Black, Hispanic residents sue Town of Newburgh, claim election system violates state law

TOWN OF NEWBURGH - Three Black and three Hispanic residents have filed a lawsuit against the Town of Newburgh, claiming its election system violates state law.

Specifically, they claim the town's at-large method of electing its four Town Board members - meaning all town residents vote for all four members - prevents Black and Hispanic residents from electing candidates of their choice.

The plaintiffs are Oral Clarke, Romance Reed and Dorothy Flournoy, who are Black, and Grace Perez, Peter Ramon and Ernest Tirado, who are Hispanic.

The lawsuit was filed in state Supreme Court in Goshen.

The plaintiffs say the New York Voting Rights Act, adopted in 2022, seeks to ensure that all racial, ethnic and language minority groups have an equal opportunity to participate in the state's political processes.

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But that has not happened in the town, according to the lawsuit, which claims Black and Hispanic residents have been demoted to second-class citizens whose concerns are ignored by the Town Board.

Approximately 25% of the town's nearly 32,000 citizens are Black and 15% are Hispanic, they say, but to their knowledge every person ever elected to the Town Board has been white. The last time a person of color ran for the Town Board was in 2011, according to the suit.

The suit says the town routinely neglects the interests of Black and Hispanic communities, most recently when 60 asylum seekers from New York City arrived in town. The town sought an injunction preventing them from being housed in town. That litigation cost taxpayers substantial sums of money and the case is still in court, according to the lawsuit.

Meanwhile, the arrival of the migrants set off a "baseless media firestorm" when a local not-for-profit group falsely claimed the migrants were displacing homeless veterans, the suit said.

Also, the lawsuit alleges that, unlike many surrounding municipalities, Town of Newburgh leaders supported the proposed expansion of the Danskammer Power Plant in 2018. The expansion, which ultimately was rejected by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, would have led to the emission of two million additional tons of carbon per year, the lawsuit claimed.

The areas closest to the plant have populations that are disproportionately Black and Hispanic, the suit said, and they suffer high rates of asthma and other similar diseases stemming from emissions from the plant.

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On March 15, the Town Board hired a law firm to evaluate the town's at-large system of electing board members to determine whether it violates the state's voting rights law. But while it directed the firm to report back to the board within 30 days, the lawsuit said it contained no schedule on when the board must act, giving them an indefinite deliberation period.

The lawsuit asks the court to declare the town's at-large system of electing board members to be in violation of the state's election law, and order a new method to be implemented in time for the 2025 election. That method could be election of Town Board members by district, or ranked choice or cumulative voting.

Town Supervisor Gil Piaquadio was not aware of the lawsuit prior to being contacted by the Times Herald-Record on Wednesday morning, but promised to issue a response "in the near future."

Mike Randall covers breaking news for the Times Herald-Record and the Poughkeepsie Journal. Reach him at mrandall@th-record.com or on Twitter @mikerandall845.

This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: Newburgh lawsuit claims election system ignores Black, Hispanic voters