Gerard Terry wielded power in North Hempstead government, town sources say

Noah Manskar
North Hempstead Town Hall will be the subject of elevator repairs. (Photo by Jim Henderson via Wikimedia Commons)

The Town of North Hempstead usually cuts paychecks for its employees and contractors on Fridays, but sometimes Gerard Terry couldn’t wait.

Terry, who worked as the attorney for the town’s Board of Zoning Appeals and a special counsel in the town attorney’s office until last year, occasionally came to ask for his check on a Wednesday or Thursday, said Angelo J. Ferrara, a former deputy finance commissioner.

“He would come into my office and say, ‘I guess they don’t know who I am,’” said Ferrara, who was fired from his post in 2013. He is not related to Angelo P. Ferrara, the Republican town councilman.

That line from Terry reflects the influence he wielded, or attempted to wield, in North Hempstead’s government as an unelected figure who was never a full-time town employee, according to interviews with four current and former town officials.

In addition to his legal work with the town, Terry, 63, was the chairman of the town Democratic committee in North Hempstead, one of the party’s few strongholds in Republican-dominated Nassau County.

He resigned in early 2016 following revelations of his more than $1 million state and federal tax debt, and has since been charged with state and federal tax crimes.

Terry, an East Hills resident, appeared in federal court Tuesday and is scheduled to appear in state court on Friday. His attorneys have said they hope to resolve both cases.

Terry’s role in the town gave him considerable influence over who was given town jobs that are not subject to civil service requirements, positions often called patronage jobs, the four sources told Blank Slate Media.

Terry also used his clout, earned over more than four decades as a political leader, as a bludgeon within the town, the sources said — if officials went against his will, he threatened them by not supporting their political campaigns, trying to get them reassigned or pushing them out of their jobs.

Terry would often put on a friendly face in personal interactions, but was feared by many rank-and-file town staffers and Democratic Party members who understood him to carry significant influence, said one current town official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because speaking publicly could affect the person’s employment.

“He’s a slight guy, but he carried a very big stick,” said a former town official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity because discussing Terry’s behavior publicly would jeopardize professional and personal relationships.

Terry started working as the town’s zoning board attorney in 2004, soon after then-Town Supervisor Jon Kaiman took office.

In that role, he advised the board on land use and zoning law, a field in which he had “a great depth of knowledge and skill,” Kaiman said in an interview.

Terry also handled special cases under the auspices of the town attorney’s office, such as the effort to create a town park at Roslyn Country Club, Kaiman said.

North Hempstead was one of seven municipalities for which Terry had worked since 2000, often earning more than $200,000 annually as his income tax debt accrued, according to state and federal complaints.

Terry’s relationship with the town ceased in February 2016, when Judi Bosworth, the current town supervisor, decided not to renew his contracts after Newsday first reported his tax debts the month before.

Terry enjoyed a close relationship with Kaiman, but his access to the supervisor’s office became more limited sometime after Bosworth took over, Jay Jacobs, the Nassau County Democratic chairman, said.

The former town official who spoke anonymously and Leslie Gross, the former town clerk, also said that Terry had a close advisory relationship with Kaiman.

Kaiman, who now works in the administration of Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, vehemently denied the four sources’ characterization of Terry’s role during his administration.

His relationship with Terry was like any that a town supervisor would have with a town political leader, he said, and they maintained strict boundaries between politics and government work.

Kaiman vetted all town employees personally before they were hired and chose his top staffers independent of political considerations, not from a pool of Democratic leaders, he said.

While Terry would sometimes make personnel recommendations, he had no control over hiring or firing, Kaiman said.

“There’s this sense that because of all that happened with one individual, to create this imagery that he’s this mastermind with all these jobs; it’s just not true,” Kaiman said.

Kaiman treated Terry like any other town employee, he said. For instance, his office heard on one occasion of Terry trying to get his paycheck early, as Ferrara described. After Kaiman called Terry into his office and denied the request, he never heard of it happening again, he said.

Terry may have projected more power than he actually held in Town Hall when he worked there, but the appearance of that power still made a difference, Jacobs said.

“There’s a distinction between perception and reality, and he was very big on the perception game,” Jacobs said. “And you know, perception is power in that sense.”

Bosworth, who first took office in 2014, declined two requests for comment for this story.

The Town Board passed several laws over the last year aimed at increasing transparency following revelations of Terry’s tax debt and the arrest last year of Helen McCann, a town employee who was charged with embezzling money from a town agency.

The reforms include stronger anti-nepotism laws, conflict-of-interest disclosure requirements and broadening the pool of town officials required to file financial disclosure forms.

Doug Kellogg, a spokesman for Reclaim New York, a conservative good-government group, said stories of unelected political figures holding power are not unique to North Hempstead.

“People try to get away with this at every level of government,” Kellogg said. “That’s why transparency is so important.”

Terry has pleaded not guilty to eight state tax fraud charges and two federal charges of tax evasion and obstruction of Internal Revenue Service law. Federal authorities have said that he is also under investigation over kickback, bid-rigging and procurement fraud schemes in Nassau County.

Terry declined to comment for this story. His Garden City-based attorney, Stephen Scaring, did not return two emails seeking comment.

Terry has blamed his tax problems on “Type-A workaholic compulsion with self-denial and truly catastrophic health issues.”

Jacobs said Terry was, when he was politically active, a “brilliant strategist” who led Democrats to much political success in North Hempstead.

Scaring has written in a court filing that Terry’s arrests and the publicity around his case have significantly diminished his ability to make a living as an attorney.

