There is something particularly ugly about a government that
- (1) claims to suffer from a shortage of qualified professionals,
- (2) seeks public money to remedy that shortage, and
- (3) simultaneously refuses employment to a highly qualified professional - whose family, quite coincidentally, has exposed misconduct by that same government.
That is the question now confronting Delaware County, New York.
Documents obtained by me under the Freedom of Information Law on October 29, 2026 - a lot of them this time, Delaware County did not consider release of THESE bombshell documents a threat, obviously - reveal that Delaware County officials spent months preparing an application for public funding to address what they describe as a shortage of environmental engineering professionals.
They wanted money to train three undergraduate environmental engineering students.
Meanwhile, Delaware County had denied employment to a ready environmental engineer living within a walking distance from the county building - BECAUSE she is a daughter of a journalist (me) who have spent years investigating and publishing accounts of official misconduct in the County.
The daughter is trilingual: English, Spanish, Russian.
She holds a Juris Doctor degree and a law license, a master's degree in environmental engineering, and expertise in geographic information systems (GIS).
She has successful professional experience in watershed planning. In fact, they quoted in official reports that HER performance in the stream protection program (for which she defended a graduation THESIS in her MA degree for environmental engineering) was THE ONLY successful performance in the ENTIRE watershed region.
She also had a bad, fatal flaw - for THIS County. She provided a personal firsthand witness account affidavit concerning law enforcement misconduct in the treatment of a violent drug dealer who was a potential confidential informant.
The County says it needs expertise. The applicant had expertise. The applicant also had evidence against County. So the County (1) orchestrated that she was canned from her employment with a County-entwined non-profit (Watershed Agricultural Council, Inc.), imported her job into County Planning Department - at taxpayer expense, split the job into two positions, doubling the pay - not for her though, and then DENIED her employment into either one of these position.
Quite a screwy plan - don't you think?
And that is where the employment decision becomes a matter of public accountability.
THE COUNTY'S OWN DOCUMENTS EXPOSE THE CONTRADICTION
In April through June 2026, Delaware County Planning, Parks and Watershed Affairs worked with the Delaware County Soil and Water Conservation District and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry to prepare an application for the Building the Engineering Workforce Summer Internship Program.
The stated problem was a shortage of trained environmental engineers capable of supporting watershed conservation, agricultural infrastructure, and environmental protection.
The proposed solution?
Three undergraduate interns, employed for ten weeks during the summer of 2027.
The budget included $24,000 in intern wages, faculty compensation, graduate research assistance, Apple tablets, field equipment, travel, and other expenses.
On September 2, 2026, the Catskill Watershed Corporation notified the County that its Public Education Committee had recommended approval of $36,463.75 in grant funding.
The County was prepared to mobilize government personnel, a public university, a conservation district, and a regional funding organization to introduce three students to professional work.
Yet it had rejected a candidate already trained in the very disciplines it claimed were in short supply.
How much education must a person possess before Delaware County considers her qualified?
A master's degree in environmental engineering?
GIS expertise?
A law degree?
A law license?
Successful watershed planning experience?
Three languages?
Or is there another qualification, one that never appears in the job announcement: a family sufficiently agreeable to County officials?
THE AFFIDAVIT THAT MAKES THE EMPLOYMENT DECISION PARTICULARLY TROUBLING
The rejected applicant was not merely the daughter of a government critic.
She had provided sworn evidence concerning the conduct of law enforcement officials in their treatment of a violent drug dealer who was a potential confidential informant.
The underlying matter involved serious questions about the handling of a person with a substantial criminal history, drug-related offenses, and a record of violence and threats.
The affidavit brought firsthand evidence into a controversy concerning the conduct of public officials.
That matters.
A sworn affidavit is not a social-media comment. It is evidence offered under penalty of perjury. Its purpose is to place facts before a tribunal where they can be tested against other evidence.
A government committed to accountability should welcome truthful evidence of official misconduct, investigate it, and correct wrongdoing where established.
A government hostile to accountability has another option: make participation in exposing misconduct professionally expensive.
And where the witness is the daughter of a journalist already investigating the same government, the possibility of retaliation takes on an additional dimension.
Punishing a journalist through her family would be an especially pernicious form of retaliation: the government need not silence the journalist directly if it can make the consequences of reporting fall upon her children.
The question is whether that is what happened here.
Delaware County owes an explanation grounded in its actual employment records, not a generic invocation of managerial discretion.
THE GOVERNMENT THAT CANNOT FIND ENGINEERS — EXCEPT WHEN ONE APPLIES
The County's grant documents are revealing because they were not written in response to a discrimination complaint.
They were written to obtain money.
When seeking funding, the County describes a need for engineering expertise, technical competence, watershed planning, environmental monitoring, and communication with landowners.
When evaluating a candidate possessing advanced qualifications in those areas, the County's actual selection criteria become crucial.
It cannot have one definition of professional need when soliciting public funds and an entirely different, unexplained definition when deciding whom to employ.
The grant application also repeatedly celebrates equitable workforce opportunities, including opportunities for people with disabilities.
How convenient to discover the virtues of inclusion when inclusion helps justify a grant application.
How much less convenient when a real, identifiable applicant seeks an actual job.
Public officials should be judged by whom they hire, whom they reject, and why — not by the fashionable vocabulary they insert into funding applications.
THE TAXPAYERS PAY FOR BOTH SIDES OF THIS CONTRADICTION
Consider the machinery involved.
Delaware County's Planning Department employed a grants manager to assemble the application.
