Village of West Hampton Dunes Amends Code of Ethics

The Village of West Hampton Dunes officially adopted changes to its code of ethics after a public hearing to review any concerns residents may have about the proposed code.

The code of ethics is a 13-page document that makes changes to the standards of conduct, including rules like using municipal resources for its intended purposes, biennial ethics training for employees and reducing political solicitations.

This code is upheld by a now formally established board of ethics, whose job in part includes the investigation of potential ethics violations, recommending disciplinary actions and training for employees.

Between 2010 and 2012, the village put together a resolution to establish an ethics board to enforce the code. However, the village never formally created the board, according to Irwin Krasnow, the current Mayor of West Hampton Dunes. That has changed since Krasnow was elected in 2024.

“One of the reasons I ran for office is they were violating what I considered a lot of the different codes of ethics,” Krasnow said. “So immediately, the first thing I did at our organizational meeting on July 1, 2024, was I appointed a board of ethics.”

The board of ethics, which is made up of five volunteers, studied other existing ethics codes from different villages in New York State, and put together a “practical code” to be chaired at the public hearing and then voted on to be adopted in the Village of West Hampton Dunes.

“We felt that the code was antiquated. It didn’t really apply… so it needed to be revised and updated,” Krasnow said.