KNOX – Tensions that have been building between Superintendent Vasilios Lefkaditis and the four other town board members since Jan. 1 erupted in force late in the May 10 board meeting.

“He scolded us and called us cowards,” said Councilman Eric Kuck.

The four board members — all Democrats, like Lefkaditis — had held a private caucus on May 8, advised by town attorney John Dorfman.

Lefkaditis threatened to sue them if they continued doing business “in a dark alley.”

However, Lefkaditis said this week that he would not sue. “Your emotions are on your sleeve; you’re firing away,” he said of his comments at the meeting. “There is no win in that lawsuit.”

Robert Freeman, director of the state’s Committee on Open Government, said this week that such a meeting is a violation of the State’s Open Meetings Law (see page 2 editorial).

“We wanted to sort out information we were considering with health insurance, coming after the misinformation we got about the workers’ compensation policy at the March meeting,” said Amy Pokorny, Knox’s deputy superintendent, of the reason for holding the private meeting.

Lefkaditis had said then that Knox was paying “too much” for municipal insurance at about $69,500 a year with Amsure and he proposed switching to another agent to save about $20,000.

Kuck said at the April meeting that the town board had relied on figures presented by Lefkaditis “being accurate and truthful.” Kuck told the Enterprise that, after the resolution had passed in March, he looked into the town’s insurance coverage. “I found out Amsure was not our comp carrier,” he said.

At the April meeting, Lefkaditis cut off discussion and the four board members voted to rescind the March motion and to switch back to Amsure; Lefkaditis cast the sole dissenting vote.

As Dorfman questioned the new agent, Ken Grey, who had come to the meeting believing he would be providing coverage options, Lefkaditis interrupted, saying, “You’re turning this into an inquisition. You’re not going to grill this man…It’s not fair…I apologize on behalf of the town of Knox.”

Lefkaditis pointed out this week that he had said at the March meeting he didn’t know the carriers. He said that Grey came to the meeting to quote prices from the different carriers.

“Claiming Amsure was our workers’ comp broker was an honest miss-speak,” Lefkaditis told The Enterprise. Amsure is the town’s general insurance broker.

Kuck subsequently sent an email to everyone on the board recommending choosing a broker through requests for proposals. Lefkaditis responded in an email there was no viable reason to RFP for a broker; he explained this week that the RFP process should be for the carrier and that is what Grey was going to do.

The private board-members-only meeting on May 8 was to discuss health insurance for the town’s highway department workers, Pokorny said. “I talked to Gary and the guys,” Pokorny said of highway Superintendent Gary Salisbury and the highway workers. “They thought the town would pay the deductible. That changed everything; it makes it more attractive for the men.”

The reason for the May 8 meeting, Pokorny said, was, “We were trying to understand what everything meant.”

Asked why this couldn’t be hashed out in public at the May 10 town board meeting, she said of Lefkaditis, “We were having trouble communicating with him. It’s difficult because he flies into rages sometimes. We were trying to understand what this is about. It’s hard to have a reasonable and temperate conversation….The meeting was helpful to us. We were able to sort through and prepare for the public meeting. It was like committee work.”

She concluded, “We need to be able to communicate openly and have dialogue, not angry rages, to exchange ideas.”

Lefkaditis told the Enterprise he had found out about the private meeting “by accident” when an insurance broker told him he’d be available for the May 8 meeting — a meeting the board had planned without publicizing it or telling Lefkaditis.

Responding through The Enterprise to Pokorny’s comments that the board needed a private meeting, Lefkaditis said, “That’s hogwash. At any time, anyone could have asked me for details. They don’t ask questions,” he said of the board members, adding, “or limited questions.”

He also said, “Am I aggressive? Sure. They need to be more vocal. I can’t read their minds. They need to stop hiding behind the attorney.”

