Elected officials in Riverhead will no longer be able to hold political party leadership posts following an amendment to the town’s ethic code approved by a the town board last night.
The board split 3-2 in the vote, with council members Jodi Giglio and John Dunleavy voting against the amendment. Both argued that the move was politically motivated, moved forward by the two Republican incumbents who failed to win the support of the party committee for their re-election bids this year.
“I think it’s a personal vendetta,” said Giglio, whom the Republican committee picked as its supervisor candidate, casting aside three-term incumbent Supervisor Sean Walter.
“I just think that this is political motivated,” Dunleavy said before casting his vote. “I think this is pay-back. ‘You did something to me and I’m gonna do something to you.’ For that reason I’m voting no.”
Amendment was a long time coming
Walter has been at odds with Republican committee chairman Mason Haas since Haas was first elected to that post in September 2013. His election as chairman came after he tossed his own hat in the ring for the Republican supervisor nomination that spring.
In the summer of 2013, Anthony Coates, who is the Democratic candidate for supervisor this year, filed an ethics complaint against Haas, who had been named vice chairman of the Republican committee that June and was considered the “heir apparent” to the party chairmanship. Coates, then a registered Republican challenging the committee’s council candidates — Giglio and Dunleavy — in a primary campaign, accused Haas of campaigning on town time. He also raised the first objections to the idea of an elected official serving as a party leader and argued that it should be barred by the town’s ethics code.
“If there’s any office in town hall that shouldn’t be held by a party leader it’s tax assessor,” Coates said in a July 2, 2013 interview. “I don’t think a political boss should decide how much you’ll pay in taxes.”
Two weeks later, Walter announced his intention to sponsor an ethics code amendment that would ban elected officials from serving on a political party’s executive committee.
“The public should have a certain amount of assurance that all elected officials are beyond reproach,” Walter said in a phone interview the following day. “You never want to think that your assessor or highway superintendent could in any way be thinking about politics in doing their job.”
The proposal touched off an immediate controversy. Haas argued that an assessor has no discretion in how taxes are calculated.
“If it was a policy-making position, I think there would be a problem with that,” Haas said. “But we don’t make policy. We enforce the state laws.”
That question — which town government positions are “policy-making” positions — took center stage in the debate that followed. The town board asked the town ethics committee for its opinion. In a November 2013 written opinion, the ethics committee recommended that the town prohibit “town officers, elected and appointed, and employees who hold policy-making positions, from serving as a political party official or committee member of a local, county or state political party.” The ethics committee told the town board it bore the responsibility to define which town government positions in are policy-making.
The town board never acted on the ethics committee’s recommendations — or, for that matter, Walter’s proposal to amend the code to ban all elected officials from holding party leadership posts.
Ethics code change re-emerges
It was not publicly discussed by the board again until after the Republican committee voted to nominate Giglio for supervisor and passed over incumbent Councilman James Wooten in favor of two newcomers, Tim Hubbard and Bob Peeker.
The day after being denied the Republican committee nomination for re-election, an angry Wooten denounced the party leader and vowed to bring the 2013 proposed ethics amendment to a vote.
“I blocked it from happening,” Wooten said in an interview. “I was trying to protect myself. That backfired,” he admitted. “Now you know damned well we’re going to go to public hearing on elected officials being on the [party] executive board. I’ll be looking to take it off the floor,” Wooten said. “I got nothing to lose by trying to do the right thing for the town.”
Before voting last night, Wooten acknowledged that amendment’s “timing might seem suspect.” But, he asked, “is there ever a wrong time to do the right thing?”
One person currently affected by the change
The ethics code amendment adopted last night adds elected officials, members of the Riverhead Industrial Development Agency, town department heads and the executive director of the Riverhead IDA to the list of town officials barred from holding party leadership posts. Prior to the amendment, the code prohibited only members of the planning board, ZBA, architectural review board, board of assessment review and conservation advisory council from serving on the executive committee of any political party.
Currently, the code change only affects one person: Riverhead GOP leader Mason Haas.
Haas said this morning he is not surprised by last night’s vote. He said Walter, more than once and in the presence of other Republican committee members, threatened him with moving forward on the ethics code amendment that would effectively unseat him as committee chairman if the committee did not back Walter’s re-election bid this year.
After the committee threw its support behind Giglio at its May nominating convention in a very close vote, Walter declared his intention to wage a primary campaign to wrest the Republican nomination from Giglio. He also promised to run as a Conservative even if he loses the Republican primary, forcing a three-way race in November.
“He makes it too much about himself instead of the people of the town,” Haas said today.
Walter over the past two years has accused Haas of wielding the power of his party position to act as a sixth town board member or even a de facto town supervisor, holding party caucuses prior to town board meetings and effectively dictating board members’ decisions on a variety of issues, including budget and personnel matters. Haas vehemently denies those accusations.
“The tax assessor in this town is in charge of the elected Republican board. That’s a lot of power,” Walter said earlier this month, “and Mason is not afraid to wield it.”
Does the code amendment go far enough?
Critics of the code change put forward by the board charge that it does not go far enough. Councilman George Gabrielsen, who voted in favor of the measure last night, says he believes elected officials should be barred from holding all party committee positions, not just leadership posts. Giglio also said the whole code should be “revamped” and Dunleavy said he thinks it “should be looked at and changed.”
The supervisor said the new code amendment won’t really affect current political party executive committees members because the timing of its adoption and effective date coincides, more or less, with the September date by which political committees have to reconstitute themselves.
By state law, the amendment adopted last night takes effect in 20 days or when filed with the New York secretary of state, whichever is later. The ethics code gives anyone who is currently a member of a political party committee’s executive board will have 20 days after the enactment of the amendment “to deliver to the town clerk such documentation establishing compliance” with the code’s new prohibition.
Haas could have to resign his chairmanship post as soon as Sept. 1, though under state election law the Republican committee would not have to elect a chairperson until 20 days after the Sept. 15 primary, i.e. Oct. 5.
“It’s obvious Sean wants to try to derail the campaign process,” Haas said today.
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