Last week, Chairman Frank Puglisi of the Cattaraugus County Democratic Party questioned congressional candidate Tracy Mitrano’s viability against Republican incumbent Tom Reed.
In response, Democratic congressional candidate Eddie Sundquist released the following statement:
“I share many of the same concerns as Chairman Puglisi. It is critical that we have a representative that is transparent and accountable to constituents in this district.
Where you call home should be a simple question for any elected official."
Recently filed public documents indicate Ms. Mitrano sold a home in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts originally purchased in January of 2016. Furthermore, an affidavit, sworn under penalty of perjury, states Ms. Mitrano was making her home in Massachusetts her primary residence. A copy of the public documents from the Hampden County Registry of Deed may be downloaded here.
Legal documents indicating Ms. Mitrano’s residence as Massachusetts while also claiming a primary residence in New York, and receiving a tax benefit, raise significant questions and serious legal ramifications.
Sundquist continued, "In the interest of transparency to voters, I would ask Ms. Mitrano to respond to the following questions:
- For the last two years, where have you considered your primary residence?
- Have you received more than one tax benefit from a primary residence in the past two years?
- Your home in Ithaca, New York, has received a NY STAR tax reduction on school taxes for the past several years. If there is any other primary residence, why have you not notified New York State in accordance with state law?
- If the home in Massachusetts was not intended to be your primary residence, why did you sign an affidavit attesting it was? Or why did you not file a corrective affidavit?
- Will you release your last 5 years of tax returns to corroborate the answers to these questions?”
Where Mitrano resides has been a question throughout the Congressional campaign. In an op-ed in January, she claimed she lived in Ithaca for the last 30 years. In a blog post from 2016, she seems to make it clear she lived in Massachusetts at the time (where she worked for the University of Massachusetts at Amherst). Yet in another letter to absentee voters the Mitrano campaign sent out, she claims to live in Penn Yan.
In a feature last week that ran front page in the Jamestown Post-Journal, an excerpt reads:
"Mitrano mentioned she is the only candidate who has resided in the western, center, and eastern areas of the district, making her a suitable representative of the people she has lived around."
Puglisi's letter spoke to that statement being a lie, as Mitrano has never claimed ties to Allegany, Cattaraugus, or Chautauqua counties. The Mitrano campaign refused to comment in response.
