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Southampton Town Comptroller Tamara Wright said this week that she has decided to take a position with the Town of Brookhaven, ending weeks of speculation about her future.
Ms. Wright informed the Southampton Town Board on Tuesday that she had agreed to accept a position as the Brookhaven Town commissioner of finance.
“There are a lot of new challenges to take on there,” Ms. Wright said on Tuesday. “They are working on a lot of new and innovative ways to deliver government services. I’m happy.”
Ms. Wright gave the board one month’s notice. She will begin her new job on March 1.
“She’s a superstar,” Brookhaven Town Supervisor Mark Lesko said earlier this week. “I think she sees an exciting challenge here in Brookhaven.”
Mr. Lesko said the seven-member Brookhaven Town Board will discuss a resolution to appoint Ms. Wright at a work session today, February 2, and most likely will appoint her on February 7.
Ms. Wright, an East Hampton resident who plans to move closer to her new office, currently earns an annual salary of $117,300 with Southampton Town, and will earn $133,000 per year in her new two-year appointment.
Southampton Town Councilwoman Bridget Fleming said she was “extremely disappointed” in the news that Ms. Wright was leaving.
“With Tamara’s leadership, we have been able to right the town’s financial ship,” she said. “Her guidance, expertise and, certainly, her level of commitment was absolutely crucial to that progress. It’s a tremendous loss to the town.
“She’s enormously talented, and I hope she has great success in Brookhaven,” she added.
Although the Brookhaven Town Board was poised to appoint Ms. Wright to the new post at its January 19 meeting, some board members had concerns regarding a $651,653 tax lien against her filed by the Internal Revenue Service in 2009. Ms. Wright, who said she disclosed the lien during meetings with Brookhaven Town Board members in mid-January, received formal documentation from the IRS last Wednesday, January 25, indicating that the lien was released earlier that day.
“It has never been an issue for me to be put under a microscope and grilled on every personal issue that may affect my trustworthiness, including my disagreements with the IRS,” Ms. Wright wrote in a statement last week.
The lien, which first came to light in 2010, is based on two years—2002 and 2003—during which Ms. Wright was employed as a chief operating officer in the financial industry in the United Kingdom. Ms. Wright has long maintained that she produced evidence to the Town Board in 2010 proving that she did not owe the money and the lien was a mistake. While the lien still exists on the Suffolk County clerk’s website, officials at the clerk’s office said that it could take six to eight weeks for information to be entered and show up in the system.
After learning that the lien had been lifted, Brookhaven Town Councilman Dan Panico, who had expressed reservations last week about Ms. Wright’s potential appointment, said he was relieved. “There is definitely a better likelihood that I would support her now that this has been formally resolved,” Mr. Panico said.
Despite the fact that he was apprehensive due to the lien, Mr. Panico said no other candidates had been interviewed, and he believed Ms. Wright would be put forward as the new appointee.
Ms. Wright said her decision to interview with Brookhaven Town was not prompted by the Southampton Town Board’s Republican-Conservative majority’s hesitation in reappointing her and Town Attorney Tiffany Scarlato to new two-year terms in early January. Both were unanimously reappointed on January 10.
Instead, Ms. Wright said Brookhaven Town officials reached out to her on January 8 after the unexpected resignation of Brookhaven Commissioner of Finance John O’Neill, who left after having worked with the town for just less than two years, to accept a position in the Nassau County comptroller’s office.
Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst, however, said this week that she believes it was the delay in reappointing Ms. Wright that sparked Brookhaven Town’s interest.
“It’s unfortunate that it had to come to this, and that there was any level of delay or doubt as to what are the sometimes unenviable consequences of not acting in a timely and appropriate fashion when someone has contributed at the level she has,” the supervisor said. “It’s a testimony to her reputation that she has acquired that it took less than 24 hours of the larger world finding out that her appointment had been held up for her to get phone calls from other parties that recognized her talents.”
The supervisor said the search would now begin to replace Ms. Wright. “It is now incumbent upon me to find a replacement of equal caliber and quality,” she said.
Looking back on last week’s flurry of rumors, Ms. Wright said there was no truth to statements that Mr. Lesko pulled a resolution to appoint her at the last minute due to the concerns of Mr. Panico and others. No resolution ever existed, Ms. Wright said, because she had not yet decided to take the job.
Both Mr. Panico and Mr. Lesko confirmed this week that no resolution had been drafted at the time of Ms. Wright’s interview.
Brookhaven Town has had a revolving door of finance commissioners over the past decade, with commissioners leaving once their two-year terms were up, including Mr. O’Neill, Thalia Buklos, and Charlene Kagel—who also once served as the Southampton Town comptroller.
Ms. Wright will be entering Brookhaven Town’s financial landscape during a daunting time—dwindling revenues have created a huge budget hole expected to come to a head by 2015. Mr. Lesko said he is considering privatizing some government functions in his recent state of the town address. “That’s the challenge for me, as a financial manager, to tackle those issues and work with the town to solve them,” Ms. Wright said.
Southampton Town Councilman Jim Malone joined his colleagues Councilman Chris Nuzzi and Councilwoman Christine Scalera in wishing Ms. Wright well.
“I’m a finance guy,” Mr. Malone said. “Tamara and I have been able, over the past two years, to develop a relationship that speaks almost in shorthand—we know the language. This will be a hell of a change.”
Understanding that the decision was a difficult, Ms. Scalera said she was grateful Ms. Wright had agreed to stay on during the transition period.
In today’s economy, Mr. Malone added, he expects a number of highly qualified candidates to step up. “We’ll begin that process and I’m sure whoever we find to succeed her will serve us well.”
Mr. Nuzzi added that he hoped the town would be able to find someone with Ms. Wright’s level of dedication to replace her.
The decision to say goodbye to Southampton was a difficult one to make, Ms. Wright said. She began working as a financial advisor in 2008 and has been appointed to her current position of comptroller three times. “I am very much going to miss Southampton,” she said.
Ms. Throne-Holst credited Ms. Wright with guiding the town through difficult years to get Southampton Town back on sound financial footing. “The town owes her a debt of gratitude and the recognition for the fact that this kind of talent only comes along so often,” Ms. Throne-Holst said.
