While some in CPS resist, Suffolk seeks accountability in Thomas Valva's death

Daily Point

Romaine, Tierney urge lawmakers to join call for more oversight of CPS

The fallout from the death of 8-year-old Thomas Valva is still reverberating in Suffolk County. The county’s top elected officials went to the legislature Tuesday to seek its support for a change in state law that would allow more oversight of child welfare services. Meanwhile, the Department of Social Services is expected to get a new commissioner next week who will be tasked with cleaning house at the beleaguered agency.

Seeking to build momentum Tuesday afternoon for the change, District Attorney Ray Tierney and Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine spoke during an open comment session about a letter the two of them are sending to Gov. Kathy Hochul, and they asked the legislators to sign on as well. Tierney cited the grand jury report released last week which declared it was unable to determine whether there was any wrongdoing on the part of Suffolk’s Child Protective Services because of a web of privacy laws.

“In the case of Thomas Valva there were at least 10 reports of potential abuse — many provided by the children’s teachers — that were deemed “unfounded”, and therefore not allowed to be reviewed by the District Attorney’s office or considered by the grand jury,” the letter says. “We ask you to join us in making changes to these laws. Providing investigators with files containing undocumented complaints will improve investigations, create true accountability and save lives,” the letter continued.

In response to the letter, AME, the union which represents CPS workers, said in a statement that it was committed to working “at every level of government to create a path towards fixing CPS as an entire system.”

AME president Daniel C. Levler said the union must have a role in discussing any changes that impact working conditions of its members. “Many of our members, including those in CPS, are on the frontlines every day working in conditions that can potentially jeopardize their personal safety in addition to the safety of the population they serve. Their safety is paramount and should not be thrown out the window as a reaction that focuses more on scapegoating and less on achieving productive solutions,” he said in the statement to The Point.

Legis. Trish Bergin, who was investigating Valva’s death for the legislature before halting the effort and turning the chamber's files over to the district attorney’s office, said she “absolutely” would support a change in the law. Bergin said that while she wants to make sure that CPS workers are fairly compensated, she learned during her probe that “top level managers within DSS would hide behind those laws, offering me no answers when pressed and therefore crippling any oversight … This remains a huge obstacle.”

Tuesday’s appearance at the legislature follows a visit by Romaine Monday morning to county social services headquarters in Ronkonkoma. While the meeting was open to all DSS employees, CPS workers filled the room to give Romaine an earful about the difficulty of their jobs and make the case that the DA’s report unfairly cast blame on them, according to sources at the meeting.

While Romaine listened to their concerns, he told them, “The county is responsible'' for Valva’s death. That surely will be demonstrated, in dollars and cents, as the county settles a lawsuit from Valva’s mother. But Romaine was adamant as well about changes the agency needed to make. “There needs to be accountability,” he said several times, according to the sources.

— Rita Ciolli rita.ciolli@newsday.com

Pencil Point

That's rich

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Final Point

Challenges ahead for GOP Senate candidates

Cara J. Castronuova, a celebrity fitness trainer known on “reality” television, is trying an unusual double-edged strategy in running an insurgent Republican campaign for U.S. Senate.

Having filed what she claims to be more than the 15,000 valid petition signatures required to qualify for the June 25 primary ballot, Castronuova also sued the party’s state chairman, Ed Cox, in federal court to abolish the system under which she needs those signatures in the first place.

On Friday, the state Board of Elections reported receiving from her campaign a total of 3,518 petition pages. Not that the number means much; officials won’t know before the submissions are inspected how many valid signatures are contained in them. Petition pages and the volumes that contain them — fastened groups of pages — can have varying numbers of signatures.

The state GOP organization has voted Michael Sapraicone, the founder of a private security business, to be its preference to face Democratic incumbent Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in November. As a result, he does not need to collect petitions. His camp is expected to have lawyers and volunteers combing through the signatures submitted by Castronuova and by another primary insurgent, Josh Eisen, to keep them off the primary ballot.

Sources told The Point that for both Eisen and Castronuova, the number of signatures above the 15,000 mark looks small enough that all it would take is the voiding of a few hundred to get the petition volumes tossed out. As of Tuesday, general objections have been filed against the two candidates. Typically, candidates try to build up signature numbers further above the minimum to cushion the likelihood that they’ll lose some of them under challenge. It was not immediately clear whether another GOP hopeful who filed petitions last week, David Bellon, will make the basic number.

Eisen reportedly submitted 1,500 pages of signatures and Bellon only five pages, with the number of signatures yet to be tallied.

Castronuova, who ran and lost an Assembly race in Elmont, suggested in her court complaint that the requirement that she get valid signatures from half the state’s 26 congressional districts over a five-week period is unconstitutionally onerous. Cox’s camp denies it.

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com

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