Southampton - The candidates for Southampton Town Board met at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton Village on Thursday to debate the issues and vie for the voters' support come next Tuesday, Election Day. As in the debate held in East Hampton the week before, the main topic was the town's finances, to which the candidates responded both by offering plans and pointing fingers.

Supervisor candidate Councilwoman Anna Throne-Holst presented a 13-step plan to reorganize Town Hall.

Supervisor Candidates Debate History
"In an election real facts are important and revisionist history is unacceptable," Councilwoman Anna Throne-Holst said in her opening remarks, "I began asking the question that my professional experience has trained me to ask - Why do we continue to budget around systemic deficits and where are the bottom line numbers for our capital budgets?" Throne-Holst framed the election and her run for supervisor as "no different than when Linda Kabot was a councilwoman and these problems started to seep in," blaming Kabot for failing to rectify the town's financial issues during her tenure on the board.

Supervisor Linda Kabot spoke about the 2007 election as well. "When you're in a hole, you stop digging," she asserted, "With my election we defeated an incumbent who caused our troubles. We closed our operating deficits and are reconciling our budgets. Over the next two hours you'll hear a manipulation of the facts, rooted in opportunism," she continued, "I have worked tirelessly and did the actual work to achieve results. They say they asked the necessary questions, but we were taking the necessary steps."

Southampton Press Special Sections Editor Jennifer Henn posed the first question to Throne-Holst on the topic of restructuring town departments. Throne-Holst referenced a 13-step plan she developed to address the town's operations. "I have a very clear plan for how we approach a restructuring," she stated, "It looks for a complete relook at our service provision model," attempting to make the town's services more "outcome based."

Kabot called Throne-Holst's plan "a lot of generalities," and countered that, "If you read the 2010 budget online you'll see a real plan with real solutions to deal with the real problems we're facing. We must redeploy our staff, we must do more with less," she continued, "We need to cut back on your tax dollars supporting duplication. That's the only way we'll get out of this hole, we need to take a look at our spending and cut discretionary spending."

"The budget the supervisor has presented reflects little or none of that," Throne-Holst retorted.

Supervisor Linda Kabot is asking the voters for one more term to fix the town's finances.

The debate went back and forth, at times becoming contentious and personal, though for the most part the candidates stuck to the issue foremost in the voters' minds: the finances.

Annette Hinkle, features editor at the Sag Harbor Express, asked the candidates if they were in favor of piercing the five percent property tax increase cap to fund deficit financing. Kabot answered first, clarifying that the cap would not need to be pierced to balance the 2010 budget. "What's at issue is the capital fund, which has a liability from various operating funds owing it money," she stated, "That is a five-year plan that I have proposed that would require a separate line on your tax bill to be paid off and I've asked that that be done outside of the cap so as not to dismantle the budget more than it already has been," adding that exact figures on the deficit would be released Monday.

"Isn't it incredible that it's almost November, a year and more, almost two years into Supervisor Kabot's term, and we still don't know what those real numbers are," Throne-Holst challenged, "By Monday, how many times have we heard 'by Monday.' The truth is that piercing the tax cap at this point, are we going to have to do it, yes we are going to have to do it at some point, but I will not do it without a real deficit reduction plan in place and we still do not know what the bottom line numbers are."

"It's easy to toss out the bombs and armchair quarterback," Kabot responded, "but the real work needs to be done and I've been doing that." Kabot again asserted that the capital fund deficits were "a hidden IOU" that came up late in the budget process. "I put a number out and a corrective action plan that I authored, with no help from the board members," she said, "I'm asking for your support for another two year term to keep this going strong."

The candidates were questioned by the editors of two local newspapers and the president of the local chapter of the League of Women Voters (LWV).

Throne-Holst objected to Kabot's statement that she has been alone in working on the town's financial problems. "The rest of us have been working just as tirelessly," she asserted, "The rest of us were the ones who asked for the forensic audits when Supervisor Kabot didn't know what that was," adding that, "It took far too long to pay heed to that call and that's why we don't have those real numbers."

Hinkle had another question toward the end of the supervisors' debate that caused a row between the two candidates when she asked how the town can protect itself from falling into the fiscal traps of the past. "At long last I am beginning to be satisfied," Throne-Holst stated, the first to answer, "We have implemented a complete revamping of our system and the controls that go with that. We have a comptroller that is very much up to the task and very much a professional and is staffing the office with professionals." The councilwoman added that a number of the employees held temporary positions, "We need to commit to them so that we don't have turnover problems," she suggested.

Conversely, "I'm never satisfied," Kabot said, "I'm always looking to move forward and install better controls. I plan to fully implement the accounting systems that dominated our work sessions for most of 2008," she continued, speaking about re-entering numbers and restructuring the process to create structurally sound budgets.

