Re July 22 article, “District rejects appeal of information denial”: It is very obvious why certain individuals waited not simply days or weeks to file their lawsuits against the school district, but rather months and years. It is call “opportunity.” With all the hyped-up media and sensationalism regarding Steven Raucci and his unfair incarceration without bail, why not use it as a means to cash in on whatever amount of money the school district is willing to settle on to avoid a long, expensive judicial process?
Stop pursuing the truth? Everyone knew-everyone looked the other way-everyone circled the wagons. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. With their attorneys.
Another legal genius from NYC-like Gov Paterson? Maybe they didn't want a bomb to go off on their porch? Or the house covered with obsene graffitti for The Mad Bombers next taxpayer funded Magical Mystery Tour? As Sal says drop the idiotic defenses and fess up.
Allegations claim Raucci targeted employee, family Couple sues for harassment Tuesday, July 28, 2009 By Steven Cook (Contact) Gazette Reporter
SCHENECTADY — Steven Raucci cut the heat to a classroom this past winter in retaliation against an employee who challenged Raucci’s union supremacy, according to the latest lawsuit filed against the Schenectady City School District. The lawsuit was filed Friday in U.S. District Court by district utility worker James D. Bachus and his wife, teacher Barbara Bachus. In the suit, the Bachuses allege that Raucci, who was the district’s head of building and grounds, moved to retaliate against James Bachus by targeting Bachus’ wife. James Bachus made moves in January to challenge Raucci in the CSEA Local 847 leadership elections. Raucci quickly found out, according to the suit, and among his responses was to refuse to supply heat to Barbara Bachus’ classroom “causing the room to be extremely cold during the winter months; jeopardizing the health of Mrs. Bachus, as well as the students in attendance,” the lawsuit reads. The allegations are some of the first to be made that Raucci’s alleged behavior directly affected students. The suit also includes allegations that Raucci publicly confronted James Bachus about Bachus’ union plans at an employee meeting Jan. 22, the day after Bachus asked the CSEA how to go about running. The confrontation also included an alleged physical threat, which Bachus pointed out to the group. “Raucci continued by stating in mocking and exaggerated terms that there were no witnesses who would support Mr. Bachus and that Raucci could say what he wanted and there was nothing anyone could do about it,” the suit reads. According to the lawsuit, Raucci sent James Bachus to do menial work, threatened his wife “using graphic language” and 15-year-old son and even had James Bachus disciplined for “insubordination” apparently related to a medical leave by Bachus brought on by the confrontation............>>>>..............>>>>..............http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2009/jul/28/0728_raucci/
Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com. School vote appeal looks fatally flawed
As for the appeal of the Schenectady school budget vote that I wrote about a few weeks ago, you’re not going to believe this one. The state Education Department employee who surreptitiously organized the appeal effort apparently failed to gather enough valid signatures for it, and so it is probably doomed to an early death without the merits of it ever being ruled on. The law is that you’ve got to have the signatures of enough people so the election result would be different if those people had voted differently, which in Schenectady’s case meant merely 24 people had to sign, since the school district’s budget finally passed by a margin of 47 votes. But those had to be 24 people who had voted in the second, crucial election. They couldn’t be just any old neighbors who were upset over higher taxes. Now, it is standard in the world of politics to gather at least twice as many signatures as you legally need for a petition of any kind, on the assumption that some of those signatures are going to be invalid for one reason or another and the opposition is surely going to pick through them all to disqualify as many as possible. If you need 10,000 signatures, it obviously takes a major effort to gather 20,000, but how much effort does it take to gather 48 rather than 24? Not much. Nevertheless, this state employee, who does not want her name made public, gathered on her own just exactly the required 24 and then picked up eight more from the private citizen she recruited to be the official petition carrier, since she couldn’t perform that function herself. So she submitted 32 signatures, which gave not much of a margin for error, and lo, in its response to this legal action, seeking to invalidate the budget vote and remove school leaders