Berne Town Supervisor Dennis Palow and former town board member and Clerk Anita Clayton at town hall in Berne in October. Palow pitched Clayton to be named to fill a key vacancy on the depopulated Town Board, but that proposal was rejected by local Democrats.

There’s something surreal, or at least comical, about the lawsuit filed by the two remaining members of the Berne Town Board in an effort to pressure Gov. Kathy Hochul to name a replacement board member whose arrival would allow the panel to finally reach a quorum and do its business.

The town’s lack of a fully functional government was, according to the three members of the all-Republican board who resigned in August, attributable to an allegedly “toxic work environment” under Supervisor Dennis Palow. If Mr. Palow’s management style was indeed the cause of last summer’s exodus, the lawsuit is........

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