By Paul Anbro
Family:
Wife, Mary; Children, Elizabeth, Anne and John.
How long have you lived in the area?
I am a life-long resident of the Syracuse area, raised in the Valley and in Camillus; residing on Roberts Ave in Syracuse from 1982 through 1992, and then on Hampshire Road in Syracuse from 1992 to the present.
What is your career?
I am a partner in the law firm of Hancock & Estabrook, LLP, concentrating in the trial of complex business cases.
How long have you been in your career?
Since graduating from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1981.
What are your responsibilities within your career?
I represent individuals, businesses, hospitals and schools in the litigation of complex business cases. As part of my career, I teach other lawyers and students, I work with construction and commercial trade and business development groups, I create training programs, and I provide political and legislative advice to clients.
What are the highlights of your career?
Every case represents a chance to improve a life and our community. I’ve been honored to try and win some exciting, groundbreaking cases in very important areas, for example, forcing health insurance companies to pay for essential treatment for breast cancer patients, or recovering pension benefits that big corporations denied to their employees, or helping hospitals provide essential services for poor and uninsured patients. I have had the chance to travel all across the world in my cases and to represent interesting people. For example, I just finished two cases in New York and Florida representing companies owned by the TV evangelist and former Presidential candidate, Pat Robertson, which was interesting especially since we disagree on many political issues!
What are the challenges?
The biggest challenge is to maintain the balance between law as a profession and as a business. I am convinced that the most successful, and best lawyers, practice law as a profession that is committed to the common good, and I try to live up to that ideal.
What do you most enjoy?
I most enjoy working to improve peoples lives, whether it is part of a case, or part of my pro-bono legal work for the poor or those not given a fair shake, or in my community work.
What are your hobbies?
My hobbies are focused on community service. I work with homeless and troubled children; families with disabled children and disabled adults; high risk schools; refugees from Afghanistan; women with breast cancer denied essential treatment by their health insurers; and low income families denied essential means to live. I have mentored troubled students in the Syracuse City school systems; led organizations which counseled and sheltered troubled youth; formed and led organizations devoted to families and individuals with disabilities; and taught ethics and law to high school, college and graduate students. I serve on the Board of Regents of LeMoyne College, the Board of Trustees of the Everson Museum, and the Government Affairs Board of CNY Med Tech. For the past three years, I was President of Legal Services of Central New York, which is devoted to providing legal services to the poor throughout thirteen counties in Upstate New York, and have worked with the Sisters of the Third Franciscan Order to develop a PACE medical facility for the elderly poor on the North Side. In addition to this work, I relax through sports (running, biking, and basketball) and contemplative prayer.
What is something people wouldn’t know about you?
That I am Italian! My mother was part of the Discenza and Barnello families, who are long time North Side and Eastwood families! The other thing is that my hero’s in life are my uncle, the deceased Rev. Ronald Buckel, former pastor of Holy Trinity on Park Street, and Robert Kennedy, whose examples inspire me to draw on my religious faith as the foundation that secures every part of my life.
What’s it been like working with the community?
Serving poor and vulnerable people are the causes of my life- working to not only meet their immediate needs, but to change the institutional structures which perpetuate and support systemic injustice in society. The greatest impact on the world comes about by small, highly committed and disciplined communities of people focused on the greater good, not their own selfish interests, and that is the essence of my community work.
How do you deal with tense situations?
By being direct, prayerful and supportive. Most tension develops when someone is alienated or not understood. So I try to genuinely strive to look at the situation through the other’s eyes and point of view, and agree where I can honestly do so. I employ a “we-can-solve-this-problem attitude” in everything that I do.
What other activities are you involved in?
Coaching little league basketball and baseball; volunteering to judge high school debating tournaments; following sports; and politics.
What are your goals in politics?
Upstate New York was one of the richest, safest, strongest regions in America for 140 years, until the 1960’s. Today, Upstate New York is mired at the bottom of all objective measures of economic progress in the nation. I want to help lead the rest of Upstate in showing how municipalities can work together, share resources, regionalize, and plan smarter for positive growth to make our region the greatest in the nation once again.
Where do you see Syracuse in the next five years?
In five years, we will have changed the physical appearance of Syracuse and Onondaga County, growing inward, preserving our towns, suburbs and farmland, and eliminating sprawl. An improved airport terminal under the management of a Regional Government authority will alter the face Syracuse shows to visitors. The Convention Center Hotel, the new Everson Museum expansion, new office building and condominium construction galore will mark a new skyline. The Route 81 arterial through the middle of the city will be removed, opening downtown and our neighborhoods to renewed development. The beautiful Butternut to Grant to James to Teall Avenue neighborhoods, where abandoned houses, crime, vacant lots and urban decay once ruled, will stand proudly revived. Our city and region will be on a health kick. Not just from a Fit City Initiative, designed to fund bike paths, diet and exercise programs in the schools and preventive health practice initiatives; but we’ll make our water cleaner and our streets safer. We’ll complete the programs to eliminate the discharge of all raw sewage into our creeks and rivers after heavy rains. The merger of the Syracuse Police Department and the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Department — under legislation I will propose, creating the new Syracuse Metropolitan Police Department – will allow us to put more officers on the street. And the scourge of releasing dangerous criminals early because of jail overcrowding will be on its way to being eliminated.
What is the best part of living in the area?
I live in the Northside where all issues, positive and negative, can be found. One of the great aspects of Syracuse, and “my area” on the Northside, is its attractiveness- the history and beauty of the residential and old commercial buildings. The other special quality of the “area” is that it is a “community” grounded in the values most people share: work, family, personal responsibility, individual liberty, faith, tolerance, and inclusion. This is a place where we believe in community; which means that we can achieve our individual destinies only if we share a commitment to our community. We believe in an ethic of mutual responsibility in which government has an obligation to create opportunity for citizens, but citizens have an obligation to give something back to the community.
