From the Candidate

Many of you already know me, my wife Jane (Flanagan), and our son Rusty.  In the next couple of months, I hope more of you will.  I’m running for one of the two seats on your Board of Finance.

We’ve been Warren homeowners for over 20 years, and developed an abiding love for this town.  Warren neighbors encouraged me to put my hat in the ring to give something back.

So who is this guy?  I went to college, at Rutgers (as an Industrial Engineer), and then to law school, at Columbia.  During the wind-down years of the Vietnam War, I did a tour of duty in the Air Force, at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio, in weapons system procurement and production, and legal assistance to Air Force personnel and their families.  Then, after 30 years as a lawyer, I served 15 years more as a federal judge—as a United States Bankruptcy Judge, in the Southern District of New York.  In the nine years since I retired from the bench, I’ve spent the bulk of my time doing mediation, providing expert testimony, and serving as a representative for others—as, for example, when I represented now-unidentified victims of the Diocese of Rockville Centre.  I’ve also been an Adjunct Professor of Law at Columbia Law School for the last 13 years, teaching Advanced Bankruptcy.

I was appointed to my job as a judge by other judges, after interviews in a nonpartisan process, with nobody asking whether I was a Republican or Democrat.  Instead they quizzed me on my qualifications, as I imagine you will too.

Sitting as a Federal Bankruptcy Judge in Manhattan, I spent the bulk of my time on corporate bankruptcies.  One, which you may have heard of, was General Motors.  But even in Manhattan, you get a lot of consumers’ cases—the bankruptcies of middle-class people—and at any given time, I’d have hundreds of them.  And you can’t be a federal bankruptcy judge without picking up a pretty good sense of middle-class people’s needs and concerns.

Now I’m running for your Board of Finance—a job that requires the skillset to manage taxpayers’ money.  You can’t function as a bankruptcy judge in the court where I served without starting with—and then building on—quite a deep knowledge of finance—in cash flow, budgeting, and the feasibility of game-plans for getting companies on track.  Those same skills, I’d suggest, would serve you well.

In the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, we were fully transparent.  We demanded it of everyone showing up in court.  And that’s something that, if elected, I’d continue, because I know how important that is for you as well.

I think I have the financial expertise, and the integrity, that you have a right to expect. 

I’d be honored to put mine at work for you.