Mystery FOIL Request Has People Wondering At Southampton Village Hall: Who Filed It, And Why?

A mysterious request seeking personal communications between Southampton Village Mayor Jesse Warren and six private individuals had Village Hall insiders and frequenters curious, suspicious and, in some cases, incensed last week.

Clocked in to Village Hall after close of business on January 17, an emailed Freedom of Information Law request asks for “copies of any and all communication, whether by text or email or private/direct message, on any private or village-owned server or cellphone or any social media site (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) including but not limited to emails, text messages, instant or direct messages,” between Mr. Warren and six people: Meghan Magyar, Evelyn Konrad, Frances Genovese, Thomas Louthan, Len Zinnanti and Joseph McLoughlin.

Mr. McLoughlin is a member of the Village Planning Commission, but the request specifies a request for “communications unrelated to his role on the Planning Commission.”

Signed by MariKate Wilson, with an address in Mobile, Alabama, the request asks for all communications between the dates July 1, 2019, when the mayor took office, and January 17, 2020.

The sender of the FOIL traces to a company called FOI Professional Services. For $85, according to Matthew Cuccias, a representative at the service, FOI will request public information on behalf of a client. Asked if he could name the client who sought the village FOIL, Mr. Cuccias replied, “No. We cannot.”

Ms. Genovese angrily spoke of the request at the podium of the Village Board’s January 21 meeting. Interviewed on January 24, she said she found out about the request from Mr. McLoughlin after running into him at Village Hall by happenstance. He said he was there because he’d been named in a FOIL request — and she had, too.

“I was very, very angry,” Ms. Genovese said. She said she was acquainted with Mr. McLoughlin and Ms. Konrad but otherwise didn’t know the others named.

Ms. Konrad answered similarly when the list of names listed in the FOIL request was read to her on Monday. “Frances and I tend to be on the same side,” she said, adding that she disagrees with Mr. McLoughlin often but finds him to be “fundamentally a decent person.” She didn’t know the others on the list.

Mr. McLoughlin said the names on the list were familiar to him, but he doesn’t know any of the people he’s grouped with personally. “I know some of them from their activity in the community,” he said.

He described his relationship with the mayor as “an innocuous, casual friendship. We keep things mostly professional.”

Both he and Ms. Genovese said they don’t conduct any conversations with the mayor via text. Ms. Konrad emphasized that, as an attorney, she doesn’t put anything in writing that she wouldn’t say aloud at a Village Board meeting or send in a letter to the editor to The Press.

The mayor echoed Ms. Konrad. “I wouldn’t send anybody anything I wouldn’t feel comfortable being in The Southampton Press,” he said.

Of the list of names, he said, “All these people are active in helping the village in positive ways. People who are in and out of Village Hall.” He described the community members named as “mentors and partners of mine in helping the village.”

None of the other people named in the FOIL request could be reached for comment.

Overall, the mayor rebuked the FOIL as nothing more than a distraction, while Ms. Genovese suggested that it was reflective of “internecine squabbles” on the board and in Village Hall.

She even suggested that the original request came from within Village Hall — but stopped short of naming from whose desk.

What the mystery FOIL-er asked for is not as important as the fact of the asking. It’s the “intent,” Ms. Genovese said. “An attempt to draw a ring around a group of people,” she said, and to chill conversation and outspoken discussion in Village Hall. She added, “It’s a specious, cowardly thing.”

Mr. Warren said the request’s intent was “to distract and agitate.” Trying to figure out who sent it in “is not really important to me,” he said, but added that he was advised by the Village Board of Ethics not to comment about any suspected author.

Differing scenarios about the origin of the FOIL are swirling around Village Hall. In one, it’s suggested that the mayor sent it himself as a “straw man,” to underscore the obstacles he’s encountering. Mr. Warren became irate at the suggestion.

“That’s not how I operate,” he said. “I’m working, literally, tirelessly!” he exclaimed, calling the mere suggestion questioning his integrity “a classic political tactic,” adding, “I didn’t realize when I signed up, it would be this bad.”

The law’s description of what constitutes “records” is expansive.

New York State Committee on Open Government Executive Director Shoshanah Bewlay explained that communications that are “in the custody of the public body” are subject to FOIL. If Mr. Warren was conducting business on either a village-owned or private device, “that is the public’s business,” she said, and would be subject to FOIL.

In general, however, she said, retrieving text messages from a private cellphone is problematic. “The village doesn’t have access to those things — [texts] aren’t records maintained by public bodies,” she said.

An advisory opinion from Kristin O’Neill, the assistant director of the Committee on Open Government, on the committee’s website sheds some light on exactly how much of the private interchanges are subject to FOIL.

“With specific respect to text messages,” the opinion reads, “in my experience, a government agency may be unable to extract or retrieve those communications; often they are retrievable only by the carrier of the services, a private company. If that is so, FOIL would not apply.”

The mayor said the village will respond to “the shell company” that submitted the request, asking it to be more specific. “We’re required to respond, and we’ll respond and let them know the request was too broad and needs to be more specific,” he said.