Memorandum From Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy
Content
From: Smith, Mark L. (Executive) [[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2010 1:56 PM To: Aug, Dan; Smith, Mark L. (Executive) Subject: Memorandum from Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy COUNTY OF SUFFOLK
OFFICE OF THE COUNTY EXECUTIVE
Steve Levy COUNTY EXECUTIVE
MEMORANDUM TO: Interested Parties
FROM:
Steve Levy, Suffolk County Executive
DATE:
August 3, 2010
RE:
Latest Newsday reporting on financial disclosure July 31 and August 3 articles
In its continuing assault on my wife s businesses and reputation, Newsday has twic e in the last four days published misleading and inaccurate articles by its heav ily advertised gotcha reporter about the financial disclosures of myself and Colle en.
As with the reporter s other articles in this series, the stories are laden with s trong insinuation backed by little legal standing, and conveniently ignore relev ant facts and points of law that would conflict with the reporter s pre-determined
belief that there is some
gotcha here.
Despite countless hours with reporters and editors, it is unfortunate that I mus t continue to issue these types of memos to friends, colleagues, supporters and the rest of the media to correct Newsday s inaccuracies.
It frankly boggles the mind that words and phrases with very specific and distin ct meanings are casually interchanged by this reporter, that context is often co mpletely ignored and that this reporter s layman s interpretation of ethics provisio ns is allowed to trump actual state law and the opinions of those who helped sha pe and interpret that state law.
Babylon lawyer to head group probing ethics commission (July 31) Source of Income versus Clients
This article stated: Newsday reported earlier this month that court reporting firms owned by Levy s wif e, Colleen West, do business with at least seven county vendors that have receiv ed millions in payments from the county. Levy said he is not required to disclos e his wife s clients even though the county form requires disclosing all sources o f income, including those of a spouse. (emphasis added)
The gross misinterpretation here of what is required to be listed on county form s cannot be attributed to ignorance, since I sat with the reporter and an editor in early July and have had countless phone calls on the subject since.
The issue of ted on all of Sten-Tel, the field. Those
clients versus sources of income is clear. The source of income is lis Colleen s forms. That source is Enright Court Reporting and Enright two firms she founded and has built into respected entities in the businesses are from where she derives income.
Individual clients of those businesses are not required to be listed on the form . There is no place on the county form that requests the individual client base of a business. In fact, the state form specifically instructs the filer not to list individual clients. And legislators who have filled out the county s financia l disclosure forms who have outside businesses, or whose spouses have outside bu sinesses, have not listed individual clients and know this to be the case.
Newsday continues to irresponsibly make the suggestion that by not listing indiv idual clients of her two businesses, Colleen did not properly disclose the sourc
e of her income. This is patently untrue.
Allowed
versus Mandated
The article also stated: Lindsay (D-Holbrook) said he was flabbergasted that the commission had allowed Levy to file a financial disclosure form different than the one required of roughly 6 50 county employees. (emphasis added)
Again, despite much documentation that we have presented to Newsday, the reporte r carelessly (or deliberately?) uses the word allowed to suggest the Ethics Commis sion made a special determination in this case.
In truth, the Commission merely affirmed the fact that by New York State Law the y, as a local jurisdiction, are mandated to accept the New York State Financial Disclosure form in all instances where an employee is required under the Public Officers law to file a state disclosure form.
The reporter conveniently fails to mention that I was required to file the state form because I sit on the Pine Barrens Commission, a state agency. Instead, she continues to insinuate that I was shopping around for a form of my choice.
This is not just my interpretation of state law, this has been verified by some of the state s leading ethics experts, whose respected opinions have been provided to Newsday but minimized and ultimately ignored by its reporter whenever it con flicts with her layman s interpretation.
The Suffolk Ethics Commission did not owed the mandates of State law.
allow
a different disclosure form -- it foll
Levy files new forms. (August 3) Personal Receivables versus Business Receivables This latest article continues with its erroneous presumptions about information that is required to be disclosed on the county forms, and thus incorrectly state s in its subhead and lede that the forms did not contain some basic financial info rmation regarding his wife s business...
Newsday s reporter has now singled out Colleen from all of the county filers (whos e disclosures Newsday has not bothered to obtain) for not listing all accounts r
eceivable of her businesses.
The information contained on the Net Worth page of the county disclosure form (p age 3) is a statement of personal assets and liabilities. The receivables or pay ables of a person s businesses are not intended to be listed on personal net worth documents.
