By Tim Healy
tim.healy@newsday.com
The Village of Asharoken is waiting for a ruling from the state’s Attorney General’s office on whether members of the village board can meet in closed political caucuses without violating the state’s Open Meeting Law.
The question was raised earlier this year by board member Pat Irving, who contacted the state’s Committee on Open Government and indicated that village business was discussed at these caucuses. Irving used to attend these caucuses but stopped after she left the Taxpayer’s Party of Mayor Bill Kelly and the other board members.
In July, Irving received a reply from the state committee’s executive director, Robert Freeman, who wrote that political parties are allowed to caucus in closed meetings, but that the Taxpayer’s Party did not qualify as a party under state election law, which defines a party as “any political organization which at the last preceding election for governor polled at least fifty thousand votes for its candidate for governor.”
The reply led to heated discussions during at least two recent village board meetings.
Laure C. Nolan, the village attorney, wrote to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on Oct. 3 asking for an opinion. She wrote that the mayor and several members of his party had held caucuses in 2005, 2006 and this year to discuss “certain impending issues that had implications for the Village.”
She said the mayor and other board members thought the Freeman ruling was flawed because it applied the definition for statewide political parties. If Freedman’s opinion stood, she wrote, most villages in the state could not hold caucuses “since almost all village boards run using local party labels.”
The attorney general’s office, contacted Thursday about the status of the village’s request for an opinion, has not yet replied.
For a copy of the opinion from Freeman, click here, and for a copy of the letter from Nolan, click here.