Mt. Pleasant’s Fight To Stave Off Sleepy Hollow Voting Rights Challenge Is Proving Costly

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Mt. Pleasant Town Supervisor Carl Fulgenzi

September 29, 2024

By Barrett Seaman–

In a perfunctory 5-0 vote at its September 24 meeting, the Town Board of Mt. Pleasant authorized another payment to the international law firm of Baker Hostetler—this time for $343,738.82, covering fees incurred during the months of June and July. That brings the Town’s year-to-date legal bill for this case to over $1,075,000.

The money is for the firm’s work in defending the Mt. Pleasant against a lawsuit by five Hispanic residents of the Village of Sleepy Hollow, which is part of the Mt. Pleasant, alleging that its “at-large” system of electing board members systematically discriminates against Sleepy Hollow’s large Hispanic community, in violation of New York’s John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act. The case was brought by the firm of Abrams Fensterman LLP.

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Two independent experts hired by the Town Board last year essentially agreed with the plaintiffs, noting that in the last six Town-wide elections, candidates supported by Hispanic voters prevailed in only one election. In all the others, the preferences of Hispanic voters were lost in a sea of predominantly white voters in the rest of Mt. Pleasant. Despite the considerable legal costs and a poor record nationally in defending against Voting Rights challenges, the board voted to fight it.

For background on this, go to: https://thehudsonindependent.com/mt-pleasant-grapples-with-sleepy-hollow-voting-rights-charge/;

https://thehudsonindependent.com/mt-pleasant-pays-300000-to-law-firm-to-cover-four-months-work-on-sleepy-hollow-voting-rights-case/, and:

https://thehudsonindependent.com/mt-pleasant-hires-national-law-firm-to-fight-allegations-by-sleepy-hollow-hispanics-that-the-town-is-violating-the-voting-rights-act/.

At the rate it’s going, the Baker Hostetler legal bill will almost certainly surpass $2 million by this time next year. Asked how long he expected the case to drag on, Town Supervisor Carl Fulgenzi allowed that he didn’t know. “The opposition keeps throwing stuff at us that has nothing to do with [the Town’s voting system]. The case has yet to go before a judge. “It’s a paper fight right now,” Fulgenzi says.

The one mitigating factor, he says, is that the town’s insurance policy is picking up the tab for “about half” of the legal bills.

Fulgenzi argues that changing the voting method from its current “at-large” method, in which all voters have equal standing throughout the town, to a “ward” system in which voting blocs, such as the villages, elect their own representatives, would set up a conflict of interest in which town board members elected by a village would potentially be faced with issues inherently against the interests of the villages they represent. That, says the Supervisor, “makes it difficult to represent the interests of those villages and those of the Town Board at the same time.”

Claiming that assertion “doesn’t make sense,” David Imamura, an attorney representing the Sleepy Hollow voters, counters that “you could make that argument about any level of government.”

Asked whether the town would consider another voting method, such as rank choice voting, the Supervisor said residents were “just confused by this.”

“To me,” he concluded, “the fairest way is what we have now.”

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