Abinanti & Stewart Cousins’ Voter Suppression Bill Suppressed, Until Today?

In a most typically secretive way, Mr Feiner, a democrat, spoke and/or met with NYS Assemblyman Thomas Abinanti and Andrea Stewart-Cousins, also democrats, to change the 100 or so-year old state law on incorporation in another futile attempt to stop the Edgemont community residents from incorporating into what would be Greenburgh’s seventh village. It would also curtail any other area in the Town from thinking about incorporation.

Ironically, the attempt in Albany also failed, albeit until today, even though Mr Feiner had enlisted his Albany buddies to change the law. Both Abinanti and Stewart-Cousins submitted the voter-suppression bills in their respective branches of the NYS legislatures, but their attempt to sneak this unincorporated Greenburgh specific bill through was met with resistance. In fact, on June 20th, several Edgemont residents traveled to Albany to meet with the Greenburgh representatives. Stewart-Cousins met with constituents. Abinanti refused to meet with his constituents. However today is a critical day as Governor Cuomo has ordered the legislature into a special session to pass through other legislation that he and others believes is critically needed. Does that include the Abinanti/Stewart-Cousins/Feiner Voter Suppression bill? Let’s hope not.

Abinanti’s refusal to meet with constituents speaks volumes and lets residents know how he feels about representing them or anyone else. It’s a shame that constituents who travel two and a half hours are thought so little of that their unchallenged representative, conspiring in cahoots with unchallenged Mr Feiner to take away voters’ rights, thinks he can treat people this way. In spite of Mr Abinanti’s rude and bad behavior, Greenburgh residents did meet with other more receptive representatives. They discussed the legality and ethical conundrum created by Mr Feiner, Mr Abinanti and Ms Stewart-Cousins. They all know it’s okay as they are democrats and their seats will never be challenged by anyone else in Westchester. Or will they?

The Greenburgh Town Democrats have nominated Mr Feiner, Mr Sheehan, Ms Juettner, Ms Beville and Ms Povella (collector of taxes) for re-election. They put their names on petitions, and Democratic District Leaders started obtaining signatures, allowing the usual suspects to run (likely uncontested).  A vacancy then opened up on the Town Court and Bonnie Orden was nominated to fill the void. The Greenburgh Democrats came up with another petition, not one just for Bonnie Orden, but one that included Mr Feiner, Mr Sheehan, Ms Juettner, Ms Beville, Ms Povella and also Ms Orden. 

So now the Democrats will be trying to get more signatures. How will they be monitoring to ensure that people do not sign both, and duplicate signatures?  Will voters even remember if they already signed a duplicate petition?  Has the Democratic “leadership” made any effort to warn petition carriers to take steps to avoid duplication? Of course, if someone were running against Mr Feiner, someone such as Mona Freitag would be double checking for duplicate signatures.  

The Greenburgh Democrats will do everything possible to support a totalitarian regime. They criticize Trump, Putin and North Korea. They protest gerrymandering. Now it appears that they support removing voting rights for unincorporated Greenburgh. Mr Feiner’s latest attempt to block the ECC, the EIC, Bob Bernstein, Jeff Sherwin and others from Edgemont and Hartsdale in Albany, may have seemingly failed. What will be next? ABG was surprisingly caught off-guard when we learned of the bill that he had concocted in secret with Abinanti and Stewart-Cousins against Greenburgh residents. Yet, even so, this latest maneuver continues to re-enforce all the reasons we believe this administration should be removed. Between law suits with guilty verdicts, fines and penalties being charged to unincorporated Greenburgh residents, unethical and discriminatory behavior, it’s time. Only then will we get A Better Greenburgh.