DA looking at conflict-of-interest claims in Long Beach

Daily Point

An unsettling settlement

Just months before two of its Democratic members will seek reelection in an already hotly contested race, the Long Beach City Council finds itself embroiled in controversy, as Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly recently opened an investigation into allegations of official misconduct.

The investigation stems from a City Council meeting in May, when a last-minute item was added to the agenda via a process known as unanimous consent. The agenda item involved a settlement with former city employee Jay Gusler, who had been involved in legal disputes over money he said the city owed him. At the May meeting, the council voted in favor of a proposed settlement agreement that involved paying Gusler a total of $144,000, to be made in annual payments between now and 2032.

Gusler, a former city firefighter, was convicted in 2016 of misdemeanor identity theft and forgery charges related to a bid he made to the city on plumbing work. The latest settlement, however, is unrelated to those charges, instead involving funds Gusler said he was owed due to a workplace-related injury.

After the May council meeting, multiple complaints were filed with the Nassau DA’s office. One, obtained by The Point, alleges potential official misconduct, noting conflicts of interest among multiple council members due to their relationships with Gusler.

During the meeting, City Council President John Bendo voted to add the item to the agenda via unanimous consent, but when it came time to discuss the individual item and vote on it, he recused himself, saying Gusler is “a friend of mine that I socialize with.”

After Bendo recused himself, council member Roy Lester, an attorney, disclosed that his firm had done work for Gusler in the past, and added, “I am friends with Mr. Gusler — not as close as Mr. Bendo, but I just want everybody to know that.”

But Lester did not recuse himself, saying, “I don’t see any conflict.”

Then there’s council Vice President Elizabeth Treston. Gusler was among a group of people who built Treston’s Long Beach home. But Treston said nothing during the meeting to allude to that connection. Treston and Lester, along with council member Karen McInnis, voted in favor of the settlement. Council member Tina Posterli was absent from the May meeting.

“I leave it to your sound discretion to determine if this constitutes ‘official misconduct’ or some other crime, but these circumstances at the very least merit a thorough investigation,” one complaint to the DA said.

A spokeswoman for Donnelly, a Republican, confirmed to The Point that the DA had received multiple complaints and “recently initiated an investigation.”

“All our council members acted under the advice of corporation counsel and are confident that the DA will absolve the city and its council members of any wrongdoing or anything untoward,” city spokesman John McNally told The Point.

The complaint to the DA also notes that the City Council had won its case against Gusler in April but still chose to approve the settlement in May. But McNally said the city was trying to avoid an appeal that it could lose.

“While the city had won on the lower level, Mr. Gusler filed a notice of appeal, which our counsel was not optimistic that the city would prevail in, so we negotiated a considerably lesser amount than the original agreement,” McNally said.

During the May meeting, the council revealed that the full amount it would have had to pay if it lost its legal battle was $285,000.

The complaints and questions come as Long Beach’s already rough-and-tumble politics are being inflamed by the efforts of Equinor, which is building an offshore wind turbine project, to get permission to bring a transmission cable ashore underneath the beach and thread it through the city to Island Park.

In Long Beach, the politics are as stable as the sand.

— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Mastering the sentence 

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Final Point

Ex-Dem throws new GOP hat in CD3 ring

Republican Rep. George Santos’ bizarre incumbency has led yet another candidate to try to succeed him. This time, the hopeful joining the pack is a relatively new Democrat-turned-Republican and U.S. Air Force veteran who grew up in Hicksville, lives in Upper Brookville, and is first plunging into electoral politics at age 52.

Gregory Hach, a private-practice attorney, enters the race endorsed by Local 30 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, where his father, the late Michael J. Hach, was business manager. The twist is that Hach tells The Point he’s “definitely an outsider.” Unlike the indicted Santos, and like most candidates, Hach has a professional background that can be easily traced.

“I met with Joe Cairo a few months back when I was first giving it some thought,” Hach said, referring to the Nassau County GOP chairman, now also serving as Republican National Committee member. “He was very generous with his time and gave me great advice.”

For Cairo, who’s set to make his party’s defense of first-term Rep. Anthony D’Esposito in CD4 a priority, CD3 has been a headache since the fabulist Santos’ fluke election last year. After Cairo said Santos, from Queens, bamboozled his backing with a fake resume, he demanded the rookie step down and vowed not to let Santos be the party’s nominee for reelection.

The choice of a 2024 nominee in the district makes for a wild card on two fronts. If Santos is forced to leave early enough for a special election to be called, the political leadership gets to choose a candidate without a primary.

Meanwhile, the contours of what is now a Nassau-Queens CD3 are expected to change depending on the outcome of a pending Democratic redistricting challenge. That process is due to be taken up by the Court of Appeals in November. Nobody knows what the final district lines will look like.

Whatever the shape of the race, Hach said Santos’ performance was his impetus to run. “I was very upset when all his lies started to come out,” he said. “As a veteran it offended me. This guy has a say whether or not to send troops into harm’s way … We need integrity and we need trust back in government. Santos wrecked that.”

“I was a Democrat until three or four years ago,” Hach said, adding that he switched “because of the radical-left shift by the Democratic Party, which focuses on issues that have nothing do with the values of the American people such as gender and sexual orientation issues, rather than crime, the economy, national security and immigration.”

The website for his law firm, Hach & Rose, touts its success in achieving multimillion-dollar payouts for clients who sued over on-the-job and motor vehicle accidents.

“I thought about running before,” he said, “but never seriously. I’m a pretty introverted guy. I thought that’s something I’d better get over, to change the direction of our government.”

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com