North Hempstead passes broad ethics reforms, promises more

The North Hempstead town board has passed sweeping reforms to its ethics laws, requiring contractors who advise town boards to file financial disclosure forms and anyone who files the forms to identify family members who work for the town.

Both measures are part of an ethics reform package proposed by Supervisor Judi Bosworth that came in the wake of Newsday stories that revealed that Gerard Terry, the town’s former Democratic Party leader and zoning board of appeals attorney, had compiled nearly $1.4 million in state and federal tax debts.

Under the former town law, Terry was not required to file disclosure forms as a contractor working for the zoning board, but he was as the town party leader. Newsday reported that he had failed to file those disclosure forms.

Without those disclosure forms, the town had no documentation of Terry’s tax debts. The town ended its relationship with Terry after Newsday’s Jan. 31 report, and he stepped down or was terminated from three other public jobs in addition to his post as party leader.

“We added some things after careful consideration that we wanted in order to make the financial disclosure more comprehensive,” Bosworth said in an interview after the board meeting Tuesday.

The town’s ethics board is also reviewing what town officials have described as an “omission” in the forms of Terry’s wife, Deputy Town Clerk Concetta Terry, who did not list her husband’s tax liens in her financial disclosure forms, which require filers to list debts of their spouses or dependent children in excess of $5,000.

Bosworth said that investigation is “ongoing.”

She said the reforms will not end with just that, however.

She said the town is exploring a far broader nepotism policy, this also in the wake of a Newsday story earlier this month that showed that the town’s highway superintendent, Thomas Tiernan, was among five family members on the town payroll.

Newsday reported that he was the best paid town highway superintendent on Long Island, and the only one to receive overtime pay. Family members include his wife, son, brother and sister.

His sister, Helen McCann, was charged by Nassau prosecutors last month with embezzling more than $98,000 in cash from the town’s Solid Waste Management Authority. She was terminated by the town board in January.

Bosworth said she knew Tiernan had some relatives working for the town but acknowledged she “didn’t know how many, and I still don’t know.”

“Right now, there are people who have family members who work in the town, we don’t know, there’s no mechanism to know that because people have different last names,” Bosworth said.

When asked for an example of a potential nepotism policy, Bosworth said, “someone who is working for the town should not be supervising a relative in their department.”

Tiernan’s brother, John Tiernan, is a highway construction supervisor.

Bosworth said any new policies aim “to make sure that we are following whatever procedures need to be followed to make sure whatever disclosures are necessary are in fact disclosed.”

She said that, for the first time in 25 years, officials have promised to collect financial disclosure forms from town party leaders by a May 15 deadline. Her predecessor, Jon Kaiman, who served as supervisor from 2004 through 2013, has said he was unaware of that requirement.

The reforms passed 6-0, with Democratic Councilwoman Viviana Russell abstaining. She cited last-minute changes to the proposal and did not provide any specific objections to the bill.

“I just wasn’t comfortable with it yet, so I needed more time to look it over,” Russell said.

Bosworth also said she would consider a request from GOP Councilwoman Dina De Giorgio to discuss the overall issues related to ethics reform in a public work session.

By Scott Eidler

scott.eidler@newsday.com@ScottEidler

Scott Eidler is a deputy editor for the towns department at Newsday. Scott has worked at Newsday since 2012 and previously covered municipal government and education.