Showing posts sorted by date for query Bloomingburg. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query Bloomingburg. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Friday, May 26, 2017

One Pleads Guilty To Voter Fraud In Attempt To Get Approval For Townhouses For Hasidic Jews

As previously reported, the village of Bloomingburg, New York has been embroiled in a battle over whether an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community would expand into the town.  Real estate developer Kenneth Nakdimen and his associates sought to build a  396-unit townhouse development there to be marketed to Hasidic Jews.  They faced local opposition which the developers said was fueled by anti-Semitism.  As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the developers were ultimately indicted by the federal government for their voting fraud tactics in seeking to obtain approval for their project.  Yesterday the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York announced that Nakdimen has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to corrupt the electoral process. The announcement describes the basis for the charges:
[B]y late 2013, the first of their real estate developments had met local opposition, and still remained under construction and uninhabitable.  When met with resistance, rather than seek to advance their real estate development project through legitimate means, NAKDIMEN and others instead decided to corrupt the democratic electoral process in Bloomingburg by falsely registering voters and paying bribes for voters who would help elect public officials favorable to their project.
....   NAKDIMEN and others took steps to cover up their scheme to register voters who did not actually live in Bloomingburg by, among other things, creating and back-dating false leases and placing items like toothbrushes and toothpaste in unoccupied apartments to make it seem as if the falsely registered voters lived there.
UPDATE: On June 6, the U.S. Attorney's office announced that a second defendant, Shalom Lamm, has now also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to corrupt the electoral process.

[Thanks to Steven H. Sholk for the lead.]

Friday, December 16, 2016

Voting Fraud Indictments Are Latest In Battle Over Hasidic Development In NY Town

As reported yesterday by The Forward, since 2012 the village of Bloomingburg, New York has been embroiled in a battle over whether an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community would expand into the town:
To the Orthodox and their allies, resistance to new Jewish neighbors can look like anti-Semitism. To the non-Orthodox, the arrival of a Hasidic community, with its schools and its institutions and its rabbinic authority, can feel like an invasion.
In Bloomingburg, local governments and an Orthodox developer have faced off in court, and in raucous village meetings, amid a volley of accusations of voter fraud and hate crimes.
The Forward article traces what appeared to be the success of Satmar Hasidim in expanding into the village. (See prior Religion Clause postings on Bloomingburg.) However yesterday, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced the indictment (full text) of three men on charges of conspiracy to corrupt the electoral process in Bloomingburg in order to obtain clearance to build a housing development for members of the Satmar community:
In pursuit of millions of dollars in profits from a real estate development project, the defendants allegedly hatched a cynical ploy to corrupt the electoral process in Bloomingburg.  As alleged, to get public officials supportive of their development project elected to local government, the defendants concocted a scheme to falsely register voters who did not live in Bloomingburg, including some who had never even set foot there.  And to cover up their voter fraud scheme, the defendants allegedly back-dated fake leases and even placed toothpaste and toothbrushes in empty apartments to make them appear occupied by the falsely registered voters.  Profit-driven corruption of democracy cannot be allowed to stand no matter who does it or where it happens.
One of those indicted was developer Shalom Lamm whose father, Norman Lamm served for many years as president of Yeshiva University. The Forward reports on the indictments.

A fourth man was indicted and has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to submit false voter registrations. (Full text of Information.)

Friday, October 28, 2016

NY Municipalities Settle Discrimination Suit Against Them Alleging Anti-Hasidic Bias

JTA reports that the upstate Village of Bloomingburg and the Town of Mamakating, New York have reached a settlement with a developer who sued claiming that the municipalities engaged in an anti-Semitic conspiracy to prevent more Hasidic Jews from moving into the area. The lawsuit filed in 2014 (see prior posting) claimed, among other things, that the municipalities violated the fair housing and civil rights laws in blocking the completion of a 396-unit townhouse project out of fear that would be occupied mostly by Hasidic families. Under the settlement, the developer's company Sullivan Farms II will be be paid by the municipalities' insurer $1.595 million on behalf of  Mamakating and $1.305 million on behalf of Bloomingburg.

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Settlement In Voter Registration Suit Brought By Disenfranchised Hasidic Jews

The Forward and JTA reported yesterday that a settlement has been reached in a lawsuit filed last year against the Sullivan County, New York, Board of Elections by 27 Hasidic Jews whose voter registrations were among 156 in the Village of Bloomingburg that the Board of Elections had taken steps to cancel.  The Election Board claimed that the voters were not really residents of the Village, which had a population of only 420 in the 2010 census. (See prior posting.)  Under the settlement agreement the names will remain on the voter rolls.  This is part of a larger dispute over the building of a high density 396-unit apartment development in Bloomingburg that will be marketed to members of the Satmar Hasidic community.

