Dawn Porreca Endorses Kathy Leck Eldridge, Janice Brodowski, and Carol Peckham

Dawn Porreca submitted the following Letter to the Editor to both the Columbia Paper and to the Register-Star on Monday, October 30.

Who's Paying for Ed Nabozny's Campaign?

This one is for people who like to follow the money.

The New York State Board of Elections has strict rules for reporting contributions made to candidates for public office, for obvious reasons. You can see those reports here.

Individual candidates may file their own reports or authorize a committee to manage their campaign expenses and file for them. Ed Nabozny has authorized The Friends of Ed Nabozny.

The Friends of Ed Nabozny reported various contributions to his 2015 campaign. Ed also received contributions from the Columbia County Democratic Committee and the Greenport Democratic Committee. But that was 2015. Since Ed elected to caucus with Republicans and lost the endorsement of local and county Democrats, he won't see any contributions from Democratic committees this year. But you would expect that Friends of Ed Nabozny is still behind him and, presumably, one or more Republican committees.

But The Friends of Ed Nabozny hasn't filed ANY of the four reports required since July in 2017.

Neither has the Greenport Town Republican Committee!

Perhaps the Columbia County Republican Committee has information for us. At least they have filed two reports (there was no county Republican primary).

However, although they do show contributions to John Faso and to Michael Blasl in their 11-Day Pre General report, there are NO contributions to Ed Nabozny. So who's been paying for all those signs, and the shiny color mailings we keep getting?

If you'd like to know who's behind Kathy Leck Eldridge, Janice Brodowski, and Carol Peckham, they have all authorized the Greenport Democratic Committee to represent them and all required reports have been filed.

 So who's behind Ed Nabozny? Are they hiding until after the election?

What Happened to Greenport's New Solar Farm?

Almost two years ago, on December 30, 2015, Greenport signed a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Solar City  for the installation of a solar farm on four acres of town property located on Middle Road. The farm was expected to produce 100% of the electricity the town government currently obtained from National Grid, at a substantially lower price—saving Greenport "tens of thousands of dollars in electricity costs each year." Solar City agreed to an "outside commercial date of operation" of December 18, 2016, with a penalty for each day past that date.

In February 2017, Solar City notified the Town Board that they were unable to meet that date due to "difficulty negotiating" with National Grid "over the need for costly substation upgrades." On March 1, in a "First Amendment to the PPA," the Board passed Resolution 35-2017 to extend the due date to December 31, 2017.

 A few questions:

•  Did Solar City pay Greenport any penalty from December 18, 2016 to March 1, 2017?
•  Does the First Amendment to the PPA, which is not available on the town's website, contain the same penalty for each day past the new outside date? 
•  When asked at the most recent town meeting when the solar farm is expected to be operational, Supervisor Ed Nabozny replied that "as a layman's guess" it would be three or four months, which is past the current due date. Why does Supervisor Nabozny have to make "a layman's guess"? 
• Why does he know so little about a project expected to save Greenport a lot of money? 
•  If the solar farm is late again, will Supervisor Nabozny still be reluctant to collect a penalty from Solar City?

We pay Greenport's lawyers to write deadlines and penalties into contracts because when we lose time with a vendor we lose money. Is there more concern about Solar City's finances than about Greenport's?