Preservationist Faces Questions Over Stringer Letter

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The New York Sun

A preservationist who once read a letter from the president of Manhattan aloud at a Landmarks Commission meeting will have to answer questions from city investigators about whether she read the letter word for word, or altered it.

A mid-level state appellate court gave the city a green light this week to pursue the matter, one of the more unusual cases occupying the city’s Department of Investigation. At issue is what exactly was said at a public meeting in October 2006 about the possible landmarking of two former stables on the Upper West Side. At the meeting, Virginia Parkhouse, a volunteer for a preservationist group, read aloud a letter from the Manhattan borough president, Scott Stringer, about the status of the two stables.

A lawyer for Mr. Stringer subsequently wrote to the Landmarks Commission to say Ms. Parkhouse was not authorized to speak on the borough president’s behalf and that she may even have violated a law against “criminal impersonation.”

There is some evidence, according to court documents, that Ms. Parkhouse changed some of the wording of Mr. Stringer’s letter when she delivered her speech at the commission hearing.

When the Department of Investigation subpoenaed Ms. Parkhouse, she argued that she had a right under the First Amendment not to be questioned about her remarks at a public hearing.

A first deputy commissioner for the department, Walter Arsenault, told the court that his agency wanted testimony from Ms. Parkhouse to help him understand whether there was a “deliberate effort to improperly influence official government proceedings.”

A court rejected Ms. Parkhouse’s position and ordered her to respond to the subpoena.

“To the contrary, she does not have a constitutionally protected right to disseminate false information in a public forum,” Judge Rolando Acosta wrote on behalf of a unanimous panel of four appellate judges.

It is unclear whether city investigators intend to pursue a criminal case against Ms. Parkhouse. The court’s decision recommends that Ms. Parkhouse receive immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony.

A lawyer for Ms. Parkhouse, Whitney North Seymour Jr., declined to comment.


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