|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
By Guy Page
Does incumbent Sen. Alison Clarkson (D-Windsor) live in the Adirondack Mountains? The question is raised because she herself said “I live in the Adirondacks” at an April, 2018 Senate committee hearing. The answer in 2024 appears to be, yes and no.
A couple weeks ago, VDC was notified of YouTube video posted six years ago. The sender was no doubt a supporter of another of the six candidates in the three-seat Windsor County Senate race. In the video, Clarkson can be seen sitting in a Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs (she was vice-chair then) comparing the affordability of living in Vermont with living in the Adirondacks. As then-Chair Michael Sirotkin and a lawmakers and lobbyists in the perpetually crowded, pre-Covid committee room look on, Clarkson responds to an off-camera remark:
“The Cost of living is a big game changer, here. It’s expensive to live in Vermont. It is not expensive to live in the Adirondacks. I live in the Adirondacks. I know. I pay property taxes in the Adirondacks. I pay people in the Adirondacks. It’s much cheaper. The cost of living is substantially lower.”
Props to Sen. Clarkson for acknowledging Vermont is an expensive place to live. Since 2018 it has become more so due to scarce housing, increased school taxes, and other factors under the Legislature’s scope of authority. But back to the main issue – ‘I live in the Adirondacks.’
The Vermont Constitution (Chapter 2, Section 15) requires that “No person shall be elected a Representative or a Senator until the person has resided in this State two years, the last year of which shall be in the legislative district for which the person is elected.”
A White Pages search under Alison Hudnut (her maiden name) Clarkson shows her addresses as Woodstock, Windsor County, Vermont, and North Creek, New York, a village in the town of Johnsburg in Warren County. I know a bit about North Creek because my late wife Diane was raised there. It’s deep in the heart of the Adirondack Park, a beautiful, conserved, difficult place where’s it hard to earn dollar, but a wonderful place to live if you can afford it. Diane used to say that everything in the Adirondack Park was held together with duct tape, because you couldn’t get a permit to actually renovate or build anything.
Searching Warren County records, I discovered that Clarkson and her husband own a waterfront property worth just under $300K. It was acquired from the estate of her parents, including her mother, Elizabeth Hudnut Clarkson. (Her father was an English-born for NY Deputy Commissioner of Commerce. The Clarksons lived in Buffalo, where Alison was raised, but also had property in North Creek.)
Her mother authored a book called “An Adirondack Archive: The Trail to Windover” in 1993, which includes 47 pages about Fox Lair, an estate built in the early 20th century by Richard Hudnut, an ancestor who was a cosmetics millionaire and aficionado of all things French. A magazine article about Fox Lair – to which Alison Clarkson contributed information to the author – describes how Hudnut built the main house in the French chateau style, a departure from the spacious, muscular log cabin favored by summering New Yorkers like Teddy Roosevelt. (Richard Hudnut spent most of his retirement and eventually died on the French Riviera.)
After Richard Hudnut’s death, the property became a Police League summer camp. It’s apparently little used now.
The Clarkson property or properties on which Sen. Clarkson says she lived in 2018 isn’t the old Fox Lair – its remnants were sold to New York State in the 1960’s – but is instead a small home or larger inheritance from her parents’ estate – it’s hard to tell from the records. In either case she owned a home there in 2018, and still does. She and her husband are still listed on Warren County tax rolls as owners of the $295,000 property at 18 Golf Avenue once belonging to her parents.
She’s also a former board member of the Adirondack Council, a non-profit supporting the conservation and environmental protection of the Adirondack Park.
Clarkson clearly has a home in Woodstock, Vermont. So – does Clarkson live in the Adirondacks, or in Vermont? Apparently both. I say apparently because I asked Clarkson, twice, by email. In the past she has responded promptly to emails. But this time…. Crickets. So I did my research. Went with what I had.
Does living part-time in New York make her ineligible for the Legislature? Not by a strict reading of the Constitution. But it’s something voters have a right to know. We welcome feedback from Sen. Clarkson.
Discover more from Vermont Daily Chronicle
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Categories: State Government
A very good question that needs to be answered, esp. from her.
