For the Express
WATERTOWN — The lead administrator of the agency governing the Great Sacandaga Lake unexpectedly retired this week.
Hudson River-Black River Regulating District Executive Director Glenn A. LaFave called it a day Wednesday after seven years with the agency. He served as administrator of the Black River Area from 2003 until his appointment as executive director in 2005.
Hudson River Area Administrator Michael A. Clark will “assume” LaFave’s responsibilities, a press release said. Clark did not return a phone call seeking comment, and LaFave could not be reached.
Details of LaFave’s retirement and the administrative processes leading to Clark’s new “assumptions” have not been released, the district only announcing the aforementioned information in a two-sentence press release.
Because the executive director serves at the pleasure of the regulating district board, it needs to appoint Clark to the position. Because the board did not meet this month, it’s presumed the appointment was approved in executive session at the July meeting in Johnstown or that appointment may take place at the agency’s September meeting in Saratoga Springs.
Clark, who is typically stationed at the Sacandaga Field Office in Mayfield, reportedly spent three days at the district’s Watertown office the first week of August.
Great Sacandaga Lake Advisory Council Chairman Bob Monacchio said if Clark is in fact appointed to his position, it may serve the lake community well because he is an area resident. Clark is listed with a Gloversville address.
“It would be nice to see that movement from north to south,” he said, referring to the fact that LaFave, a Brownville resident, was typically stationed at the district’s Black River area office in Watertown.
Peter Van Avery, president of the lake watchdog group Batchellerville Bridge Action Committee, said he hopes the appointment, whether its Clark or not, “is a person with business experience because they will be running a multimillion public benefit corporation, with emphasis on corporation.”
“It’s time to get a grownup with a grasp of business principals in there. It seems the district’s main mission has been to generate lawsuits, and has become an enormous machine for enriching the legal profession,” he said.
The regulating district has had more than 20 lawsuits filed against it, the most recent filed by five Capital District counties that were suddenly slapped with tax bills totaling more than $4.5 million in March, an attempt to rectify severe fiscal problems in the Hudson River area. It found itself without a means of generating revenue after a federal Court of Appeals judge ruled the district’s 80-year-old practice of taxing hydropower plants was illegal.
The regulating district is also battling a suit filed by the former Niagara Mohawk company, which argues the lake’s Access Permit System has created an illegal subsidy paid for by hydropower plants.
Van Avery said if the regulating district had completed the study determining the costs of the Access Permit System, or followed the Offer of Settlement’s directive to search for new beneficiaries, both problems could have been avoided.
“I’ve sat at these meetings for years and been just appalled. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed,” Van Avery said.