In the end, at the May 10 meeting, the board unanimously agreed on MVP for the highway workers’ health insurance with the town paying the deductibles. “It’s a homerun for the highway guys and a homerun for us,” said Lefkaditis at the meeting. “We pay the whole deductible up front.”

The board also unanimously agreed on a broker, recommended by the highway workers, Whitney Pangburn of Marshall & Sterling.

Still fraught

But tensions remain.

At one point in the May 10 meeting, Dorfman challenged a statement Lefkaditis had made at the April meeting about changing banks to save on fees.

Dorfman produced a letter from Kathy Mizener, a vice president at KeyBank, stating that Michael Hammond, the longtime Knox supervisor who was ousted by Lefkaditis, “created an entire worksheet for me on a monthly basis showing any fees that had incurred…Over the months we worked on refunding all of the monies that were due to the Town and that has been completed. The Town’s accounts have been coded so they do not incur fees…”

“She said he was absolutely wrong,” said Dorfman of Lefkaditis; the fees weren’t paid back because of a phone call from Lefkaditis.

“Since you have a failing memory, go back to the tape,” retorted Lefkaditis.

Dorfman said this week, “If you don’t want to use the bank, fine. But you should have the information.”

Board members are at a disadvantage, Pokorny said, because they don’t know ahead of time what topics will be discussed at meetings. “I understand it’s hard to put together an agenda in advance,” she said. “We’ve had experiences where we see the agenda just before the meeting with new items. It would help if we could be made more aware with communication between meetings.”

She went on, “With the health-insurance issue, it was helpful Vas had worked with the highway men and sorted out options. The rest of us just weren’t aware. It could have been solved so easily. We could have been given clear information; there would have been no need for a caucus.”

Pokorny concluded that most of the disagreements are not on matters of substance. “It’s just a matter of communication…It’s a shame the vilification happens.”

Open Meetings Law

The Open Meetings Law contains two vehicles for elected boards to meet behind closed doors. One is to vote in public session to go into executive session for one of eight listed reasons. The other is for one of three exemptions — for judicial proceedings, for political caucuses, or for any matter made confidential by federal or state law.

Freeman said, when the law was enacted, courts agreed that, if a majority of a legislative body met to discuss public business it was not really a political caucus; rather, they must be discussing party business for the exemption to apply.

Freeman went on, describing the history of the exemption: In 1985, a New York Post reporter threatened to sue the speaker of the State Assembly unless the Democatic caucus was opened. The state law was swiftly amended, Freeman said.

It now states: “The deliberations of political committees, conferences and caucuses means a private meeting of members of the senate or assembly of the state of New York, or of the legislative body of a county, city, town or village, who are members or adherents of the same political party, without regard to the subject matter under discussion, including discussions of public business.”

“They can meet in private to talk about anything they want,” said Freeman of the caucus exemption. “They cannot vote; they cannot take action.”

Case law on the matter since the 1985 change is slim. “There’s only one judicial decision in which all members [of a legislative body] were in the same party,” said Freeman. The Knox board members are all Democrats.

The precedent-setting case was won by The Buffalo News, seeking to cover Buffalo Common Council “caucuses” on the city’s budget.

“Since they were all Democrats,” Freeman said of the Buffalo legislators, “there was no opposing member to whom strategy could be telegraphed.”

If the exemption doesn’t apply, the Open Meetings Law does.

“There is also a provision dealing with party registration. If he,” said Freeman, referring to Lefkaditis, “remains registered as a Democrat, he’s still a Democrat.” Although Lefkaditis was elected on the Conservative Party line, having been turned down by the Knox Democrats, he remains enrolled as a Democrat.

“If four out of five get together, that’s a meeting quorum,” Freeman concluded of the town board members, “and the meeting is open to the public.”

Dorfman, on the other hand, said there are two relevant cases in New York. Since the state’s top court in a three-tiered system, the Court of Appeals, has never ruled on the matter, a case in the Third Department of the Appellate Division (the court is based in Albany) where Knox is located would take precedence over the case in Buffalo, which is in the Fourth Department, Dorfman said.

