Levy seeks panel decision on attorney for ethics probe

Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy asked a state judicial watchdog panel Tuesday to jump into an escalating dispute between himself and the county legislature over the proposed hiring of an outside special counsel to investigate the County Ethics Board's handling of Levy's financial disclosure forms.

In a letter to the New York State Judicial Grievance Committee, Levy is seeking an immediate determination to "a textbook example of a conflict of interest" in the legislature's attempt to hire Melville attorney Anton Borovina because he is already involved in a different case before the ethics board.

Levy said Borovina's proposed hiring "flies in the face of common sense and runs rampant over the principle of a truly independent counsel." He said Borovina faces a conflict because he represents former chief deputy county executive Paul Sabatino in an open Ethics Commission complaint filed by Levy's administration.

But the legislature's presiding officer, William Lindsay, rejected Levy's latest move, saying there was no conflict for Borovina and that legislators had already discussed Borovina's representation of Sabatino before Levy made it an issue. "I take him [Borovina] at his word, and he says he doesn't have a conflict," Lindsay said.

The full legislature will get to decide at a meeting next week whether to hire Borovina for $250 an hour, under an outside legal counsel contract that would be capped at $23,500, Lindsay said. The legislature wants to investigate why the county's Ethics Board approved Levy's filing of New York State financial disclosure forms rather than the county's more extensive form.