North Haven Mayor Says He Is Vindicated in Email Controversy

North Haven Village Mayor Chris Fiore said this week that he felt vindicated after an investigation concluded that he had done nothing wrong when he sent a group email late last month announcing the launch of his mayoral website.

The investigation was conducted by Village Attorney Scott Middleton and the village’s information technology consultant, East End Computer, with the assistance of Trustee Claas Abraham, who serves as an informal technology consultant to the rest of the board.

Last week, Fiore’s challenger, Barbara Roberts, charged the mayor had violated state election law by using the village server to send out the announcement.

Fiore called that charge “preposterous” and said he lacked the technical acumen to access the village server. He said that he had used his own email account to send the announcement to “a treasure trove” of email addresses he had collected since he first began serving in village office five years ago.

“I really think this was a manufactured thing that was designed specifically to manipulate the media and get a headline,” Fiore said. An article reporting Roberts’s charge appeared in last week’s Express.

He said he would like Roberts to make good on her offer to pay the approximately $5,000 in legal fees he said the village incurred to investigate the matter, which she made at a debate sponsored by The Express News Group on Saturday.

In an email on Tuesday afternoon, Roberts said she would be happy to reimburse the village for the actual cost of the investigation. “Obviously, I would like to see the real bills before committing to an exact amount,” she said, adding that the village had mistakenly broadened the scope of its investigation beyond what she requested.

Although Roberts said she wanted to move on from the matter at Saturday’s debate, she said at that same event that Middleton’s explanation of why the email appeared to have come from the village server “doesn’t make sense” and added “there’s no other way” Fiore could have obtained the email addresses of two of her friends unless he obtained them from the official village list.

She repeated those claims in a telephone interview on Tuesday afternoon, but still insisted she wanted to drop the matter.

Roberts said she raised the issue because she was concerned that Fiore had a habit of bending the rules. As an example, she cited one of his recent financial disclosure statements, which showed no expenditures, despite the fact that at least two advertisements for his campaign had appeared in The Sag Harbor Express.

Asked to comment on that matter last week, Fiore said he had paid for the ads with a credit card but had yet to receive a statement. He said once he paid that credit card bill, he would enter the cost of the ads on his disclosure statement.

On Monday, Fiore said he had amended the financial disclosure statement Roberts cited to show the cost of the ads to avoid any appearance of impropriety at the recommendation of Middleton.

The controversy over Fiore’s email also brought Abraham, who serves as Fiore’s deputy mayor, into the fray.

Roberts filed her complaint after Trustee Terie Diat, who has endorsed her campaign, sent her a screenshot of an email that appeared to show that Fiore sent the group email from the village server.

Abraham, who said he was upset that Diat did not reach out to him, but instead assumed Fiore had done something wrong, said there was a simple explanation.

Abraham said the mayor’s address list must include ticks@northhavenvillage.org, an address that was set up to receive emails from residents with questions about the village’s tick-control program. He said emails to that address are automatically forwarded to him and Diat, who oversee the program, so they can respond to their questions about the program.

Abraham said the mayor had sent an email to that address several years ago when he consented to have a 4-poster, which treats deer with insecticide as they feed on corn, installed on his property.

Abraham said Diat’s screen shot clearly showed that the email originated from Fiore’s personal account.

Diat declined to comment for this article, saying only that she had been told there would be an investigation and to save her emails, but that she had never been contacted.

Ironically, candidates can obtain email addresses from a municipality by filing a Freedom of Information Law request. Roberts said she had learned that when she first raised concerns about Fiore’s email.

Fiore said, while it may be permissible for candidates to FOIL the village for its address list, he opposed the idea, saying it would betray the trust residents should be able to count on when they correspond with government.