Nassau County Comptroller candidate Howard Weitzman (D-North Hills) accused Comptroller George Maragos (R-Great Neck) last week of playing favorites with restaurant and catering venue Carltun on the Park – a charge denied by Maragos and County Attorney John Ciampoli, who say the business’s alleged underpayment of rent to the county has been resolved in a settlement.
Weitzman said at a press conference that the Carltun, which operates on county land in Eisenhower Park under a revenue-sharing agreement, was found to have underreported income in an audit released in the last months of 2009, shortly after Weitzman was defeated by Maragos at the ballot box.
Weitzman called on Maragos to return donations raised at a political fundraiser hosted for free by the Carltun in September, and in a conference call Tuesday said the county’s February settlement agreement included giveaways to the restaurant.
“Not only is Mr. Maragos financially challenged, he is also ethically challenged as well,” Weitzman said.
But according to Maragos and Ciampoli, nothing improper took place.
“This is another desperate attempt by my opponent to try and save his campaign by tossing false and malicious allegations. The fact is, unlike Weitzman, we follow up on audits and where he failed we succeeded in reaching a settlement that provided $381,000 for the taxpayer,” Maragos wrote in an e-mail. “The only conflict of interest in this race is the one where Cablevision donated $200k to the top of the Democratic ticket and insists on holding one-sided debates.”
There are some facts about which both candidates agree.
Carltun on the Park has an exclusive license to run its facilities in Eisenhower Park and pays a portion of its revenues in rent to the county. Weitzman’s December 2009 audit concluded that the Carltun owed the county over $500,000 due to underreported revenues – a contention rejected by the Carltun’s management, who said in comments responding to the audit that the uncounted revenues were service charges that went directly to employees
The Carltun did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Following the release of the audit, the Carltun’s owner Anthony Capetola filed a lawsuit against Weitzman, then-County Executive Tom Suozzi and other county officials alleging that the audit was false and defamatory, and further claiming that the county owed the Carltun compensation for failure to deliver electrical services.
The settlement, signed by Ciampoli in February of this year, would see the Carltun pay the county $381,456 with the county granting the Carltun a $550,000 break on its rent payments to purchase a generator and absolve the county from future electrical service liability.
Wrapped up in the settlement are the roots of several allegations made by Weitzman: that the generator allowance was a giveaway to the Carltun, which hosted a fundraiser for Maragos and whose owner Capetola has donated in excess of $100,000 to the Nassau County Republican Committee since 2004; that Maragos acted improperly in accepting an in-kind contribution from the Carltun when he had oversight authority over the hotel’s agreement with the county; and that the settlement was never approved by the county Legislature.
“In effect, the county ended up giving him $160,000 to settle their claim that he owed them $500,000, which is preposterous,” Weitzman said Tuesday.
Ciampoli said in an interview that the settlement was designed to let the county off the hook for future electrical service and would serve to clear up ambiguities in the county’s rental agreement with the hotel, which he described as a flawed leftover from the Suozzi administration.
“The agreements that the prior administration had left us with weren’t as clear as they might have been,” Ciampoli said. “We used this opportunity to straighten out any disputes.”
Adding to the dispute, legislative Minority Leader Kevan Abrahams (D-Hempstead) said the settlement had never been seen or approved by the Legislature.
“The Legislature never ever saw or heard of the settlement,” Abrahams said. “This is something we believe should have come before the Legislature for approval.”
When asked whether the agreement should have been approved, Ciampoli said it still could be sent to the Legislature for a vote and that the settlement, though signed, was not finalized.
“The way this works is it’s signed by the attorneys and then forward to where it needs to be forwarded to,” Ciampoli said. “It’s not settled yet, there’s work still to be done on this thing.”
The county’s administrative code governing settlements appears to mandate that the Legislature approve legal settlements. A section of the county administrative code’s chapter on the role of the county attorney says “[The County Attorney] shall not permit, offer or confess judgment against the County, or accept any offer of judgment in favor of the County, unless previously duly authorized so to do by resolution of the [County Legislature.]”
