Rockland Sewer Commissioners Must Pay Back Stipends: Judge

NEW CITY, NY — One of the irregularities about Rockland Sewer District No. 1, which serves Clarkstown and Ramapo, might be rectified soon. Rockland County has won a ruling involving $70,000 in payments to elected officials serving as Commissioners on the board of Rockland Sewer District No. 1.

Members of the Sewer Commission are appointed by the Rockland County Legislature. County law says only non-elected people on that board may receive pay.

In a decision handed down this week by Rockland Supreme Court Judge Thomas E. Walsh II, the court dismissed an argument by the defendants that the only reason the county was going after their back pay was that the county executive had a vendetta against the county legislature.

He agreed with the County that supervisors and mayors on the sewer board were wrongly paid.

"I promised taxpayers when I came into office in 2014 that I would reform government and safeguard every cent of their money," said Rockland County Executive Ed Day. "This successful legal action is another example of how I am making good on that promise."

Day vowed to get the taxpayer funds back from officials who were improperly paid, many for years.

They include two former Commissioner who have since been convicted of fraud in unrelated cases — former Ramapo Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence and former Spring Valley Mayor Noramie Jasmin.

Other commissioners named in the lawsuit include Paul Whelan, John Maloney, Bernard Jackson, Demeza Delhomme, George Darden, Craig Flanagan, Daniel O'Leary, Mark Reimer and Thom Kleiner.

Only Flanagan remains on the sewer board.

Both Flanagan, mayor of Hillburn, and O'Leary, a Sloatsburg village trustee, have promised to repay the funds, Day said.

"We commend Mayor Flanagan and Trustee O'Leary for doing the right thing," he said. "I am calling upon all of the former Commissioners to do the same and pay this money back to the taxpayers."

The payments began in 2003 and stopped in February 2015 after Day's administration discovered that the stipend was being paid to all Commissioners.

The County Sewer District laws clearly state that elected officials serving on the board are not to be paid, while non-elected officials earn an annual $2,375 stipend, Day said. The court agreed.

The County filed suit in 2015 to recoup the improper payments. Former sewer Commissioners Alexander Gromack, former supervisor of Clarkstown, and Andy Stewart, former supervisor of Orangetown, have already repaid their salaries. Gromack returned $13,458 and Stewart returned $6,927.

The statute of limitations only allows the County to seek repayment for six years.

Some Commissioners got the stipend for much longer. St. Lawrence, a former chairman of the Sewer Commission, was paid $24,000 for 2003-2015. He is required to pay back $13,062 in principal, plus interest.

Judge Walsh dismissed two arguments from the Commissioners: that that they were employees of the sewer district and should be paid like the others; and that the action to recoup the funds "was commenced as a vendetta by County Executive Day against the Rockland County Legislature."

In his decision, the judge wrote "the Defendants have failed to provide any direct evidence of that allegation."

It's not the only recent irregularity for which the Sewer District has been in the news.

Rockland County is trying to recover more than $400,000 paid by the Sewer District to the Town of Ramapo to remove dirt from a sewer expansion project — work the town didn't do. The dirt remained in place in piles for years in Sloatsburg and Hillburn.

The county filed a $2 million lawsuit and the dirt was removed in the fall of 2017, according to The Journal News.

Also, a plan to have the Sewer District pay for a Clarkstown Police Department storage building hit a snag in 2015 when residents questioned why Sewer District officials expected the County Legislature to approve selling county bonds for the building for "the pump station and collection system." The Rockland Voice quoted Gromack from an interview in 2015 saying that the Sewer District had given Ramapo lots of deals and was willing to help Clarkstown and that it was one of many similar deals.

PHOTO: Rockland County Sewer District No. 1 facilities, Orangeburg/ Rockland County

SEE ALSO: A Dirty Deal Between Ramapo and the Rockland Sewer District