I wonder what Senator Clark will be willing to do to try to make Vermont more affordable. Hopefully she’ll be willing to work with or soon to be newly elected Lt Governor John Rogers making Vermont affordable again. so that we can all have our own little happiness about having to leave the state. I love Vermont I want to stay here forever I don’t want to be like all my other friends I’ve had to move out eventually because they just can’t afford it anymore.
So making tax decisions for the voters but lives in NY
Isn’t it great that all these wealthy carpetbaggers slithered their way into Vermont to raise our taxes, pass restrictive laws and fees and tell us how to live? Well, you can thank the Vermont voters for the misery they brought to Vermont. Voters here look into nothing about who they vote for. They look for a D or P after the name and mark the spot. Democrats and Progressives have ruined the state. Thank you, now please return to where you came from.
Vermonters are so stupid somet! Get rid of her!!!
So, since Clarkson has stated, and records show, her primary “home” is New York so it begs the question; is her Woodstock home taxed at the higher second home rate?
My question exactly !
Moot point. She shouldn’t be a Vt representative!!
if her residence is in NY she is not eligible to vote in Vermont!
The law requires that she needs a primary residence in the district she represents and be registered to vote in that district. If her primary residence is in NY she can not be registered to vote in VT. That is the voter integrity laws. If she is not filing tax returns in Vermont than she is not a Vermont resident.
Laws do not affect democrats, they are SPECIAL and PRIVILEGED. Keep voting for them you jesters.
Lifelong Republican, live in Woodstock, and can say that Senator Clarkson does in fact reside here full time. She and her husband are good folks and good neighbors, she is around town all the time. Can’t say I agree with her voting record or her party’s views at all, but she is as much a Vermonter as any of us.
the question is where does she claim her primary residence? If it is NY she is scamming the system. Why would we vote for someone that is a tax cheat?
Even knowing this; The Vermont Left will STILL vote for her, after all who cares where she lives – she is militantly pro abortion.
There must be something illegal about this. Are there any politicians left in this state that will step up and stop this madness? Are there any lawyers that want to stand up for the constitution? It’s absolutely amazing what power does to the human condition. God bless us all, we will certainly need it.
There are many many many folks in state government positions who don’t live here. Go down the list and look at public record if you want to see for yourself. Lots of people with residence in New York.
most of the farmers i know (dairy,addison county) have zipped off to Florida for a sixmonth and a day. Florida makes sense. houchovill not so much.
The shock of learning one of our Senators is a crooked, grifting elitist. Isn’t that how they win their seats? Isn’t that how they rip us off with impunity? Isn’t that how they get away with criminal acts, civil violations, and profit bigly off our labor? C’mon man! If Sleepy Joe and Camel Toe can do it, they can all do it! It’s a free for all by those pretending to represent the People – they represent only the Corporation and their own bank accounts. The enemy within, indeed.
Things are so expensive from property taxes to groceries even our elected officials don’t live here. I’m surprised there aren’t more of them living in NH because Vt has become unaffordable for many of us.
I wonder if she is registered to vote in two localities.
When you are global you have no residence. Looks like a member of the one world gang. Was Woodstock the play ground for the Rockefellers???
This definitely needs further investigation. However, maybe it’s just a summer “camp” on a New York lake. If so and there are no tax and voting irregularities then no big deal. I’m sure many people in Woodstock own more than one home.
She is just one more example of why we must vote against any state representative or senator with a D, D/P, or P after his or her name if we want to be able to stay in our own state. Don’t pay any attention to what they say. See what they did and are doing.
Clarkson is devious at best. Just got a double salary increase, does she also charge travel expenses traveling to her place in NY? She gets paid by the VT taxpayer then goes to NY where she says it’s cheaper to live. Very devious. She needs to be impeached. Travel and meals motels receipts required for reimbursement. Ask the Zuck, he does it and admitted doing it, in a Seven Days column.
It seems that she stepped in it when she said “I live in the Adirondacks” rather than I have a place or a home in the Adirondacks. Lots of people have a vacation home out of state and that is not a problem. I have no reason to believe she is not a Vermonter, or should I not say a resident of Vermont. I think the question to be answered on November 5th is is she representing the best interests of Vermont and has her voting record made Vermont more or less affordable? I will be voting for those with an R beside there name!