Ethics Bored

After sitting through the recent Huntington Ethics board meeting, one might have pondered the question, “Are they corrupt or inept?”

The annual Ethics Board meeting took place on March 18, 2015.  The meeting began at 6:00 p.m. and lasted until 8:15 p.m., which is significantly longer than in years past.  This is likely because the integrity of Councilman Cuthbertson and others has been questioned recently.

Considering that the topic of ethics has been such a hot topic recently in local newspapers, social media and at recent town board and local civic meetings, this board was painfully unprepared for their only meeting of the year.

According to Town Code, there is supposed to be a minimum of 4-5 active board members.  There are currently only 3 members and an attorney on the board.  They were unprepared to answer the most basic questions.  When asked, they seemed to be unclear on how long their terms are, when and if they had active appointments and how many complaints they had actually addressed this past year.

Most of the residents who spoke on public record were in agreement that the Ethics Code was fine the way it is and the problem was lack of enforcement of the Ethics Code and holding people accountable. The code is currently being revised by a local law firm at a cost to the tax payers.

Unlike the ill prepared Ethics Board members, the residents who spoke were remarkably well informed.

Marie Rendley, one of the residents who spoke at the meeting, described how she is followed every time she enters Town Hall. She described how her Town Hall files “disappeared” and she was forced to go to Riverhead to obtain new copies.

Rendley stated,  “Ken Lindhal (former Director of Public Safety) followed me whenever I entered Town Hall.  He violated my free rights.  Whenever I was here to obtain personal records or file a FOIL request I was harassed and intimated. I came to this board and you did nothing.  When I asked why I was being followed by the code enforcement officer, they didn’t know why they were following me.”  She continued, “Don’t you think it’s strange that the people who were told to follow me, were not told why?  This was all a form of harassment because I was calling out my town board.”

Rendley continued, “There are also good people who work in this town and who want to do their job, but they can’t because of who their boss is.”

Peter Nichols, a resident of Melville, has been trying to hold the Ethics Board accountable for years.  There have been previous ethics hearings where he was the only resident to show up. This year he finally had some company.  There were approximately 40 people in attendance.

There were several common concerns among the residents that spoke. One key point made repeatedly was that it is problematic to have the Ethics Board members appointed by the supervisor and the Town Council members.  Resident Jim McGoldrick  described this as the fox watching the hen house.

Another area where there seemed to be agreement was that the town’s Ethics Code does not need revision, it needs to be enforced.

Marie Rendley stated, “The code is written very well, all the town employees are given a copy of the Code of Ethics and it is very clearly written out.  The problem that we have in this town is that we have no accountability, we have no one to turn to who will enforce the laws. Our town board appoints the Ethics Board,  right there this is a conflict of interest.”

Another area of consensus was that people would like to see an Ethics Board that is more active and involved.

Several people expressed that they would like to see more frequent meetings of the Ethics Board.  Holding meetings quarterly seemed to be something most people agreed with.  Other suggestions included having an Ethics complaint form available online that people could easily access with a description of the procedure for filing a complaint.

Peter Nichols asked,  “Do you respond solely if complaints come from the general public?  If you read something in the paper or you hear something in town hall will you investigate it?”  Howard Glickstein, who is the Chairman of the Ethics Board, explained that they only respond to public complaints and will not initiate an investigate on their own.

Peter Nichols asked, “In the past 5 years, how many complaints have been filed by the general public?  Glickstein answered, “2 or 3” Nichols responded, “That’s strange because I’ve filed at least 10 myself.”

Nichols asked,  “Are there are any reports or opinions issued by the Ethics Board that the public could review?”  Glickstein responded, “We render advisory opinions to employees of the town that have questions of ethics that may or may not violate the code but copies can’t be obtained because they are confidential.”

Nichols asked, “How many complaints have you investigated in the past 5 years?”  Glickstein responded, “All have been filed, but what do you mean by investigated?”  Nichols explained, “Investigated, meaning that you took the time to investigate and followed up with the person who made the complaint.” He never received an answer.

Nichols continued, “Since we’ve been allowed to file complaints, nothing has really been done. No one has been held accountable for anything.  All the complaints that I’ve filed, all of the complaints that others filed, seem not to matter.   We don’t need any more code, we just need to enforce what is on the books.”

Huntington resident Michael Kornfeld stated, “As a public Relations professional, I think in terms of perception and reputation.  On both of these, I think some Huntington Town officials have fallen short, some very short.  Cronyism has run rampant in Huntington Town Hall for years and transparency; well there is not often much of it here.”

Kornfeld continued, “While anyone has the right to make campaign contributions, is there a conflict of interest when Ethics Board members have contributed to the elected official they are supposed to investigate?

Marie Rendley stated, “Our Supervisor has failed to appoint Ethics liaisons”.  She continued, “As stated in Town Code, he is supposed to appoint his Councilman to each of the various departments to make sure the Code of Ethics is being followed.  He has failed to do this in 20 years as Supervisor.  I have brought it to his attention several times.”

Rendley continued, “I have yet to get a single response in all my years from this board as to my charges of the violation of the Code of Ethics.”

Marie concluded, after pleading my case over and over, I hoped it would impact this board.  She continued, “Some people do not have a conscious; it is just not in them.”

She ended by saying, “I don’t think this Board of Ethics should work on changing code, they should work on changing their character.” 

See page 5  for portions of the Town of Huntington Ethics Code. See page 17 for more about the Ethics meeting.  Check out our website and next month’s issue for a list of specific ethics concerns and a list of recommendations that were brought up at the annual meeting.