How do projects get considered?
Q: The old NL Industries Superfund site on Central Avenue in Colonie has been cleared for sale. The federal government is auctioning it off.
An idea has been kicked around over the years that the land could be used to host a link from the Central Avenue/ Osborne Road intersection to the Route 85/I-90 interchange. This would alleviate the heavy traffic borne by the nearby residential neighborhood that is used as a cut-through from Central Avenue to the same interchange. It also would be safer and less time consuming for residents and commuters.
It seems that there would be no better time than now to study this. The land is available, interest in it is low, the infrastructure bill has passed and the need is great. Can you pose this to the proper authorities? I am not sure whose domain this is — town of Colonie, city/county of Albany, New York state, the federal government?
As a follow-up, how do projects of interest to the public get considered, if they are not already on any transportation authority’s radar? Is there a process to propose or petition them to study a potential project? — Joseph Mirabile, Colonie
A: The project you propose would be undertaken by the state Department of Transportation, but the DOT is not planning anything along those lines, said agency spokesman Bryan Viggiani.
Since you first wrote in, interest in the site has grown. There are 11 bids, with the highest being for $1.7 million, all
in its raid March 27, 2018, on a town house on Hale Drive in Halfmoon.
“In this case, disqualification and reassignment are the only way to preserve Mr. Raniere’s rights, the rule of law, and justice — let alone the appearance of justice,” Tully stated. “The court’s history of biased comments and rulings, in this case, establishes that Judge Garaufis cannot engage neutrally and impartially moving forward. Only a new judge can fairly adjudicate any further issues in this case without these pre-existing biases and prejudices.”
Tully said Garaufis “displayed, to an ordinary observer, a lack of judicial temperament and expressed its personal distaste for Mr. Raniere and his counsel such that the court’s conduct neither satisfies justice nor any appearance of justice.”
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have previously called the allegations of tampering frivolous. The former 15-year-old victim whose images appeared in the child pornography spoke at Raniere’s sentencing in October 2020. The woman, now in her 30s, said Raniere began grooming her at age 13, started a sexual relationship with her at 15 and filmed the child pornographic images of her. She told Garaufis that Raniere “used my innocence to do whatever he wanted with me — not just sexually but also psychologically. He manipulated me into what he wanted, for his own reasons and for his own pleasure.”
Raniere, 61, known in NXIVM as “Vanguard,” who led NXIVM and its Executive Success Programs in Colonie for 20 years, is serving a 120-year sentence in federal prison in Arizona for sex trafficking, forced labor conspiracy and racketeering charged that included underlying acts of extortion, identity theft and possession of child pornography.
Tully contends Garaufis, a judge since August 2000, showed bias against Raniere in several ways, including his reference to star prosecution witness, former NXIVM official Lauren Salzman, as a “broken” person, and in telling Raniere co-defendant Clare Bronfman, serving nearly seven years in prison for conspiring to conceal and harbor illegal immigrants for financial gain, and identification fraud, that she refused to “renounce” Raniere.
Tully’s motion included excerpts from a July 21, 2021, hearing when he and then-raniere’s attorney, Marc Fernich, exchanged heated words after Fernich asked for an adjournment to attend the funeral of a fellow attorney, Joel Winograd. The judge allowed Fernich to attend the service but brusquely told Fernich he could have been in court earlier.
“Give him this to go cry on. He’s not a member of your family, sir,” the judge told Fernich, adding he had “an obligation to this court.”
“And I’m here,” Fernich responded.
“Be seated or I’ll have you arrested,” Garaufis told Fernich.
“You have me arrested?” Fernich asked.
“Be seated,” the judge told Fernich.
“This demeans you more than me,” Fernich responded.
“Be seated,” Garaufis told Fernich a second time.
“It’s a disgrace. It’s a disgrace. It’s a lack of human decency,” Fernich said.
On Tuesday, the same day Tully argued Raniere’s appeal before a federal court tribunal in Manhattan, Tully filed a motion highlighting alleged wrongdoing by the FBI. It included statements from retired 20-year FBI agent J. Richard Kiper, who contends a key federal witness misled the jury in a “miscarriage of justice” about the reliability of data to prove the creation of digital photographs.
“If the government could blatantly mislead a jury about something so easy to disprove, it leaves me to ponder: What else were they lying about?” Kiper stated in Tully’s motion.
At trial, metadata on photos showed to jurors showed the images of the 15-year-old girl were taken in November 2005, when the girl was 15 and Raniere was 45. In addition, text messages exchanged between Raniere and the woman showed Raniere told her in September 2014 that he was “proud to have been your husband for 8.75 years” which dated to when she was 15.
At trial, just before prosecutors rested their case, they played a video in which Raniere told supporters that some young children are “perfectly happy” having sex with adults and that it was “society” that considers it abuse. And Raniere told supporters the age of consent in some parts of the world was 12.
“What’s abuse in one area is not abuse in another. And what is it really?” Raniere asked on the video. “Is the person a child or is the person adult-like? Does the person have a certain type of cognition, morality to make such a choice?”
Martin Feely, spokesman for the FBI, declined comment.