Thousands of dollars for a presentation to the Republican National Convention in Garden City in February 2026.Thousands of dollars for a presentation to the state Republican nominating convention in Garden City in February 2026.
Thousands more for lodging and banquet charges at the Garden City Hotel in July 2025, where a “deep dive” meeting was held to develop litigation strategy with a Suffolk Republican Party lawyer.
An $8,300 food and beverage tab for 25 guests at The Mansion at Glen Cove, where another “deep dive” meeting was held Sept. 3.
Thousands more spent on litigation strategy development, public relations campaigns, media strategy and tens of thousands of dollars in fees to expert witnesses.
This is just a sampling of the detailed descriptions contained in a year’s worth of invoices issued by the New York City law firm Brewer, Attorneys and Counselors to six Republican-controlled Long Island towns, including Riverhead, and the island’s two counties in connection with litigation seeking to block New York’s Even Year Election Law.
By the time the government entities withdrew from the litigation last month, they had collectively been billed nearly $2 million by the law firm.
And that was on top of another $1.1 million billed to Suffolk County and five Republican-controlled Long Island towns by the Chicago law firm Troutman Pepper Locke for a state-court challenge to the law. Riverhead Town was not a party to that lawsuit.
The two lawsuits — one filed in 2024 in state court, the other filed in 2025 in federal court — were both dismissed.
The federal lawsuit was filed in the Eastern District of New York after the New York Court of Appeals — the state’s highest court — upheld the law and dismissed the state-court case. The New York Republican State Committee and the Republican Party committees in Suffolk and Nassau counties were the lead named plaintiffs in the federal case. But, as previously reported by RiverheadLOCAL, the party committees did not pay the costs of the litigation, which were instead borne by county taxpayers and taxpayers in several Long Island towns.
Invoices from the Chicago law firm that represented Suffolk County in the state-court litigation were sent to a Rocky Point lawyer who is a Suffolk County Republican Party insider before the invoices were paid by the county.
The invoices were addressed to Suffolk County, marked “Attention: Christopher Clayton, Esq., County Attorney,” in care of Steven Losquadro P.C. at Losquadro’s Rocky Point office address. A payment voucher on which the invoices are listed was approved by Clayton and paid by the county.
The county’s share of the fees due represented a one-sixth pro-rata share of the amount billed, according to the invoices. The invoiced amounts were divided equally among Suffolk County and the towns of Hempstead, Brookhaven, Huntington, Islip and Smithtown.
Losquadro is counsel to the Suffolk County Republican Party.
It is not clear why the invoices for the county’s share were sent to Losquadro’s office rather than directly to the county. Michael Martino, communications director for Suffolk County Executive Edward Romaine, said Wednesday he would look into it and respond to questions on Thursday. He requested copies of the invoices and payment voucher, which were provided to him by RiverheadLOCAL on Wednesday as requested. He has not yet responded to the inquiry.
An invoice issued by the Brewer firm on Oct. 8, 2025 included more than $14,000 for hotel lodging and meals, plus Uber rides, for a “deep dive meeting” at the Garden City Hotel from July 22 to July 24, 2025. Documentation attached to that invoice showed Brewer rented 10 rooms for three nights and listed Losquadro as one of the people in attendance who was provided with a room paid for by Brewer. The other individuals whose hotel charges were paid by the Brewer firm were all employed by or affiliated with the firm, according to the backup documentation submitted with the invoice.
Losquadro did not respond to an email this week asking detailed questions about his involvement in the litigation.
Martino said Wednesday that Losquadro was never retained by Suffolk County to represent the county in the Even Year Election Law actions.
Losquadro did not file a notice of appearance as an attorney representing any party in either the state-court litigation involving Suffolk County or the federal-court litigation brought after the state challenge failed.
The Oct. 8 invoice totaled $295,850.79, to be divided evenly among eight parties, according to the invoice: Suffolk County, Nassau County, and the towns of Brookhaven, Riverhead, Islip, Smithtown, Huntington and Hempstead.
Altogether, the Brewer firm billed the government plaintiffs a total of $1,913,670 for fees, costs and expenses from June 2025 through May 2026.
Troutman Pepper Locke billed government plaintiffs $1,101,956 in connection with the state-court litigation.
County Legislator Greg Doroski produced copies of invoices and county payment vouchers reviewed by RiverheadLOCAL for this story. Those documents supplemented and expanded on documents obtained by RiverheadLOCAL through Freedom of Information Law requests.
“The more we learn, the worse this story gets,” Doroski said yesterday.
“While us regular folks are struggling to make ends meet, these guys used taxpayer money to rent a Gold Coast mansion in Glen Cove for a day. They paid for hotel rooms and banquets at the Garden City Hotel. They rode to and from the city in ‘Black Car Ubers,’” Doroski said.
“The political motives behind this case are troubling enough, but this spending is gross. This isn’t waste,” he said. “This is corruption. And it reflects a rot that’s destroying our nation.”
Republican state lawmakers fought the Even Year Election Law, which was passed in 2023 by the Democrat-controlled State Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul in December of that year. The rationale behind the law, which moves most local elections in New York to even-numbered years to align them with state and federal elections, was to increase voter participation. Voter turnout in local elections, which have been held in odd-numbered years in New York, is significantly lower than in even-numbered years, when state and federal elections take place.
Republican state legislators and local elected officials argue that local issues will be drowned out when local elections are on the same ballot as state and federal races. They also argue that the law violates the home-rule provision guaranteed to localities by the state constitution.
Martino said Wednesday that passage of the Even Year Election Law itself was blatantly political, calling it a Democratic power grab sold to legislators by expensive lobbyists.
Doroski, a Democrat who represents Suffolk’s First Legislative District, wants the county to try to recover legal fees paid for the two lawsuits, even if it means filing another lawsuit.
Riverhead Town Attorney Erik Howard said during Tuesday’s Town Board meeting that he did not think such an attempt would succeed because the fees were paid pursuant to a signed retainer agreement with the law firm.
Suffolk County Democratic Party Chairperson Rich Schaffer said Thursday that RiverheadLOCAL’s reporting “found a number of issues that deserve serious investigation, with a full explanation as to why something that everybody, including Republicans, considered to be a political debate, would have taxpayers footing the bill.”
The New York State Attorney General’s Office, which represented the state in both lawsuits, did not respond to questions emailed to its press office.
Southold Town Democratic Committee Chairperson Kathryn Casey Quigley faults Suffolk’s Democratic Party leadership for what she calls an anemic response to these issues. She has mounted a campaign to unseat Schaffer as chair of the county committee this year. A vote will be taken at the party’s convention this fall.
“The leader sets the tone. The leader sets the culture,” she said. Democrats in Suffolk are “a controlled opposition,” she said.
“If we want to have actual accountability in our county and town governments, we need leaders in the Democratic Party that are willing to fight corruption and hold people accountable, and that’s the same message that we’re hearing nationwide,” Casey Quigley said.
“When you have an opposition party that’s out of power, they still have a responsibility to hold the party in power accountable, and their failure to do so is leaving the average person being totally fleeced,” she said.
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