Attorney David Slottje, from the Park Foundation funded Community Environmental Defense Council, can call it whatever he wants – a duck, a goose, a chicken or even a moratorium – but no matter how he spins it, and he's doing plenty of that, the Broome County Supreme Court wasn't buying what he sold Binghamton. The court threw out the foundation for every moratorium enacted in the last several months on Slottje's advice and left the CEDC strategy in tatters.

We are writing this post jointly for a reason. Tom has written numerous land use laws for communities all over New York State over the years and has been our analyst in regard to several of the local and court decisions on bans and moratoriums the state. You can read some of his takes on the matter and what he calls Potemkin laws here, here and here, for example.

Rachael has been following David Slottje around New York like a Redbone hound on the scent of a treed raccoon that's been raiding the poultry shed. She's spent more hours than anyone alive listening to Slottje pontificate on land use law he wasn't even qualified to practice in New York until 2010. She has covered numerous meetings, posted hours of video and recorded Slottje's multiple promises to his municipal hosts.

Slottje assured those hosts he was the best there was at crafting such laws. He told them enacting a moratorium before the state adopted natural gas regulations was the smart strategy – a "no brainer thing." Judge Lebous appears to have thought it was brain dead. His decision effectively renders every moratorium Slottje recommended, and others like them, irrelevant while New York State is still developing its regulations.

http://eidmarcellus.org/marcellus-shale/slottje-no-brainer-moratori...