Reversal of Fortunes

It has been astonishing to witness the acrimony between the four Southampton Village trustees and Mayor Jesse Warren spill over into public view like dirty laundry tumbling from a dumped basket.

Roles have reversed. The mayor has, in the past, been willing to aggressively go after colleagues who disagree with him, whether they be elected trustees or village employees. He’s shown little patience with detractors. The result has been so much turnover among employees and appointees that Village Hall really should get a revolving door.

Getting his way was often easy for Warren to do — the majority of the trustees went along. But after last year’s village election, when Joseph McLoughlin, who became a frequent target of the mayor’s ire, lost his reelection bid and was replaced on the board by Bill Manger, the board shifted, hard. The mayor, almost overnight, went from being in the majority of a 4-1 board to being the sole voice that the majority runs roughshod over. Warren now finds himself in the position that McLoughlin was all too familiar with: His requests are ignored, he’s not given information that the other Village Board members are privy to, and he’s condescended to.

The clearest evidence of the reversal of fortunes: The four trustees called a special meeting in December to appoint their pick for police chief after a yearlong-plus search, and to offer him terms of employment — terms that the mayor and village attorney had not even seen. The mayor was left to cast a meaningless “no” vote.

Warren then set out, seemingly, to blow the whole thing up. He conducted a one-man campaign, publicly, to besmirch the hiring process, and the new police chief selected by his colleagues. It worked: The candidate saw the dysfunction and ran the other way.

What’s left is, in a word, a mess. The mayor says he will lead the police chief search this time. In a scathing press release, the trustees accused Warren, among other things, of “irresponsible and destructive actions” and “improper conduct” and promised to limit the mayor’s role in the police chief search this time “to the minimum extent permitted by law.”

The trustees’ statement said the mayor is seeking a police chief “who would accede to his wishes, with blind loyalty to him, irrespective of the wisdom or propriety of the mayor’s position on a given subject.” That tracks with the mayor’s behavior since entering office, but it is strange that the current trustees — including Deputy Mayor Gina Arresta, the longest-serving member of the board behind Warren — have taken this long to recognize it, or at least to acknowledge it. The trustees also said that other recent actions by Warren are “detrimental to the best interests of the village and its residents.”

It might all be fireworks, soon to sputter out. Warren says his intention is to put the controversy and the trustees’ statement behind him, and to go back to being a team. Both sides say what’s best for the village is their only goal.

And then the village administrator files a lawsuit against the mayor, and it all blows up again.

The last few weeks have tarnished every member of village government. If something positive can be said, at least it’s all playing out in public — one bit of transparency, distasteful as it is.

Both the mayor and the newly energized trustees aligned against him appear girded for battle. Sorry, village residents, but in wartime, all progress otherwise halts. Southampton Village has many challenges — a business district coming out of difficult times, a housing crisis, a lack of progress on a sewer system — but it all appears to take a backseat for now. The circus is in town.