from office, the school district says it checked election records and determined that only 17 of those 32 people were qualified to sign by dint of having voted in the June 16 election. This was disclosed in an affidavit submitted by the school district’s recently retired clerk, Dick Yager, and submitted to the Education Department as part of the district’s formal response to the appeal. There were other objections stated also, of a procedural nature, one by Superintendent Eric Ely that he was not personally served with the petition as the law requires, which I thought was cute, since the neutral third party who carried the petition to the school administrative offices hand-delivered it to the school attorney, Shari Greenleaf, who accepted it on Ely’s behalf, I was told. But no good. If it wasn’t put directly into Ely’s hands, it doesn’t count. And so forth. And this raises in my mind a question: Why the devil does the state Education Department need to hide in the shadows and solicit a private citizen to make a formal complaint, dotting all the procedural i’s and crossing all the procedural t’s, before it can take action? If a small business owner dumps sewage into the Mohawk River, the Department of Environmental Conservation doesn’t recruit a private citizen to file a complaint so that it can take action. What kind of a crazy way to run a government would that be? The Schenectady City School District, under the direction of Superintendent Eric Ely and then-Board of Education President Jeff Janiszewski, brazenly concocted a contingency budget based on an inflated enrollment projection that generated a 16 percent tax increase. Faced with that scary alternative, the people of Schenectady very narrowly approved the regular budget with a less scary 6 percent ................>>>>...............>>>>..............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00900
And so forth. And this raises in my mind a question: Why the devil does the state Education Department need to hide in the shadows and solicit a private citizen to make a formal complaint, dotting all the procedural i’s and crossing all the procedural t’s, before it can take action?
They dont do a freakin' thing.....WHY???
SHOW ME THE $$ TRAIL SHOW ME THE ARBITORS SHOW ME THE CONTRACTS SHOW ME THE GUMBAS SHOW ME THE LEVY SHOW ME THE POLITICIANS SHOW ME THE PENSIONS
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
[quote=61] Just hope Sal is not on The Mad Bombers first (of 29) juries. Or that other idiot from the Independent Party in Rotterdam. Two jamokes think it's no big deal?
Nothing bothers me more then someone who is on here under a fake name calling someone a "idiot"....typical. Another case where someone has No Balls
State Ed Department has failed Sch’dy on contingency budget
For awhile it looked as if the Schenectady school board and Superintendent Eric Ely might actually be held accountable for using an inflated contingency budget this spring to bludgeon voters into approving a proposed budget higher than the one they’d already rejected. This stunt was so brazen, and so well publicized, that it got the attention of high-level officials at the state Education Department. Unfortunately, rather than step in directly to stop the district before the vote, or punish it afterward, the officials chose a convoluted approach using one of their own employees to surreptitiously organize a local petition drive for an appeal to the education commissioner. Only the employee botched the petition process, so now it looks as though Ely and company will never get their comeuppance — at least for their budget deceptions. (There’s always the nontrivial matter of Steven Raucci.) It would be a shame if the contingency budget issue just went away. The clear expectation of the public, and the Education Department, is that a contingency budget will be lower than the proposed budget, not higher. And if it is higher, due to special circumstances, not $5 million higher , as Ely contrived to make it by using projected enrollment figures that he admitted he didn’t believe himself — and didn’t budget for. ...............>>>>.............>>>>.................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00703
Suit says HR director laughed at Raucci allegations Latest lawsuit in Raucci matter also says district officials took no action
By LAUREN STANFORTH, Staff writer First published in print: Wednesday, July 29, 2009
SCHENECTADY -- The latest in a series of lawsuits filed against the Schenectady City School District claims administrators knew about allegations that former facilities supervisor Steven Raucci intimidated and threatened workers -- and says the school's human resources director laughed in an employee's face when told about it.
School district utility worker James D. Bachus and his wife, teacher Barbara Bachus, filed the complaint Friday in U.S. District Court.
