Town of North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman revealed plans on Tuesday to provide three years of financial records of the Clinton G. Martin Park District in New Hyde Park to county Comptroller George Maragos on Wednesday.
Officials from the town comptroller’s office delivered the records to Maragos spokesman Jostyn Hernandez on Wednesday afternoon.
Kaiman told reporters of his decision to share the records with Maragos after Tuesday night’s town board meeting in which he engaged in a shouting match with New Hyde Park civic association leader Jim McHugh over the town’s continued resistance to permit Maragos to audit the park district’s financial records.
“We’re dropping them off at his office because he has said on his Web site that we’re concealing the records,” Kaiman said.
The records Kaiman said he will provide to Maragos include the town’s lease agreement with the park district for a building at Clinton G. Martin Park, the park districts financial statements for 2009, 2010 and 2011 and town board meeting minutes. Kaiman said the records comprise those that Maragos asked to see in 2011.
“[Maragos] could have had the information a long time ago. It’s been available,” said Richard Finkel, a senior counsel with Bond, Schoeneck & King who is representing the town in the lawsuit.
The town recently announced that it would file a second appeal to the New York Court of Appeals in a lawsuit it brought against the county comptroller’s office to prevent the audit after losing the first two rounds of the court battle. The town maintains that the county comptroller’s office lacks the proper authority to conduct an audit of the town or the park district.
“It is now apparent that the Town of North Hempstead intends to conceal its financial records from the public scrutiny,” Maragos said in a statement last week after the town announced its intention to file another appeal in the case.
He said he met with Maragos and offered to provide the records before the county comptroller’s office served the town with a subpoena after being refused access to the records for an audit.
“Ultimately they declined,” Kaiman said of his offer to make the records available.
The argument between Kaiman and McHugh was sparked by the town board’s plans to make an agreement with Robbie Wagner’s Tournament Tennis Training to provide a summer tennis program at three parks in the town, including town parks Manorhaven and Michael J. Tully, and Clinton G. Martin.
McHugh said he understood the agreement called for a financial split on fees from the tennis lessons, with the tennis training firm receiving 70 percent of the fees and the town receiving 30 percent. He asked where the town’s portion of the proceeds would go.
“All the money that comes out of Clinton G. Martin goes into the special park district,” Kaiman said, confirming the fee splitting deal.
Kaiman said participation at Clinton G. Martin would be restricted to New Hyde Park residents who are members of the park district. McHugh questioned who would oversee the program and how they would verify that people participating were park district members.
“Certainly we could exclude Clinton G. Martin. I don’t know why you would want to do that,” Kaiman said.
Jennifer Fava, town director of recreation, said the program aimed to bring in “high-caliber” tennis teachers than those on the park district staff and reiterated that funds from the program would remain in the park district.
“From the beginning it will be in the Clinton G. Martin budget and it will stay there,” she said.
Responding to McHugh’s question about how the fees would be monitored, Kaiman told McHugh the park district’s finances are “documented.”
“We for the last 12 years have been refused that information,” McHugh said.
“That’s actually untrue. We’ve made those records public,” Kaiman replied.
McHugh repeated that the three New Hyde Park civic associations, which he said he was representing, had been denied access to the park district financial records after asking to see them. McHugh is past president of the New Hyde Park Park Civic Association.
The attempted Maragos audit was sparked by Lakeville Estates Civic Association President Marianna Wohlgemuth’s charges that the town was not current in its financial obligation on an annual $15,000 lease of a building at Clinton G. Martin. Kaiman has conceded the town had fallen behind on its payments, but maintains the town has now paid the park district what it owed.
“The other civic associations have declined because they don’t want to see them,” Kaiman said, his voice rising. “You don’t have the guts to come and see them.”
“You don’t have them and the court will show you don’t have them,” McHugh shouted.
“You are lying,” Kaiman replied.
“We want to know what the hell you’re trying to hide,” McHugh said. “How many more judges have to tell you to show them?”
McHugh said the town’s next court appeal would cost $250,000 and charged that Kaiman is “stalling.”
Kaiman told McHugh to “stop yelling out” and said, “No town in the history of Nassau County has been audited.”
He said a previous court case determined that the county can’t audit another municipal unit of the state. After the meeting, he said he was referring to a 1990 case when the Nassau County Supreme Court ruled the county lacked jurisdiction to audit the Inwood Fire District.
“It’s an interesting question as to whether the county can audit the town,” Kaiman said calmly at the end of his exchange with McHugh.
