His mom was seated in the front row. Representatives from Senators Schumer’s and Gillibrand’s offices sat behind them. So too were officials from state, county and municipal levels, as well as executives from the business and non-profit sectors. It must have been several dozen in all, who had driven up to an hour or more to the small Hudson River City of Newburgh on a cold Monday night in January to watch a man get sworn in to a job that hadn’t existed a few short weeks earlier. The city had moved the Council Meeting from City Hall to the recreation center just to fit them all.
One by one, council members came out to take their seats, starting with Torrance Harvey, the mayor: strutting as if onto a grand proscenium stage in the manner of a man who is proud of his work. He roll-called the VIPs as the room filled to capacity. Some took to the podium one after the other to offer their words.
Then the moment arrived. Mike Neppl stood, raised his right hand, and BOOM, the city had a brand new … Deputy City Manager.
Neppl talked about his roots. Fifth-generation Newburgh. Humble beginnings. Coming home to serve. Coming home to lead. Look at what he has helped Newburgh accomplish so far. The accomplishments seem to this observer to revolve mostly around investments in several affordable housing projects. PILOT funded housing investment. Democrats have been using PILOTS, a process originally designed to support business development, to instead incentivize “affordable” housing development. When applied to housing, it is arguably a financially extractive process, taking money out of the community both upfront in fees and then shifting the tax burden to other homeowners, and is a very damaging way to do long term urban development. Being of Puerto-Rican descent, it reminds me of Operation Bootstrap, the massive welfare program in the 1950s designed to turn Puerto Ricans away from the struggle for independence. It encouraged corporations to locate factories there with massive tax incentives in order to provide employment, but what ended up happening was that mostly capital intensive pharmaceutical companies with few jobs exploited the program. That’s a story for another day.
In any event: the dignitaries nodded, the audience clapped, the mayor beamed. The city manager, Todd Venning, sat at the end of the head table, looking like a man whose plan had come together. The ceremonial proceedings concluded, and then BOOM: just like that, Neppl and his entourage stood up, put on their coats, and walked out the door.
Many of those remaining turned to each other, as if they were collectively sharing a thought bubble: “That is some little club they have there. And we ain’t in it!”
But the Council Meeting wasn’t over. It was just getting warmed up.
The Blue Screen
Four days earlier, on January 8, the Newburgh City Council held a work session. Before conducting any public business, they went into executive session—private, closed to the public.
The stated reason, per the agenda: “the medical, financial, credit or employment history of a particular person or corporation, or matters leading to the appointment, employment, promotion, demotion, discipline, suspension, dismissal or removal of a particular person or corporation.”
The citizens — the hardy half dozen or so who showed up to observe the evening’s proceedings — sat in the room for two hours, enjoying the provided audio visual entertainment: two flat screen monitors that displayed the City of Newburgh logo set still against a cobalt blue background, with an incessant hum from the ventilation system providing aural accompaniment. For. Two. Hours. They could have been home watching Sinners and had twelve minutes to spare.
When the council finally emerged, they conducted their remaining business. Nobody explained what they’d been discussing. Nobody had to. Executive session minutes are not public.
But here is what we know:
On December 18, 2025, days before Christmas, the council created the position of Deputy City Manager and appointed Michael Neppl to fill it — on the very same night they held a public hearing to receive comments on whether or not this was even desirable.
That’s right. Line item 8: public hearing. Line item 13: create the position. Line item 14: appoint Neppl. All in one evening. The public was invited to comment on a job that was already created and then filled minutes later.
I was there to express my opposition to creating the position, for reasons that I will state later. Seeing items 13 and 14 for the first time, I sat there slack jawed, soaking up the absurdity of the situation, and said nothing. A certain level of public apathy drives low attendance to council meetings, and tonight was not an exception. But to be fair to the public, scheduling this meeting days before Christmas did not help. It was as if the council did not want the public to see what was occurring that evening, and those who did saw no reason to step up to the mike either.
On January 8, 2026, the council spent two hours in private discussing someone’s employment history.
On January 12, 2026, Neppl was sworn in with dignitaries gracing the event with their presence.
What They Didn’t Celebrate
A search of the New York State attorney registration database https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/attorneyservices/search? takes maybe 90 seconds. Type in a name, click I am a human, hit enter.
Michael Thomas Neppl. Registration number 4720645. Status: Currently registered. Disciplinary history: Yes.
Click Michael Thomas Neppl for details and under Disciplinary History click View Discipline and you find a court order from the Appellate Division, Third Judicial Department, dated March 20, 2025. It grants Neppl’s motion for reinstatement to the practice of law:
“Upon reading respondent’s notice of motion and affidavit with exhibit sworn to November 25, 2024, and the January 10, 2025 responsive correspondence from the Attorney Grievance Committee for the Third Judicial Department, and having determined, by clear and convincing evidence, that (1) respondent has satisfied the requirements of Rules of the Appellate Division, Third Department (22 NYCRR) § 806.16 (c) (5), (2) respondent has complied with the order of suspension and the rules of this Court, (3) respondent has the requisite character and fitness to practice law, and (4) it would be in the public interest to reinstate respondent to the practice of law (see Rules for Atty Disciplinary Matters [22 NYCRR] § 1240.16 [a]), it is ORDERED that respondent’s motion for reinstatement is granted; and it is further ORDERED that respondent is reinstated as an attorney and counselor-at-law, effective immediately.”
