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.