Issue #50, March 23, 2007

Fox With Chickens?

Southampton Village Lacks Certain Ethics in their New Ethics Code

By Dan Rattiner

The Village of Southampton is a small patch of land within the more than four hundred square miles covered by the larger entity of Southampton Town. Where in the Town, there are about 500 people employed full-time, in the Village there are just 100. The others who work in the Village — and about 20 people do so, on any given day — are there either as volunteers or just as part time employees. For example, Mayor Mark Epley is expected to show up for a bit every day at Village Hall on Main Street and on some days all day, but is paid just $14,400 a year for his services. His “real” job is as full-time Director of the Seafield Rehab Center in Westhampton Beach.

Sometimes it’s tough to find people who want to fill these part time posts. But my hat is off to those who do, because working for so little pay is an honorable way to give back to the community in which you live.

In case you think that Southampton Village is some kind of special case in this regard, I can assure you it is not. The same holds true in all the incorporated Villages in our community, from Sagaponack and East Hampton Village, to Quogue and the Village of Westhampton Beach as well as numerous others. These are small villages with small budgets and part time people, for the most part.

Also in many Villages, and Southampton is one of them, there are ordinances on the books, put there thirty or forty years ago, to keep people who have businesses that can directly benefit from financial contracts made with the Village, from serving on any of the Village Boards — not on the Planning Board, Zoning Board, Village Board or, in the villages where they have them — Architectural Review Boards. Obviously, people making decisions about something should be at arms length from the beneficiaries of those decisions. For example, Mayor Epley would almost never have direct contact with any funding from Southampton Village. The Seafield Rehab Center is in Westhampton Beach. Others who serve on boards are Doctors, Dentists, Merchants, Lawyers, Landscapers, Environmentalists, Teachers and Professors. The Mayor before Mark Epley, was a math teacher at Southampton High School.

The next thing I’m going to say is going to surprise you. This was all before the rise of the real estate business.

Now there are Very Big Bucks on the table. And some of the most able people in town are in that business, as surveyors, real estate agents, real estate developers, contractors and architects. And apparently, the Village of Southampton, maybe ten years ago, began to ignore this very silly little ordinance.

For example, just two years ago, I had occasion to write about a controversial real estate development in that village and in the course of things I dealt with some decisions made that year by the Southampton Village Architectural Review Board. Who was on it? Four people. A builder, a real estate agent, a developer and a man in the landscaping business.

Where is the enforcement of this village ordinance? It is nowhere. Last week, Mayor Epley engaged in a conversation at the Village Board meeting with Trustee William Bates, who has been trying to require that the Village enforce this ordinance. This conversation took place during a debate just before the voting of a new “ethics code” for the Village. There was no mention or reference to the conflict of interest ordinance in the Village.

“We should be trying to clarify who should be allowed to sit on these boards,” Mr. Bates said. “I think, if we can’t put anything in the ethics code about this,” (his proposal to do so was rejected), then we should enforce the ordinance we have.”

Mr. Epley, after agreeing that the ordinance was not being enforced, said that it was self evident that people on boards shouldn’t use them to advance their personal interests, and those that do should be prosecuted. He also said that the 1970s definition of who should not be allowed on the board, those “in the business of developing land,” is too vague and ambiguous.

It sure doesn’t sound vague and ambiguous to me.

Trustee Nancy McGann said that Mr. Bates’ persistence in trying to get the ordinance enforced or mentioned in an ethics code, smacked of a “lack of trust.” Mr. Bates, she said, was looking at it as if somebody was getting something. Where was his faith in the Southampton public?

Another trustee said how are we going to keep the land developers from pulling the wool over our eyes if we don’t have some of them on the board?

Oh, I dunno. Have experts in real estate on an advisory board?

In any case, the new “ethics code” was finally passed at the end of this meeting, and the board is congratulating itself for its good work in defining what is ethical and what is not ethical in the Village. But it does not address any conflict of interest of board members.

This is a Village, by the way, that in 2001 had on its payroll, a police officer who, last week, was arrested and charged with agreeing not to arrest certain women, in exchange for sexual favors. You can read about this in detail elsewhere in this issue. He joined the Southampton Town Police force full time in 2002. Now he faces fourteen charges of such behavior that an investigation says has been going on for five years.

I suppose at that level we don’t just rely on “trust.” The buying and selling of land is another matter, apparently, at a lower level, as far as civic trust is concerned.