Hempstead Town Board to vote on $857,000 in added salary expenses 

The Hempstead Town Board is scheduled to vote Tuesday on adding $857,660 in salary expenses to the 2025 budget but has provided little information about the spending, in a break, for the second month in a row, from established practice regarding personnel actions. 

For years, the board has included detailed information about raises, hires and promotions, with the board resolutions posted on its website ahead of meetings. That information included employee names, salaries, titles and a description of the action.

In the past, such resolutions stated the action was approved by a department head and ratified by the town board — and routinely, the board voted to approve. 

The personnel resolution slated for a vote Tuesday instead calls for "budget transfers" to the individual salary budgets of 12 town departments and provides no additional information beyond the dollar amounts to each department. 

“This is a budget transfer clearly delineated in here,” town spokesman Brian Devine said Monday. “Anything you’re looking for can be FOILed,” he said, referring the state Freedom of Information Law, which provides a process for the public to obtain documents that a government entity won’t otherwise disclose. 

At its Dec. 10 meeting, the town board approved a resolution for “budget transfers” to add $599,799 that was categorized as a personnel action but which included few details other than the amounts, departments and their budget lines, which indicated they were for salaries. The public information about the transfers did not identify where the money was coming from, only where it was going to. 

At that meeting, a member of the public asked for additional information about the budget transfers. Town Attorney John Maccarone said they were being done after consulting with the town’s auditors to reflect ongoing changes in the budget and described them as a housekeeping function.

“Employees come, employees go, employees get raises,” Maccarone said, according to a transcript. “Sometimes we hire people.”

Maccarone did not explain why a resolution was needed for salaries when the board, at that same meeting, approved a separate resolution for dozens of budget transfers for various purposes, including salaries.

State law governing how towns compensate employees and officers says town boards "shall fix, from time to time, the salaries of all officers and employees."

Devine declined to comment on whether the town board is still approving raises, hires and title changes, as it has in the past. 

New York State Comptroller's Office spokesman Mark Johnson said in an email Monday,  "We cannot comment on how the sections of law may or may not apply to the situation in Hempstead."

Watchdog organizations said Monday that transparency is needed when it comes to spending the public's money. 

"The town should be transparent in how they are spending our money and what it's going for," said Barbara Epstein, who is part of the management team of the League of Women Voters of East Nassau. "Everything should be aboveboard." 

Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, said if the town is obscuring information that was previously made public, "the public deserves a clear argument as to why, and in the absence of that, they should revert to the old system.” 

He added, “The public has the right to know how government spends the public’s money; it’s not the government’s money, it’s the public’s money."

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified the executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group and misattributed a quote from him.