On August 12, 2019 the church made a motion to dismiss the lawsuit to restore the funds. Links to the documents are above. The grounds for this motion revolve around various claims that I lack the "standing" to bring the suit, in part claiming that I am a "former" parishioner. The motion to dismiss was granted, with the decision released on March 6, 2020. The decision was based on the Court ruling that I lacked "standing" which is my ability to bring this type of action against the church. Thus, the Court made no decision on the merits of the case.

Instead the Court ruled that "[N]ormally, standing to challenge the actions by the trustees of a charitable organization or corporations is limited to the Attorney General." Thus, the issues remain unresolved and the cloud of suspicion remains over the actions of the Vestry and (especially) their advisors.

This raises the question of why the Attorney General's office did not act? A complaint was filed in September of 2017 and it took several months for them to even acknowledge receipt of that complaint. There was virtually no communication from the Charities Bureau--the office that handles such complaints. Follow-up letters were sent with additional information. They went unanswered until, in January of 2019 I received a two sentence letter that they were taking no action.

This lawsuit was filed in the spring of 2019, which also named the Attorney General's office as a potential "necessary party." Their attorneys initially told my attorney that the Charities Bureau was extremely protective of restricted funds--but their inaction has told a different story.

In preliminary hearings their counsel appeared--but repeatedly took no position. At a hearing where the church unsuccessfully sought to shut down this web site, we asked why the Charities Bureau was not taking an active role in this case. The attorney emphasized that their resources were very limited. Since no one was actually stealing the funds, they did not have the resources to devote to the case.

What the above lack of enforcement does is send a message to all religious and not for profit organizations that it is "open season" on restricted funds. Those organizations are free to use those funds for any purpose within the organization. This goes against the very principle of a restricted fund.

So why are the resources of the Charities Bureau so limited? Three million dollars were in those restricted accounts--not a petty amount. The answer is that, while no governmental agency has unlimited resource, the Charities Bureau certainly does have a large staff and funding. The answer lies in how those resources are being used.

The Attorney General is a political office. Our present Attorney General has higher political ambitions, as evidenced by her short lived run for the governor's seat in 2022. There is a lot more publicity/political gain to be made by going after charitable organizations and not for profits such as the NRA, various Trump organizations, Amazon and the like. But not a lot of political gain/publicity is to be gained by enforcing the rules against a more commonplace religious or charitable organization . . .

Clearly so much of those resources are being used to enforce the rules in high profile cases, leaving little to no resources to perform the core day to day responsibilities of that office. So, based on this lack of enforcement, generous people who donate to a charity or not for profit in New York to help fund a specific project now have no protection or recourse if that gift is used for an entirely different purpose. Your gift to an organization solicited for hurricane relief can freely be used by that organization for any other purpose within the operational scope of that organization. This should not be permitted to happen.