On February 10, the Chronicle reported that the Croton Democratic Committee, in a close vote, had chosen attorney Ali Jaffery to be its nominee for Village Justice in November’s elections over current Justice Sam Watkins, who has been on the Croton bench for 20 years. That report came in the context of a broader story about the Village Manager’s proposal to study the possibility of shutting down the Croton Village Court and moving its operations to Cortlandt.
We were confident in our information because it was confirmed by two members of the Committee who were personally present for the vote. However, those Committee members spoke to us off the record, because they were not authorized by the officers of the body to provide us with that information.
For that February 10 story, we asked the chair and vice-chair of the Committee, attorney Michael Eisenkraft and county legislator Emiljana Ulaj, respectively, to publicly confirm the information and discuss with us the reasons for the decision. We also asked Ali Jaffery to tell us why he wanted to be Village Justice. None of them have responded in any way to our queries.
On February 14, in our “Croton Week in Review” item, we briefly discussed this story again, and commented that the decision to pick Jaffery over Watkins had taken place “behind closed doors.” In response to this, a member of the Committee wrote us privately to say that the group’s meetings were open to the public, and that they took place every fourth Thursday at the Croton Free Library. We checked that and it is true; the meetings take place in the large Ottinger Room.
So we were wrong when we said that the vote for Jaffery had taken place “behind closed doors.” But how wrong were we?
The vote for the Village Justice nominee reportedly took place at the Committee’s January 22 meeting at the library. We have seen no evidence that Croton Democrats put out any kind of public announcement ahead of the meeting that this crucial matter was going to be discussed. Sam Watkins has been a popular judge these past 20 years, is well liked by many, and the news that the Dems now want to replace him is already reverberating in the village and upsetting many.
Nor has the Croton Democratic Committee yet made any kind of public announcement about the decision after the fact. There is nothing on the group’s Website, and nothing on its Facebook page announcing the vote. Nor will the three Committee officers we have now contacted repeatedly—up to the publication of this report—respond to our questions about it.
We have been told that the vote by the Committee followed a somewhat lengthy process of discussions with Watkins and Jaffery about their candidacies. Even if it might have been justified to keep that vetting process confidential, there is no excuse for not letting the community know about the outcome very soon after the vote.
We are now told that the Committee has sent a letter to The Gazette making an announcement. If that is true, and the letter appears in the issue of The Gazette that will appear this Thursday, February 19 (and is normally delivered to subscribers in the mail on Friday), Croton Dems will have waited nearly a month to tell villagers something that we think they had every right to know weeks ago.
To make matters worse, when the Board of Trustees discussed the future of the court during its Work Session on February 11, no one on that body mentioned that Ali Jaffery had been chosen to run this November—even though four of the trustees are Croton Democrats and all four knew about the vote. The fact that Watkins was being sent into an apparently forced retirement after 20 years on the bench was certainly relevant to that discussion.
So while we were technically wrong to say that the vote took place “behind closed doors,” we were right to suggest that there was a lack of transparency in the process. And as the days have gone by and officers of the Committee continue to ignore our requests for information—we have also written to the body’s secretary, Linda Simon, asking for details of the vote and the exact count, to no avail—the seriousness of that refusal to tell the village at large what many residents want to know only grows.
Even the letter to The Gazette, should it actually be published this week, does not substitute for answering a reporter’s basic questions about the decision. That letter is likely to tell villagers what the Croton Democratic Committee wants them to know, and no more.
Let’s be clear on what the issues are here. Croton Democrats have the democratic right to choose whomever they want as their candidate for Village Justice or any other office. But the vote for Jaffery, we are reliably told, was not decisive or a slam dunk for his nomination. It was close. Nor did it represent any kind of consensus in the village at large; far from it. As we pointed out in our earlier reporting, Sam Watkins is not only well known but a very experienced judge; Jaffery is best known as a Democratic Party loyalist whose work as an attorney appears to include extensive experience in civil litigation, but not criminal defense work.
We should add that Sam Watkins was a vocal opponent of shutting down the court when that discussion came up four years ago, and continues to be a vocal opponent today. Whether that has anything to do with why some Croton Dems want to get rid of him now, we cannot say at present.
While the current dominance of Croton Dems in village politics remains strong, with the mayoralty and three trustee seats out of a total of five board members, Mayor Brian Pugh only defeated his Voice of Croton challenger by 22 votes out of more than 3,000 cast. That lays a heavy responsibility on Croton Dems to be fully transparent about their handling of such important matters as who will be our Village Justice. While Sam Watkins or any other candidate could mount a primary challenge to Jaffery, or run as an independent in November, Croton Dems have already put their hands heavily on the electoral scale.
These assertions about the lack of transparency are also heavily supported by the failure of the Croton Democratic Committee’s officers to tell the village in a timely manner that the group had chosen Jaffery over Watkins—a matter of great public interest and concern—and the adamant refusal even now to answer questions about the vote and the decision nearly a month after it took place.
It is difficult not to conclude that Croton Democrats wanted to wait as long as possible before letting us know about a very weighty decision they had made. If there is another explanation, they have declined to say what it is.
Democrats in Croton-on-Hudson, and at the county, state, and national level, have been very vocal in expressing their worries about the threat that the Trump administration poses to democracy in our country and the future of our democratic institutions. We think those concerns are well founded.
But democracy begins at home, right here in Croton. Villagers have a right to expect their political leaders to be open and honest about the decisions they are making and the reasons for them. Even more, Crotonites have a right to know what those decisions are, especially when they affect all of our lives.
The doors to the library’s Ottinger room may be open. But if no one tells us ahead of time what is going to happen behind them, and no one tells us afterwards what did happen there, they may as well be locked and shut.
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Croton Democrats acting like MAGA Republicans, they should be ashamed. Sam Watkins is an honorable and well-respected judge and member of the Croton community. To treat him as a pariah and not worthy of continuing as Village Justice is a black spot on the local Democratic party. The doors to the Ottinger Room may have been open but there is a bad smell originating from the interior.