The case he based his advice on was Oneonta Star v. Schoharie County, involving a Republican caucus of supervisors.

In that case, the Appellate Division reversed the lower court’s judgment because, during the appeal, the 1985 law went into effect, allowing the discussion of public matters in closed political caucuses. However, the Schoharie case does not involve all members of a single party on the legislative board the way the 1992 case in Buffalo did, so it does not parallel the situation in Knox as the Buffalo case does.

Dorfman said that board members had asked his advice because “the drop-dead date for insurance was being determined and they had no information to address the situation. They wanted a solution,” he said.

Dorfman added, “They relied on my legal representation. If anyone erred, it was me.”

He said of the May 8 meeting, which he attended, “It was very nice and cordial.”

Dorfman said of his role as town attorney, a post he’s held for 24 years, “I do not make policy but, if I have information regarding the town, I put it forth.”

Pokorny said of Dorfman, “He advised us we could caucus because of the exemption in the Open Meetings Law. He assured us it would be legal…Vas said he doesn’t agree with that opinion. He said he’d sue us if we met again in that way….We talked to John. He hasn’t changed his opinion. He did say we should not meet that way. If we have questions, we should talk individually to him.”

She also said, “We don’t want to do the wrong thing. We don’t want to do anything illegal…We need to be able to communicate openly and have dialogue, not angry rages.”

The board had a public meeting on Sunday morning; three members attended — Pokorny, Kuck, and Dennis Barber. The meeting lasted less than 15 minutes and every resolution was passed unanimously.

Lefkaditis, who was out of state for his daughter’s surgery, did not attend the meeting but was aware of it. The meeting was called primarily to approve a flat 17-percent health-insurance contribution for highway workers and a 0-percent contribution for the highway superintendent. But, since the timing turned out to not be imperative, the matter was tabled.

“It’s a complicated enough topic to save our discussion for the regularly scheduled public meeting,” said Pokorny who chaired the meeting in Lefkaditis’s absence.

The board also rescheduled public hearings on light and noise ordinances for the next regular town board meeting on June 14, and agreed to have Santore’s World Famous Fireworks present a display for the Knox Youth Council festival on June 4.

Lefkaditis shared emails with The Enterprise this week showing a board member’s suggestion that a meeting last Tuesday with the highway workers on their health insurance not be advertised as a public meeting, but, rather, be held as a “caucus” so that board members could “focus on the task at hand.”

“Not more than 48 hours after having an illegal meeting, they’ve learned a new trick and are trying to keep the public in the dark,” said Lefkaditis. “It’s a dark, slippery slope.”

He also said, “For years, the town board meetings were very brief: People checked in, voted ‘yes,’ and checked out. That tells me, they were meeting beforehand. When you have a conversation out in the open, there will be spirited debate.”

Lefkaditis went on about the board members, “If they want privacy, they should not have run for public office.”

He estimates that Knox has saved about $50,000 since he took office on Jan. 1.

He says he is frustrated that board members don’t speak up at meetings but, rather, complain later that they are excluded. He is also frustrated that board members did not respond to his question on May 10 about open meetings: “If it is illegal to — air quotes — ‘caucus,’ would you continue that practice?’ They didn’t answer.”

Lefkadits also said of the board, “They think I’m going too fast. I think I’m too slow. We need to find middle ground.”

He concluded of the May 8 meeting, “Whether they’re legal or not, you always need to err on the side of transparency….We should not be looking for reasons to hold secret meetings. We should be looking to be as transparent as possible.”

“None of us are trying to do anything nefarious,” Kuck told The Enterprise. “Meetings involve a lot of chest-thumping….It’s best to work in a civil manner. We consulted with the town attorney and he indicated the meeting was proper. Down the road, if it’s otherwise, we’ll comply.”

“Everyone is motivated to do the best for the town, as I am,” said Dorfman.