Long Beach ends payout scandal by paying $250,000 to key player

From www.LongBeachNy.gov

                                                     

The scandal over excessive separation and drawdown payments that roiled the City of Long Beach from 2018 through 2020 is over.

It ended not with a bang or even a whimper.

 It concluded last Tuesday night with a slap in the face to the many city residents who uncovered and protested excessive payouts to high-level political appointees during the Democratic administration of former City Manager Jack Schnirman and former corporation counsel Rob Agostisi ,who also served briefly as acting city manager.

The current City Council -- which has a new Republican majority -- voted to pay $250,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by Agostisi against Long Beach after the city in 2020 sued both Agostosi and Schnirman, demanding return of some $2.4 million in excessive payouts made with their approval.

There was no mention on Tuesday that the city had already discontinued its lawsuit against Schnirman on Dec. 29, 2023 -- three days before the three new Republicans took office on the five-member city council.

So it's over: the scandal that began in 2018 when outraged Long Beach residents learned the city needed to borrow more than $2 million to pay separation payments already made to Schnirman and others. They demanded investigations from the state comptroller, the Nassau district attorney and federal authorities.

Though Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and then District Attorney Madeline Singas -- both Democrats --issued critical reports about the "unlawful" payouts to both departing and continuing appointees,  no criminal charges were ever filed. The fed probe ended with no public reports.

Schnirman, who left Long Beach in Jan. 2018 after being elected Nassau county comptroller, repaid about $53,000 of his $108,000 payout.  Schnirman subsequently did not run for re-election as county comptroller in 2021 but took a job with Northwell Health.

Agostisi, who left the city two weeks after DiNapoli in 2029 issued a draft audit that questioned $500,000 in payouts, countersued the city in federal court in 2021. 

He contended the city should pay him for hundreds of hour in unused sick, vacation and personal time accumulated during his tenure as the city's top lawyer and interim city manager from 2015 through Sept. 2019. He also denied any improper payment.

Some of the same residents who uncovered and protested the payouts attended Tuesday's meeting to object to the settlement, including former Nassau Legis. Denise Ford, a registered Democrat from Long Beach who voted with Republicans when serving on the county legislature.

"Maybe you weren’t intimately involved with the work and the fight we put up in regard to these illegal payouts that were orchestrated by Jack Schnirman and Rob Agostisi, " Ford told the council.

"It was a very very difficult time for a lot of us. We put a lot of energy, our heart and soul...into gathering information. reaching out to the comptroller, reaching out to the DA, going to the FBI....to sit back and look at our hard work is left and thrown aside."

But Council Vice President Chris Fiumara, a member of the new Republican majority, said, "I think it strictly has to comes down to a business decision. "

He said the city had already spent $1.3 million in legal fees with no end in sight. He voted to settle and "stop the bleeding for taxpayers."

Council member Roy Lester, a Democrat, said the cost for the Agostisi case alone was much less. Indeed, critics contend the $1.3 million includes all the legal fees accumulated since the scandal broke.

"I am disgusted by this," Lester said. After a scandal "that cost this city a lot of money and a lot of embarrassment," Long Beach is "now paying one of the chief architects a quarter of a million dollars."

Agostisi's counsel later countered, "The city was smart to settle. It would have cost them a lot more money to get to the end of this case and lose. The city would have lost this case because Rob Agostisi did nothing wrong," according to the Long Beach Herald, which first reported the excessive payments.

Fiumara and his two Republican colleagues voted to settle. Lester voted no, while Council member John Bendo, a Democrat named in Agostisi's law suit, recused himself.

During her testimony, Ford faulted Singas for caving to party politics, instead of filing charges. Singas, who has since been promoted to the state's Court of Appeals, reported then that the payments were "excessive and inconsistent with the applicable law..."

Singas complained about a lack of cooperation from the administration while Agostisi was acting city manager and said Schnirman had allowed "millions of dollars in improper payments to be made."

But she concluded her investigators did not find "evidence of the criminal intent necessary to bring criminal charges."

Ford complained, "We think we were going to get some sort of justice and we got nothing. Absolutely nothing..."

And she made reference to the replacement of the Democratic majority on the city council with Republicans."That’s why we made changes on the city council; Why we brought different people in the hopes that maybe they would follow through and say enough is enough."

The three new Republicans had ousted three Democratic incumbents in the November city elections. 

But now Republican majority is paying Agostisi $250,000.

What are the chances of the majority remaining Republican in the future?