Letters

When Tommy John Schiavoni announced that he would be a candidate for the Southampton Town Board in 2017, my wife, Barbara, and I, after researching his background and his stated plans if elected, began an intensive letter writing and online blog campaign for his election.

Mea culpa. Instead of being a progressive voice for the environment and the citizens of Southampton Town, Tommy John showed himself to be just another party hack, at the call of the developers.

The great American horror story writer Stephen King (i.e. King not Ring) wrote, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” So, Tommy John, you are not going to fool me anymore.

Tommy John started his political career opposing The Hills project, aligning himself with courageous former Town Councilwoman Julie Lofstad. Soon thereafter, he became just another puppet for Jay Schneiderman and his developer friends. Why?

In recent weeks, it’s been the environmentally dangerous Hampton Bays battery energy storage system project and the Southampton Liberty Gardens time bomb. Jay was so desperate to please his developer friends that on his way out of office, he called a last-minute special Southampton Town Board meeting to approve a plan for Liberty Gardens that most knowledgeable people say was incomplete.

What did Tommy John do? When asked to raise his hand “yes” by Jay, he did, without even having the decency to offer his reason for voting that way.

Last week, Assemblyman Fred Thiele announced his plan to retire. Tommy John, thinking that the baton should be passed to him, with no opposition, declared his candidacy. I guess he forgot about his disastrous State Senate campaign.

Well, Tommy John, the Republicans have as their candidate Shelter Island Town Attorney Stephen F. Kiely, a person with working experience as an attorney in Brookhaven, Southampton and Riverhead towns.

Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

Stephen Ring

Hampton Bays