In the East Hampton matter, the Suffolk district attorney’s office has said that Evelyn Calderon, an office assistant, and Ryan Benitez, a building inspector, accepted cash from contractors in 2024 in exchange for moving building permits and certificates of occupancy to the top of the approvals stack.
It was unconscionable that in responding to the two arrests East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez tried to lay the blame on a former town chief building inspector. Joe Palermo, who now heads the East Hampton Village Building Department, has vigorously protested Ms. Burke-Gonzalez’s baseless accusation. However, in his own defense, Mr. Palermo unintentionally brought to light a permissive culture in which officials are allowed to take gifts from people who do business with them. This disturbing practice, though legal under state law, encourages officials to skate too close to the ethical edge and should be ended.
Mr. Palermo is not the first town official to describe the largess that flows into the department. For example, a onetime town planning board member described a previous chief building inspector’s office as looking like a liquor store at Christmas.
The problem stems from a mushy caveat in both state and town law that allows gifts under $75 without restriction and only prohibits gifts of more than that amount if they can “reasonably be inferred” as a bribe. As Mr. Palermo said, the gratuities “may come in the way of a gift card or a bottle. People like to say thank you. But that stuff is all up front and not related to any specific work that is going on.”
This is a hard pill to swallow in an industry where multimillion-dollar construction projects hang on the decisions of certain public officials. The tell is who is handing out the gift cards and alcohol — they are not disinterested parties by any stretch.
In a twist, most state officials are held to a stricter standard, capping gifts at $15. But it makes no sense that state officials, whose purviews are orders of magnitude greater than those of local officials, should be held to the $15 limit, while town and village officials must only hew to the $75 line.
While the higher limit is allowed under state law and local ethics codes, it is also an invitation to graft. We would advise the town and village to set a limit of $15 and take the vague “reasonable inference” wiggle room out of their laws.