Riverhead supervisor: elected officials should not hold party leadership positions

Update: Supervisor Sean Walter is now asking the town board to refer this issue to the town ethics board for a recommendation, “in order to remove the politics from it.” He suggests the ethics board to take a look at “political activity” by elected and appointed officials. He asked the ethics board to look at a draft of a propose ordinance last night, but the board said they had no authority to make a recomendation on a code unless the full legislative body requested it in writing. 

Original story:

Supervisor Sean Walter is asking the Riverhead Town Board to amend the town ethics code to ban elected officials from serving in political party leadership roles. The move would affect the current vice chairman of the town Republican party, Mason Haas, an elected town assessor. Haas is opposed to the change, which he says is politically motivated.

Walter announced his intention to sponsor the amendment at Tuesday night’s board meeting when he presented longtime board of assessment review member Marjorie Acevedo with a proclamation thanking her for decades of service on that board. Acevedo, who was appointed to the board during the Janoski administration in the 1980s, resigned from the position in January, after she took office as Riverhead Democratic Committee chairwoman.

The town’s current ethics code was adopted in 2004 during the administration of Supervisor Phil Cardinale. In addition to setting forth standards of conduct and requiring annual financial disclosures by elected and certain appointed town officials, the 2004 code prohibits members of the planning board, zoning board of appeals, architectural review board, board of assessment review and conservation advisory council from serving on the executive committee of any town, county or state political party committee. At the time, the Riverhead Republican Committee chairman, Bruce Stuke, was chairman of the Riverhead Zoning Board of Appeals. The adoption of the code in November 2004 forced Stuke to choose between the ZBA or the political party post; he subsequently resigned from the ZBA.

The current supervisor says he believes that ban should extend to all elected officials, as well. He said a draft code amendment modeled after the one in place in Brookhaven Town, will be presented today to the town board at tomorrow’s work session.

“The public should have a certain amount of assurance that all elected officials are beyond reproach,” Walter said in a phone interview Wednesday. “You never want to think that your assessor or highway superintendent could in any way be thinking about politics in doing their job.”

Haas took the party committee vice chairman post last month and is said to be a frontrunner for election by the committee to succeed John Galla as chairman.

This spring, Haas sought the Republican nomination for supervisor but backed off prior to the party’s convention in May, throwing his support behind Walter.

Walter’s ally and former political advisor Anthony Coates, who is challenging the Republican party’s council nominees — incumbents John Dunleavy and Jodi Giglio — in a primary, has been a very vocal critic of Haas holding the party leadership position.

Coates announced on July 2 that he filed a complaint with the town ethics board about Haas taking the party post.

“I believe the office that assesses taxes and decides on grievances should be professional, impartial and free from politics,” Coates said in a news release. “I don’t think a political boss should decide how much you’ll pay in taxes.” The candidate also claimed Haas was carrying party nominating petitions during regular work hours.

Haas vigorously denied doing party business on town time, saying his allegations were “slanderous.” Coates’ criticism of an elected member of the board of assessors holding a political party leadership position doesn’t hold water, according to Haas.

“If it was a policy-making position, I think there would be a problem with that,” Haas said in a July 5 interview. “But we don’t make policy. We enforce the state laws. We have a board of three making decisions,” Haas said.

“We don’t set the tax rate. We assess a market value,” Haas said. An assessor couldn’t change an assessment of market value for no reason, Haas said. “That would be a selective assessment and that would be illegal,” he said. He noted that the board of assessors consists of three people, so there are built-in checks and balances. The three incumbent assessors are currently all Republicans.

Haas said yesterday he agrees the code should be amended to disallow town officials in policy-making positions, such as the town board, from serving in party leadership slots. But he reiterated his belief that the ban should not extend to elected officials who are not policy-makers, including himself.

Haas questioned the timing of the supervisor’s proposal, and said Walter was taking up the cause of his political ally, Coates.

Walter shrugged off criticism that his proposal is politically motivated.

“This is what’s good for the town,” he said. “I would take it further and say town board members shouldn’t even be on the committee. I hope the town council members would put the ethics concerns of residents over partisan politics,” Walter said.

“If Marge Acevedo could not sit on board of assessment review and serve as town leader, how can we allow elected officials to serve as party leaders?” Walter asked.

The record is silent on why elected officials were left out of the ban in 2004. Minutes of the Sept. 7, 2004 public hearing on the proposed code and of the Nov. 16, 2004 meeting at which the code was adopted contain no discussion of the idea that the ban should extend to elected officials.

Former councilwoman Rose Sanders, who was involved in drafting the code, said she couldn’t clearly remember whether the board discussed including elected officials in the ban. “It would have been logical,” she said. “It had to have come up. I can say for certain that one of the drafts had the town attorney in it.”

During the public hearing on the proposed ethics code, former supervisor Cardinale said several times that it was modeled after the Town of Southampton’s ethics code, according to the meeting minutes. But the Southampton code only bans the town attorney from serving on a party committee — something the Riverhead code doesn’t do.

Brookhaven’s code says “No elected Town official, Bingo Inspector or any person holding an appointed office on the Town’s Board of Ethics, Planning Board, Zoning Board of Appeals, Assessment Review Board or Accessory Apartment Review Board shall hold a position on any Town, county, state, or national duly recognized political party’s executive committee.”

Southold Town’s ethics code also bars elected officials — along with appointed members of the ZBA, planning board, ethics board, board of assessment review and the town attorney — from serving as a party committeeperson.

The county code of ethics says political party officers — defined as the chairman of a county or town political party committee — are not eligible to serve as elected officials, department commissioners, assistant district attorneys or as members of any board, commission, authority or public benefit corporation appointed by the county executive or county legislature.

Members of the Riverhead Town Republican Committee, besides Haas, include Councilman George Gabrielsen, planning board chairman Richard O’Dea, planning board member Joseph Baier, zoning board member Frank Seabrook, town attorney Robert Kozakiewicz, and industrial development agency executive director Tracy Stark-James, according to documents provided by the Suffolk County Board of Elections in response to a freedom of information law request. The board of elections has not yet supplied the membership list of the Riverhead Democratic Committee, in response to a July 9 FOIL request.

Photo captions: (Top) Riverhead Town Supervisor Sean Walter speaking at a groundbreaking event for a Route 58 shopping center Tuesday morning; Town Assessor Mason Haas speaking at a county legislature hearing in February; Riverhead Democratic Committee Chairwoman Marjorie Acevedo, who resigned from the Board of Assessment Review in January after 25 years of service, was honored by the Riverhead Town Board at Tuesday  night’s meeting, from left: Walter, Councilwoman Jodi Giglio, Councilman George Gabrielsen, Acevedo, Councilman John Dunleavy and Councilman James Wooten.

RiverheadLOCAL photos by Denise Civiletti