Jack Martins attacks Laura Curran’s ethics board plan

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Jack Martins attacks Laura Curran’s ethics board plan
Jack Martins speaks with supporters at his campaign launch event at Mineola Village Hall on Wednesday, April 26, 2017. (Photo by Noah Manskar)

Jack Martins, the Republican Nassau County executive candidate, attacked his Democratic opponent’s plan to reform Nassau’s ethics board as a “charade” on Wednesday.

County Legislator Laura Curran, the Democratic nominee for Nassau’s top office, has proposed a bill that would give the county comptroller and top legislators the power to appoint members of the Board of Ethics. The county executive currently appoints four of the five members.

The Board of Ethics is responsible for investigating complaints of ethical wrongdoing by county officials, advising officials on ethics policies and enforcing financial disclosure rules.

Martins, a former state senator, said Curran’s plan only shuffles the board’s membership without giving it additional power to root out corruption.

“Laura Curran’s proposal is nothing more than politics and misses the opportunity to move forward on ethics reform,” Martins said in a news release.

The Board of Ethics has only recently been drawn into the debate over anti-corruption reforms, which erupted in 2015 after then-state Sen. Dean Skelos and his son, Adam, were indicted on federal corruption charges involving a $12 million Nassau contract. Both were convicted and are appealing.

Both Nassau District Attorney Madeline Singas and an independent panel appointed by current Republican County Executive Edward Mangano — who was indicted on federal corruption charges last year — conducted reviews in 2015 of the Nassau contracting process, from which several scandals have emerged.

The changes to the Board of Ethics that Martins and Curran have proposed were not among the many reforms those reviews recommended, several of which have not been implemented.

Martins, who has called for Mangano’s resignation, says he would restructure the board so that no more than two of its five members would be from the same political party. The county’s investigations commissioner would also work as the board’s “investigatory arm” under Martins plan.

The county executive would appoint and the Legislature would confirm the members, who would serve staggered five-year terms, as would Curran’s proposal.

Under Curran’s plan, which the Legislature’s Democratic caucus introduced as a bill last month, the county comptroller and the Legislature’s presiding officer and minority leader would each appoint one ethics board member. The county executive would get two appointments, one of which would be recommended by labor unions representing county employees.

In a statement, Curran said she has also proposed reforms to the county contracting process, a ban on political contributions by county vendors and other measures to stop corruption before it happens.

“[T]axpayers just can’t trust Jack Martins, who carried water for [the Nassau Republican] machine and stifled ethics reform in Albany at every turn,” Curran said.

Curran has the backing of the Nassau County Democratic Committee but faces a primary against Nassau Comptroller George Maragos.

Martins has also proposed a measure that would allow the county Legislature to remove the county executive from office and independent budgets for the investigations commissioner and the procurement compliance director, who oversees county contracts.

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  1. “Gulotta said the installation of the cameras requires the approval of the County Legislature. He didn’t know when they would be installed, or the price tag, but said it would run into the millions. “Yes, we can afford it,” he said. Nassau District Attorney Denis Dillon has recommended the installation of cameras at the jail. Gulotta said the cameras could monitor performance, act as a deterrent and provide investigators with key evidence in the event an abuse complaint is filed. As the new liaison, Deputy Undersheriff Ernest Weber would report directly to the sheriff, the district attorney’s office and the County Legislature about abuse complaints. Gulotta said, as previously announced, that medical care is being upgraded at the jail.

    A Proposal For Cameras In Nassau Jail
    The Nassau County District Attorney, Denis Dillon, called upon the County Legislature today to order the installation of video cameras throughout the county jail in East Meadow, where the authorities say an inmate was beaten to death earlier this month by guards. Mr. Dillon advised requiring Sheriff Joseph Jablonsky, who oversees the jail, to double the size of its four-person internal investigations unit, calling it ”clearly inadequate to effectively investigate an institution as large” as the 2,200-bed Nassau Correctional Center. He also recommended that transfers of inmates to disciplinary cells be recorded using hand-held video cameras.
    By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
    Jan. 29, 1999

    Prisoner advocates agree the introduction of cameras has deterred guard misconduct in many prisons and jails. It has also helped many victims of abuse prove their cases in court.

    Huge lawsuits will be inevitable when the camera shows all that is denied in inmate care and custody.

    In Arizona, cameras caught officers dragging a dazed and confused prisoner who later died as they held him in a restraint chair. The videotape was considered central in the county’s decision to settle a civil suit with the prisoner’s family for $8.25 million – a record amount in Arizona.

    In New York, it was only after Thomas Pizzuto was allegedly beaten to death in early January at the Nassau County Jail that the local district attorney called for the installation of video cameras.