Neppl was suspended in May 2019 for violating Judiciary Law § 468-a — the statute requiring attorneys to register and pay their fees. A garden variety offense: to say that he was “disciplined” gives it more gravity than it deserves. He let the suspension stand for nearly six years.
During that time, he founded Mike Neppl Communications — a consultancy that my best searches reveal so far may exist primarily as typographic facade on a LinkedIn page. Don’t we all have some of these? He subsequently took a job as Government Affairs Director for the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors for five months.
Then in August 2022, he was hired as Chief of Staff for the City of Newburgh.
In November 2024, he was appointed Chair of the City of Newburgh Industrial Development Agency — an oversight board composed of volunteer citizens, where his management style inclined many volunteers to resign. Those who were too stubborn to get the memo nevertheless found a way to the door: think The Exterminating Angel of municipal governance in reverse.
Suddenly, a board meant to have 7 advisory members of independent citizens at arm’s length from city governance intended to provide the city with business advice and oversight was reduced to 4 city employees appointed by and reporting directly to Neppl himself, who justified it by saying “It’s not illegal”.
It was just days after the IDA appointment — November 25, 2024 — that he filed a motion for reinstatement. On March 20, 2025, the court granted it. Nine months later, the council created a new position and handed it to him.
And the mayor, who — like the city manager — spits out the word transparency the way Mariano Rivera broke bats with his cutter, with regard to this, stayed in the bullpen.
Did the dignitaries who came to applaud Neppl’s humble roots know? Did the U.S. Senator’s reps know? What did the council know? At least one of them told me they did not know that there would be a Neppl Grand Inaugural Extravaganza that evening (I was later told that Neppl had arranged it himself, with help from a couple council members. The rest were apparently kept out of the loop.).
What were they discussing for two hours on January 8? I found some of what may or may not have been occupying some of their minds for those two hours with a basic search.
The Second Meeting
Meanwhile. Back to the recreation center.
With the Neppl Grand Inaugural Extravaganza out of the room, the council moved on to the rest of its agenda. The city manager gave his report. Then it was time for public comment.
About twenty people queued up at the microphone. I anchored the end of the line.
Early up was a man named Corey Allen. A Black man. A Newburgh-born and raised man. A man known to the community. An angry man. A man who has earned his anger — about urban renewal, the policy that gutted this city decades ago, including his family’s home, a gutting that after 65 years, still waits to be repaired. By whom and for whom is another topic for another day. He spoke with the kind of anger that doesn’t perform. It exhales.
Next up: a woman from the Kenny complex.
The Kenny complex is an apartment building where residents have been without heat or hot water for two months. This is January. Children live there.
The woman started talking, and within a minute or so, the meeting exploded.
Someone — who, I later learned, is very involved in school politics and lives in the town of Newburgh, not the city — started yelling at a councilmember. Within seconds, he was challenging him to a fist fight. The councilmember started to get up from his seat: to calm him down or to oblige, I do not know but the councilmember is often incendiary himself: now he has some competition. Tenants — in a cacophonic wave — surged forward, all screaming toward the head table: “Liars!”, “Do Nothings!” and … other things. Residents who had been freezing for two months were letting the council know exactly what they thought about city services.
Police moved in. They didn’t rush: they ambled, like men who’d seen this before.
But the Kenny tenants would not be silenced. The council sat. The mayor looked on: I think maybe he wished he’d left with Neppl. After maybe 15 minutes, he decided to “break protocol” — as he is inclined to do — and attempt to intervene with admonitions and excuses, which seemed to only further incite them. He might have calmed the room if he followed protocol — make a motion, get a second, get a vote, then talk. Parliamentary formalities may be boring, but their time-consuming nature has the parallel benefit of lowering the thermostat. Instead, the mayor speaks when he feels like it. The crowd follows his example.
Then, corporation counsel took her turn. Her defense: the city didn’t know about the conditions at Kenny. The public must come to them and let them know! Now that they know, they’ve sent inspectors. But. They can only do what the law allows, and first the landlord must be given time to respond.
The code department? “Nobody told us: we didn’t know”.
“We didn’t know.” They always say “We didn’t know.” Furthermore: things will take time. The law is the law: the system doesn’t allow us to enforce immediately. Never mind that the landlord is breaking the law up and down, left and right and all over. Right NOW.
Nobody — the mayor, the council, asks why they didn’t know. Nobody asks why it takes a near-riot for the city to act on the fact that children are living without heat in January.
