Former Bellone aide agrees to $2,000 fine to settle ethics violations over job application

The former chief of staff of the Steve Bellone administration who chaired Suffolk County’s opioid settlement fund committee has agreed to pay a $2,000 fine following a Suffolk County Board of Ethics investigation that found she violated two ethics laws in applying for a top job at a not-for-profit group that received funding.

In an April 28 settlement agreement obtained by Newsday, Ryan Attard, who served under former County Executive Steve Bellone from May 2020 until Dec. 31, 2023, acknowledged that while she was the county executive’s representative on the Opioid Funding Selection Committee, she had submitted her resume to the Family & Children's Association, where she was later named chief operating officer and vice president. Her application was made in the waning days of the administration while the secretive opioid committee was finalizing a second round of grant funding. 

FCA, a Garden City not-for-profit that offers assistance to those facing social, emotional, and economic challenges, was awarded more than $1.8 million in grants from the committee in the first round of awards, Newsday reported, with two separate grants of $1.3 million and $576,000. FCA received a $216,995 "initial advance," but the organization did not receive a second-round funding award. 

Attard’s attorney, Mark Lesko, called the violations "technical." 

"In hindsight, Ms. Attard acknowledged a technical violation of the ethics code," he said. "She submitted her application to FCA after she sent her letter of resignation and a mere three weeks before she ended her employment with Suffolk County."

FCA spokeswoman Kim Como, saying the group was unaware Attard had reached a settlement, noted that FCA applied for two grants from the opioid funding committee, "one of which was received in recognition of the vital services we provide ... The other we did not receive." She noted Attard is no longer employed at FCA, and that the grant "was awarded before Miss Attard’s tenure at FCA and prior to our search" for a new chief operating officer. 

The practices of Suffolk's $105 million opioid settlement committee, which was formed in 2021 to distribute billions of dollars of funds resulting from state settlements with opioid makers and distributors, have come under scrutiny by Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine, who last year ordered a review and reform of the funding practices. Suffolk Comptroller John Kennedy in 2023 referred concerns about the post-county employment of Attard and former County Executive Steve Bellone to the county Ethics Board. 

Jessica Hogan, executive director of the board, declined to comment on any pending case before the board. 

Kennedy in an audit released this week found the committee during the Bellone administration held its meetings in private with no public participation or recorded minutes, used a faulty system to grade potential awardees, and documentation from awardees was lacking — all of which "question the integrity and validity of the whole process," Kennedy said. His review found that "no current county ethics rules were violated" by Bellone's and Attard's employment.

But the Ethics Board found, and Attard acknowledged, that as chair of the committee "she could have been called to discuss or testify" about funding decisions in the waning days of the administration after she had applied for a job with the FCA. 

Attard, in testimony in the case, said Bellone as county executive "made all substantive decisions" concerning the opioid settlement fund. 

Bellone has since joined Northwell Health, which was awarded $3.5 million from the opioid settlement funds. He did not respond to a request for comment Thursday, but in the past told Newsday his new position "did not require submission of a recusal form because I was not personally or directly dealing with Northwell Health or personally involved in any of their business dealings as a county official at the time." An attorney for Bellone did not respond to requests for comment. 

As Newsday has reported, Attard was named chief operating officer for the Family & Children’s Association less than a month after departing the county on Dec. 31, 2023. Attard had helped develop the process for administering funds from the county opioid committee, her announcement with FCA disclosed. Attard has since left the organization but before she did, the group said she would be "recusing herself from any subsequent funding that we apply for from Suffolk County."

In the April settlement papers, Attard acknowledged that by "submitting her resume to FCA while FCA’s proposal [for] the second-round funding was still pending before her, she violated a specific section of the ethics code. The code states that no public servant "shall solicit, negotiate for or accept employment with any firm which is involved in business dealings with the county while" the employee "is directly concerned with or personally participating in those business dealings" on the county’s behalf.

By failing to recuse herself from the second-round funding discussions after submitting her resume to the Family & Children’s Association, the settlement papers say she violated a second part of the code that calls for "prompt" recusal from such matters.

Attard's $2,000 fine, according to the Ethics Board, "considered [Attard’s] assertions that she believed her involvement in the second-round funding to be merely administrative, that the County Executive made all substantive decisions, and that she did not, as a result, intend or even realize that she was in violation of the provisions of the Code of Ethics."

Paul Sabatino II, former counsel to the Suffolk County Legislature, said the settlement demonstrates that the "whole opioid settlement distribution process was contaminated from day one," and said the county must now work to "convert this from a slush fund for politicians to one that complies with the law." 

Legis. Anthony Piccirillo (R-Holtsville) said he's been working on reforms for the county ethics law and for the opioid distribution process. "The process is broken from the previous administration and we need to fix it," he said.