Mt. Pleasant Poised To Accede To Electoral System Rewarding Sleepy Hollow Voters
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By Barrett Seaman—
A post on its web site this past week has sent a signal to residents of the Town of Mt. Pleasant that its governing board is prepared to settle the nearly three-year-old legal battle over how board members are elected. According to the announcement, the town’s five-member board will vote at its March 10 meeting on whether to change in the current “at large” voting system, in which all voters choose among candidates, to one in which members would be elected to represent three discrete districts, one of which represents Sleepy Hollow, where roughly half the population of about 11,000 identifies as Hispanic.
Except for Sleepy Hollow, two-thirds of Mt. Pleasant’s voters are white and tend to vote Republican. An analysis by outside experts hired by the Town revealed a pattern in which candidates preferred by Sleepy Hollow voters consistently lost to ones favored by voters in Pleasantville, Hawthorne, Thornwood and Valhalla.
The case dates back to the summer of 2023, when the law firm of Abrams Fensterman LLP, representing five Hispanic voters from Sleepy Hollow, sent a letter to the board asserting that their current system violates New York State’s John L. Lewis Voting Rights Act by systemically discriminating against a minority segment of the population.
For the first few months, the Town Board followed protocol established by the Voting Rights Act, by considering some of the alternatives to at-large voting, including rank-choice voting that encourages voters to prioritize their votes, rewarding candidates that consistently place second or third. In January 2024, after weighing its options and holding two public hearings dominated by angry opponents to change, the board voted to fight the case and hired the national law firm of Baker Hostetler to represent the town.
Paralleling the Mt. Pleasant case was a similar challenge to the government in Newburgh, NY also brought by Abrams Fensterman, a firm with close ties to the Democratic Party. Newburgh took its case directly to the New York State Court of Appeals on grounds that the demand to change the voting system violated the Constitution. They lost and late last month agreed to switch to rank-choice voting.
The Newburgh settlement was in many ways the writing on the wall for Mt. Pleasant. Beyond the legal hurdle that case presented, was the issue of cost. Town Supervisor Carl Fulgenzi assured the public that legal fees would be paid out of a hefty “fund balance” reserve of between $14 and $17 million, rather than directly by taxpayers. Since hiring Baker Hostetler, the town has accumulated legal fees of approximately $1.4 million.
Beyond direct legal fees, the Voting Rights Act stipulates that in cases where a plaintiff prevails, its legal expenses must be paid by the losing defendant. In the announcement posted on Mt. Pleasant’s web site last week, the town acknowledged that, “The proposed settlement includes a $1.425 million payment for the plaintiffs’ attorney fees,” while adding, “most of which would be paid by the Town’s insurer.”
At the end of the day, the Town of Mt. Pleasant will have spent nearly $3 million to make a change that could have been made amicably in 2023 for nothing.
A board vote to settle the case on March 10 will trigger a switch to a district voting system in the fall of 2027 that will divide Mt. Pleasant voters into three districts of roughly equal size. One district will represent all of Pleasantville. A second would cover the majority of Sleepy Hollow, which in its entirety is slightly larger than Pleasantville, while a third would include the remaining unincorporated areas of the town. The Pleasantville and Sleepy Hollow votes would fill one seat each on the Town Board, while the unincorporated district will fill four seats.
According to the announcement, the proposed settlement would increase Board membership from four to six Town Board members, plus the Supervisor, who would still be elected at-large. The election of the Town Clerk, Highway Superintendent, Receiver of Taxes and court judges, reads the announcement, “is unaffected by the settlement.”
The principal legal force behind both the Newburgh and Mt. Pleasant settlements is Abrams Fensterman partner David Imamura, an Irvington resident and Westchester County legislator. “We are,” he said, speaking for plaintiffs as well as his Abrams Fensterman colleagues, “thrilled that after almost three years of litigation, minorities will get a seat at the table.”
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