This week, the Adirondack Park Agency commission is scheduled to take its first big plunge into the truly, final last deliberations that will shape a vote on the Adirondack Club and Resort project in Tupper Lake.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the entire Agency board and the executive team staff from the APA will tour the site, under the supervision of administrative law judge Daniel O’Connell.<\/p>\n
The wrinkle, of course, is that the board sets off on this journey without a chairperson.<\/p>\n
Curt Stiles stepped aside over the summer and so far, Governor Andrew Cuomo hasn’t picked a replacement — either an interim or a permanent chair.<\/p>\n
(Press attention has fallen on commissioner Lani Ulrich as a possible new leader for the agency, but the governor’s office has stayed mum.)<\/p>\n
The process continues to rumble forward, but it’s hard to imagine the board navigating this decision — this is one of the biggest, most controversial decisions in the history of the APA — without stable leadership.<\/p>\n
In past interviews, all sides of this debate have told me that they think it would be very disruptive to have a leadership change, or new appointment, made in the middle of active deliberations, which will continue from this week into the winter.<\/p>\n
I have a call in to the governor’s office to see if there are any new developments, and it may be that some kind of announcement will come ahead of the APA meeting.<\/p>\n
I will also say that sources at the Agency have told me that they think the executive staff and long-time commission members are handling this uncertainty well.<\/p>\n
But this is a process that will face intense public scrutiny, and likely a legal challenge as well.<\/p>\n
In the past decade, APA chairmen like Dick LeFebvre, Ross Whaley and Curt Stiles really shaped big decisions like this, and served a key role in handling public perception, as well as communications with Albany.<\/p>\n
So…this is uncharted territory.\u00a0 Look for updates as the week goes along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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