The lawsuit says Raucci, who has been criminally charged for allegedly vandalizing and placing explosive devices on the cars and at the homes of people he perceived as enemies, physically threatened James Bachus on Jan. 22 in front of other district employees and threatened to "torment" his wife and 15-year-old son after Bachus expressed interest in running against Raucci for the CSEA unit president's post. Bachus said he went to human resources director Michael Stricos and Assistant Superintendent Michael San Angelo about the "overall dangerous and hostile employment atmosphere within the Operations and Maintenance Department" and the district never did anything, the lawsuit states.
Bachus also said Stricos "responded by laughing in Mr. Bauchus' face" after Bachus said he had stress-related injuries that prevented him from working between Feb. 12 and March 6.
Raucci was arrested Feb. 20 for allegedly placing an explosive device at a house in Rotterdam in 2001, and various other charges followed.
Court papers released two weeks ago as part of a workers' compensation claim included handwritten notes allegedly written by Stricos that showed Stricos knew about Raucci's alleged activities in 2005. That employee claimed he couldn't work also because of stress inflicted by Raucci, who allegedly would hold the employee against his will and grab at his testicles..............>>>>......................>>>>.............http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=825357
Now it comes out that students were frozen out by The Mad Bomber. But the Mad Bomber "didn't hurt a fly?"
I know Sal we should all ignore it and maybe it will go away? This is the tip of the iceburg. Taxpayers will be on the hook for millions of dollars in lawsuits-while stuna "administrators" enjoy full retirement benefits. Still not one "administrator" has been fired. No one has the decency to resign in disgrace?
Rissetto fee for investigation needed second cost contract BY MICHAEL GOOT Gazette Reporter
Investigator Rachel Rissetto was initially authorized to spend only up to $10,000 on her probe of former Schenectady school facilities director Steven Raucci’s alleged workplace misconduct, according to her contract. Rissetto went over the 100 hour mark with her investigation and her total bill was $12,925. Documents requested by The Daily Gazette through a Freedom of Information request show that Rissetto was to be paid for not more than 100 hours, working at a rate of $100 per hour. The Board of Education on April 1 voted to hire Rissetto to investigate whether Raucci harassed and demeaned colleagues and whether his supervisors knew of his behavior and did nothing. This would be separate from the criminal investigation. Raucci is facing charges in three counties for allegedly planting explosive devices as part of a pattern of harassment. The board at the time did not set a cap on Rissetto’s fee. However, school Attorney Shari Greenleaf and then-President Jeff Janiszewski signed the “consultant agreement” contract on April 10 and April 13, respectively, setting the $10,000 limit. Rissetto completed her report on June 15. Three days later, Greenleaf and Janiszewski signed another contract authorizing up to 50 hours of work at a cost not to exceed $5,000. ..............>>>>.............>>>>........http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01102&AppName=1
Raucci asks court to free him Retired schools official accused of numerous offenses wants bail
By PAUL NELSON, Staff writer First published in print: Thursday, August 6, 2009
SCHENECTADY-- Steven Raucci is taking his fight for freedom to a state appellate court.
The retired Schenectady school facilities director, who is accused of targeting his enemies by vandalizing their property and placing explosive devices at their homes or vehicles, filed a notice of appeal to the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court in Albany.
This latest legal action on Wednesday comes two weeks after Acting Supreme Court Justice Richard C. Giardino rejected arguments by Raucci attorney Ronald DeAngelus that a lower court judge abused her discretion when she ruled in June that Raucci should remain in the county jail after testimony from prosecution witnesses in her chambers. Schenectady County Judge Polly Hoye had made a similar decision in March, a month after the Niskayuna man was arrested in his office on arson charges.......................>>>>....................>>>>...............http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=828227&category=YTSCHENECTADY
Logged
Stop pursuing the truth? Everyone knew-everyone looked the other way-everyone circled the wagons. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. With their attorneys.
