This fight isn't over yet

The local Biofuel investors, and their enablers at the IDA and in the food chain of the state's corrupt Empire Zone program, have been gloating ever since their motion to dismiss our lawsuit was granted by the Seneca County Supreme Court on Friday. We went to court to try to force the IDA to do what it would have done on its own had it taken its obligations to the public seriously---namely, require an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for their massive ethanol plant proposal. But the fight is far from over.

The first thing the public should be asking is why the Biofuel interests preferred to get the case dismissed on a technicality rather than address the substance of the case. The answer is clear: the facts were against them. The failures of the IDA and other public officials to do their duties were so egregious that it is not surprising that they chose not to defend them. Instead, they chose to bet on the political culture of Seneca County, where they could count on getting a free pass to ignore the law.

People should understand that the grounds for the dismissal were extremely narrow, and had nothing to do with the merits of the case for an EIS. The judge ruled that we, the petitioners, lacked "standing", i.e. we were not impacted by the proposal more than the public at large. Under this legal theory, those who propose to reap profits by subjecting the public to negative environmental impacts are immune to challenges from individuals or groups who cannot demonstrate that they will suffer from these impacts more than the public at large. In other words, the developers of this disaster-in-the-making are benefiting from the widespread nature of the environmental catastrophe they are planning.

Even within the arcane legal world of "standing", this ruling was extraordinary. The judge's only basis for rejecting standing was that the petitioners failed to include individual affidavits identifying their physical proximity to the proposed project. Under this novel theory, the case was dismissed because there were no formal documents attesting to information that a 30-second Google search would have confirmed, had anyone cared to do one.

We could talk about the problems of judges having to run for office, as if the responsibility of administering the law were no different from the influence peddling of the average municipal election. We could talk about the cronyism and "business as usual" in Seneca County, where public office is seen not as a public trust but as a license to give and receive special favors.

But let's get the the core of the problem: Our leaders are not acting in the interests of the public at large, but rather in behalf of a few influential individuals to further their interests at the expense of the rest of us. They have been making decisions behind closed doors, and emerge only to spread disinformation about what they are doing and whose interests they are serving.

We have not given up on the legal process. We plan to appeal this ruling, in the hopes that judges more insulated from the pressures of local politics will have an opportunity to weigh in. But in the end, an informed public is the only answer. We as citizens have to let it be known that we will hold our officials accountable for their actions.