Any businessperson or accountant would confirm that the receivables of a firm do not in any way reflect the owner s net worth as those receivables are very likely to be used to pay salaries, utilities, taxes and many other expenses.
And, again, others who have filled out these financial disclosure forms who hav e outside businesses, or whose spouses have outside businesses, know this to be the case and do not list business receivables as personal data. Nor do they list individual clients. And had Newsday requested the forms of any other elected of ficial or county employee for comparison purposes they would have learned this t o be the case.
Heavily Redacted The opening paragraph of the article describes the forms as heavily redacted. Fur ther on it notes, Commission officials have said they allow officials to redact p rivate information. Both statements give the implication that I ordered this info rmation to be redacted.
What the article did not state is that the redaction of financial dollar amounts is not done at the discretion of the filer, but is rather mandated by County La w to be redacted by the Ethics Commission.
Section 61-11 of the County Code, as amended in 1991, states: B.Notwithstanding any provision of Article 6 of the New York Public Officers Law , the information obtained pursuant to this chapter which shall be available for public inspection is: (1)The information set forth in an annual statement of financial disclosure, exc ept that the categories of value shall remain confidential as shall any other it em of information authorized by the Board to be deleted from an individual's di sclosure form.
Thus, dollar amounts on my forms, Colleen s forms or any other county employee s for ms will always be redacted.
Other than dollar amounts which are mandated to be redacted by County law, I per
sonally asked that the address of my Florida condominium be redacted, since this home is empty much of the year I felt it could pose a risk of burglary. And I a sked to redact the names of banks where I have accounts, in this day and age of identity theft.
Biased Sources Shockingly, the article again solicits the opinion of attorney Anton Boravina wh o is representing a former chief deputy that I fired in 2007 in a proceeding bef ore the Ethics Commission that was brought by my staff against him. (Ironically, this two-years-and-counting proceeding is before that same Commission that legi slators and Newsday assert I have so much influence over.) He is the textbook exam ple of a hostile witness.
It is laughable that in a story allegedly about ethics that of all the thousands o f attorneys on Long Island, Newsday solicits comment from one who is defending a person in an active proceeding before the Commission. This is a proceeding to d etermine if that fired deputy violated the county code of ethics. Can this perso n really be thought of providing an unbiased opinion?
The reporter uses Boravina to bolster her inaccurate interpretation that filers must list individual clients, and then folds in a ridiculous non-sequitur quote: That statute was intended to cover not only the official, but the spouse of the official, he said.
We already know a spouse must file, and Colleen has. That quote does not pertain to whether her filing contained receivables that were personal or corporate. So where is the malarkey he referenced? The quote was only included as a means to in sinuate there was something wrong.
Ethics Opinion Finally, the article references contracts that Colleen s businesses hold with area hospitals. These contracts were listed because the form has a specific entry fo r contracts. The reporter references a contract with Good Samaritan and yet sug gests that a 2005 Ethics Commission opinion Colleen obtained as pertaining only to Stony Brook. This is an outrageous half-truth as the reporter and Newsday wer e provided with the full opinion.
And while she cites the county s ethics code which bars an official or spouse from benefiting directly or indirectly from any transaction that presents a conflict of interest, she amazingly fails to not include the very language of the 2005 E thics Commission which states: Ms. West, as President of Enright, and County Executive Levy, as her husband, wou
ld not have a direct or indirect interest in a contract or business or professio nal dealings with the County of Suffolk which is prohibited by A30-1 (A) (1).
The Commission also ruled:
the Ethics Commission is of the opinion that a prohibited conflict of interest wou ld not be created if Enright Sten-tel Transcription Services, Inc. enters into c ontract for medical transcription services contracts with University Hospital or other hospitals located in Suffolk County. (emphasis added)
This is a deliberate omission from the reporter and the paper who were provided with this opinion, and yet continue to make it appear as if Colleen s work for oth er hospitals were not covered by the Stony Brook opinion.
The article also mentions how much money Good Samaritan Hospital received under county contracts since 2006, and that would give readers the impression that 200 6 is when the hospital began its contractual relationship with Suffolk County. I n fact that hospital has been contracting with the County to run one of our heal th centers long before I became County Executive. The reporter then references 2 006 as the year Colleen began contractual work for that hospital work that was d eemed to be no conflict of interest.
