Letter from Lee Robbins

Hartwick Is Not for Sale, Bryan

This week’s article about the Article 78 legal challenge represents an individual obstructing the governance of Hartwick for his own personal gain (“Hartwick Town Councilman Files Article 78 Petition Challenge against Town Supervisor,” September 17, 2026). Mr. LoRusso has bought up undervalued properties around Hartwick and taken advantage of our legal system to put the tools of the town into his service, and to discredit all he cannot control.

Hartwick has a history of questionable highway superintendents. One left at the same time as the former town clerk under questionable circumstances. Mr. LoRusso funded the campaign of the current highway superintendent, printing cards and signs, and the roads have never looked better under his supervision, a good choice!

In my 40 years living here, Hartwick has never had more local road work done in a season; this summer much of that supporting Mr. LoRusso’s properties. Nothing illegal, just a point of fact. At the last election, Mr. LoRusso supported a discredited former clerk for a position on the town board but she lost, and now she is the assistant to his town board seat (a new position?), with access to the town records by the divine right of kings.

Mr. LoRusso himself ran to be town supervisor but was defeated by the former supervisor—a longtime local resident that I first came to know when I was EMS medical director of Otsego County some 20 years ago—but after a year into his second term, he left under pressure without a forwarding address. Then, the town attorney and bookkeeper also quit.

After defeat, at the next election Mr. LoRusso did secure a seat on the town board and other members of the board exited, as did the six-year water commissioner, and Mr. LoRusso installed his men. Now, with his leadership, hammering in a nail requires a posted public bid and town board meetings have become interminable exercises in legal minutiae.

Mr. LoRusso pressed for a write-in of Ola Hawatme as his own Republican challenger to Antonio Delgado’s last run for NY-19, and he continued the write-in campaign after Otsego County Republicans rejected her. Interestingly, in this election cycle, she just lost a primary for the Florida-19, Byron Donalds’ former seat. Nice work, Ola!

In the vein of truth and reality, this Article 78 challenge is just another attempt to put sand in the gears of the town, with the help of the current town clerk actively slow-walking town business to discredit the supervisor, her opponent in the last election. At the first town meeting this year, police were summoned to permit the legally-elected supervisor to lead the meeting. Mr. LoRusso is an expert in legal shenanigans: see LoRusso vs DEC, ART.78.

Hartwick is not for sale!

“The Freeman’s Journal” should not function as a partner in a local hijacking of democracy in service of a king, albeit with gold trappings, bread and circuses!

Lee Robbins, MD
Medical Officer, Town of Hartwick, and
EMS Medical Director, Otsego County, 1988-2002

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, the Town of Hartwick has been in disarray since fall 2024 and the filing of an Article 78 by any town councilmember against a town’s supervisor is newsworthy.