Civic group coalition files ethics complaint against Giglio over private meeting with applicant in EPCAL land deal

A coalition of local civic and environmental groups have filed a complaint with the Riverhead Board of Ethics about Councilwoman Jodi Giglio’s March 12 meeting in New York City with representatives of the company seeking to buy more than 1,600 acres of land from the town inside the Calverton Enterprise Park.

Giglio was the only town official at the meeting, which she took without notifying the other town board members or the lawyers representing the town on the $40 million deal.

The meeting took place on the eve of the scheduled continuation of a public hearing on the proposed sale by the town board, sitting as the board of the Riverhead Community Development Agency, which holds title to the former Navy site once occupied by Northrop Grumman.

The complaint to the ethics board, Greater Calverton Civic Association president Rex Farr told the town board Tuesday night, was filed by the coalition that afternoon; it contends “Giglio’s behavior tainted the qualified and eligible public hearing process.”

The councilwoman’s “private meeting” with the prospective purchasers “fails utterly to allow for fairness and impartiality in the execution of her responsibilities as an elected Town of Riverhead official and a member of the Board of Directors of the Town of Riverhead Community Development Agency,” according to the complaint.

“We believe that her actions, regardless of intentions, have irrevocably harmed Ms. Giglio’s ability to make a determination on the matter of qualified and eligible. Ms. Giglio engaged in ex parte discussions that are inappropriate and unacceptable,” it states.

A copy of the document was provided to RiverheadLOCAL by the Coalition Against EPCAL Housing, which filed the complaint.

Some residents, including Farr, former Greater Jamesport Civic Association president Angela DeVito and Phil Barbato of the Riverhead Neighborhood Preservation Coalition took the podium Tuesday night to call on Giglio to recuse herself from any further participation in the qualified and eligible hearing and vote on the application of Calverton Aviation and Technology.

Giglio supporters pushed back against the idea.

“Councilwoman Giglio had every right to meet with them,” said Joann Waski of Jamesport. “Thank you, councilwoman, for going in and doing your due diligence.”

Tommy Lassandro of Baiting Hollow agreed. “In my humble opinion none of you have done anything wrong to be accused of doing this or doing that. In my opinion, it’s nonsense,” he said.

During the comment period Tuesday night, Giglio asked town attorney Robert Kozakiewicz for an opinion on the matter. At first he said he would give a legal opinion only in an executive session, but then offered, “I don’t see anything here that mandates recusal. I see nothing here that violates law.” He suggested the town board seek the advice of the special counsel it hired to represent the town in the deal.

“No one said there was any mandatory need for recusal,” DeVito responded, after rising to the podium a second time. “It’s a of the public trust and that’s what needs to be restored.”

Giglio vehemently denies any wrongdoing. She maintains that she took the March 12 meeting in Manhattan as part of her “due diligence” research into the qualifications of the prospective purchaser. She said Tuesday night she told the other board members about the meeting the very next morning. Giglio also contacted RiverheadLOCAL on March 13 to discuss the application and her meeting with the applicants.

The continuation of the Q&E hearing originally set for that evening was postponed due to snow.

Prior to March 13, the councilwoman had been a vocal opponent of the sale to any entity in which Luminati Aerospace had an interest — including, initially, Calverton Aviation and Technology. In December, she voted against a resolution approving the contract of sale, which passed 3-2 with the support of former supervisor Sean Walter, former councilman John Dunleavy and Councilman James Wooten. On Feb. 6, she voted against scheduling the qualified and eligible hearing. She said the “letter of intent is not in conformance with the contract. I voted no for the contract and I’m voting no with moving forward on the Qualified and Eligible.” On March 6, she voted against changing the hearing location to a larger venue, saying, “I’m not putting my name on anything to do with this.”

The next evening, March 7, Giglio attended a presentation by Triple Five principals and representatives hosted by the Riverhead Chamber of Commerce. She has said that, in conversation following the presentation, Triple Five chairman Nader Ghermezian invited her to meet with him and other company representatives in Manhattan. That was how the March 12 meeting came about, she told board members during the April 5 work session.

Giglio said she attended the meeting in Manhattan with former Riverhead Community Development director Christina Kempner, whom she described as “a friend.” Kempner, who left the Riverhead CDA in May 2017 for a job with the Stony Brook Business Incubator in Calverton and is now employed as Brookhaven Town’s deputy commissioner of housing and human services, has been an enthusiastic advocate of the proposed land sale to CAT. She’s described it as “the best thing that could ever happen at Calverton.”

In an interview on the morning after the NYC meeting, Giglio for the first time publicly expressed support for the proposed sale.

Both Giglio and Kempner said that meeting with applicants during ongoing Q&E proceedings is not unusual. During the town board’s April 5 work session, where she gave the board an account of the March 12 meeting, she replied to the supervisor’s question about whether she considered asking the town’s special counsel for advice before setting up the meeting: “No because I’ve been involved in five Q&Es before and we’ve always had open discussions during the Q&E process with previous applicants so I didn’t think that there was anything wrong with it.” She cited Riverhead Resorts and Vintage Group as examples.

In email correspondence last week and again after Tuesday night’s meeting, Giglio denounced as inaccurate reporting that there have been only three other qualified and eligible applications before the town board during her tenure in office, none of which had been adjourned or continued to a second date as the CAT hearing had been. She said during her tenure, the town was in discussions with two entities, Rechler and Vintage Group, previously found “qualified and eligible,” who did not reach agreements with the town and were interested in filing new applications.  She also denied saying she had been involved “in five Q&E hearings.” 

“You make me out to look like a liar and portray me in a negative perspective every time Denise, as if I was a criminal. I don’t like the way you portray me. I’m doing my job and have no ulterior motives,” Giglio wrote in an email.

The ethics complaint filed Tuesday by the Coalition Against EPCAL Housing contends Giglio violated three provisions of the ethics code which describe the purposes of the code and one provision which requires recusal by the town officer if an action would benefit the official, their business or outside employer, family member, customer or client, or an entity who has contributed an aggregate of more than $1,000 to the official’s most recent campaign.

The complaint does not contain specific allegations regarding any alleged benefits to the official, business, family member or campaign contributor.

The town ethics code does not contain any language pertaining to the conduct of public hearings or about a town officer meeting privately with an applicant during the pendency of a public hearing.

The complaint also makes reference, as “relevant for consideration,” to a provision of the State Administrative Procedure Act which bars members or employees of an agency in an “adjudicatory proceeding” from communicating with any party to the proceeding “except upon notice and opportunity for all parties to participate.”

While the Riverhead Community Development Agency is a public authority created by state law, the state administrative procedure act says it applies to local public authorities only if the governor appoints at least one board member.

The town has no relevant code governing hearing procedures in general.

Its “rules and procedures for the review of proposals for the sale or lease of property by the CDA,” adopted last year, are silent about meetings with an applicant outside of the public hearing while the hearing is pending.

The rules set forth four “criteria” for determining whether an applicant is “qualified and eligible.” One of the criteria is the “presentation of the applicant sponsor to the public at the prescribed hearing upon due notice at a public meeting of the CDA providing an opportunity for the applicant sponsor to present its proposal and ability to meet the established criteria for designation by the CDA as a ‘qualified and eligible’ sponsor pursuant to Section 507(2)(c) of Article 15 of New York State General Municipal Law.”