Sandy-related lawsuit against Oyster Bay Town Supervisor dropped by state

Town of Oyster Bay Supervisor Joseph Saladino delivers his second State of the Town Address on Tuesday, June 12, 2018 in Oyster Bay. Credit: Howard Schnapp
A New York State agency has dropped a lawsuit against Oyster Bay Town Supervisor Joseph Saladino after he repaid almost $16,000 of federal disaster relief for which fund administrators contended he was not eligible.
The Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery "received Mr. Saladino’s full payment on 12/26 and the lawsuit is being dropped,” the agency's acting general counsel, Emily Thompson, said in an emailed statement.
A lawyer representing the Housing Trust Fund Corp., a state agency that administers the New York Rising Housing Recovery Program, filed a notice to discontinue the lawsuit on Dec. 27 in State Supreme Court in Mineola.
The lawsuit, filed in September, alleged Saladino failed to disclose a homeowner's insurance settlement for damage from superstorm Sandy to his primary residence in Massapequa. The insurance settlement resulted in his receiving duplicate benefits, making him ineligible for a $15,803 New York Rising grant he received in 2015, according to the complaint.
Saladino, in an emailed statement Monday, said the lawsuit was "ridiculous and unfair."
"I applied and qualified for New York Rising like everyone else. 5 years later, the program tried to claw-back the little assistance they provided me," Saladino said. " I spent a great deal of time speaking and meeting with NY Rising representatives to resolve my disagreement with their valuation of damage to my property."
Saladino’s attorney, Farmingdale-based Gregory Carman Jr., said Monday the supervisor had disclosed the homeowners insurance money in his application to New York Rising.

The home of Joseph Saladino on Monday, Dec. 17, 2018 in Massapequa. Credit: Howard Schnapp
“It was a truthful application,” Carman said.
Carman, who also serves as Oyster Bay’s Deputy Town Supervisor, said Saladino "made a presentation to New York Rising at the time the application was filed as to what he expected to receive from his flood insurance and homeowner's insurance.”
Carman said he could not provide a copy of the application.
On Monday, Thompson said in a statement "The facts in the lawsuit are accurate," and declined further comment.
The lawsuit against Saladino was one of more than 140 the Housing Trust Fund filed in 2018, according to electronic court filings. Most of those cases — 137 — were filed in Long Island courts, with 110 in Nassau County and 27 in Suffolk County. In many of those cases the state agency is seeking the return of New York Rising grant funds based on allegations that homeowners either failed to file all the required paperwork or that they received duplicate benefits from insurance or other disaster relief programs, the complaints show.
The Housing Trust Fund stated in its complaint that it had notified Saladino in June 2017 that he was ineligible for the grant and needed to return it.
Saladino “put them on notice that he was still doing the work on his house and that the estimate that they [New York Rising] had come up with was much lower than what it was going to cost to do the project,” Carman said.
Carman said he did not have estimates of the actual cost to repair the home. The grant was supposed to pay a portion of the approximately $114,000 project approved by the state.
Saladino was notified in 2017 that he could appeal the program’s decision to claw back the grant money, but he did not, according to the complaint.
Carman said Saladino didn’t have the opportunity to appeal because the state sued in September, a month after he received his certificate of occupancy from Oyster Bay for work on his house.
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