What’s up, Coeymans?

Things sound awfully odd in the town of Coeymans lately. Odd enough, one would think, to merit attention from those whose job it is to keep an eye on governments and the people who run them.

It was odd enough when, after voters rejected a $7 million proposal to build a new Town Hall, the town decided to pay $2,000 a month to lease new municipal offices on property owned by the town’s Planning and Zoning Board chairman, Robert Nolan. As the Times Union previously reported, the town also paid for upgrades to the property, which were previously the headquarters of Mr. Nolan’s company, Nolan Propane.

That was followed by the “resignation” last month of the attorney for the Planning and Zoning Board, Andy Brick, after he was told that the Town Board had lost confidence in him. Surrounding that resignation is an allegation that Mr. Nolan has been interfering in a town matter concerning a proposal by a competitor.

The competitor, Long Energy, wants to build a propane storage terminal in Coeymans, but says that Mr. Nolan, along with town Supervisor George McHugh, have been obstructing the project. According to Mr. Brick’s resignation letter, Mr. Nolan had complained that it was Mr. Brick who was biased in his work for the Planning and Zoning Board. Neither Mr. Nolan nor Mr. McHugh have answered Times Union requests for comment.

Oddly, too, at least one Town Board member couldn’t get an answer from the supervisor on why Mr. Brick was asked to resign — other than that Mr. McHugh claims he didn’t ask him to quit — while several Planning and Zoning Board members said they support Mr. Brick and were blindsided by word of Mr. Nolan’s accusations, which still haven’t been detailed to them.

Mr. McHugh, for his part, has tried to stall the Long Energy project since it was proposed last year, asking for a three-month moratorium to address some supposedly ill-defined terms in the town code. He later withdrew that request. Long says the supervisor also suggested the state Department of Environmental Conservation would have a problem with the proposed terminal; DEC has since said it does not.

All of this ought to at least be raising red flags beyond town government. Indeed, an attorney for Long suggested that Mr. Nolan may be in violation of state law by not recusing himself from discussions involving a business competitor’s proposal.

The apparent conflicts and machinations in Coeymans sound like exactly the sort of thing the state attorney general’s Public Integrity Bureau was created to look into. By its own description, the bureau exists as a place where New Yorkers can be sure their concerns about public corruption can be investigated “without the fear of local politics influencing the outcome.” It also teams up with financial experts from the state comptroller’s office in cases that potentially involve the handling of public funds.

It may sound like just so much small-town petty politics, and ultimately that’s all it may be. But it bears investigation. No public official, at any level of government, should be abusing their position for private gain.