The North Hempstead Town board voted Tuesday to approve Zimmerman/Edelson Inc. to perform public relations services for the town, but one council member voiced strong opposition to the approval, citing the town’s efforts to reform its ethics practices.
Town Councilwoman Dina De Giorgio said while she knows the Great Neck-based public relations firm has a strong reputation, she had issue with its contributions to Town Supervisor Judi Bosworth’s political campaigns.
“In the interest of re-evaluating the town’s ethics practices, particularly in respect to vendor political contributions to town officials, I don’t understand how we can award this contract to Zimmerman/Edelson after they’ve contributed over $6,000 to your political campaign,” De Giorgio said.
The board voted four to one in favor of Zimmerman/Edelson’s approval, with De Giorgio serving as the lone board member to vote against it.
Town Councilman Angelo Ferrara was not at Tuesday’s board meeting.
Town officials were scheduled to hold an ethics working group Wednesday to discuss the town’s ethics practices.
De Giorgio said the vote for Zimmerman/Edelson’s approval should have waited until after the ethics working group met.
“It just seems very inappropriate to award the contract tonight,” she said. “I find it suspect. I don’t make this comment lightly but it’s a problem.”
Town Attorney Elizabeth Botwin said vendors had a right to donate to town officials’ political campaigns if they wanted to.
“Business entities have a First Amendment right to make political contributions as they see fit within the restrictions provided in various laws on contribution limits,” Botwin said. “What we require in our relationships with vendors, and what we will continue to require, is disclosure.”
She also said that while the ethics working group was supposed to meet Wednesday, there was nothing on the table about preventing vendors from donating to town officials.
“We are not looking at barring any vendor for contributing to a town official from getting work with the town,” Botwin said. “That is not something that has been proposed and it is something that many town vendors have done in the past and probably will do in the future.”
Town Director of Communications Carole Trottere said a request for proposal, or RFP, was placed on the town’s website for public relations services.
Trottere said only two firms responded to the RFP — Zimmerman/Edelson and New York City-based Johnson & Asberry.
She also said a team of three town officials, including herself, reviewed the two proposals and picked Zimmerman/Edelson over Johnson & Asberry based on its “scoring system.”
“We reviewed the two proposals and we found that they by far had more extensive experience in public relations and Long Island municipal public relations,” Trottere said. “Johnson & Asbury appeared to be a fairly new company that had done work for very specific areas of government but not really in a broader sense.”
She said they found some issue with Johnson & Asberry’s finances.
“The tax returns of the other firm seemed quite questionable, so we didn’t feel that they were stable,” Trottere said. “They actually lost money last year.”
The town’s agreement with Zimmerman/Edelson is for a 20-month contract beginning May 1, 2016 and ending December 31, 2017.
The town will pay the firm $5,937.50 per month for its services.
Bosworth said she did not believe there was a conflict of interest and that the town made a “good faith effort” to get other firms to also respond to the RFP.
“I would hate to think that we are going to pick and choose who is okay to do business with the Town of North Hempstead,” she said. “I believe everything was done to make sure that this went out according to our process, our procedure.”
