G.O.P. Tries to Recover-'Entrenched' Democrats have everything 'their way'

With East Hampton's Democratic town board set to release a tentative 2006 budget tomorrow, Republicans hope to find the kind of political ammunition that can turn the talk from rats in Florida to what's rotten in East Hampton.

"The Republican Party is challenging an entrenched political group that has everything their own way and acts like it," Thomas E. Knobel, the newly re-elected Republican chairman, said on Monday.

"Every single election cycle, while decrying the Republicans and saying smear, smear, smear, they come up with something like this," he said, referring to a front-page article on the Republican town board candidate Bill Gardiner in the Sept. 21 issue of The Independent.

The article, headlined "Rat Infested House Haunts Candidate," takes aim at Mr. Gardiner for unpaid fines and back taxes owed on a Boca Raton house he inherited from his mother, Isabel Gardiner Mairs. He took title to it in 2003.

"Obviously this is being mined by various supporters of the Democratic candidates. They disclaim it, but they take advantage of it," Mr. Knobel said. "The headline was grossly sensationalistic. . . . It's pretty close to assassination here."

Bob Schaeffer, the co-chairman of the East Hampton Democratic Committee, said he had "absolutely nothing to do with it." He called Mr. Gardiner on Sept. 21 to "assure him that neither I nor anybody on the committee was involved."

"To me, it's somewhat petty," said Larry Penny, the other Republican candidate for town board. "It's the same stuff. I hated it in the past and that's why I never ran."

"Anything about a candidate is potentially pertinent to a candidacy," Mr. Gardiner said Friday. "You're a candidate, people are going to take shots at you, and that goes with the turf, but it makes it sound like I ruined the whole neighborhood."

According to The Independent article and a Sept. 11 article in the Sun-Sentinel, a newspaper in Florida, neighbors of Mr. Gardiner's Boca Raton property have told city officials they believe the untended house is contributing to a rat problem in the neighborhood.

The Sun-Sentinel article says Mr. Gardiner has been cited for "overgrown grass, stagnant water in the pool, vermin, and a damaged soffit vent system," and that the city of Boca Raton "has about $60,000 in liens against the property."

"After this came out, it sounds like this horrendous place down there," Mr. Gardiner said. "It's not like the Edie Beale structure," he added, speaking of the infamous condition of Grey Gardens in East Hampton in the 1970s. "It's only been a year and a half since I've been there. How much could have transpired?"

"I asked Bill flat out, 'Bill, are there any other properties anywhere that this could be happening with?' He said, 'Absolutely not,' " Mr. Knobel said Monday. "You don't want this to be a pattern. . . . The laws must be complied with by our candidates. An ongoing situation is something that we would regard very unfavorably."

The Republican Committee discussed the matter last week after a previously scheduled reorganizational meeting. "Before we respond, we have to confirm what is true - what is there, what isn't. I don't know the extent to which Bill has a situation down there in Florida," Mr. Knobel said.

Mr. Gardiner said he had hired someone to fix the problems at the house some time ago. "I thought it was all done. I got a new notice that it was not done. They had been sending the notices to the house there. . . In 2004 the notices were sent up here. Again I got in touch with somebody to fix it."

While he was aware of an outstanding 2003 tax bill, which was due in April, he said he was unaware until recently that the 2002 bill was also unpaid. "All this happened during a year when we had a very bad year. Our family took a lot of punches," Mr. Gardiner said Friday.

"I'd like to think that I'm taking care of this as quickly as I can, and I hope the people of East Hampton will see it as something that just happened to me and now I'm taking care of it, and they won't look at it as something so horrible," Mr. Gardiner said.

"I'm just hoping that the static over this doesn't overshadow the bigger issues affecting the public," Mr. Knobel said. "The question really is whether an apparent lapse in house maintenance should be the basis for assessing Bill."

At the end of last week, Mr. Gardiner said he had hired a property manager and an attorney in Florida to attend to the house and any legal issues with the city of Boca Raton. He also traveled to Florida over the weekend to inspect the house himself. "The house didn't look anything like the way they described it." He said he had mailed payment of the tax bills last week.

"It should have been taken care of sooner. It got taken care of later, but it did get taken care of," he said on Monday.

Since the story came out last week, the thing Mr. Gardiner hears the most, he said, is "surprise, surprise, the Democrats are slinging mud." In letters to the editor, he has also come under fire for outstanding taxes owed to East Hampton Village and Town, which he said he has since paid.

He said such attacks have made him more determined to stay involved in politics. "I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure those guys [the Democrats] don't get in again," he said. He has no intention of withdrawing from the race and said he will continue to talk about and investigate the issues he has discussed throughout his campaign, in particular how and where the town spends money from its Community Preservation Fund.

He has been harshly critical of the Democratic administration's use of the fund, repeatedly questioning the town's $3.8 million purchase of Dayton Island in Three Mile Harbor last year and claiming that the town spent far too much for an island that could never have more than one house on it. He charged that the town's purchase price exceeded a first appraisal and that the town board has since tried to cover up that fact.

More recently he has criticized the town board for its decision to pay $1.9 million for a 6.9-acre reserved area in the Buckskill Farm subdivision in East Hampton. In that case, the owner of the property agreed after negotiations with the town to reduce the subdivision from eight to four lots and to increase the size of the reserved area.

The town, in turn, agreed to buy the reserved area pending planning board approval of the subdivision. Although zoning in the area was to be changed from one-acre residential to three-acre residential, that deal kept the property from being upzoned provided the sale to the town went through.

Because the property contained prime agricultural soils, the owner was required to set aside a reserved area when he developed it. As Mr. Gardiner sees it, the town is essentially paying to preserve land that would already have been protected from development as part of the subdivision process. Such deals, he says, are a misuse of the Community Preservation Fund.

"That's the sort of thing I'm not going to let go of even if they do find a tax bill was not paid or a house did not get repaired," he said Monday.