Its commissioner participated in coordinating the effort.
Soil and Water personnel supplied proposed matching contributions, salaries, equipment specifications, and project information.
SUNY ESF personnel contributed research proposals, curricula, budgets, and evaluation methods.
The County prepared resolutions and a memorandum of agreement.
All of this administrative activity was directed toward obtaining approximately $36,000 for a program serving three undergraduate interns.
And the public should ask: What happened when an already qualified professional sought employment?
How much public money was expended on the hiring process? Who reviewed the application? What criteria were used? Who made the decision? What was the successful applicant's comparative experience, if another person was hired?
These are questions about the administration of public employment and public resources.
They are also questions about whether a government's professed need for expertise corresponds to its actual conduct.
RETALIATION DOES NOT BECOME ACCEPTABLE BECAUSE IT IS INDIRECT
The First Amendment protects criticism of government. It also protects the right to petition government for redress of grievances.
The constitutional problem does not disappear merely because the person who suffers an adverse employment decision is related to the government's critic.
A government employer cannot lawfully use hiring authority to punish protected expression through an applicant's family relationship. Nor may it retaliate against an applicant for constitutionally protected participation in exposing government misconduct.
The applicable legal claims depend upon the actual decision-makers, their knowledge, the nature of the protected activity, and evidence connecting that activity to the employment decision.
That is precisely why the employment records matter.
Who knew about the affidavit?
Who knew the applicant was the journalist's daughter?
Who participated in the hiring decision?
What reasons were given at the time?
Were those reasons consistent with the position's actual requirements?
Were the criteria applied consistently to other applicants?
The County's own records concerning its claimed workforce shortage make those questions especially difficult to dismiss.
THE AFFIDAVIT WAS ABOUT PUBLIC MISCONDUCT. THE JOB WAS PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT.
There is an additional reason this situation warrants scrutiny.
The affidavit concerned the treatment of a person whose criminal history and possible relationship with law enforcement raised questions of direct public importance.
The journalist's investigation concerned government conduct.
The applicant's employment prospects concerned government conduct.
And the newly disclosed workforce-development initiative also concerns government conduct.
These matters intersect at the same fundamental issue: whether public officials exercise public authority for legitimate governmental purposes or use it to protect themselves from scrutiny.
A county government is not a private club.
Its employment opportunities are not favors to be distributed among people whose families refrain from criticizing officials.
Its professional qualifications are not supposed to change according to the political convenience of the applicant.
And its publicly funded programs are not supposed to become exercises in congratulating officials for addressing problems that their own employment decisions may perpetuate.
DELAWARE COUNTY SHOULD PRODUCE THE HIRING RECORDS
The County's workforce-development documents are now available for examination.
The employment decision should receive the same scrutiny.
The relevant records include the vacancy announcement, job requirements, applicant evaluations, interview records, selection criteria, communications among decision-makers, and contemporaneous reasons for rejection.
They should be compared with the County's statements about the scarcity of environmental engineering and watershed planning expertise.
If the County had legitimate, consistently applied reasons for rejecting the candidate, those reasons should withstand examination.
If the evidence instead shows that a highly qualified candidate was rejected because she supplied sworn evidence of misconduct, because of her relationship to a journalist, or because of other protected activity, the implications extend far beyond one employment decision.
They concern the use of government employment authority to suppress accountability.
WHEN GOVERNMENT RETALIATION REACHES THE CHILDREN
There is a particularly disturbing possibility at the center of this matter.
A journalist investigates government misconduct.
Her daughter supplies sworn evidence relevant to that misconduct.
The daughter, professionally qualified in fields the government itself identifies as understaffed, is denied employment.
The same government then seeks public funding to develop the expertise she already possesses.
That sequence demands investigation.
It also illustrates why retaliation through family members, when established, is so destructive to freedom of expression.
A journalist can choose to continue investigating despite personal consequences.
Her children did not choose her profession. They are entitled to pursue their own careers, offer truthful evidence, and compete for public employment without having their opportunities determined by official hostility toward their parent.
A public employer that punishes a child for a parent's reporting is not merely retaliating against an individual. It is communicating a warning to everyone who might expose government misconduct:
Speak, and the consequences may follow your family.
That is the very antithesis of constitutional government.
THE COUNTY'S OWN WORDS SHOULD NOW BE USED TO MEASURE ITS CONDUCT
Delaware County has put its alleged shortage of qualified environmental engineering professionals into a formal grant application.
It has described the professional skills it values.
It has identified the public benefits those skills supposedly provide.
It has requested public funding to develop them.
And it has rejected a known applicant already possessing an unusually strong combination of those qualifications.
The public should not be asked to accept the County's workforce-shortage narrative on faith while its actual hiring decisions remain unexplained.
Nor should a government that has been accused of misconduct expect the public to ignore the professional consequences experienced by a witness who supplied sworn evidence against it.
The County's hiring records should be examined. Its decision-makers should be identified. Its stated reasons should be tested.
Because the ultimate question is no longer simply whether Delaware County needs environmental engineers.
It is whether Delaware County wants qualified professionals — or only qualified professionals whose families know better than to expose the government.
Of course - the daughter in question could be TRAINING those interns... But - to give a job to the daughter of A NERONI????!!!!!
Based on documents that were already on file with the author before today's FOIL disclosure, and documents produced by Delaware County on October 29, 2026, including the CWC Workforce Development Grant application, correspondence among Delaware County Planning, DCSWCD, and SUNY ESF, and the September 2, 2026 CWC funding recommendation.
No comments:
Post a Comment