We Asked About 2026. They Answered With 1999.
When we published "The Playbook," we made one prediction: the moment this campaign feels pressure, the conversation will shift — from policy to personality, from substance to scandal, "from Cornwall's future to someone's past." We wrote: "when the next one arrives — because it is coming — remember that you read about it here first." It arrived this week.
The Cornwall Democratic Committee — the party organization backing Supervisor Wojehowski's re-election — has launched a new page on its website: "The Wells Cornwall Lost." It announces that the committee "has been digging through decades of Town Board minutes" to examine — their words — "a major unfinished matter from Helen Bunt's time as town supervisor." The matter in question dates to 1999. It will run as a four-part series. There is a form to sign up so you can be the first to read it.
What They Published
Read their page yourself — we link it, we quote it accurately, and we encourage the click. The committee says that in 1999 Cornwall voted unanimously — Bunt included — to pursue a water system in Mountainville, that the acquisition was later said to be moving forward under her administration, and that "Cornwall never secured it." What happened, they ask, and "what does this history tell us about the leadership Cornwall needs today?" A fair question, as far as it goes. Note the vintage: the newest fact previewed on that page is more than a quarter century old.
And before the four parts start dripping, one piece of context their teaser leaves out: the wells matter became entangled in a bankruptcy proceeding — litigation in a forum no town supervisor controls — and that proceeding did not conclude until 2004, after Bunt had left office. Whatever the series ends up claiming, keep that timeline in hand: you cannot "lose" in office what a bankruptcy court had not yet decided when you left it. If the committee's sourced documents tell a different story, we will read them — and check them — like everything else.
What They Are Not Talking About
Now set that alongside the questions sitting on the table right now — every one documented on this site, every one addressed to the current administration, and every one still unanswered. The Comprehensive Plan was pushed to a holiday-week special meeting with last-minute wording changes and no cap, restriction, or density limit added anywhere. The Town has gone silent on records requests for emails about the Cornwall Commons courtship — correspondence this site ultimately published from a private submission because the Town would not release its own records. The $8 million pool project still has no staffing plan, in a town that couldn't reliably keep the kiddie pool open this summer. And the "$18 million in grants" campaign claim did not survive a fact check against the state's own award lists.
A committee with the energy to dig "through decades of Town Board minutes" could address any one of those with an afternoon and a records request. It chose 1999 instead.
If the conversation has shifted from policy to personal attacks, from substance to scandal, from Cornwall's future to someone's past — you are watching the playbook.— Cornwall Truth, "The Playbook," published before that page existed
To Be Fair — And To Be Clear
Let us say plainly what we are not saying. Scrutiny of any official's record — including Helen Bunt's — is legitimate. Documented, sourced examination of public records is what this site does every week, and if the committee's series produces documented facts, read them; we will. Cornwall Truth is not a campaign arm and holds no brief for any candidate's record. Our objection is not that someone is checking the minutes. It is the selection: an organization whose own candidate faces open, sourced, current questions — about a Plan pushed through over public objection, about emails the Town will not release, about money being spent right now — has chosen to spend this election digging twenty-seven years in the other direction. That is not accountability. That is aim.
And the mechanics tell you the rest. The series is a teaser with a sign-up form — four parts, timed to an election season, built to drip. Accountability work publishes its documents when it has them. We know, because that is how every story on this site has run: the record first, in full, unedited, the same day we wrote about it.
We predicted, in writing, that when this campaign felt pressure the subject would change from Cornwall's future to someone's past. This week the Supervisor's own committee published a page that does exactly that — a four-part dig into 1999, launched while every 2026 question on this site sits unanswered. So as each installment arrives, run the test we gave you in "The Playbook": is this about an issue, or is this about an opponent? And keep a private count of how many of the four parts answer anything — anything at all — about the Plan, the emails, the pool, or the grants. We called the pivot. We are confident in the count, too.