Letter from Ramapo:Haredi Bloc Votes On The Hudson

Haredim, bloc votes and corruption.

Balancing votes, priorities
Bob Baird • Journal News

The question for today:

A 10-bed hospice home to be built in New City gets a federal stimulus grant, and a huge chicken slaughterhouse proposed in New Square gets a state Restore New York grant. Which project gets $125,000 and which gets $1.6 million?

The larger grant's not for the hospice, which will ease suffering at the end of life.

The chicken plant gets the big bucks because it will produce more than kosher poultry: It will produce votes.

Since the founders of New Square arrived in Rockland more than 50 years ago, that has been the unspoken but freely acknowledged deal between the religious community and politicians: You do our bidding, we give you our votes.

Almost all of them.

We had written about bloc voting for decades, but no one outside Rockland cared until 2000, when New Square backed U.S. Senate candidate Hillary Clinton 1,400-to-12 votes just months after she met village leaders. Everyone involved denies a direct connection, but after the grand rabbi later visited the White House, President Bill Clinton, in his final hours, reduced the prison sentences of four men with ties to New Square. They were jailed for stealing tens of millions of dollars in federal funds, including financial aid through a fraudulent Judaic studies program at Rockland Community College.

Bloc voting is what causes politicians of all parties to parade to New Square seeking the community's endorsement. In return, New Square and the religious communities in Monsey, Kaser and elsewhere in Ramapo, feel free to push the envelope on zoning, fire and health codes.

Volunteer firefighters have complained for years about the dangers of illegal home conversions in Ramapo, and New Square refused to adhere to fire codes for so long the state threatened action.

It's not just about disregard for zoning, although that's very much an issue in the proposed chicken plant.

We've seen a cow slaughtered behind a Ramapo yeshiva where the Department of Health had to shut down the kitchen because of an unapproved well.

Two years in a row, the site of an annual chicken ritual was left strewn with feces, feathers, trash and blood.

In the case of the zoning, the justification is always the unique housing needs of the religious community. When it came to the cow and chickens, it was easier to apologize and pay fines than to do the right thing from the start.

Politicians who court the bloc vote in the religious community enable all that when they provide grants, letters of support and more without checking that the recipients are playing by the rules.

Rep. Eliot Engel, D-Bronx, recently supported federal funding for the parent organization of a Spring Valley health clinic that was closed for six weeks because of unsanitary conditions including bird feces on the walls. Engel says he was unaware of the problems.

The agency making the $1.6 million grant for the slaughterhouse says Engel, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., state Sen. Thomas Morahan, R-New City, and Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee, D-Suffern, sent letters supporting New Square's application. They were either unaware that Rockland planners recommended it not be built opposite residential neighborhoods or they don't care.

The county planners' action isn't binding on New Square, which can still approve it if four of the village's five board members vote in favor.

We can bet they'll pull off that bloc vote.

Comments

[Successful Messiah]

why is block voting corrupt? It is perfectly legal, unless of course in Shmarya's mind where everything orthodox jews do is corrupt. After all, he is still trying to justify why he left orthodoxy.

[Ben]

Why these people vote at all? We should only ask their rabbi to vote and forget about the rest of the people, since they don't have any opinion anyway.

[Yakira]

These types of practices and political favors prevent legitimate businesses from acquiring the neccessary funds they need to create or enhance their companies. The acquisition of these grants is supposed to be fair and equal to all citizens within jurisdiction without any special treatment from politicians.