Accabonac Chaos
Quasi-governmental authorities often spell trouble. Their members are given more autonomy than elected government officials, especially over the borrowing and spending of public funds.
Such authorities are often established, in fact, precisely to circumvent the kind of public oversight that is required when municipalities plan to encumber taxpayers with costly construction projects. The rationale is that in the long run the public will benefit from the authority's efforts. But sometimes it doesn't work out that way.
When last heard from, the East Hampton Housing Authority appeared almost poised to self-destruct. Furthermore, it has posed a threat to the town's credit rating ever since the Town Board agreed to guarantee its loans.
This week, however, with the authority seemingly frozen in indecision about how to complete its Accabonac housing project and having no plan to meet again until March 24, the Town Board finally took action. In a bipartisan decision, it agreed to hire its own auditors to get the financial mess unraveled. It's about time.
Anybody who seriously believes that Supervisor Cathy Lester conspired with former Councilman Tom Knobel and the former town attorney, Robert Savage, to conceal the whereabouts of $1 million or more in unaccounted-for Housing Authority funds ought to have their head examined. That is not to say that the use of funds for the beleaguered housing project has been explained satisfactorily or even that it was not illegally "diverted," as a disenchanted contractor alleges in a recent lawsuit. The first auditors hired to sort out the authority's accounts gave up in frustration, defeated by its twists and turns. Has anything of the sort ever happened here before?
If, however, the authority's newly proposed financial gambit - to renounce Federal Section Eight subsidies for the housing - actually occurs, it surely would seal the doom not only of the Accabonac project but would undermine its own reason for being. Can anyone have forgotten that its mission is to provide affordable housing?