County Calls For Probe Into Hempstead Town CARES Act Spending

HEMPSTEAD TOWN, NY — Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, Congresswoman Kathleen Rice and a group of state senators have called on the federal government to investigate how the Town of Hempstead has spent the millions of dollars it received from the federal CARES Act. But town officials called it a political attack.

Curran and Rice were joined by state Senators Todd Kaminsky, Kevin Thomas, Anna Kaplan and John Brooks — all Democrats — to ask the U.S. Department of Treasury to investigate the Republican-run Town of Hempstead. The group claims that the town misappropriated more than $60 million in the CARES Act funding it received.

"The lack of transparency with regard to how the CARES Act funding is being spent by the town and the length of time it has taken the Town to spend this money – the deadline for expenditures is quickly approaching and these hearing documents were just made public – necessitate an immediate investigation," the group wrote in their letter. "As elected officials from the region, we implore your offices to provide much needed oversight here so that our communities, who have already been through so much, can survive the winter."

The Town of Hempstead received $133 million in funding from the CARES Act, more even than Nassau County. It has been slowly doling the money out to groups and other municipalities within the town over months. However, the deadline to spend the funding is Dec. 30.

Specifically, the group says that the town misappropriated the funds by allocating $43,649,245 to the Sanitation Operating Fund and $17,345,824 to the General Fund at its Dec. 8 meeting.

Town documents don't give a reason for the expense. They say that the town-created COVID-19 committee that oversees the spending of the CARES Act money "determined [the expenditure] to be lawful, proper use of funds, in the public interest, and in compliance with the Treasury's promulgated guidance."

But the town said it has spent its CARES Act money to help the community, and that the call for an investigation is just a partisan attack.

"Today, County Executive Laura Curran, who has shamelessly used her government’s $100 million federal CARES funding to plug her mismanaged and out-of-whack budget, joined with her political cronies in a partisan attack on the Town of Hempstead," Town Spokesman Greg Blower said in a statement. "In specific, Curran and cronies are miffed because they can’t get their hands on monies that are rightly being used by Hempstead Town for the benefit of its residents who have been impacted by the COVID pandemic."

Curran had previously called on Hempstead Town Supervisor Don Clavin to give the town's CARES Act funding to the county. Curran asked Clavin to give the county $50 million to cover police costs during the pandemic, but the town declined.

Hempstead Town has used portions of its CARES Act funding to give money to local colleges, food pantries, to purchase PPE for businesses and more. But it still had a sizable amount of the funding left to spend going into December.

"Hempstead Town will continue to use its CARES funding in a responsible manner for the benefit of it residents, regardless of the partisan antics of the county executive and her cronies," Blower said.