Mark L. Smith, Deputy Director of Communications Office of Suffolk County Executive PH: 631-853-8342/ CELL: 631-445-7169 E-Mail: [email protected]
OFFICE OF THE COUNTY EXECUTIVE
Steve Levy COUNTY EXECUTIVE
MEMORANDUM TO: Interested Parties
FROM:
Steve Levy, Suffolk County Executive
DATE:
August 3, 2010
RE:
Latest Newsday reporting on financial disclosure July 31 and August 3 articles
In its continuing assault on my wife s businesses and reputation, Newsday has twic e in the last four days published misleading and inaccurate articles by its heav ily advertised gotcha reporter about the financial disclosures of myself and Colle en.
As with the reporter s other articles in this series, the stories are laden with s trong insinuation backed by little legal standing, and conveniently ignore relev ant facts and points of law that would conflict with the reporter s pre-determined
belief that there is some
gotcha here.
Despite countless hours with reporters and editors, it is unfortunate that I mus t continue to issue these types of memos to friends, colleagues, supporters and the rest of the media to correct Newsday s inaccuracies.
It frankly boggles the mind that words and phrases with very specific and distin ct meanings are casually interchanged by this reporter, that context is often co mpletely ignored and that this reporter s layman s interpretation of ethics provisio ns is allowed to trump actual state law and the opinions of those who helped sha pe and interpret that state law.
Babylon lawyer to head group probing ethics commission (July 31) Source of Income versus Clients
This article stated: Newsday reported earlier this month that court reporting firms owned by Levy s wif e, Colleen West, do business with at least seven county vendors that have receiv ed millions in payments from the county. Levy said he is not required to disclos e his wife s clients even though the county form requires disclosing all sources o f income, including those of a spouse. (emphasis added)
The gross misinterpretation here of what is required to be listed on county form s cannot be attributed to ignorance, since I sat with the reporter and an editor in early July and have had countless phone calls on the subject since.
The issue of ted on all of Sten-Tel, the field. Those
clients versus sources of income is clear. The source of income is lis Colleen s forms. That source is Enright Court Reporting and Enright two firms she founded and has built into respected entities in the businesses are from where she derives income.
Individual clients of those businesses are not required to be listed on the form . There is no place on the county form that requests the individual client base of a business. In fact, the state form specifically instructs the filer not to list individual clients. And legislators who have filled out the county s financia l disclosure forms who have outside businesses, or whose spouses have outside bu sinesses, have not listed individual clients and know this to be the case.
Newsday continues to irresponsibly make the suggestion that by not listing indiv idual clients of her two businesses, Colleen did not properly disclose the sourc
e of her income. This is patently untrue.
Allowed
versus Mandated
The article also stated: Lindsay (D-Holbrook) said he was flabbergasted that the commission had allowed Levy to file a financial disclosure form different than the one required of roughly 6 50 county employees. (emphasis added)
Again, despite much documentation that we have presented to Newsday, the reporte r carelessly (or deliberately?) uses the word allowed to suggest the Ethics Commis sion made a special determination in this case.
In truth, the Commission merely affirmed the fact that by New York State Law the y, as a local jurisdiction, are mandated to accept the New York State Financial Disclosure form in all instances where an employee is required under the Public Officers law to file a state disclosure form.
The reporter conveniently fails to mention that I was required to file the state form because I sit on the Pine Barrens Commission, a state agency. Instead, she continues to insinuate that I was shopping around for a form of my choice.
This is not just my interpretation of state law, this has been verified by some of the state s leading ethics experts, whose respected opinions have been provided to Newsday but minimized and ultimately ignored by its reporter whenever it con flicts with her layman s interpretation.
The Suffolk Ethics Commission did not owed the mandates of State law.
allow
a different disclosure form -- it foll
Levy files new forms. (August 3) Personal Receivables versus Business Receivables This latest article continues with its erroneous presumptions about information that is required to be disclosed on the county forms, and thus incorrectly state s in its subhead and lede that the forms did not contain some basic financial info rmation regarding his wife s business...
Newsday s reporter has now singled out Colleen from all of the county filers (whos e disclosures Newsday has not bothered to obtain) for not listing all accounts r
eceivable of her businesses.
The information contained on the Net Worth page of the county disclosure form (p age 3) is a statement of personal assets and liabilities. The receivables or pay ables of a person s businesses are not intended to be listed on personal net worth documents.
