Exit from race follows side work questions
Sheriff upset over his lawyer’s town job offer
The chief counsel to Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple withdrew from the race for a county court judgeship on Friday in the wake of a Times Union investigation into his side work.
Jasper Mills, 39, of Albany, was one of three candidates running to fill the vacancy created by former County Judge Peter Lynch’s election to state Supreme Court in November.
“I entered this race with enthusiasm and a clear conscience,” Mills said in a statement. “I am leaving this race with a heavy heart and a clear conscience.”
Mills’ announcement came
just hours after the Times Union presented his campaign manager, Libby Post, with questions about his pursuit of a part-time job with the town of Coeymans.
In early February, town officials insisted there was no professional relationship between Mills and the town.
“Jasper Mills has never been employed by the Town of Coeymans, has never received any payment from the Town of Coeymans, has never submitted a voucher for payment, and there are no pending payments to him,” wrote Deputy Supervisor Tom Dolan in an email, responding on behalf of Coeymans Supervisor Philip Crandall.
In a Feb. 7 interview with the Times Union, Mills acknowledged that Coeymans town officials had offered him a job. Mills said nothing about the resolution of the town’s recruitment efforts.
“They asked me if I could help them with their traffic tickets and things like town attorney-type duties,” Mills said. “I told them, ‘Listen, I don’t have any problem with it, but you’re going to have to talk to the sheriff because, you know, I have a responsibility at this office.’ Whatever conversations that Phil Crandall had with the sheriff, it ended up with him not authorizing it.”
Asked when Crandall offered the job, Mills said, “It was probably around New Year’s, I want to say.”
On Thursday, the Times Union asked Crandall in a phone interview if any
sort of work relationship between Mills and the town had existed.
“If he did any work for the town of Coeymans, I didn’t sign any check for him because it didn’t come across my desk,” Crandall replied. “So I’d have to say no . ... The only time he was in our office was when he came down with the sheriff to negotiate ... over (law enforcement) coverage for the town, and that was probably a year and a half, two years ago.”
Crandall said the only recent conversations he could recall between himself and Mills were “maybe twice” about Mills’ judicial ambitions. He and Dolan appeared at Mills’ campaign announcement kickoff on Jan. 16.
When he was asked about Mills’ admission that Crandall had offered him a job, the supervisor’s memory became more lucid.
“We were looking for a town prosecutor, and we offered the job to Jasper but he turned it down — because, obviously, he was getting ready to run for office,” Crandall said. Asked when the offer had been made, Crandall said “sometime within the last six to eight months.”
On Friday morning, the town responded to the Times Union’s FOIL request for any records related to its dealings with Mills. It produced two documents that revealed his recruitment proceeded much further than previously described.
One document revealed that the Town Board, including Crandall and Dolan, had voted unanimously at a Jan. 1 meeting to hire Mills as the town’s prosecutor for traffic matters at an annual rate of $12,800.
The second record showed that on Jan. 24, the town amended the earlier resolution in order to hire attorney Kenneth Mcguire to handle similar duties. The document includes no explanation for the change from Mills to Mcguire.
On Friday, Apple said Mills asked him in December if he could work for Coeymans prosecuting tickets. Apple then spoke to Crandall, and explained that Mills could not work for the town because of the obvious conflict between his day job and his proposed town post.
The Jan. 1 resolution said Mills’ Coeymans salary would be paid for from three revenue streams: $2,400 from town code and penal code trial matters; $5,200 from traffic tickets issued by Coeymans police; and another $5,200 drawn from tickets issued by State Police and the sheriff’s department — the one Mills works for.
“I was adamant and said no,” Apple said Friday. “It’s a clear conflict. Perception-wise, it’s a nightmare.”
Apple said he spoke to Crandall at the end of December and that the town supervisor appeared to understand the concern.
Apple — who until Friday had been one of Mills’ strongest supporters — said Friday he was “very, very disturbed over this Coeymans information, because I made it very clear to both parties that this was not allowable.”
He said Mills, a former Albany County prosecutor who went to work for the sheriff’s office in October 2016, was not under suspension from his county job, which in 2018 paid $112,000 a year. “It’s a personnel matter at this point,” Apple said.
The Times Union has in recent weeks also been examining Mills’ work in 2017 and 2018 as a special prosecutor for Rensselaer County, where last July he won the conviction of Richard Wright, who faced retrial in a 1986 arson that caused the deaths of two teenagers. A report on that aspect of Mills’ work will appear in Sunday’s edition.
In Mills’ statement suspending his campaign, Mills noted that it was “my first foray into elective office.”
“I have been overwhelmed by the support I’ve gotten from people from all walks of life in this county,” Mills said. “But, I have also been targeted by rumors and allegations about my professional and personal life that have caused me to re-evaluate whether running for Albany County Court judge at this point is the best course for me and my family.
“After much thought, I have decided it is best to suspend my campaign,” he said.
Cohoes City Court Judge Andra Ackerman, endorsed by the County Democratic Committee, and Albany City Court Judge Holly Trexler are headed for a June primary for the county seat.