Race-baiting GOPer booted off school bd.
ALBANY — Carl Paladino, the bombastic Buffalo businessman who ignited a firestorm last year with incendiary and racist remarks about former President Barack Obama and his wife, has been booted off his hometown school board.
In a decision made public Thursday morning, state Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia granted the Buffalo School Board’s request that she remove him from the school system’s governing body.
But Elia’s decision — and the school board’s request — was not based on Paladino’s racially charged remarks about the Obamas.
Instead, Elia concluded that Paladino wrongly disclosed information from an executive session of the school board.
“The record demonstrates that respondent disclosed confidential information regarding collective negotiations under the Taylor Law which he gained in the course of his participation as a board member in executive session, and that his disclosures constituted a willful violation of law warranting his removal,” Elia concluded in her decision.
The decision came after Elia held a hearing on the matter that stretched over several days in June.
Paladino, who was the GOP’s 2010 candidate for governor and the co-chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in New York, did not respond to a Daily News request for comment but told a Buffalo radio station that he hadn’t decided to whether to challenge Elia’s ruling, which he derided as a political move by the commissioner.
“Unfortunately, these people are very susceptible to politics and whoever is screaming loudest,” he said.
Paladino, who has already filed a federal lawsuit against the Buffalo school board over its effort to remove him, added that “if the state really wanted to do something to help the Buffalo children, they would discharge the entire board.”
The board moved to remove Paladino after a weekly newspaper in Buffalo published remarks from him stating that he hoped President Obama would have sex with a cow and die from mad cow disease, and that Michelle Obama would be “let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe” to live in a cave with a gorilla.
Paladino’s comments were widely condemned and drew a rebuke from Trump’s transition team. He eventually apologized and said he never intended for the remarks to be made public.