Personality Conflict Shakes Up Southampton Village Ethics Board

The Southampton Village Ethics Board recently saw a spate of resignation letters that did not lead to actual resignations.

All four members of the board expressed a desire to step down, but the Reverend Steven Peiffer, the board’s longest-serving member and its chairman, said on Monday that no one has resigned.

Peiffer wrote to Mayor Jesse Warren on Friday asking to be dismissed from the board. He explained that on October 17, while waiting for the three other members of the board to join a Zoom meeting, he learned they had resigned, including two who sent letters of resignation to Warren.

He set about recruiting new members with Warren’s knowledge, according to his letter. On Thursday, November 4, he called a member who resigned and asked that member to consider rejoining the board. He learned that the three members had not actually resigned and were continuing to do the work of the Ethics Board on their own, without him. They had been discussing cases and scheduling meetings without communicating with him. He wrote that these actions make his membership on the board untenable.

“I realize that my request will probably be resisted by you because of your concerns about having to make such a dismissal public,” Peiffer wrote to the mayor. “But I assure you that my departure from the Board is my sincerest wish, and I hope you might understand that, considering the above, the inferences generated by my having to take the initiative and personally submit my resignation are deeply repugnant to me.”

Reached on Monday, Peiffer confirmed that he wrote the letter but said it has since been rescinded. No one has officially resigned, he said. “There’s not a story.”

He also said, “Our work on the Ethics Board is confidential and that letter is confidential.”

The Ethics Board, members of which are appointed by the mayor with approval from the Village Board, is tasked with ensuring “both the reality and the appearance of integrity in village government” and hearing ethics complaints brought by residents.

Peiffer was appointed to the Ethics Board in April 2020. The other members of the board are Teresa Melhado, appointed in October 2020, Susan Steinhardt, appointed in April this year, and Thomas Kempner Jr., appointed in July this year.

Melhado, Steinhardt and Kempner released a joint statement Monday: “As you know, all Ethics Board business is strictly confidential and for that reason we can’t comment on any matters concerning the Board. We have each sworn to serve the best interests of the Village and will continue to do so as members of the Board.”

Warren said on Tuesday that he believes the issue between the Ethics Board members was personality driven and he is happy that the members have agreed to work together in a collegial way for the good of the village.

He added that the Ethics Board members were recently informed that the board is a public body and is subject to open meetings law, which means the meetings must be announced and open to the public. He noted that the board can still go into executive session to discuss matters privately, such as personnel issues.

The fifth seat on the Ethics Board was vacant from September up until this week. In a letter dated September 1, Christian Picot — who joined the Ethics Board in 2017 and was its chairman for a time — resigned from the board and requested to be appointed to the Planning Commission as it takes on the village’s new master plan. The Village Board appointed him to the commission on September 21 with a term ending in 2025.

The Village Board voted, 4-0, on Tuesday to appoint Craig Goldberg to fulfill Picot’s term, which expires June 30, 2023. Village Board member Joe McLoughlin abstained. He said he would prefer another candidate “given the issue that occurred with the Hartnett Report.”

The Hartnett Report is an operational analysis of the Village Police Department that was conducted earlier this year. Goldberg was the chair of the village’s Police Review Task Force, which gave a presentation in May on the report. The report’s author later said that the presentation reflected the task force’s point of view and made recommendations that were not consistent with his report.