Here's a bunch of links to a bunch of things!

I've been sick (*cough! sniffle!*) the last few days so I have been in bed drinking orange juice rather than updating my blog. In the meantime, people have been writing things about the ACR! Imagine that!

¯Let's start with this. Brian Mann says Richard Brummel was saying the entire APA review of the ACR was fixed by the state. Interesting!

Brian asked Lani Ulrich in her little presser after the decision last Friday how much of a directive the state had given the APA on the decision. Ulrich said they had gotten either very little or no directive at all from the governor's office, and she was proud that the state put its trust in the APA to give the project a fair review.

¯Also, today VPR interviewed Paul Maroun. I didn't know VPR ever covered anything over here! But they did. Through Paul Maroun.

He became something of a spokesman for Tupper Lake last week, being mayor AND legislator and all. Quite a few people interviewed him about the decision. Imagine if Mickey had still been mayor when the decision went through? I don't think it would have gone quite the same way.

¯Third, Adirondack Wild's David Gibson wrote this piece on Adirondack Almanack about how "10 votes gave away the Park."

"A critical factor in the outcome of the vote, in my opinion, is that the APA staff performed badly (I could use a stronger word) in their summaries of the adjudicatory hearing evidence for the Agency’s members," Gibson wrote.

Gibson states that the hearing evidence presented by he and his colleagues played little role in commissioners' decisions. But there was plenty of evidence to suggest that commissioners were actually reading or watching at least parts of the record on their own. It seemed like each of them studied the parts of the record they were particularly concerned with, and they drew their own conclusions from that. I did expect a little more of the APA staff presenting all sides of each point, but commissioners did in the end decide how much weight to give each argument. Gibson makes it seem like commissioners had no access to the record at all.

Also, regarding his conclusion number 5, I have no idea what he's suggesting about when the concessions were made. How does that play into any of this at all? It may make some of the arguments made by the developers and their supporters a bit disingenuous, but beyond that, so what?

¯And finally, WPTZ, The Press-Republican and of course the Enterprise have all been editorializing in support of the decision.

Once again, as a disclaimer, I have absolutely no input into Enterprise editorials and only fact check them on occasion if I'm asked to, which I was for this one. It's all the opinion of our editorial board, Managing Editor Peter Crowley and Publisher Cathy Moore.

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