Election 2017: Gillen Challenges Santino For TOH Supervisor

Town of Hempstead Supervisor Anthony Santino is facing a challenge from Democrat Laura Gillen as he runs for his second term as the supervisor of the Town of Hempstead.

Though Santino, a Republican, has only been supervisor for two years, he has served on the Town Board since 1993, which made him the longest-serving councilman before he was elected supervisor. Prior to his time in the Town of Hempstead, he served as a trustee and deputy mayor for the Village of East Rockaway, where he still lives.

During his first term as supervisor, Santino cut town spending, reduced the size of the town workforce and cut overtime. He touts his first budget as the first structurally balanced budget in more than 20 years, and says his reforms have resulted in an upgrade of the town's fiscal outlook.

Not everything in Santino's first term has been rosy, though. He has received significant pushback from two other Republican Town Board members — Erin King Sweeney and Bruce Blakeman. The two have criticized Santino and said he runs the town like a dictator. Santino passed a series of ethics reforms earlier this year, which the two criticized for not being strong enough. The limit on trustee's outside incomes, they said, was a thinly veiled attempt by Santino to push them off the board.

Santino is being challenged by Laura Gillen, a Democrat from Rockville Centre. A practicing attorney, Gillen is counsel to the Uniondale law firm of Westerman Ball Ederer Miller Zucker & Sharfstein, LLP, where she practices commercial litigation.

Gillen is a political newcomer. She has run for other offices, but has not held a governmental seat. She earned her JD from NYU's School of Law, and has been a practicing attorney since 2000.