Any businessperson or accountant would confirm that the receivables of a firm do not in any way reflect the owner s net worth as those receivables are very likely to be used to pay salaries, utilities, taxes and many other expenses.
And, again, others who have filled out these financial disclosure forms who hav e outside businesses, or whose spouses have outside businesses, know this to be the case and do not list business receivables as personal data. Nor do they list individual clients. And had Newsday requested the forms of any other elected of ficial or county employee for comparison purposes they would have learned this t o be the case.
Heavily Redacted The opening paragraph of the article describes the forms as heavily redacted. Fur ther on it notes, Commission officials have said they allow officials to redact p rivate information. Both statements give the implication that I ordered this info rmation to be redacted.
What the article did not state is that the redaction of financial dollar amounts is not done at the discretion of the filer, but is rather mandated by County La w to be redacted by the Ethics Commission.
Section 61-11 of the County Code, as amended in 1991, states: B.Notwithstanding any provision of Article 6 of the New York Public Officers Law , the information obtained pursuant to this chapter which shall be available for public inspection is: (1)The information set forth in an annual statement of financial disclosure, exc ept that the categories of value shall remain confidential as shall any other it em of information authorized by the Board to be deleted from an individual's di sclosure form.
Thus, dollar amounts on my forms, Colleen s forms or any other county employee s for ms will always be redacted.
Other than dollar amounts which are mandated to be redacted by County law, I per
sonally asked that the address of my Florida condominium be redacted, since this home is empty much of the year I felt it could pose a risk of burglary. And I a sked to redact the names of banks where I have accounts, in this day and age of identity theft.
Biased Sources Shockingly, the article again solicits the opinion of attorney Anton Boravina wh o is representing a former chief deputy that I fired in 2007 in a proceeding bef ore the Ethics Commission that was brought by my staff against him. (Ironically, this two-years-and-counting proceeding is before that same Commission that legi slators and Newsday assert I have so much influence over.) He is the textbook exam ple of a hostile witness.
It is laughable that in a story allegedly about ethics that of all the thousands o f attorneys on Long Island, Newsday solicits comment from one who is defending a person in an active proceeding before the Commission. This is a proceeding to d etermine if that fired deputy violated the county code of ethics. Can this perso n really be thought of providing an unbiased opinion?
The reporter uses Boravina to bolster her inaccurate interpretation that filers must list individual clients, and then folds in a ridiculous non-sequitur quote: That statute was intended to cover not only the official, but the spouse of the official, he said.
We already know a spouse must file, and Colleen has. That quote does not pertain to whether her filing contained receivables that were personal or corporate. So where is the malarkey he referenced? The quote was only included as a means to in sinuate there was something wrong.
Ethics Opinion Finally, the article references contracts that Colleen s businesses hold with area hospitals. These contracts were listed because the form has a specific entry fo r contracts. The reporter references a contract with Good Samaritan and yet sug gests that a 2005 Ethics Commission opinion Colleen obtained as pertaining only to Stony Brook. This is an outrageous half-truth as the reporter and Newsday wer e provided with the full opinion.
And while she cites the county s ethics code which bars an official or spouse from benefiting directly or indirectly from any transaction that presents a conflict of interest, she amazingly fails to not include the very language of the 2005 E thics Commission which states: Ms. West, as President of Enright, and County Executive Levy, as her husband, wou
ld not have a direct or indirect interest in a contract or business or professio nal dealings with the County of Suffolk which is prohibited by A30-1 (A) (1).
The Commission also ruled:
the Ethics Commission is of the opinion that a prohibited conflict of interest wou ld not be created if Enright Sten-tel Transcription Services, Inc. enters into c ontract for medical transcription services contracts with University Hospital or other hospitals located in Suffolk County. (emphasis added)
This is a deliberate omission from the reporter and the paper who were provided with this opinion, and yet continue to make it appear as if Colleen s work for oth er hospitals were not covered by the Stony Brook opinion.
The article also mentions how much money Good Samaritan Hospital received under county contracts since 2006, and that would give readers the impression that 200 6 is when the hospital began its contractual relationship with Suffolk County. I n fact that hospital has been contracting with the County to run one of our heal th centers long before I became County Executive. The reporter then references 2 006 as the year Colleen began contractual work for that hospital work that was d eemed to be no conflict of interest.
Mark L. Smith, Deputy Director of Communications Office of Suffolk County Executive PH: 631-853-8342/ CELL: 631-445-7169 E-Mail: [email protected]
