By ANTHONY BOTTAN
Ethics Board member Margaret Mazlin resigned two weeks ago, and village officials anticipate that Carol Gulino and Hilary Becker will do the same. The appointments of Mazlin and Becker to the board by Mayor Brian Curran violated village ethics code 14-14 subsection C, which states that a member of the board cannot hold political office within two years of being appointed.
Mazlin was the president of the New Vision Party in 2006 - whose members included Curran, Deputy Mayor Bill Hendrick and Trustee Alan Beach - before she was appointed to the Ethics Board in 2007. Becker was the corresponding secretary of Lynbrook's Independent Party until June 2005, and was also appointed to the Ethics Board in April 2007.
Former Mayor Eugene Scarpato appointed Gulino to the board in September 2004, but the ethics violation occurred when she was re-appointed in 2006, because in June 2005 she had been elected to succeed Becker as corresponding secretary of the Independent Party.
Though village attorney Peter Ledwith took sole responsibility for the error at Monday's village board meeting and admitted to not looking at that section of the ethics code, Curran blamed himself for the mistake. "I should have definitely known about it," Curran said. "The bottom line, it was my appointments and it was made in error. It was an oversight and when it was pointed out to me, it was corrected."
The resignations leave only three members on the Ethics Board - Mazlin was an alternate - though that is still enough for a quorum. Trustee David Penso said he would ask the board to look into the appropriateness of Curran's appointments as well as Ledwith's actions.
"I applaud Mr. Ledwith for taking responsibility, but I still think it was odd that he read the ethics code a hundred times and this didn't raise a red flag to him," Penso said. "I believe Mr. Ledwith and [Village Administrator John] Giordano have not provided good counsel to the mayor."
Penso added that he would also ask the Nassau County Ethics Board to look into the appointments. Curran said it would be a waste of time for Penso to do that, adding that the errors in his oversight have already been rectified. "I want to get this taken care of so we can get back to doing real work," Curran said.
Trustee Richard Clifford said he had gotten scant explanation from the mayor on Becker's and Gulino's resignations, and in fact had found out about them by reading about it in Newsday. He said that an authority outside Lynbrook should determine whether there were any ethical improprieties on the mayor's part. Clifford added that he does not think there should be any new appointees to the Ethics Board because the political climate is too tainted.
"At this time, to appoint new people to the Ethics Board could be looked upon as suspect and politically motivated," Clifford said.
Comments about this story? ABottan@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 246.