UPDATE: A Feb. 2 report by the New York Post says that the settlement, which the court has approved, includes the appointment of a monitor for 5 years to oversee the voting process (including review of the voter challenge questionnaire). Also voting materials and signs will be in both Yiddish and English. The county will pay damages of $25,000 and $550,000 in attorneys' fees.

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Plaintiffs May Proceed On Some Claims Charging Anti-Hasidic Motivation In Obstructing Construction

In Bloomingburg Jewish Educational Center v. Village of Bloomingburg, New York, (SD NY, June 9, 2015), a New York federal district court allowed plaintiffs to move ahead with some of their claims that local governments and public officials of the Village of Bloomingburg and the Town of Mamakating took various actions to prevent Hasidic Jews from moving into the area.  The court held that two of the plaintiffs
have stated plausible claims for relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and 42 U.S.C. § 1985 against [various] defendants ... based on these defendants’ alleged roles in stymying the conversion of a property in Bloomingburg into a mikvah, a bath used by Hasidic Jews for ritual immersion and purification.  Plaintiff Sullivan Farms II, Inc. has stated plausible claims for relief under § 1983, § 1985, and the FHA ...  against [certain] defendants based on these defendants’ alleged roles in obstructing the completion of a housing development project known as Chestnut Ridge.
A number of other of plaintiffs' claims were dismissed.  AP reports on the decision.

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Suit Charges Religious Discirmination In Cancellation of Hasidic Jews' Voter Registration

A class action lawsuit was filed yesterday in a New York federal district court by a group of Hasidic Jews against the Sullivan County Board of Elections that oversees voting in the small Village of Bloomingburg, New York.  According to Newsweek, in January the Board of Elections sent notices to 184 of the Village's 285 registered voters to show cause why the Board should not cancel their voter registrations. More than 160 of the voters receiving the notices are Hasidim.  Last month the Board announced that it would move ahead to cancel registrations of 156 of these voters-- comprising virtually every Hasidic Jewish resident of the Village.  The suit alleges that the voters were singled out only because of their religion.  A lawsuit filed last year charges the Village more generally with acting together with a neighboring town to keep more Hasidic Jews from moving into the area. (See prior posting.)

Failed Messiah blog says that the Village has good cause to cancel the voter registrations:
The suit is backed by Shalom Lamm, the Modern Orthodox developer [of a Bloomingburg housing project] who ... deceived (and, some say, bribed) his way past naive locals to get the original go-aheads for the project, which was always meant to be a 396-unit high density Satmar hasidic village but camouflaged as a low density 125-home golf course vacation and retirement community....
The hasidim who were disqualified from voting almost all claimed one of Lamm's private homes in the village as their residence, with more than a dozen adults showing the same single family home as their "official" residence. The property, however, showed no sign of regular habitation....

Tuesday, September 09, 2014

Suit Alleges Anti-Hasidic Conspiracy By Two Municipalities

Invoking RLUIPA, the Fair Housing Act, the 1st and 14th Amendments as well as New York statutory and constitutional provisions, in a 66-page federal court complaint a Jewish school, developers and Orthodox Jewish residents sued the Village of Bloomingburg, NY and the adjoining Town of Mamakating alleging an anti-Semitic conspiracy to prevent more Hasidic Jews from moving into the area. The complaint (full text) in The Bloomingburg Jewish Education Center v. Village of Bloomingburg, New York, (SD NY, filed 9/8/2014), alleges in part:
The Village of Bloomingburg ... and the adjoining Town of Mamakating ,,,, acting on behalf of an aggressive and hateful group of residents, are engaged in a conspiracy to prevent Hasidic Jews from buying houses, establishing a private religious school, and operating businesses in their community. After members of the Hasidic community began to move into the area, Bloomingburg and Mamakating instituted a number of roadblocks designed to stop the community from growing. These municipalities are engaged in a series of patently illegal actions to block lawful, approved and long planned developments....
The Village and Town are seeking to use their political power, economic pressure, zoning laws and sheer intimidation to prevent a certain type of people from joining their community. This type of intolerance might sound like a story from the Civil Rights Era in the South. But it is unfolding right now in a municipality just 75 miles from New York City.
As reported by JP Updates:
The lawsuit is directed at Bill Herrmann, the Supervisor of the Town of Mamakating, who has said that “the people elected him to stop the Jewish infiltration,” and Frank Gerardi, the new Mayor of Bloomingburg, who’s claim to fame is that he was elected to prevent more of “those people” – Hasidic Jews – from moving into Bloomingburg.