Councilwoman Offers Separate Ethics Package For Hempstead Town

Hempstead Town Councilwoman Erin King Sweeney is calling for an emergency session to discuss ethics reform and the appointment of an inspector general to scrutinize the town's contracting process.

King Sweeney made her announcement on Thursday, calling on Hempstead Town Supervisor Anthony Santino and the rest of the Board of Trustees to appoint the inspector general to review contracting policies and procedures in an effort to weed out potential waste, fraud and abuse. In addition, King Sweeney wanted to enact a series of ethics and transparency reforms.

"It is time to set aside petty vindictive politics and bring real ethics reform and transparency to Hempstead Town," said King Sweeney. "I am hereby renewing my call for an emergency ethics reform session. This has waited long enough, especially now that the Supervisor is trivializing this important matter and playing political games."

Last week, Santino proposed his own series of ethics reforms for the town. The main component to his package was limiting outside income for elected officials to $125,000 annually. However, King Sweeney said the proposal was an attack against her, since she and her husband make more than that.

"I find it ironic that Supervisor Santino, who certainly has friends on the town payroll and himself had a significant outside income during the many years he was a councilman, is now using ethics reform as an attempted political hit job," King Sweeney said in a statement last week. "This is not the American way or the Republican way."

The main component of King Sweeney's plan is the appointment of an inspector general, who will serve as an independent monitor of the town's contracting process. The goal, King Sweeney said, would be to ensure the town's contracting process is open and honest. King Sweeney said that she and Councilman Bruce Blakeman offered the same resolution on April 28, but that Santino voted against considering the item.

King Sweeney's plan also includes many other ethics reform measures:

• Listing ALL current contracts over $10,000 on the town’s website, all collective bargaining agreements, individual employment contracts and procurement rules;
• Publishing of all bids, including scoring of each;
• Posting current checkbook of how the Town spent money in the fiscal year, posted annually and monthly in a searchable format; disclosure of all tax rates, and fee schedules;
• Establishing a five-member board of ethics, none of whom are officers of any political party, and a process for reporting ethics violations directly to the members of the ethics board, confidentially. Board members names and contact information would be published on the town’s website.
• Requiring the disclosure of all political donations made by a prospective vendor to elected officials of the town as part of reply to RFP, bid or application, disclosed to the town board at time of consideration.
• Publishing of current year and past three years budgets in a machine-readable format (searchable spreadsheet).

While King Sweeney has proposed these changes, they have not been voted on yet. She plans to bring them forward at the next Town Council meeting on Aug. 8.

Santino, however, did not seem amenable to her suggestions. "Supervisor Santino has proposed the most comprehensive ethics reform package of any municipal government leader on Long Island,” said Hempstead Town Spokesman Mike Deery to Newsday. "Indeed, any ethics reform that does not include limits on outside income is woefully insufficient and fails to put public service ahead of personal profit."