"The comptroller [Tamara Wright] was somebody that I brought to the town when it became clear that Supervisor Kabot had brought on a comptroller that was not up to the task," Throne-Holst said, "Finally, after the call for reorganization and the moving aside of a comptroller who Mrs. Kabot had put in place and who was not up to the job, the system was wholly inadequate to handle a budget of our size. I'm satisfied that finally some action has been taken," though she added that, "it's much too little, much too late."

Two political newcomers and two town council incumbents from opposing parties are running for the two seats up this year and the debate ran largely along those party lines.

Town Board Candidates Argue Along Party Lines
The candidates for Southampton Town Board include an incumbent and a newcomer in both parties and the debate accentuated and confirmed the party divide that has defined this election season. Henn, from the Southampton Press, asked the candidates what they think "can and should be done to improve the waste management department," which oversees the town's four transfer stations. The candidates' answers split down party lines, with an interesting exchange between the incumbents Chris Nuzzi and Sally Pope.

Political newcomer Democrat directly challenged the record of Republican Councilman Chris Nuzzi several times throughout the night.

"Well I don't think we should privatize waste management," Democratic candidate Bridget Fleming answered first, "It's just another way we could use crisis management to help us make bad decisions. In the second half of last year's budget waste management was not funded at all and the liaison, [Councilman] Chris [Nuzzi], did not do anything about that," she alleged, adding that, "We just spent an awful lot of money to renovate the North Sea transfer station and now we're talking about privatizing it."

"I think the first interesting point in this is that this year's budget only budgets for six months of operation," fellow Democrat Councilwoman Pope said next, "Privatization has been discussed for years. It seems to be the assumption that we're going to get it out of the budget and we don't want to do that. I think we should look at what is the best way to operate it," she offered, "which might even include expanding operations," suggesting that the town consider offering carting services themselves.

Councilman Nuzzi, the Republican incumbent and the town board liaison to the department, responded to the comments about funding. "The good news is we lost a couple of employees and were able to keep the division open," Nuzzi explained, "We definitely don't want to see these expanded. We've incorporated charge-backs so that the highway department, which charges hundreds to waste management, will have to pay their fair share."

Councilwoman Pope used one of her two chances to interject to state that, "Certainly that's good, running it as a business, if we're using it we need to pay for it, however think about what that's going to do for the rest of the budget," she said, "The highway department, the parks department, we need to look at the entire budget and see how they absorb those costs."

Nuzzi agreed, however, using his ability to speak out of turn, clarified by saying that, "We need to realize, irrespective, that those costs are going to exist. It's a matter of how and where you want to bear those costs."

First-time candidate Republican Jim Malone shifted to national politics in his closing, stating that, "We've been seeing more government, more spending and less hope."

Republican nominee Jim Malone similarly clarified the use of the word deficit with regard to waste management. "The budget did not include funding to adequately cover the expenses of parks and recreation and the highway department," he explained, "and the funding for that was taken out of the mortgage taxes," a revenue source that has since dramatically diminished, "So we should be careful about throwing the word 'debt' around."

Addressing the rising unemployment in Southampton Town, currently projected at 10 percent and rising, League of Women Voters (LVW) President Carol Mellor asked the candidates what role the town should play in developing new economic opportunities, to which the two political newcomers gave interesting responses.

"The economic engine of Southampton Town has come from two areas," Malone, a life-long Hamptons resident, explained, "The hospitality sector and the tourism sector, and that just doesn't work anymore as we've seen over the last 18 months, so I agree we need to do something. But there are two industries that seem to be getting left behind, the farming industry and the fishing industry," he said, "I think we need to reinvigorate them with a 'home grown, home bought' campaign and with the re-dredging of Shinnecock Harbor I think we'll see the fleet rebound in that area."

"We are going to watch the economy change," Fleming agreed, "and that's something that we'll have to deal with, especially with our reliance on second homes. One thing that we really need to be mindful of, though, is that we really need to have one-source hiring. We should give preference to local contractors or extra fees to businesses from outside," she suggested, adding that, "Partnering with the business community is absolutely essential."

County Legislator Jay Schneiderman defended his record and encouraged community activism.

A Brief Diversion For Schneiderman
Midway through the town council debate Suffolk County Legislator Jay Schneiderman was given five minutes to address the audience alone, as he is running for reelection unopposed. "You have these four very bright and capable candidates," Schneiderman said of the town council nominees to his right, "I think we're very fortunate to have these people take the time out of their lives, not just to campaign, but to serve. I'm happy that my kids are getting to see this," he continued, pleased with the show of democracy, "They're showing that they care and they want to get involved, and that's really why we do what we do: we care."

As a legislator for the last six years, Schneiderman is the chair of the county environmental committee ("It's nice to have someone from the East End stewarding that") and as such has helped to preserve the land and the way of life on the South Fork. "You deserve a lot of credit too," Schneiderman told the people of Southampton, "Because you really are helping to contribute to that with your sales tax," a quarter-percent of which is used at the county level to purchase open space and agricultural land, "and the town of Southampton has really been a great partner," chipping in on land conservation with the Community Preservation Fund (CPF), "The county is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, but we are happy to have a partner like Southampton," he said.