Judge rejects O’side sanitation restraining order

Payments to former sanitation supervisors Michael Scarlata and his son Charles will continue.

At a hearing on Nov. 13, Judge Antonio Brandveen of Nassau County Supreme Court denied a request for a temporary restraining order to stop the Oceanside Sanitation District from paying the Scarlatas and their company, Assistance Corp.

Earlier this year, a state comptroller’s audit revealed that the Scarlatas collected $800,000 in retirement benefits in addition to their salaries. Michael received $391,000 in deferred payments from 1998 to 2013, after retiring in 1998 with a $75,000 annual pension. His son received $421,353 in payments in 2012 and 2013, after he retired. Michael has remained a consultant to the board under a five-year contract, earning $62,000 a year as well as health benefits. In addition, the comptroller determined that the district had entered into a series of contracts with Assistance Corp. in order to pay Michael Scarlata additional post-employment money.

A class action taxpayer complaint filed Nov. 3 by former sanitation worker Joe Samoles alleges that the sanitation board has failed to recover money it paid the Scarlatas, and seeks to reclaim it. The complaint also claims that board Chairman Joe Cibellis and Commissioners Tom Lanning and Florence Mensch voted against measures to recover the funds and to bring in outside counsel, because of business and political relationships they have with the Scarlatas.

The suit further alleges that former board attorney Jack Libert and Michael Scarlata were in a business relationship that led to a conflict of interest. Libert was recently elected a Nassau County Supreme Court judge.

Samoles’s attorney, Austin Graff, sought the temporary restraining order to immediately stop the district’s payments to the Scarlatas. Attorneys representing the sanitation board and the Scarlatas argued that the action was not valid, and the board’s attorney, Jared Kasschau, added that stopping the payments would put the sanitation district at risk of a lawsuit by the Scarlatas for breach of contract, and that the board had directed him to review the comptroller’s report at its Nov. 5 meeting.

In July, the board approved a resolution, by a 3-2 vote, to suspend Michael Scarlata and review his contract as well as the comptroller’s audit. (The comptroller’s office said it would not get involved in the lawsuit.) The resolution ordered him to stop attending sanitation board meetings and interacting with board members or sanitation employees. But Scarlata has continued to attend meetings as a member of the public, which he is allowed to do. A September proposal to hire outside legal counsel to review his contract failed in a 3-2 vote.

The case is due back in court on Nov. 24.