For the East Hampton Village Board, July began with a contentious meeting that saw complaints that code amendments passed last winter requiring service workers to register with the village and curtailing noise by tightening the hours during which such work can be done had been insufficiently publicized, putting disproportionately affected Latino workers in the position of going before a judge and paying a fine for a violation of which they may not have been aware.
The month ended with a conciliatory meeting, on July 30, in which immigrant advocates and the village board were broadly in agreement that the process could be improved, though a streamlined means of addressing such code violations is, at best, more than a year away.
Minerva Perez, the executive director of Organizacion Latino Americana of Eastern Long Island, or OLA, told the board on July 30 that “we would love to see, going forward, a different implementation of notification that does include the various news sources that we have,” beyond the Instagram posts with which the village sought to publicize the new laws.
Advocates had complained that forcing a worker to answer a summons by appearing in Justice Court was burdensome and even terrifying to those living in fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents amid the Trump administration’s moves to round up and deport undocumented immigrants. “We’d love to see that changed,” Ms. Perez told the board, noting that East Hampton Town allows such violations to be paid online.
Last, she asked, “who is accountable for these things?” She suggested that the responsibility should lie with the contractor or property owner, rather than the employee who is acting at their direction.
“I don’t like the idea that people have to go to in to pay a fine where they could potentially be picked up and sent to God knows where,” Lena Tabori said, referring to ICE agents and a detention camp or foreign prison they might use.
At a February press conference, Mayor Jerry Larsen emphasized that “local police are not immigration police” and that police “are not interested in your immigration status.” The mayor “showed a great sensitivity to the community and how scared people are in our community, particularly our Latino neighbors, our immigrant neighbors at this time when they are frankly being terrorized around the country by law enforcement,” Anna Skrenta, chairwoman of the East Hampton Town Democratic Party, told the mayor. “I hope that we can be the same in this situation, particularly with how things have escalated” with federal funding for ICE activities.
“They’re so afraid to go into court, especially with what’s happening now with ICE,” echoed Erika Padilla, OLA’s legal advocate. “I never understood why they had to go to court and weren’t given the option to pay the ticket just by going to the window or going online.”
“I get the value of the ordinance,” said Biddle Duke of Springs, a community organizer, “but if we’re trying to accomplish people abiding by the rule, fining the person who’s holding the equipment doesn’t make sense.”
Brian Lester, an attorney who serves as the village’s prosecutor, said that the village code is enforced under New York State’s Criminal Procedure Law, which requires that people charged with code violations appear in court.
“There has been mention that certain town tickets don’t go in front of the court,” he said of the discussions at that meeting and the board’s previous one. “That’s because there’s a New York State law that allows a bureau of administrative adjudication.” The town board established such a bureau in 2021. For the village to do the same, he said, “a state law has to be passed on that. From there, not every code could be covered by that bureau, but we need that state law first before anything can be done. . . . We have had discussions about just accepting fines at the window, and the [Criminal Procedure Law] does not allow it at all.”
As to targeting the employer rather than the employee, “it’s called a corporate substitution under the Criminal Procedure Law,” Mr. Lester said. “I have not seen a judge yet deny a corporate substitution . . .”
“We have,” Ms. Perez interjected.
“. . . and I encourage them whenever we can have them,” Mr. Lester continued.
The village, the mayor said, does not have a court system and therefore relies on the town to process things like fines and jury trials.
To handle those tasks, it would have to create its own bureau of administrative adjudication, Mr. Lester repeated. “We can’t piggyback on that town bureau. We have to have our own bureau, and a law permitting that bureau.”
Mr. Larsen said that the village did apply to the state to that end, but “as of my last phone call with that, we were told it possibly could happen in January 2027.”
“Even with that approval,” Mr. Lester said, “we would need a separate approval to create the bureau of administrative adjudication. That’s a separate process.”
“This is a very time-consuming thing for the Police Department as well, the way we’re doing it now,” the mayor said. “I would love to be able to change that, but as you’ve heard, it’s a process. We’re definitely moving forward with that, but it’s not going to be an immediate fix.”
Also at the meeting, the board held public hearings on proposed code amendments to reduce the term of members of the zoning board of appeals and the planning board from five to three years. The hearings drew no comment and were closed, and later in the meeting the board voted to enact the amendments.
