Smithtown delays appointments to anti-bias task force amid plans to revamp group 

Smithtown officials have indefinitely delayed new appointments to the town’s anti-bias task force, citing plans to revamp the group to promote greater community participation.

Town Supervisor Edward Wehrheim and Councilwoman Lynne Nowick said they were reviewing changes Islip made to its task force last year and could use that as a model.

Islip’s task force, rebranded as the Unity Council, focuses on strengthening connections with adults to overcome discrimination, its leaders said last year. That group includes religious leaders, nonprofit directors, and school, hospital and elected officials. The council has coordinated an address by a Holocaust survivor and a ceremony on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“The Unity Council seems more to be trying to bring people together, rather than react” to bias incidents, Nowick said. A revamped Smithtown group would share that focus, she and Wehrheim said. They did not give a timeline for the change, and the Smithtown task force chair, Maria LaMalfa, was not available to comment.

Created in 1994

Town officials have said the 12-member volunteer group, created in 1994, was largely inoperative by 2019, when LaMalfa was appointed. Under her leadership it has sponsored events such as a bias awareness art show and a Pride Month picnic scheduled for June.

The town board’s decision April 20 to table the new appointments leaves prospective appointees Jay Fried and Amy Fortunato in limbo. Fried, 48, is a Smithtown parent who works in higher education and has volunteered for task-force outreach events. Amy Fortunato, 63, is a retired pastor active in Democratic causes.

Another resolution, which called for the removal of task force members Barbara Bernard, William Holst, Carmen Quinones and Rabbi Abe Rabinovich, also was tabled. Nowick said the members “weren’t active — they’d moved on to other things.”

Holst said at the board meeting he had served on the task force since the mid-1990s and did not seek reappointment because of other commitments. Rabinovich said Tuesday he moved off Long Island last summer. Bernard and Quinones could not be reached Tuesday.

Protesting the nominees

Wehrheim said his office had fielded emails and phone calls opposing the appointments of Fried and Fortunato, but said the board’s decision was based on the planned revamp, not the complaints, which he said were a reaction to a town hire that stalled earlier this year.

Fortunato participated in a January Town Hall protest opposing the hiring of Long Island Loud Majority leader Kevin W. Smith to a part-time job as town videographer. Smith was offered the position but did not take it, according to Wehrheim.

The Suffolk County-based Long Island Loud Majority, whose work is intended to “energize conservatives from coast to coast,” according to its Twitter account, last year was labeled an “extreme antigovernment” group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a description its founders said was inaccurate.

Fried last year criticized one of the group’s founders in a letter to Newsday but said he did not participate in the January rally. In a text message Monday, Fried said, “I know there is a process, and I respect it. . . . It would be an honor to be appointed.”

Fortunato said she looked “forward to being an active member” of the rebranded task force.

Wehrheim said the town would not consider politics in its hiring and that Fried and Fortunato could be appointed in the future.

Graduation incident genesis

Smithtown’s task force was created after a 1993 incident where two Commack High School seniors painted swastikas and antisemitic slurs on the school’s track hours before graduation. According to the town’s website, the group was created “in consideration of the destructive effects of prejudice and discrimination and to address this ongoing problem.”

In 1994, the task force organized a community welcome for a Black family whose prospective home in Nesconset was set on fire days before they were set to sign purchase papers.

From 2018 to 2022, Suffolk police recorded four hate crimes and 10 hate incidents in the Fourth Precinct, which covers Smithtown. The department defines hate crimes as crimes committed because of a belief about the background of a person. Hate incidents are defined as bias-related acts against a protected class of people, whether lawful or not.

Countywide last year, police investigated 20 hate crimes and 52 hate incidents.

Police on Tuesday announced creation of a hate crimes hotline.