In Strong Rebuke, Stevenson Takes Southampton Village Mayor To Task for 'No' Vote on Police Chief and Public Comments

In what amounted to a strong and forceful public rebuke, Southampton Village Trustee Roy Stevenson took the opportunity at Thursday night’s Village Board meeting to address Mayor Jesse Warren’s vocal opposition to the provisional hire last month of Suffolk County Deputy Commissioner Anthony Carter as the village’s next chief of police.

Stevenson’s statement was, in part, an attempt to show Carter that despite the mayor’s objections, the rest of the board had his back and they were looking forward to seeing him step into the role of police chief.

On Monday morning, Carter announced that he would not take the job, after consulting with his family and deciding it was “not the right time.”

Warren was the lone dissenting vote in December when the board appointed Carter, 4-1, to assume the chief’s post beginning in March. Carter would have initially joined the department as the provisional chief, and his appointment would have become permanent if he had passed a civil service exam, which is scheduled for March 25, and finished among the top three test-takers.

Warren, who has had an increasingly contentious relationship with his fellow board members in recent weeks, found himself on an island in more ways than one at the meeting.

Deputy Mayor Gina Arresta, Trustee Robin Brown and Trustee Bill Manger expressed their support for and agreement with much of what Stevenson had to say, and many of the points made by Stevenson were also echoed at the meeting by attorney Vince Twomey, who served as labor counsel for the police chief search committee.

Carter was also present at the meeting and, when called up to speak by Stevenson, was surrounded at the lectern by Southampton Village PBA President Michael Horstman, PBA Vice President David Dorchak and several members of the department.

Stevenson began what was a prepared statement without much warning: He launched into it when Warren asked his fellow trustees if any of them had any comments they’d like to make regarding a lengthy period of public discussion and debate about the controversial traffic barrier that has been set up on Somerset Avenue.

Instead of sharing his thoughts on that matter — which he shared on the record later on and in a letter to the editor in The Press this week — Stevenson launched into an impassioned defense of Carter and of the job done by the police chief search committee over the course of more than a year to find a candidate for the job. Stevenson served on that committee along with Brown, who was the chair.

Stevenson began by saying that Warren offered “no reasons” for his dissent and said there “was no qualification Mr. Carter lacked.” He said he chose to speak because Warren had made statements that “must not only be rebutted but rebuked, since they are false.”

The search committee “reviewed every application that met the standards for the position,” Stevenson said, adding that they were assisted by a professional recruiter and narrowed down the field by conducting “deep” background checks.

“I have nothing but pride for the way Trustee Brown conducted the committee search process and the work that was done by fellow committee members,” he said.

In response to Warren’s statements alleging that it was unfair that the village had not allowed Detective Sergeant Herman Lamison, a longtime member of the police department, to take the exam and be considered for the job, Stevenson said that the civil service guidelines prohibited anyone with a rank lower than lieutenant to take the exam — although whether or not civil service or the municipality seeking to hire a chief gets to set the parameters for who is eligible to take the exam has been another topic of debate.

Stevenson also defended the terms of Carter’s hiring and contract that were outlined in his offer letter, refuting Warren’s claim that it was a “fat” compensation package on par with what former Chief Thomas Cummings had made.

Southampton Village Administrator Charlene Kagel-Betts prepared a comparison of the two compensation packages, and Stevenson referenced several points that he said illustrate that Carter’s compensation package amounted to a savings of $140,000 annually for the village, while pointing out that Carter had agreed to work 20 more days per year than Cummings had.

Stevenson offered an apology to Carter for what he has endured in becoming the provisional hire, saying that the excitement of earning the job was “tarnished” by the mayor’s actions.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you said, shove it, I don’t need this BS,” Stevenson said, just three days before Carter withdrew from the position. “Instead, I hope it will stiffen your resolve to show the mayor how wrong he is. I hope the mayor will make every effort to amend his behavior and rebuild the loss of trust his actions have caused.”

Warren tried to steer the discussion back to the traffic issue, particularly when Stevenson asked Twomey to speak, but was overruled by his fellow trustees.

Twomey said the comments made by Stevenson were “all accurate,” adding that any criticisms of the job the committee did are “really misplaced.”

On Friday morning, Stevenson elaborated on his reason for making his statement at the meeting. He said that an article published in the New York Post on January 7 in which Warren shared his view that Carter did not deserve the job was “the breaking point,” coming on the heels of a Viewpoint published in The Southampton Press recently, and at 27east.com, in which Warren elaborated on his reasons for voting no.

“I felt that if the mayor is going to continue to try to publicize his side of the story, that it needed a response,” Stevenson said. He added that he crafted that response on his own, and that while the rest of the board seemed to agree with him, he did not craft the response in concert with them or ask them to read it ahead of time.

Stevenson and the other three trustees were united on a second front that was another point of contention at the meeting. As part of a supplemental agenda, the trustees tried to bring up a vote on removing Warren as the village’s Freedom of Information Law appeals officer and instead having the entire board serve together as the appeals body for any FOIL request that was denied and subsequently appealed.

Warren expressed immediate and vociferous objection to that move, taking the trustees to task for trying to walk on a resolution in the middle of the meeting without first consulting with Village Attorney Andrew Preston, while also reminding them that they cannot change a local law via resolution. The board decided to discuss the matter in executive session, and after coming out of the private discussion, they debated the issue further, ultimately scheduling a public hearing on the matter.

Warren said he was frustrated with the actions of the trustees in trying to change the local law on the FOIL appeals officer for several reasons and said it was ironic that they attempted to change a law related to freedom of information and transparency in such a nontransparent manner.

“The village clerk walked in with the resolution that was not publicly noticed or put on the village website or on the agenda, and, worse, it was not even reviewed by the village attorney or myself,” he said. “We should be as transparent as possible. So for the Board of Trustees to come mid-meeting and put something like that on the agenda, and to do it in the fashion they did, was problematic. It was done so hastily.”

Stevenson said on Friday morning that the reason the board made the unusual move was because they were concerned that Warren would grant an appeal for a FOIL request that had already been denied by the village for the names of all the candidates who applied for the police chief job. Stevenson said releasing those names would be a violation of the privacy of the individuals who applied for the job.

“People who applied for the job were told that their applications would be kept confidential,” Stevenson explained. “We were concerned that an appeal would be made to the mayor and he would grant the appeal.”

Stevenson said there were valid reasons for keeping the names of the applicants confidential. Revealing their names could jeopardize their current employment and tarnish their professional reputation and good standing if it was revealed that they applied but failed to secure the position, he said.

Warren said an appeal of that FOIL request had not yet landed on his desk and said if it did, he would handle it in the proper manner and would abide by the recommendations of the village attorney.

He said his objection to having the entire board serve as the appeals officer also stems from the fact that it would then require a public meeting to be called any time an appeals decision needed to be made, which would slow down the process of trying to get information to the public.

When it came to Stevenson’s mid-meeting statement regarding the police chief situation, Warren said that while Stevenson is entitled to his opinion, he did not agree with the way he made the statement in the middle of the meeting and also invited both Twomey and Carter to speak without any advance notice on the agenda.

“We want to stick to the agenda and do the business of the village,” Warren said. “And every member of the board will have an opportunity to speak, but it’s best when it’s done at a designated time on the agenda.

“The mayor presides over the meeting, and it’s a best practice to keep the meeting in good order,” he added, saying he will likely bring up a resolution at a future meeting for the board to adopt the best practices, as outlined by the New York Conference of Mayors, for running a board meeting.