2019 Campaign Co-Chairs: E. Stewart Jones, Jr. – E. Stewart Jones Hacker Murphy and David Cost – Barclay Damon, LLP
2019 Justice For All Annual Campaign Kickoff
Thursday, September 19, 2019
Fort Orange Club, Albany • 5:30 to 7:30 pm
Open Bar • Hors d’Oeuvres • Live Music
RSVP to [email protected] or 518-375-3457
Event is complimentary to members of 2018 JFA Leadership firms and/or members of those JFA firms that pledge or donate on or before the date of the event, and individuals who contributed over $250 to the 2018 campaign or pledge or donate before the date of the event.
Campaign Leadership Firms calculate their gifts at a minimum of $250 per attorney.
A complete list of firm and individual donors to the 2018 Campaign is available at www.lasnny.org
To make your donation or pledge to the 2019 JFA Campaign, please contact Deanne Grimaldi at 518-689-6336 or [email protected].
Retirement should be carefree for Ralph and Rosemarie Bryden in their 500-square-foot bungalow in rural Rhode Island. They garden and bowl, but financial worries loom.
The Brydens feel angst since learning both of the pensions they’ve lived on for a decade may soon disappear. The couple worked for St. Joseph Health Services, which failed to put enough money into the pension plan to pay retirees. Now, about 2,700 beneficiaries face reduced or eliminated payments.
“We used to go traveling,” said Ms. Bryden, 69. “Since things started, we stopped with a lot of other frivolous things.” Buying clothes and eating out are rare.
“It’s a double whammy,” said Mr. Bryden, 70.
The betrayal has set off a holy war of sorts — the organization accused of failing to fund the pensions is the Roman Catholic Church.
Former St. Clare’s Hospital workers have turned their anger over the loss of their pension benefits toward the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, which purchased the land where the hospital was built in the 1940s.
With help from the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York, the AARP Foundation and others, about 100 St. Clare’s pensioners filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the Diocese of Albany and the board that oversaw the pension plan, which was terminated last November in the face of a $35.5 million shortfall.
The lawsuit puts the blame for the collapse of the pension plan — which led to the reduction of payments to the oldest retirees and the elimination of all benefits for others — upon the Catholic Church, which until now has distanced itself from the crisis. Bishop Edward Scharfenberger sits on the board that oversaw the pension’s operations and was allowed to appoint four other board members, giving the diocese the power over “all major decisions” impacting the pension plan, the suit states.
The state Attorney General’s Office is backing efforts to remove the trustees of the troubled St. Clare’s Hospital pension fund, which has reduced or eliminated benefits to more than 1,100 former employees of the defunct Schenectady hospital.
In court filings this week, the agency — acting in its capacity as a watchdog over nonprofits within the state — supported efforts by three of the pensioners to be granted a seat at the legal proceedings to dissolve the hospital’s successor entity, the St. Clare’s Corporation, as well as to change control of the pension fund.
In the filing Tuesday in State Supreme Court, Schenectady County, the chief of the Attorney General’s Charities Bureau also raises multiple questions about the long chain of events that led to the pension crisis, and indicates the corporation has provided zero access to witnesses and less than complete access to documentation as he looks into the situation.
Counsel will be joined by St. Clare’s pensioners to announce the action taken earlier that morning against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany and other defendants. The organizations represent more than 100 former employees of St. Clare’s Hospital of Schenectady.
In October 2018, more than 1,100 former St. Clare Hospital employees, including former nurses, orderlies, lab technicians, clerical and housekeeping staff were informed that despite their years of service, their pensions would be reduced or stopped altogether in February 2019.
The briefing will include details of that action and the reaction of St Clare’s pensioners. A press release and documentation will be available to the press at this time.
Who: Victoria Esposito, Esq., LASNNY; Dara Smith Esq., AARP Foundation; NYC; Professor David Pratt Esq., St Clare’s Pensioners in attendance will include Co-Chairs: Bob Bradley and Mary Hartshorne and other plaintiffs
What: Briefing on the morning’s action taken on behalf of the St Clare’s Pensioners.
When: 10:30 am Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Where: Schenectady County Judicial Building, 612 State Street Schenectady, NY 12305 (on steps)
A lawyer in New York’s Capital Region, Ehrlich has worked to improve the financial lives of his pro bono clients and has mentored other lawyers in pro bono work for much of his 30-year career. He has spent countless hours shepherding pro bono clients through the process of Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and is known to routinely accept clients from The Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York and other area legal service organizations. He is known to encourage other lawyers to take on pro bono caseloads that can be time consuming and challenging.
Gray Gables was built by local millionaire William H. Miner in the 1920s. For the last few decades the complex has been used as affordable housing for working class and low-income families, but the rambling apartment building has been neglected, racking up a long list of code violations.
Bill Arthur is Chazy’s Town Supervisor. “Gray Gables is a unique building. It was built by Mr. Miner at the same time he built the school.”
Teachers and their families lived across the street from the school in the Gray Gables apartments. “[Gray Gables] is built so well,” says Arthur.
The original Chazy Central Rural School Miner built across the street was eventually torn down and replaced, but Gray Gables still stands. The school board sold the building in the 1960s. It has been a privately owned apartment complex for decades.
The Town of Chazy has ordered the owners of the Gray Gables apartment buildings off Route 9 to vacate tenants from the premises by July 22 because of structural issues.
Michael Tetreault Jr., Chazy Code/Zoning Enforcement Officer, issued the order in a July 7 letter to apartment owners Frederick and Cecile Reus. Tetreault said the two apartment buildings at the site are “unfit for human occupancy.”
Furthermore, Tetreault said, the buildings must remain “vacant until such time as you the owners of the property have an engineering report completed detailing all deficiencies at the property, and required repairs to bring the structures into compliance with the New York State Building code.”
Since 2015, the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York, Inc., representing 13 apartment tenants, has filed state and local complaints regarding living conditions at Gray Gables.
Everyone living in an apartment building in New York’s North Country needs to find a new place to live…quickly. Their town has declared the building unfit for people to live in.
Residents at the Gray Gables Apartments on Route 9 in Chazy, right next door to the town hall, have been complaining about the property for a long time.
In an April letter to the town board, Chazy code enforcement officer Michael Tetreault, Jr. wrote that the property has long-standing issues with code violations.
Tara Glynn, a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York has represented tenants there in a wide range of legal matters over the last four and a half years.
The Gray Gables apartments in Chazy are “unfit for human occupancy,” according to Town of Chazy Code Enforcement Officer Michael Tetreault.
In a letter dated July 7 to the building’s owner, Fredrick Reus, Tetreault writes the decision comes after numerous complaints from tenants, as well as inquires made by the Clinton County Health Department and the New York State Office of Oversight.
NBC5 News spoke with Reus on Saturday morning. Reus said he had a meeting with his lawyer scheduled for Sunday and wouldn’t comment until after that conversation.