What would Jesus do?
The city manager is required by statute to live in Newburgh. It is strongly suspected that only his rent checks have been residing at that apartment in Ward 1, constituting a taxpayer subsidy to one lucky landlord.
Jesus would live here. I am sure many believe He does.
There’s a quote from Father Gustavo Gutiérrez’s Theology of Liberation: “My neighbor is not he whom I find in my path, but rather he in whose path I place myself, he whom I approach and actively seek.” Gutiérrez isn’t talking about helping whoever stumbles onto your doorstep. He’s saying you go find the people who need help. You walk their streets. You know their names. You place yourself in their path, in their shoes.
If the city manager lived here — actually lived here: as in, walked the blocks, talked to the people in the street, knew the buildings, talked to the tenants — would the Kenny complex have gone two months without heat before anyone in city government noticed?
It seems that nobody whose job it is to know lives close enough to find out.
What would Christina do?
Christina Amato has deep roots in the city and now runs her family’s real estate business. She has experience. Relevant experience. She was one of the people who left the IDA under Neppl’s management — after about a decade of service. Her reason? She wouldn’t be part of something the city wanted to do that she believed was at best problematic. She is civic minded, but not the type to insert herself into politics. She once did run for ward 1 councilmember, as an independent. The experience shook her and she has yet to try again.
Nevertheless, there she stood, with the first constructive observation. Didn’t the Kenny complex receive a 30-year PILOT? If so, she said, the city should have and should use its leverage. She asked about claw-back clauses — doesn’t the agreement require certain conditions to be met, and if they’re not, can’t the city revoke the PILOT retroactively, place a lien, seize the property? She insisted that the city should be in a position to apply real pressure.
Chrissie — a developer herself — is among many long-timers who believe developers bully the city into handing out PILOTs like Halloween candy — and that the city lets them, because officials are so insecure and lacking in vision that they think no one else will build here.
Taking My Turn
It was time for my three minutes.
I announced that I was using the moment to file an ethics complaint against the city manager.
The city manager is an attorney. He may have violated Rule 8.4, which prohibits conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation. I first raised the matter in the mayor’s office in November 2024. The mayor indicated he personally would not tolerate such conduct. He took no action. Since the ethics complaint goes first to the desk of the very city manager who is the subject of the complaint before going to an ethics committee that has been lacking 3 of its 5 members for years, leaving it without a quorum, and that reports to him, I said that for now, I am simply laying down a record.
I brought up my six outstanding FOILs — unanswered for months, in violation of the law — and the eleven more I would be filing, starting that night.
Then I turned to the Kenny tenants. Councilperson Tamika is new, but she is hitting the ground running: she was the only councilperson with specific and constructive recommendations, such as bringing in mobile boilers until the permanent ones are fixed and sending the bill to the landlord. I commended her, and added that the nightmare might not have come to pass if the council had hired three code inspectors instead of wasting salary on an executive vanity hire: I am here referring to the deputy city manager position that I had intended to critique back at that council meeting on December 18. I concluded with a personal story: about how decades ago, I was one of tens of thousands of loft tenants, a number approaching the population of Newburgh, mostly artists, mostly in Manhattan, who went on rent strike against hundreds of landlords simultaneously. Our effort kept us in our homes. We wrote groundbreaking landlord tenant law. If they wanted to know how that was done, they can find me through their councilperson.
I walked to the clerk and handed her the ethics complaint and a FOIL request on Neppl’s vetting, and left. As I reached my car, I opened my mobile and hit send — my remarks, the ethics complaint, the FOIL — to every councilmember and the mayor. In case their attention had drifted.
Hear No Evil, See No Evil
The people who stayed for the show celebrated Michael Neppl, the fifth-generation Newburgh native coming home to serve. They saw the trappings of civic achievement.
They didn’t see Corey Allen.
They didn’t see the Kenny tenants.
They didn’t see an attendee challenge a councilmember to a fight, or the councilmember rise, or the police amble over like it was all part of the routine.
They didn’t hear corporation counsel explain that the city didn’t know.
They didn’t hear Christine ask about clawbacks.
They didn’t hear anyone cite Rule 8.4.
They didn’t hear anyone ask why the council spent two hours in executive session discussing someone’s employment history, four days before a public swearing-in, without telling the public what they found.
The Two Cities
The people who stayed for the show saw how Newburgh ritualizes public service: where a man talks about his humble roots and everyone applauds and then goes home.
The people who stayed for governing saw how Newburgh governs: where children live without heat for two months and tenants scream at their councilmembers and the city’s defense is that they didn’t know.
On January 12, 2026, both versions were in the same room. Sort of like two boats on the Hudson: when hosting a party, the other taking on water, both unmored, adrift.
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The views expressed in “Newburgh Is America” are those of the blog and do not reflect the views of any organization, institution, or individual other than the author.
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