Is bipartisanship dead in the Town of Hempstead?

When Laura Gillen took the reins in January as the first Democratic supervisor in the Town of Hempstead in more than 100 years, residents, and even some members of the Republican-majority Town Board, expressed hope for a new era of cooperation and transparency.
However, eight months after Gillen’s first board meeting as supervisor, a number of the Rockville Centre Democrat’s key reform initiatives are blocked even from debate by Republican board members, and accusations of political games fly from both sides almost weekly.
“I think that yesterday’s Town Board meeting made clear that there is still a corrupt machine operating in the Town of Hempstead, trying to take power from the people,” Gillen said in an interview on Aug. 8. “They’re utterly tone-deaf to the will of the people who elected them.”

Elections versus appointments

Gillen was still reeling from a Town Board meeting that lasted over six hours, at which Republicans, for the third time, blocked debate on how the board should fill vacancies outside the election season. Traditionally, the board’s majority has appointed new members upon a resignation — which is how allcurrent Republican members got their jobs, before running successfully for re-election as incumbents afterward.
Gillen has tried three times to call for a public hearing at which the board could debate and vote up or down her proposal to hold special elections whenever a vacancy opens up on the board. Republicans, however, have refused to open discussion, and on Aug. 7, they passed new procedures to keep the item from even going on the board’s agenda without majority approval.
Residents at last week’s meeting were displeased, with Susan Ryan, of Point Lookout, telling Republicans, “You’ve had your own way for so long you seem to have no respect for bipartisan government.”
Councilwoman Erin King Sweeney, of Wantagh, who is now the Republican majority leader, said on the day after Gillen’s election that the “era of bullying, intimidation and ego-driven politics” was over, in reference to outgoing Republican Supervisor Anthony Santino, with whom she had publicly feuded over transparency and ethical reforms.
On Aug. 8, however, King Sweeney derided Gillen’s call for discussion of special elections as a “quest to make political points,” and called for Gillen to be “more even-handed and less partisan.”
And Gillen, referring to a number of King Sweeney’s votes, said the Republican councilwoman was “completely a hypocrite and a fraud reformer.”

Sniping continues, Town Hall-wide
Tension between Gillen and the board has been high since April, when Gillen filed suit against the board for a series of controversial job protections and interdepartmental transfers successfully pushed by Santino at his last meeting, which ensured that many appointees would keep their jobs, and that some would get significant raises.
Gillen also held a news conference earlier this month, at which she tore up a resolution she said was negotiated in secret between town board members and the town’s labor union that would have amounted to almost $800,000 in additional raises for “politically appointed insiders — not the rank and file.”
“They already gave away $200,000 in raises,” Gillen said last week. “That’s a million dollars to try and enshrine themselves in the Town of Hempstead. And meanwhile, they’re claiming, ‘We can’t afford special elections.’”
Board of Elections officials estimate that the special elections would cost between $150,000 and $170,000, depending on the councilmatic district, Gillen said.
“An entrenched, corrupt majority wants to give away $1 million of taxpayer money, but said it’s too expensive to hold a $200,000 special election to let people choose who is going to be their representative,” she noted.
The partisan divide in Hempstead seems to extend to the tax receiver’s office, where Don Clavin, a Republican who was appointed in 2001, posted a news release on Aug. 7 declaring “victory” over Gillen’s administration. The board had just voted 6-1 to approve “free speech” legislation pushed by Clavin to allow him and board members to post news releases on the town’s website without Gillen’s or her staff’s approval.
Gillen responded by questioning Clavin’s understanding of the First Amendment, and his motives.
“He clearly needs to revisit dogma and case law,” Gillen said. “There’s no right to post anything you want on a government website. Clavin can say anything he wants in a public forum, but not on a government website.”
Clavin’s frequent news releases are “the Republican machine again,” Gillen continued. “It’s machine politicians who have abused the taxpayers and used taxpayer dollars for their own relentless campaign, and that’s exactly what the tax receiver is doing, and continues to do.”
Clavin did not respond to a request for comment on Gillen’s statement. He did, however, defend the legislation and subsequent news release, saying that Gillen had tried to “silence” other government officials, and thanking town board members for approving the legislation.

A disappointed public
Larry Levy, a political analyst and executive dean at Hofstra University’s Center for Suburban Studies, was one of the voices expressing hope for “a working coalition” on the board after Gillen’s election. “They have a chance to show how governing can work in the nation’s largest township,” he said at the time.
Last week, however, Levy’s optimism had faded, although he was careful not to assign blame to just one side.
“Anybody who hoped on inauguration day that her election would usher in a period of bipartisan cooperation has to be pretty disappointed,” Levy said. “It doesn’t really matter who’s at fault, but what the public is seeing is a lot of chaos, political posturing and a lack of progress on things that taxpayers care about.”
According to Levy, chances are slim that things will change in Hempstead’s town government.
“Unless Laura Gillen can find some common ground with a majority of the board — which has the power to run things, if they want — then her only other recourse is to go directly to the people with her message, and hope that there is some sort of redress in the next election,” Levy said. “But that also would mean open warfare, and . . . very little of the public’s business getting done.”
Gillen said she would continue to push for the reforms that she believes are needed, even if they are consistently blocked.
“I’m just going to keep pushing forward, putting forward good legislation,” she said. “Everything I’m putting forward is good for the residents. If [Republican board members] stop serving the residents, they’re going to lose this.”