Village Trustee makes public statement at board meeting, calls for outside forensic audit

An internal issue among Northport Village officials surfaced at Tuesday’s Board of Trustees meeting, highlighting a culture of mistrust and a call for transparency.

“This is my platform and this is why the residents of Northport elected me to be in this seat,” said Trustee Dave Weber before reading a letter addressed to Mayor Damon McMullen aloud to the room, during the time usually allotted to his routine commissioner’s report. Both the mayor and Village Attorney Stu Besen stopped Weber from reading the letter – which relayed events that occurred during an executive session on September 21 – in its entirety, stating that any details related to that private meeting could not be disclosed to the public.

With that in mind, Trustee Weber stuck to the “meat and potatoes” of the issue, explaining that his concerns pertain to exactly that – a breach of confidentiality during an executive session and a need for a forensic audit performed by an outside firm.

In September, Village Deputy Treasurer Laura Kaplan resigned after a discrepancy of $600 was discovered by the payroll clerk. The Village did not take legal action against the former employee and the terms of her release will not be made public until after they are finalized in an executive session. This comes on the heels of former Village Administrator Tim Brojer pleading guilty to official misconduct in 2020 after he was caught stealing Village property and using public funds to purchase construction materials for his personal use. Brojer had a previous record of misconduct after being fired from his position as Village Administrator for Mastic Beach, which the Northport Village Board was aware of upon his hiring but never discussed publicly. And before that, in 2009, former Village Treasurer Mary Claire Krumholz paid herself $115,900 in overtime, on top of her $60,000 base salary, which was discovered by former Village Clerk Donna Koch.

In response to the latest discrepancy, Trustee Weber is calling for a full forensic audit, or financial review, by an independent company that has no ties to Village officials or anyone within the Treasury Department. In his letter to the Mayor, he notes that proposals from two well-qualified firms were set to take place in private meetings this week, but they were cancelled by the Mayor the day before. Mayor McMullen then sent a memo to the board, Village attorneys, and other Village officials including Treasurer Len Marchese, Payroll Clerk Siobhan Costello, and Police Chief Chris Hughes, all who were not privy to the information discussed at the executive session and should not, under Village code, be given this kind of private information, said Weber.

In his memo, which he read during the public board meeting, Mayor McMullen wrote:

“As you know, the Deputy Treasurer resigned after it was discovered that she had used Village funds to pay personal bills. The funds were less than $600 and were recovered. Thanks to the procedures and policies that our treasurer, Len Marchese, has put in place, this misuse of Village funds was discovered. When that occurred, the treasurer informed me immediately of the situation. At this point, the two of us notified Chief Hughes. The Chief contacted the Suffolk County District Attorney's office to start a formal investigation. In conjunction with the Suffolk County DA office, the Treasury Department began an investigation reaching back three years to make sure there were no additional occurrences of misuse of funds. At the conclusion of their investigation, the Treasury Department found no other occurrences and the Suffolk DA investigators were satisfied that there was no further misuse of funds.”

He added, “I do not intend to hire an accounting firm for $10,000 at this time to repeat an investigation that has already been completed. This, I believe, would[n’t] just be a waste of taxpayers’ money, but a misuse of funds as well. Therefore, I am not going to put forward a resolution to do so.” In his concluding statement, the Mayor noted that “the Village needs to move on.”

Trustee Weber had two points of contention that were noted in his letter to the Mayor: executive information was shared with Village employees inappropriately, and an investigation of a department conducted by the department itself is not adequate.

In his letter, Trustee Weber explained, “The hiring of a forensic audit is a contractual matter that would possibly contain information that would or may be used in a future investigation or for prosecution of a criminal offense, and which would imperil effective law enforcement if disclosed. I believe the discussion of this meeting with the Treasury Department outside of our executive session is a clear breach of the Village ethics code Chapter 30-3 Standards of Conduct, section B, Confidential Information, which states ‘He shall not disclose confidential information acquired by him in the course of his official duties.’”

He added, “I entered the executive session with full belief that all discussions within that meeting are confidential, not for discussion with outside parties. By distribution of your memo, you have now discussed the contents of our executive session with employees of the treasury and this, Sir, is troubling to me and rightfully should be to all Village residents.”

Although Trustee Weber noted that he doesn’t want to “pick on” any one department, he said, “The Treasury Department has three employees. One was stealing and one is steering the course of the investigation in his own office." The third member, the Payroll Clerk, was just awarded a $5,000 raise, approved by the board on Tuesday evening, after receiving a 3.5% salary increase last year and a $7,500 ‘IT stipend.’

Trustee Weber ended his letter by asking that a resolution to be put forth to hire an outside CPA firm to conduct an audit covering August 1, 2019 to August 31, 2021. Despite the Mayor’s memo indicating that he would not agree to hiring a firm for a previously completed investigation, the board did decide to pay Nawrocki Smith, the same accounting firm that has been used by the Village and Treasury Department for the last eight years, $8,925 for a financial audit. Nawrocki Smith was recently retained to conduct the Village’s 2021 audit in an amount not to exceed $32,000 and is the same firm that’s used by the Town of Southampton, in which Len Marchese (the Northport Village Treasurer) serves as Comptroller.

Trustee Weber described this as a compromise, although he told the Journal that having a firm that was hand-picked by the current treasurer for an investigation of the Treasury Department doesn’t sit well with him. For the sake of transparency and building a culture of trust, using an independent firm would be more appropriate to resolve this matter, said Trustee Weber.

Mayor McMullen did not immediately return a request for comment from the Journal.