Gerard Terry was first arrested on a state tax fraud charge in April 2016. (Photo from Nassau County District Attorney’s office)

POWER OVER JOBS

As the Democratic town clerk from 2007 to 2013, Gross was an independently elected official with her own staff.

But on many occasions, Gross said, control over the hiring and firing of her staffers seemed to lie not with her but with Terry, who put political allies in her office who were incompetent or difficult to work with.

“When Gerard wanted to make a space for somebody, he just got rid of somebody else,” Gross said.

In 2011, one of Gross’s aides in the clerk’s office who happened to be a Republican was fired around the New Year’s holiday, her position eliminated entirely without notice, Gross said.

At other times when her office was understaffed, town officials, apparently at Terry’s behest, would send Gross employees with ties to the Democratic Party without her having any say in their hiring, she said.

Gross said Terry decided not to support her re-election campaign in 2013 after becoming frustrated that she was not working well with his political allies and was also fraternizing with Republicans.

“He doesn’t like people who question him, so if you question Gerard you’re out,” Gross said.

Leslie Gross (right) appears at a 2013 debate with Wayne Wink, who defeated her in the race for North Hempstead town clerk that year.

The former town official who asked to speak anonymously said Terry was behind the former official’s replacement with a political ally of Terry’s who needed a job.

The person was offered a position in another department but decided to leave altogether, the person said.

“He didn’t get me my job, so I guess he felt he couldn’t control me,” the former official said.

Ferrara, the former deputy finance commissioner, also saw personnel shifts in the finance office and in other departments that Terry seemed to orchestrate, at least on some level, he said.

Ferrara was fired after 22 years with the town in December 2013, after Bosworth was elected but before she took office. He said he was told at the time that Terry was behind his firing.

Several other town officials were replaced or quit around the time Ferrara was fired, he said. The changes were markedly different from the transition into Kaiman’s administration from May Newburger’s, his Democratic predecessor, Ferrara said.

“I’ve never seen where a Democrat came in and they were letting Democrats go,” Ferrara said. “Usually it’s the other way around, when the other party comes in then you kind of expect it.”

Kaiman resigned in September 2013 to lead Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Superstorm Sandy recovery effort on Long Island and to serve as chairman of the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, Nassau County’s financial oversight board. John Riordan served as interim replacement until Bosworth took over the following January.

Kim Kaiman, Jon Kaiman’s wife, who until Wednesday was the executive director of the town’s Business and Tourism Development Corp., was given Ferrara’s deputy finance commissioner title after he was fired. 

Kim Kaiman is leaving the town for a new job, a town spokeswoman said. Her position was moved fully into the corporation, a separate municipal agency, earlier this year.

Ferrara has sued the town in state court alleging that his firing was discriminatory, tied to his Italian heritage and political patronage concerns.

That case is now before a state Appellate Division court, Ferrara said.

Kaiman rejected Gross’s and Ferrara’s claims of Terry’s control over jobs as sour grapes from two former officials who parted ways with the town on bad terms.

“It is so far from the truth, it’s disturbing,” he said.

Gross had a bitter public split with Terry and the town Democratic committee in 2013, when Wayne Wink, then a Nassau County legislator, was nominated for her job. She ran against him on the Republican line and lost.

Gross was having trouble managing her office and constantly asking for more help, Kaiman said, so his administration sent her additional employees. They were strong workers, but relations broke down because Gross found them hard to work with, and vice versa, Kaiman said.

Separate political tension between Gross and Terry emerged after she started seeking support from Republicans, Kaiman said.

No appointed town employee had an easier path to a job because of political connections, Kaiman said. He maintained that each was hired “based on merit” and did strong work on taxpayers’ behalf.

“We were very sensitive to the lines and made sure we always stayed on the right side of the line,” Kaiman said. “Government was government and politics was politics.”

CONTROL AND RETALIATION

Whether Terry’s power was perceived or real, he sought to keep others in line by threatening their jobs or political futures if he did not get his way, the current and former town officials said.

When Terry came into Ferrara’s office asking for early payment, he expected Ferrara to order his staff to cut the check, Ferrara said. His refusal to do so seemed to be part of the reason he was fired, he said.

“He pushed his weight around everywhere he went,” Ferrara said.

Terry tried to exert control over the Board of Zoning Appeals, excluding some staffers who dealt with matters relevant to the board from certain meetings in which it would discuss applications or decisions, according to the two current and former town officials who spoke anonymously.

Crossing Terry had consequences — he would sometimes manipulate town staffers’ access to zoning board files and other information if he felt they were questioning his methods, the current town official said.

The former town official said Terry projected a reputation of power and acted as though he had influence over that person’s job, even though he had nothing to do with the person’s hiring.

“I think it was more about whom Gerard could trust and control,” the current town official said.

Kaiman, though, said he never heard any reports of Terry excluding staffers from zoning board meetings or limiting others’ access to files. It is unlikely that a pattern of such behavior would go unreported, he said.

Kaiman insisted, again, that Terry had no control over anyone’s jobs or how they did them.

The town sources may have magnified the significance of Terry’s behavior in hindsight, especially given the recent revelations of his tax debt and his very public fall from prominence, Kaiman said.

As supervisor, Kaiman said, he heard complaints about many officials in his administration, but he handled them all the same way. If anyone stepped out of line, including Terry, Kaiman reminded them of the rules.

“He, like anybody else, felt my wrath when I thought that they were going beyond [what] was in their purview,” Kaiman said.

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