By Jonathan Cronin
The board of trustees of the Village of Atlantic Beach has filed a lawsuit against County Executive Thomas Gulotta to ensure the future of a bill that would give the village power to rule over its
own zoning.
Stephen Mahler, mayor of Atlantic Beach, said the board wanted to prove in court that it is legal for the Nassau legislature to amend the county charter, an opinion that Mr. Gulotta contends.
"I think its just a practical thing to do," the Mayor said of the lawsuit.
Section 1607 of the charter states that any village incorporated after 1936 must have its zoning ruled by the nearest town; for Atlantic Beach, that would be the Town of Hempstead. The amendment Atlantic Beach seeks would change the incorporation date to 1963.
The county legislature first agreed to send the amendment bill to voters in mid-May, but 30 days later, Mr. Gulotta vetoed it because of a legality question in his mind. In vetoing the bill, he said he was not judging it on its merits and was seeking the opinion of State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. He said he would then rule on the bill on that opinion alone.
In August, the legislature again passed the bill, and Attorney General Spitzer soon followed with his opinion that the county legally could amend its charter.
By then, only two weeks remained for the bill to be signed by the County Executive if it were to make it onto the ballot as a referendum in November. The deadline passed without a word from Mr. Gulotta, and 30 days after it had passed in the legislature for the second time, the bill again was vetoed by Mr. Gulotta, who this time cited a portion of the state constitution. He said that if the bill became law, it would impair the power of the Town of Hempstead and the state constitution states that a local government, such as the county legislature, cannot adopt a law that impairs the power of another local government.
"In all my years as a lawyer, I never heard of an elected official going against the opinion of the state attorney general ... the highest arbitrator of state governmental law," Mayor Mahler said. What Gulotta did is like going to the state Supreme Court for a ruling and then to the courts
in Mineola, he said.
Because the County Executive referred to the state constitution, the Atlantic Beach lawsuit includes mention of the village seeking remedy at the state level and being turned down because of a belief that it was a local matter.
Mayor Mahler said the reference in the lawsuit is to his having gone to State Senator Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) for help and being told by the Senator that the matter should be handled locally. Jonathan Crist, press secretary for Senator Skelos, said he had no such knowledge of the Senator making such a statement.
At a recent Atlantic Beach meeting, the Mayor said the lawsuit is a matter of interpretation between the village and Mr. Gulotta.
Bob Lazaro, press secretary for the county legislature's Republican minority, said, "No comment on a pending legal action." Mr. Lazaro in the past has told The Herald that the Republican Party believes that a bill like this one would create only more layers of government at a time when that is not needed.
Mayor Mahler later said that to get the bill signed by the County Executive, "the only thing to do is to elect a new County Executive." He also said he would like to have this matter resolved, "so when the new County Executive comes in, he can't use the excuse that the legislature can't change the charter."
County Legislator Mike Zapson (D-Long Beach), who sponsored the bill, said, "I'm never happy to see someone sue the county. I hope that it doesn't backfire and prevent us from doing what we're trying to do." Mr. Zapson added that he is planning to present this bill to the legislature yet again after the first of the new year.
"He is a smart guy," Mr. Zapson said of Mayor Mahler. "I'm sure he researched and checked this out. He knows what he's doing."
Diane Baumert-Moyick, press secretary to Mr. Gulotta, said the County Executive had just received the lawsuit's documents on Monday, October 23, and could not
comment on the lawsuit while it was in
litigation.
