“I wish to assure members of the public that UCRRA is not in crisis.”
— UCRRA press release, August 26
When an organization puts out an unsigned press release which denies there is a crisis, the instinct is to ask why it’s necessary to deny a crisis.
The Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency (UCRRA) has been beset by scandal so frequently over the last year that a defensive posture is understandable. The verbal equivalent to ducking after throwing a punch, the statement comes on the heels of the termination of agency executive director Greg Ollivier.
Formerly the acting head solid waste for the desert city of Bakersfield, California, Ollivier began the oversight of Ulster County’s waste recovery operation last October. On August 22, 2023, he was dismissed at a UCRRA executive session in which five agency board members guided by the counsel of three lawyers voted unanimously to authorize his termination.
Ollivier’s exit is eased over a 30-day administrative leave before full termination.
Two of the five board members voting, David Gilmour and Regis Obijinski, had officially joined the board less than two hours before the vote. The press release went on to characterize the board’s decision to terminate Ollivier as “proper and correct”.
It’s likely chair Andrew Ghiorse, vice-chair James Gordon and board member Donna Egan, had discussed the idea before, and were only waiting to establish a full quorum to follow through.
Obijinski and Gilmour’s seats have been vacant since May when board members Margot Becker and Tom Kacandes quit the board within a week of each other. Becker’s resignation letter was like lobbing a flash grenade into a board room. She caught her colleagues unawares, characterizing the agency as “a place driven by bullying, self-interest, manipulation, aggression, secrets, impartial information divulgence, and extreme dysfunction.” Becker had joined the board in February 2022.
With Ollivier’s departure, director of finance and administration Tim DeGraff will serve as acting director until a new executive director is chosen. DeGraff previously served as executive director of UCRRA from October of 2020 until Ollivier’s selection.
As executive director of the agency from 2020 through 2022, DeGraff became exasperated with the responsibilities that come with the job while dealing with the expectations of the board.
“I’ve been treated like spit,” said DeGraff in March 2022, “and that’s reality…I was retaliated against and it’s not stopping and I’m getting tired of it. Tired of being bullied, harassed and treated like crap around here. I’m done.”
It’s unclear who had gotten under his skin. DeGraff, who started with UCRRA in 2007, asserts he has always had a good working relationship with UCRRA board members.
Coinciding with the board’s effort, led by Jim Gordon, to censor comments from the UCRRA staff about official board communications regarding the language in a scoping document, things came to head.
Shielded from most forms of outside oversight and operational direction, UCRRA is a public benefit corporation, a legal designation that protects the agency with a kind of qualified immunity. Proponents say this keeps politics from interfering with the entirely consequential business of waste disposal. Detractors disdain the placement of the agency out of reach to traditionally utilized methods of oversight.
Legislator Joe Maloney is one of these critics. He refers to the UCRRA as a kingdom of its own within the county. He has alleged the real power over the past decade has been in the hands of operations and compliance director Charlie Whittaker, supported by agency counsel Kenneth Gilligan.
“Anybody who suggests changing anything or making decisions within [Whittaker’s] realm of influence … is instantly viewed as a problem,” Ollivier has said.
During the directorship of DeGraff in 2021, the agency sued the county to prevent county comptroller March Gallagher to audit its compost operation. The effort only failed in court after it had cost the taxpayers an estimated $10,644.
“The completion of the audit was delayed nearly a year by this litigation,” said Gallagher. “However, once we were provided the requested documentation, we were able to complete our work.”
“A significant amount of the benefits of the composting program are going to one customer,” alleged the comptroller’s audit, “the UCRRA director of maintenance and brother of [the] operations manager to whom he reports.”
The comptroller alleged that the employee responsible for the oversight of compost operations, Willie Whittaker [Charlie Whittaker’s brother], from October 15th to December 31st had bought up an estimated 29.8 percent of the county compost at a disadvantage to the general public for the use of his private company and at a discount to himself.
Compost sold at UCRRA is not taxed.
General Municipal Law bars employees from using their position to obtain special benefits and using the position to be first in line for first-come, first-serve product.
At the same March 2022 UCRRA board meeting where DeGraff said he was treated like spit, director of operations Charlie Whittaker spoke. Frustrated with the direction the board was taking on oversight policy, Whittaker lost his temper.
“I watched 60 board members walking in and out of this room over the past three decades,” he said. “And Tim’s right, we’ve all been through a lot of crap this past year. For the record …Willie didn’t buy one ounce of compost.”
Vice-chair of the UCRRA board Jim Gordon has offered his opinion on what should be done.
“To start the modernization process,” wrote Gordon in an Op-Ed published in Hudson Valley One, “Ulster County’s government must absorb the Resource Recovery Agency (RRA) and turn it into a county department.”
Gordon deplored what he characterized as the intermittent oversight offered by a five-member board of rotating unpaid citizen volunteers. Gordon would prefer that RRA operations should be under the control of county executive Jen Metzger, and thus, he has said, be more directly answerable to the public.
“Solid-waste management solutions are too important to be decided by the five-member board of an independent agency answerable to no one,” said Gordon.
The contract defining the relationship between UCRRA and the county expires in 2025. Outgoing director Greg Ollivier has been asked what he thinks would be the most effective relationship between the agency and the county government. So far, he hasn’t responded to requests for his comments.
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