Muted Reactions Follow Hults's Arrest
By Carissa Katz

(June 11, 2009)    If there was one thing East Hampton’s political leaders could agree today after the  the former town budget officer, Ted Hults, was arraigned on seven felony and two misdemeanor counts, it was that June 11 was a sad day for East Hampton.

    “Ted is a genuinely nice person, and I really am still trying to come to grips with what’s happened,” said Bill Taylor, chairman of the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee.

    Mr. Hults was brought to East Hampton Town Justice Court  Thursday after turning himself in to authorities in Riverhead.

“This is a different story from what we’ve been hearing,” Mr. Taylor said. “All along the Democratic Committee had been assured that everything was fine” by Town Supervisor Bill McGintee

    Republicans have been saying exactly the opposite since well before the 2007 election, when their candidate for supervisor, Bill Wilkinson, narrowly lost to Mr. McGintee by just over 100 votes.

    “Finally, the truth is going to be told,” said John Behan, chairman of the Town Republican Committee. “It’s something that the Republican Party has been saying for two years. The district attorney and the state comptroller finally concluded their investigation with one employee taken away in handcuffs, and we expect more,” he said. “Hults didn’t do this on his own. He was ordered to by McGintee. When town officials act like this, they have to answer to the law.”

    “It makes for a sad day for East Hampton when you see a public official being taken out in handcuffs,” Mr. Behan said.  In the Republican Party,  the mood was one of  vindication that the financial mismanagement they had focused on is now alleged to be far greater than they had imagined. However, Mr  Behan expressed another feeling. “It doesn’t make me happy that it happened,” he said.

“We don’t expect the new public officials, be they Democrats or Republicans, to do anything of this kind, ever,” Mr. Behan said.

    Mr. Wilkinson, who is running again for the post he lost in 2007, called this “a dark chapter in the history of East Hampton government,” but said in a release that his “focus remains with the future of our community and how to repair the damage that has been done.” During the earlier campaign, Mr. Wilkinson repeatedly questioned Mr. McGintee on the state of the town’s finances and the size of the surplus on hand,  and he continued to do so after the election. It eventually came to light that not only was the surplus completely depleted, but the town was running a deficit of $15 million and counting.

     “The deficiencies of our current administration became painstakingly obvious to me, as they would to anyone with similar expertise, because of my 35 years of business experience,” Mr. Wilkinson said in the release. “I have questioned the political leadership that supported this administration for its consistent failure to confront the town’s leaders.” He said that many town officials and the Democratic leadership “not only chose to be silent, but covered it up.”

    Mr. Behan, a former state assemblyman who became the Republican leader last year, said he got back in politics “because of this corruption,” and speculated that Mr. McGintee would have to step down as supervisor before the end of his term in December.

    “There’s too much contradictory information out there to determine anything other than it’s a mess,” Mr. Taylor said. “It has to be fixed, and it’s not going to be pleasant.”

    “It’s not anything you like to see happen and it was so unnecessary. There were ways for them to deal with the shortfall in revenue. There are options the town has without having to transfer money that’s in a dedicated fund, so it’s doubly sad,” said Ben Zwirn, a deputy Suffolk county executive who is running against Mr. Wilkinson for town supervisor on the Democratic ticket. Since announcing his candidacy last month, he has been equally critical of the sitting Democratic supervisor and town board. “There was an election going on, and they were afraid that if they showed the actual situation the town was in that that would have jeopardized their re-election,” he said today.

    “I think this episode is not over yet, and I think it’s going to go a lot farther than Ted Hults,” he said. Mr. Zwirn wondered what the town’s auditors knew and asked how they could have read and signed off on the town’s financial reports. “What role did they play in this, or were they missing in action?”

    It will take more than a year to resolve the financial mess that the town is in, Mr. Zwirn said, “and as it goes forward, we are going to have to put safeguards in so that this doesn’t happen again.” While the town will have to trim its budget in many places, he said it should not skimp on financial oversight. “I think the town comptroller is going to need additional help.”