All of this is my opinion…
It is my understanding that community offices in a Legislator’s District is for the politician to help his or her constituents and that our elected officials are there to help “the little people”.
My feeling is they are put in office by the people they represent to help the people they represent. Otherwise, why do they have community offices? They could spend their term up in Albany.
Here is the situation. For the sake of anonymity let’s call the person in need of help “Elmo”.
Elmo had a thriving business and had his whole life savings stolen by the people who managed his business. He brought his case to the authorities but in an effort made by the people of interest to deter any prosecution they set out to destroy Elmo by every “free” means necessary.
It cost them no money to lie to multiple state agencies but it cost Elmo everything he had and even most of what Elmo’s retired parents had to defend these many fronts. All of these lies surfaced and all of the cases were dismissed except one.
In one instance these people of interest banded together and approached the Labor Department claiming that Elmo was a terrible boss who took advantage of an employee by not paying her overtime by calling her his office manager. A sham of an investigation was had by the Labor Department in which 4 witnesses presented (all of whom the people who stole Elmo’s money or their employees). Stamped time cards were produced even though Elmo did not own a Time Clock. The Senior Labor Investigator Ronald Coaxum refused to take a single statement from any of Elmo’s witnesses. Mr. Coaxum refused to look at Elmo’s hard evidence that this woman was indeed his office manager. Furthermore, he lied to Elmo and in my opinion he violated Elmo’s Civil Rights by seeking out protected information from other agencies by nefarious means after that agency denied his information subpoena. Incredibly, he then held Elmo’s evidence to the statute of beyond a reasonable doubt as if this were a criminal case and dismissed every piece of evidence Elmo turned over that undid his case all the while fitting every piece of his complainants evidence into his case no matter how ill fit. (For more information please read more here about Mr.Coaxum)
But this is about Elmo’s Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz.
It turns out in the course of this mockery of impartiality by the Labor Department that one of the key witnesses they based their case on recanted her statement under oath. The whole case being based largely on her unsworn statement to Mr.Coaxum – Elmo reached out to Colleen Gardner the Labor Commissioner that new evidence had surfaced. Elmo thought that the Labor Department’s role was to follow the evidence and not build cases against employers despite the evidence. Elmo was wrong. Ms. Gardener asked her Chief of Special Investigations John Dormin to look into the matter. He requested information from Elmo. Then once he had the information refused to help – cutting off all communication.
Sad that the Labor Department did not care about evidence… All they care about is not looking bad or having to admit they made a mistake and have been defrauded. Elmo looked for an elected official with integrity that would stand up with him and take a stand for justice and fairness…
And now… this is about Elmo’s Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowtiz.
Broke and with a forever tarnished reputation from these fraudsters Elmo reached out to Assemblyman Cymbrowitz to update him and ask his help in insuring the Labor Department look at the evidence they refused to consider. A meeting was scheduled by Elmo’s Aunt. Once Assemblyman Cymbrowitz found out that Elmo and his father were coming to this meeting he canceled the meeting. Stating through his staff “I cannot help”.
My opinion -he did not want to help
I thought it was his elected job(his duty in office as my elected official) to try and help. I thought I deserved the courtesy of a meeting for him to hear the new developments and to try and help. All that was being asked of him was his help ensuring that Elmo was being treated fairly. Shouldn’t every legislator want to ensure that his constituents are being treated fairly by the State Agencies they legislate?
I realize Integrity is tough to come by these days and surely the path of least resistance was for Assemblyman Cymbrowitz to blow Elmo off. But don’t we put our Assemblyman into office so they can do the hard thing.
Personally I think Mr.Cymbrowtiz showed weakness of character here and I don’t think we should have anyone without backbone serving our community.
SHAME ON YOU