Southampton Village Administrator Sues Mayor, Alleges Discrimination

Charlene Kagel-Betts, the Southampton Village administrator, is suing Mayor Jesse Warren and the village itself, alleging that she was subjected to age and gender discrimination, a hostile work environment, retaliation and slander.

The lawsuit filed on Monday afternoon states that “Warren made Village Administrator Kagel-Betts’s life a living hell,” and that his “every contact and email communication with plaintiff was demeaning.”

But Warren said on Tuesday that a retired administrative judge whom the Village Board had hired to investigate Kagel-Betts’s claims in 2022 found after a “lengthy and detailed investigation” that no such discrimination took place.

In the lawsuit, Kagel-Betts, 62, states that she was marginalized when Warren hired a 27-year-old man, Patrick Derenze, to be assistant to the mayor, assigned Derenze several duties that had previously been hers, and excluded her from meetings that she was required to attend and communications she was required to receive.

The lawsuit refers to the responsibilities as “chief of staff-related duties” and cites a section of the Southampton Village code that spells out the powers and duties of the village administrator. It states that Warren had Suffolk County Civil Service include those duties in the duty statement for the assistant to the mayor position — and when Kagel-Betts asked if the mayor intended to change the village code to reflect the changes to the village administrator’s duties, he ignored her.

The complaint also states that, in her capacity as chief financial officer of the village, Kagel-Betts “detected and reported improper conduct” by the mayor: Namely, having an independent contractor move audio-visual equipment from Village Hall to the Southampton History Museum and back at a cost of $1,800 so that he could host a town hall-style event at the museum. Warren then asked the contractor to void the invoice when it was sent to the mayor’s office, the lawsuit alleges, and tried to satisfy the $1,800 bill with a $500 gift card to his store, which the contractor did not accept.

Warren said that is false — he did not offer the contractor a gift card as payment, but he did give a Christmas gift to the contractor’s son, who works for the contractor, but only after getting written approval to do so from the village’s Ethics Board chair.

And he said that the trustees pushed for the taxpayers to be charged $1,800 for the services as a politically motivated tactic even when the services for the town hall-style event fell under the contractor’s contractual monthly hours and came at no extra cost.

In making the case that Warren has a pattern of gender discrimination, Kagel-Betts states in the lawsuit that Warren was accused of failing to promote a female aide with the title “secretary to the mayor” to “assistant to the mayor,” after promising to do so, and of berating and belittling the aide. The lawsuit notes that Warren did give the title of “assistant to the mayor” to the aide’s male successor.

Warren’s previous aide — Miranda Weber, who was referred to as “Jane Doe” and “Secretary Doe” in the lawsuit — quit in April 2022 and went to work for Kagel-Betts’s brother-in-law, John Betts, the new owner of Shippy’s restaurant. She had been earning a $72,000 salary and was awarded an $8,000 stipend for managing the village’s SeeClickFix app a month before resigning.

According to the lawsuit, on the last day of Weber’s employment, she submitted a spreadsheet logging hours of overtime amounting to $80,000, which she said Warren had promised she would be compensated for.

Warren says the village’s labor counsel told him the role is an overtime-exempt position.

The lawsuit makes a number of other allegations, including accusing Warren of “sabotaging” the village clerk, being “disparately abusive” to female trustees when they did not vote according to his wishes, trying to eject Kagel-Betts from an executive session of the Village Board and, on a separate occasion, condescending to Kagel-Betts when she raised concerns about his plan to increase the workweek for nonunion village employees from 30 to 35 hours without increasing their compensation.

The lawsuit states that Warren pounded his fingers on the desk and told Kagel-Betts: “I am giving you a directive … To clarify, I want this resolution on the agenda. Are you clear?”

Warren said he had asked Kagel-Betts to leave the executive session because the topic of discussion pertained to her performance and said he did, in fact, suggest that nonunion employees should work additional hours, which he said is a valid point for a mayor to raise.

Kagel-Betts’s slander claim relates to a conversation the mayor had that, according to the lawsuit, was recorded during the mayor’s town hall event and posted to the village’s YouTube channel — before the mayor ordered the video removed. The lawsuit says Warren defamed Kagel-Betts when he stated that the Village Board awarding a three-year contract to operate the Coopers Beach concession stand to Kagel-Betts’s brother-in-law was “cause for concern” and gave “the appearance of impropriety.”

The lawsuit points out that Kagel-Betts had recused herself from the bidding process for the concession stand contract and that Warren knew she had.

Kagel-Betts’s attorney, Regina Calcaterra, said on Tuesday night that a complaint and a notice of claim were both filed with the village back in September 2022, triggering the village’s investigation. She said that the investigator’s report was not shared with her or Kagel-Betts, so they don’t know what the investigator concluded.

She said Warren is using the report as a defense, pulling out lines that may benefit him, while not disclosing findings that don’t benefit him. “There are things in there that show that he’s a bad actor,” she said.

Calcaterra added that the interviews led by the investigator were not conducted under oath, and there were no subpoenas issued. “You shouldn’t be relying upon this report,” she added.

Warren responded in writing to the lawsuit, framing himself as an “outsider” fighting to bring positive change to the village and stating that “transparency and integrity” remain a top priority for him.

“Unfortunately, when anyone comes into a system with a different vision and tries to change that system to reflect openness, honesty, etc., there will often be a great deal of resistance,” Warren wrote. “Sometimes, as here, that resistance gets very personal.”

He wrote that a trustee, whom he did not name, called him on January 13, telling him that if he didn’t resign, the trustee “would spread false and damaging information about me as well as refer baseless criminal charges to the Suffolk County district attorney’s office,” as well as encourage the administrator to sue the village.

“In a similar threat, the trustee stated that the trustees would settle an overtime wage dispute with an employee, one that the trustees had previously determined to be unfounded, in a further attempt to embarrass me,” Warren added. In a follow-up phone call, he said that the trustees previously were against settling the dispute even when he suggested they do so.

He reiterated that the same points raised in the lawsuit were investigated at length by the retired administrative judge the village had hired, and both the investigator and a human resources consultant found that no discrimination occurred.

Kagel-Betts, who is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, and attorneys’ fees, was hired by the Village Board in October 2020. Her salary is $178,602.