East Hampton Village Official Says Advertising Buy Was Political, Taxpayers Should Be Reimbursed $11k By Mayor

East Hampton Village Trustee Arthur Graham has said that an $11,000 advertisement purchased with village funds by Mayor Jerry Larsen was a political ploy, and that the mayor should pay back the village the cost of the ads from his NewTown Party campaign funds.

The ad, which spanned four full pages printed in their own separate pullout section of The East Hampton Star the week before Memorial Day, was cast as the mayor’s annual “State of the Village” message and largely extolled the success of the mayor’s administration over the past year, and the tax cut that is anticipated in the village’s proposed budget for the coming year, and patted the village’s department heads, some by name, and employees on the back.

Graham, who is running for reelection this year against two candidates backed by the mayor, says that the message takes a thinly veiled “dig” at him and that the timing of the release of the mayor’s message makes it clear that the ad was meant to influence the election.

The message makes no mention of next week’s village election nor any of the candidates by name, but it does briefly reference an ad from the campaign, implying that one of the candidates had slighted village employees in it.

Graham says the reference was to an advertisement that he had run recently that asked voters if they believe village policy should be crafted by the elected officials or by appointed department heads — a criticism aimed at the mayor’s habit of working with department heads to formulate policy and offering other Village Board members little input or opportunity for public criticism.

He said he doesn’t see anything legally inappropriate with the move. “It just smacks of politics,” Graham said, “and something that blatant — he’s blowing his own horn so hard right before the election, it’s clearly political — should be paid for by their campaign, not village taxpayers.”

The mayor has defended the message as simply a new approach to trying to get the annual State of the Village message in front of more residents.

“We did it with a mailing last year, and we got feedback that a lot of people didn’t see it for whatever reason,” Larsen said on Monday. “So this year we did it with an advertisement. There’s nothing that talks about the election, except where I defended our employees against a politically motivated dig.”

The mayor’s office spent $10,700 to mail the printed message from the mayor to all village residents in 2021. That mailing was sent out in July.

Larsen said that he thought it a worthwhile public service to try to spotlight the village’s successes in as bright a way as possible, because his administration, he says, has pressed its employees over the last two years and they have delivered.

“We’ve really held our department heads and employees to a higher standard than in the past and they’ve done a good job and deserve the recognition for that,” he said.