{"id":3543,"date":"2011-01-12T07:02:42","date_gmt":"2011-01-12T12:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=3543"},"modified":"2011-01-12T09:33:06","modified_gmt":"2011-01-12T14:33:06","slug":"reporters-notebook-did-the-apa-and-arthur-lussi-game-the-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/01\/12\/reporters-notebook-did-the-apa-and-arthur-lussi-game-the-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Reporter’s notebook: Did the APA and Arthur Lussi game the system?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This morning, I’m reporting on accusations<\/a> made by a local town official in North Elba that APA commissioner Arthur Lussi and Agency staff tried to manipulate local review of a cell tower project in which Lussi has a financial interest.<\/p>\n

“[They were] trying to manipulate the public meeting and the local government board to make decisions that benefit one individual who happens to be a public official, which to me again is totally unethical,” said North Elba-Lake Placid Joint Review Board member Mike Orticelle.<\/p>\n

Other town officials are divided on the case, with some echoing Orticelle’s concerns and others telling NCPR that no ethical lines were crossed.<\/p>\n

This was a tough story to unravel, involving complicated bureaucratic wrangling between the APA, North Elba town officials, and Verizon, further muddled by some obvious missteps and miscommunications.<\/p>\n

Agency spokesman Keith McKeever says the state made a good-faith effort to handle the project fairly, and independently, while also allowing Lussi to have legitimate input .<\/p>\n

Lussi himself says he wasn’t using his role as an APA commissioner to influence local review and was only trying to help develop a good, well-designed project.<\/p>\n

I came away from my reporting feeling that this wasn’t a case where I was sure that anyone had behaved improperly.<\/p>\n

But credible sources in local government were raising serious questions about the behavior of powerful state officials.<\/p>\n

And even many of my sources who rejected claims of unethical conduct described the APA’s handling of the case as “awkward” and “strange.”\u00a0 Because a sitting commissioner was involved, that raised red flags.<\/p>\n

In cases like this, NCPR presents the best facts we can find, in hopes that the information will clarify your understanding of how government works.<\/p>\n

The full text of the story can be seen here<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 Check it out and offer your view below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning, I’m reporting on accusations made by a local town official in North Elba […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[22,5583,4817],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3543"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3545,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3543\/revisions\/3545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}