Gloversville activist starts own publication

PHOTOGRAPHER: Jim McGuire

Taxpayer activist Jack Kinzie, saying that he is tired of what he sees as voter apathy and shortcomings in the mainstream local media, is publishing a newsletter to expose what he contends is rampant corruption in the county.

The first edition of “Fulton County Politics and Taxes with Jack Kinzie” is now available by contacting the author. He said he has a growing mailing list that stood Thursday at 122, and he is making plans to establish a Web site.

Under the headline, “We Tell It As We See It,” the first edition is three pages, outlining some of Kinzie’s current concerns about local governments and school districts. He questions recent Gloversville school board decisions, the propriety of Mayor Tim Hughes and City Attorney John Clo selling unused sick and vacation time back to the city and Gloversville’s selection of a modular home dealer for its grant-funded homebuyers program.

Kinzie pledged to examine all the candidates going into the primary and general election season and lambasts voters in general for failing to show up each year to vote.

“The reaction has been favorable,” Kinzie said Thursday.

“I just feel there is a need for steady diet of exposure … Corruption is rampant in this county and it has to be exposed,” he said. “I’m going to try to use that newsletter to expose it.”

The local media, he said, either cannot or will not tackle some of the issues. “Issue after issue raised in this county never gets resolved — and then people forget about it,” he said.

Kinzie, the host of the cable access show also called “Politics and Taxes with Jack Kinzie (5:30 p.m. Thursdays on Channel 16), is inviting people with information about possible corruption to contact him under the veil of confidentiality. He said he will investigate.

In the introduction to his first edition, Kinzie takes on the local media. “Day in and day out those of us who live in Fulton County seldom if ever get to read or hear the local political and government news in an unbiased tell-it-as-it-is manner.”

The newsletter, he wrote, “will enable all of us to determine which local elected officials are really fighting to protect our interests as taxpayers.”

Raising a favorite issue of his — about 10 percent of voters participate in school elections and often only 60-some percent in general elections — Kinzie continued: “we are going to stick to telling you the news in a direct straight forward manner in hopes that the truth alone will convince you to care enough about your community to get out and vote.”

Kinzie said he plans to publish at least biweekly. When the Web site is online, he said he will probably post daily.