League of Women Voters of Suffolk CountyThe Suffolk League of Women Voters, which champions “due diligence, open inspection and public comment” on key issues, should call for these principles to be followed by public officials in Southampton and Westhampton Beach.

Abuses are taking place including last minute insertion of important items in meetings of town councils that allow no chance for public input. There is almost complete refusal of elected officials to interface with the press in the form of press conferences or answering questions on the phone or even in person.

The national LWV, whose slogan is “Making Democracy Work,” also believes in “educating and engaging voters.”

League of Women Voters - Making Democracy WorkLawyers tell Hamptonites they can ask all the questions they want at public Council meetings but the officials are under no obligation to reply. Citizens say the officials are “hiding behind lawyers.” The “Open Meetings” law of New York State is a law with no teeth in it from the public’s viewpoint.

Estimates are that about 95% of residents of Hampton towns oppose the permanent placement of religious markers of any type on utility poles. They note that opponents of such markers win the elections while supporters are defeated. This is what happened in the June 19 WHB election when Brian Tymann and Rob Rubio displaced incumbents by large margins.

Whether one side or another is right on this issue (the legality of religious boundaries), a principle question is whether openness, transparency and democratic principles are being followed. They are not.

LWV Quotes Emailed to Officials

We have emailed Mayor Maria Moore of WHB and Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst of Southampton the quote on the website of the League of Women Voters of Suffolk County that says “Government has an obligation to its citizens. Transparency is critical in holding elected officials accountable.”

LWV/Suffolk in 2012 condemned the redistricting of the County by the legislature, saying the lines had been redrawn “behind closed doors” and that the pleas of LWV and citizens had been ignored. “Back room politics has trumped transparency for our County legislature,” it said.

Suffolk LWV also says “Democracy is not a spectator sport” and that it “encourages informed and active participation in government.”

Brian SokoloffWHB legal counsel Brian Sokoloff shows thickness of one of the legal filings in WHB vs. East End Eruv Assn.
Photo: Debora Giammarco

We have asked LWV/Suffolk, “Where is the 'due diligence, open inspection and public comment' on the proposed agreement of SH with EEEA?" A resolution was slipped in during the last few seconds of the Aug. 25 meeting—a resolution that was not on the agenda.

Hampton residents can view the Tuesday, Sept. 8 meeting of the SH Council live at 6 p.m. on local Channel 22, which covers government and civic body meetings.

When will the citizens of SH get to see the proposed agreement with EEEA? This is a matter the WLV/Suffolk should look into. Where is the outrage on this issue?

Mayor Moore has said that “perhaps” there should be a meeting of WHB residents to discuss the eruv matter. No such meeting has been scheduled. WHB outside attorney Brian Sokoloff, who was not on an initial agenda for the Sept. 3 meeting, spoke for 45 minutes on legal aspects of the eruv dispute.

Sokoloff Was Filibustering

Sokoloff talked for so long, wandering off the topic into cases not directly involving WHB and the eruv, that we held up a paper on which was written “Filibuster,” pleading with WHB trustees to put a stop to this waste of citizens’ time.

The session will be aired in the next few days on the WHB website as well as local Channel 22. No notice of the Channel 22 airings has ever been carried on the WHB website.

Sokoloff at one point noted the huge volume of filings by holding his hands about five inches apart and saying this is how thick just one of them was.

Justice Kathleen Tomlinson has complained of the volume of words being generated, saying one filing was 70 gigabytes, equivalent to 125 million pages assuming 1,000 words per page.

Sokoloff’s speech was a classic case of “mike control” which we have experienced many times at the PR Society of America Assembly. A parade of 10-11 speakers normally occupies almost the entire morning of Assembly, blocking delegates from speaking.

Southampton Sell-Out Not Discussed

Ordered to take our seat, with Police Chief Trevor Gonce standing nearby, we never got to discuss the planned sell-out of Southampton officials to the East End Eruv Assn.

That has been termed “caving to threats and blackmail” of the EEEA by Arnold Sheiffer, chairman of Jewish People for the Betterment of WHB, in a letter published Aug. 3 in the Southampton Press.

We never got to read the letter which noted the sneaky way in which the SH Council passed a resolution saying it would stop opposing an eruv if the EEEA promised not to pursue legal penalties and expenses.

Robert Sugarman of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, pro bono counsel for the EEEA, won more than $300,000 from Tenafly, N.J., after a decision ordering an eruv in that city to be taken down was reversed by an Appeals Court in 2002.

“They did not ask the citizens and voters their opinion,” said the Sheiffer letter. “They asked for no public comment. Like guilty children about to do something wrong, the action was done quickly with no advance notice.”

Text of Deal Being Sought

We told the WHB meeting Sept. 3 that Aug. 25 would be a day that would “Live in Infamy” on the town’s record—a day of surrender to what has been called the “ever-increasing extortion by court procedural costs imposed by the Orthodox Jews’ legal action” in an email to the SH Press by “Highhatsize.”

The U.S. legal system has plenty of critics including lawyer Marion Munley of Scranton who says jury trials have about disappeared, replaced by decisions made by panels of one or three judges. The same criticism is made by the Anti-Lawyer Party which says there are now a “multitude of pre-trials for pre-trials for pre-trials benefitting the lawyers only.”