360-bed Valley View Center for Nursing Care and Rehabilitation to a private, for-profit corporation is working fast because this thing stinks to high heaven and everyone in Orange County knows it.”

A bit later in the article we learn that the attorney doing the advising (also appointed by Neuhaus) is affiliated with the Harris Beach law firm, the same people hired by the county to set up the local development corporation (LDC). The stench gets even worse as readers are informed that the board’s inaugural meeting was open to the public, “except for a private session” during which the members chose officers and spoke with attorney Shawn Griffin of Harris Beach. Oh, and by the way, any future discussions about purchase offers “are expected to take place behind closed doors.”

Only one sentence mentioned perhaps the most important point: “Unless a lawsuit brought by privatization opponents invalidates the move, the LDC board can decide which bidder buys and takes over the operation of Valley View without further action by the Legislature.” That lawsuit, filed by Michael Sussman on behalf of Valley View residents, employees, not to mention most people in Orange County, has yet to be decided. But the last time the county legislators tangled with Sussman they didn’t do so hot. Our local Republicans, taking a cue from their counterparts at higher levels of government, had gerrymandered a couple of districts so as to ensure that people of color would not constitute the majority of voters. They ended up with egg on their lily-white faces after Sussman got through with them.

I hope that wolf-in-sheep’s clothing Neuhaus, who had pledged not to sell Valley View during his election campaign, and the cowardly weasels among the Republican majority in the county legislature (with the notable exception of Mike Anagnostakis) meet a similar fate.  Anagnostakis deserves special recognition for his courageous and principled stand on this issue.  As for the rest, what else can you call them but cowardly after they set up an LDC to do the deed and pretend it is independent when it is anything but? And just to put the stinko icing on the cake, here is the last paragraph of the news article in its entirety: “Griffin told the Times Herald-Record that the board will likely make public the names of all bidders — but not the prices they are offering — once the solicitation period ends. The identity and price of the winning bidder would be released once the county and buyer have signed a sale contract, he said.”

In other words, they will meet in secret, make their decision in secret, and only tell the public about it after the contract has been signed. I guess that’s one way to be independent: independent of public oversight or scrutiny. 

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.