A complaint charging Councilwoman Jodi Giglio with ethics violations has been filed with the N.Y. State Attorney General’s Public Integrity Bureau, which investigates allegations of government corruption, fraud and abuse of authority.
The complaint, filed by Riverhead resident Ellen Hoil on behalf of a group called “Riverhead Concerned Citizens for Transparency,” alleges Giglio has violated local ethics codes and the state Public Officers Law. It centers on Giglio’s March 12 meeting in New York City with representatives of the Triple Five Group, who own a controlling interest in the company seeking to purchase 1,643 acres of undeveloped land from the Riverhead Community Development Agency for $40 million.
That meeting previously gave rise to a complaint to the Riverhead Town ethics board by a civic group coalition in April. The complaint before the town ethics board is still pending.
The new complaint to the AG’s office — like the one pending before the town ethics board — questions the propriety of Giglio’s meeting with the applicant in the middle of a public hearing on the company’s proposal. The town board, sitting as the governing body of the Riverhead CDA, must by state law determine the applicant a “qualified and eligible sponsor” to allow the sale of land in a designated urban renewal zone without a public bid. The board opened the qualified and eligible hearing on the application of Calverton Aviation and Technology on Feb. 27. After more than four hours of testimony, it was adjourned to March 13. A snowstorm on March 13 forced the adjourned hearing date to be rescheduled to March 19.
Role of former CDA administrator questioned
On March 12, Giglio, accompanied by former Riverhead CDA administrator Christina Kempner, met privately with Triple Five representatives. Kempner left her post with the Riverhead CDA in May 2017 and is, since Jan. 25, the deputy commissioner of housing and human services for the Town of Brookhaven.
The day after the NYC meeting, Giglio contacted RiverheadLOCAL to say she was reconsidering her previous opposition to the CAT application after a four-hour meeting with Triple Five in Manhattan. Giglio said in an interview she came away from the meeting with Triple Five chairman Nader Ghermezian and others believing that the company has “the experience and the wherewithal” to develop the site as an aviation technology center.
The meeting took place without notice to the rest of the town board or the town’s lawyers.
Facing criticism for taking the meeting, Giglio at the April 5 town board work session gave fellow board members an account of the discussion she had with the applicant three weeks earlier. At the work session, she disclosed for the first time that she had been accompanied to the meeting by Kempner, whom she described as “a friend and an attorney.”
Kempner has been enthusiastic about the CAT proposal, which was the culmination of a letter of intent signed between the CDA and Luminati Aerospace in April 2017. Luminati Aerospace, owned by Daniel Preston, occupies the former Skydive Long Island site and part of the building known as Plant Six at the Calverton Enterprise Park, where it says it intends to manufacture unmanned aerial vehicles and other products for the defense aerospace industry. Luminati, since November 2015 has had exclusive use of the active runway at the site, pursuant to a runway use agreement with the CDA.
Both prior to and since the March 12 meeting, Kempner has advocated for the CAT proposal in emails, texts and interviews, calling it “the best thing that could ever happen at Calverton” and during remarks at a Chamber of Commerce presentation by Triple Five on March 7, the type of plan “we’ve been trying to bring to the town for years and years.”
Kempner adamantly denies that she is or was working for Triple Five in any capacity. She said she is advocating for the proposal because she cares deeply about Riverhead.
The complaint to the public integrity bureau describes Kempner’s actions and questions whether state lobbying laws or other ethics laws were violated.
Kempner said today the complaint “seems like same stuff.” She denied any wrongdoing.
“Hopefully this puts this officially to rest. I just think aviation is a great use for the Calverton property and Triple 5 has the capacity to develop a good project to bring high quality jobs,” Kempner wrote in an email.
Giglio fires back: ‘a political hit’
Giglio maintains that by meeting with Triple Five she was simply doing her “due diligence” on an important application.
“I can tell you that I felt and feel to this day that it is my duty to ensure Riverhead taxpayers are getting the best opportunities available for job creation, expanding the tax base and lowering the cost of living,” she wrote in an email.
“There is no ethical or legal basis for any complaint lodged against me,” Giglio said.
“In fact, the formal complaint to Riverhead Ethics was made by a political operative who has donated money to the supervisor’s campaign this past fall,” she said. The complaint was filed by the Coalition Against EPCAL Housing, which is led by coordinator Rex Farr of Calverton, president of the Calverton Civic Association.
Giglio said the supervisor attempted to have Hoil, who filed the state complaint, appointed to the town’s ethics board in April — right around the time the Coalition Against EPCAL Housing filed its complaint with the town ethics board.
“The person who filed the complaint with the state is the same person the supervisor tried to appoint to the ethics board to replace Jeanmarie Costello, whose term had not yet expired,” Giglio wrote. “That resolution was in the packet to be adopted the same day the Riverhead ethics complaint was filed against me, ironic, I think not. This is beginning to look more and more like the dirty politics on the federal level. The supervisor is using the ethics board to try and manipulate the process.”
The councilwoman accused the town supervisor of “abusing her office, its resources and taxpayer money to take out a political hit.”
“That is absolutely not true,” Supervisor Laura Jens-Smith said. She said a bipartisan committee of the town board reached out to all members of all town committees to ask if they were interested in staying on in their posts and also interviewed people who applied for the various committees.
Jens-Smith said Costello “was going to step down” but then realized her term on the board wasn’t up. Meanwhile, Jens-Smith and Deputy Supervisor Tim Hubbard had been interviewing candidates for the ethics board. A resolution appointing Hoil was prepared and circulated to the town board but never put forward because Costello decided to remain on the board.
Hubbard today agreed with the supervisor’s account, though he said he was not a party to the conversation between Jens-Smith and Costello. Costello could not be reached for comment.
“I think Jodi is just trying to take some cover by accusing people of political attacks in order to deflect the concerns people in the community have about her behavior as a town board member,” Jens-Smith said today.
“If someone from the community has concerns, they have a right to raise them,” the supervisor said. Hoil, an attorney, is a member of the Riverhead Democratic Committee. That should not preclude her from expressing her concerns, Jens-Smith said.
The complaint to the state AG’s office, a copy of which was obtained by RiverheadLOCAL, alleges Giglio violated not just the town’s ethics code but also a code of ethics that applies specifically to the Community Development Agency, which bars actions that “give a reasonable basis for the impression” that a member of the CDA board can be improperly influenced in the performance of their official duties.
Giglio called on the town supervisor and the Democratic party leader “to call off their political attack dogs and step aside” so the elected officials “can do our job, which is to create jobs and opportunities for people in our town, so that we may lower taxes and increase the quality of life.”
The town board has agreed to put off voting on the pending qualified and eligible application until after the Riverhead ethics board renders a decision, which is expected to include a recommendation on whether Giglio should recuse herself from voting on the application. Giglio has said she is undecided whether she will follow the ethics board’s recommendation. On a board split along party lines, Giglio’s vote may be the deciding vote on the application.
The Riverhead ethics board’s next regularly scheduled meeting is July 10, the supervisor said.
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