The Town of North Hempstead Town Board Democrats voted to table a resolution appointing Thomas Tiernan to highway superintendent Thursday night and removed the acting superintendent from his post. 

“With great, great regret, I am going to vote to ‘aye’ to table,” said Democratic Councilman Robert Troiano, who voted last and broke a 3-3 vote along party lines. 

The vote followed deliberations that took an hour and 23 minutes, which featured a number of people testifying in support of Tiernan’s nomination mixed with some calling for a search for other candidates. 

Council members later approved a personnel resolution that included the removal of Harry Weed as the acting highway superintendent. North Hempstead Supervisor Jennifer DeSena had earlier called for Weed, who was put into his position in 2021 under Supervisor Judi Bosworth, to be appointed on a permanent basis.

That for the moment leaves the town without a highway superintendent. As of Monday, two foremen will be managing crews on a day-to-day basis during the job search, which was also posted this week.

Councilwoman Veronica Lurvey thanked those in attendance who expressed their support, concerns and questions about Tiernan’s potential appointment. She called for the Town Board to participate in a search “so we can work together to best serve the needs of our residents.” 

“I hope that Tom Tiernan will be given every consideration as part of this search,” Lurvey said. 

DeSena had called on Lurvey to withdraw a resolution to appoint Tiernan as the town’s new highway superintendent six years after he resigned following probes into his overtime compensation.

“It’s extremely clear for anyone to see that Mr. Tiernan was handpicked in a backroom deal by Councilwoman Lurvey as no prior discussion, rationale or explanation was given as to how, when, where, and why Mr. Tiernan was chosen,” DeSena said in front of Town Hall at a news conference weeks ago.

“I am disappointed that rather than withdrawing the resolution entirely, Councilwoman Lurvey chose to table it, which is a sneaky tactic that ensures Mr. Tiernan’s appointment will be on the Town Board meeting agenda going forward, able to be voted on at a moment’s notice,” DeSena said. “I am even more disappointed that majority Council members decided to recklessly terminate our current acting superintendent without a replacement in place, leaving the department without a superintendent.”

She began to read one of the disciplinary charges Tiernan received from a previous town attorney in 2016 following the vote to table Tiernan’s appointment.

The charge stemmed from an internal investigation in 2015 through the town attorney’s office following complaints from a vendor, Robert Hamilton, that Tiernan verbally abused him.

“There was a call for some of the findings from the report, and I would like to note a couple of them,” said DeSena, a registered Democrat who was elected as a Republican in November.  “Item No. 35, Mr. Tiernan’s unprofessional behavior negatively reflected upon the town and was unbecoming of a Highway Superintendent.”

While DeSena was reading the report, Troiano stood up from the dais, called what DeSena was doing “unbecoming of a legally trained person” and briefly left the room before returning. 

Troiano and Lurvey both said they had previously looked at the charges reviewed by the town attorney in 2016 while fellow Democrats, Council members Mariann Dalimonte and Peter Zuckerman, said they had not. 

Troiano contended DeSena’s reading the charge after the Town Board tabled the resolution to appoint Tiernan violated Robert’s Rules of Order and was not a proper continuance of the scheduled agenda. k. 

DeSena, in a statement, said she was glad the majority Council members had “finally come to their senses” and stopped Tiernan’s appointment, although it does remain on future agendas.

“Now that my colleagues have finally committed to an open and transparent process, I will ensure that the Town publicly post this position and aggressively search for someone who’s not only experienced and qualified, but someone who shows the necessary integrity to be a trustworthy highway superintendent,” she said.

During public comments, Tiernan, who was not in attendance, garnered a lot of support from people in the audience, including multiple town employees. 

Robert Hamilton, the executive vice president of Bohemia-based truck equipment distributor Trius who said he was verbally abused by Tiernan in 2015, supported his appointment Thursday night.

He told the Town Board he had a “tough conversation” with Tiernan, whom he called a “passionate individual,” in 2015. Hamilton said the two have patched up their relationship and hoped it didn’t have any bearing on his impending employment. 

“I will say even then, Tom was held in very high regard for the job he did as the highway superintendent department he helped build and ran with great efficiency,” Hamilton said. “I hope that puts any of the controversy surrounding my past conversation with him to rest.”

Additional supporters of  Tiernan included First Baptist Cathedral of Westbury Bishop Lionel Harvey, Westbury Hills Civic Association President Pablo Sinclair, Bill Cutrone, Lakeville Estates Civic Association president, a group of town employees and Tom McDonough, the safety coordinator for North Hempstead’s Civil Service Employees Association Unit 7555, among others.

McDonough touted Tiernan’s appointment to stop the “rollercoaster” going on in the department and to post the position if the Town Board decided against Tiernan.

The union head said Weed, in addition to his $150,828 annual salary, is “actively collecting his retirement from the state of New York”, a process he referred to as “double-dipping.”

“The leadership of the highway department has been dysfunctional for five or six years now since Mr. Tiernan left,” McDonough said. “Bring someone in who is going to come in and work with the people, with the employees and the union because right now I am working with someone who is anti-union and retaliatory — a very vindictive individual.”

Kate Hirsch of Manhasset referenced a recent editorial from Newsday on Tiernan and called for transparency.

“Is there really only one person who’s qualified for this position? That is hard to believe,” Hirsch said.

Hank Ratner and Robert Donno, a Manhasset Chamber of Commerce committee member, requested the public get a copy of the charges that were brought against Tiernan and that it get read into the record, which DeSena briefly read later. 

“I’d actually like to know what’s going on,” Donno said. “It seems like there’s a lot of things not being said that should be said and people should know what’s going on.”

Tiernan had worked with the town since 1980 and was named highway chief in 2000. In 2016, Tiernan resigned following reports in Newsday that he had amassed over $130,000 in overtime between 2011 and 2016, according to Newsday payroll data, and an internal investigation by the town.

Following Tiernan’s resignation, Joe Geraci, the deputy commissioner of public works at the time, served as the town’s acting highway superintendent from 2016 to September 2018, when the town officially began its search for a full-time superintendent. 

After Geraci, Kevin Cronin, then administrative assistant to Supervisor Judi Bosworth, was the acting commissioner. His salary in 2019 was $117,507, according to town payroll filings.

Richard Baker became the first permanent highway chief in 2019, just over two years since Tiernan resigned. After his February appointment, Baker resigned that July, just four months after he had gotten the job. At the time of his resignation, Baker was earning $140,000 according to Newsday. 

At the time of his resignation, several members of Tiernan’s family were on the town’s payroll and still are.

His sister, Helen McCann, is a former longtime employee of the town.

In 2018, she was sentenced to a conditional discharge for embezzling more than $98,000 from the Solid Waste Management Authority from 2014 to 2016, prosecutors said. She was ordered to pay $50,000 in restitution to the town, $48,330 to an insurance company for a claim made by the town and pleaded guilty to second-degree corrupting the government charges. 

His brother, John, was a 27-year town employee who was a highway construction supervisor. He was asked to resign in 2018 after the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board found he “knowingly made material misrepresentations” to get benefits, according to Newsday.

His wife, Jill Guiney, is a former town deputy commissioner of public works who still works with the town. Tiernan’s son, Thomas, also works with the town.

The next North Hempstead Town Board meeting will be Thursday, June 16. 

A previous version of this story was published. It has since been updated.