    Video Monitors Planned for Troubled Nassau Jail
    Facing a Federal investigation of reports of abuse by guards at the county jail, the Nassau County Executive, Thomas S. Gulotta, announced today a series of initiatives, including the installation of surveillance cameras throughout the troubled correctional center. Mr. Gulotta said the surveillance system would permit the jail to monitor and record events in all inmate areas, including housing, recreation, visiting, transportation, holding, booking and medical locations and connecting hallways.
    March 9, 1999

    “Tens of millions of dollars have been included in the budget over the past two fiscal years to make Rikers Island a safer place for inmates, detainees, and correction officers,” she wrote. “Having accurate data is essential to ensure that these dollars are spent appropriately.

    ”The consent decree also includes provisions related to staff training, a new use of force policy, new policies for juvenile prisoners and the installation of 7,800 more video cameras at the jail complex.

    The head of the monitoring group, Steve Martin, was appointed after a group of inmates and former Manhattan federal prosecutor Preet Bharara filed a lawsuit, alleging widespread abuses by officers.

    Mr. Martin also worked with the Nassau County jail after a fatal beating there in 1999 led to a federal probe into the jail’s use-of-force policy.

    D.   Videotaping
         75.   NCCC shall maintain sufficient hand-held video equipment to record all planned uses of force and sufficient equipment for investigators and supervisors to view such videotapes. The Deputy Undersheriff of Operations shall be responsible for ensuring that videotape equipment is properly maintained. NCCC shall develop and implement policies and procedures for recording all planned uses of force to the extent practicable; for training personnel assigned to film uses of force in the use and maintenance of such equipment; for disciplining staff who fail to videotape incidents as required; for disciplining staff who tamper with the videotape machines or tapes; and for reviewing regularly the tapes. NCCC shall maintain the used tapes for three years to ensure that evidence is not destroyed or lost. No tapes containing relevant evidence shall be destroyed during the pendency of any civil, criminal, or administrative investigation, prosecution, or litigation.

    Systemic corruption
    Systemic corruption (or endemic corruption) is corruption which is primarily due to the weaknesses of an organization or process. It can be contrasted with individual officials or agents who act corruptly within the system.

    “County Executive-Elect Curran made it clear: her administration will be transparent and accountable to the taxpayers,” said Kasschau of Rockville Centre, who said he plans to move legal work that has been outsourced to private firms back in-house.

    In 2006, during the Suozzi administration, Curran was hired as a part-time Nassau County press officer. Her duties included coordination of activities between county agencies.

    “I got to parachute into every agency . . . and got a crash course on just about every department,” Curran recalled.

    Curran left the Suozzi administration in 2008.

    From 2000 to 2009, Fludd’s assignment was to work directly in the office of the jail’s top official — first former Sheriff Edward Reilly and then Sposato.

    Correction union leader Brian Sullivan applauded Fludd’s appointment, saying the Sheriff’s Department veteran rose through the ranks and knows the jail “inside and out…

    To date, 190 officers have been injured in the line of duty at the jail, while 271 were hurt by inmates last year, Sullivan said. Not one caught on Video Surveillance Cameras since 1999.

    The guard most frequently accused of attacking inmates over the last decade, Salvatore Gemelli, was vice president and then president of the correction officers’ union for much of that time. And jail officials have yet to install the surveillance cameras that prosecutors have long urged as a way of deterring beatings and aiding investigators.

    Curran is a former journalism who had worked for both the New York Daily News and the New York Post. Don’t ask me how that happens; I have no idea. Curran has the dubious distinct of being temporarily kicked out of party caucus meetings due to voting for a Mangano written budget bill that added $50 million of debt to the county’s coffers without informing her colleagues of her vote or even that a vote was going to be occurring. (Mangano somehow claim the borrowing embedded in the bill was really revenue. Where have we heard that before?). Curran in the one televised debate between her and Repub turned Dem County Comptroller George Maragos, claimed she had never been kicked out of caucus meetings. A quick two second internet search brought up tens of articles specifying she had, in fact, been kicked out of caucus meetings and as of May was still not allowed back in. Yet she became the party’s chosen nominee. And don’t think this is the only Dem to be barred from caucus meetings. One was barred after being arrested for domestic violence (he’s still a member of the legislature after called from the minority leader for him to re-sign.) and another was barred for making racist remarks

    “County Executive-Elect Curran made it clear: her administration will be transparent and accountable to the taxpayers,” said Kasschau of Rockville Centre, who said he plans to move legal work that has been outsourced to private firms back in-house.
    “Laura Curran’s policies require legislative action, just as Laura voted to nearly double her own pay, she should vote to implement her own reforms,” Nevin said in an email.

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