LIBRARY: Defeated Bill Leaves Huge Rift Here, Governor's veto fails to ease tensions among board of managers

After learning last week that only one member of the East Hampton Library's board of managers knew in advance about a state bill that would have streamlined zoning review for the library's proposed children's wing, seven of 23 board members at a July 27 meeting called on the president, Tom Twomey, to step down.

When their motion was defeated, six of the seven resigned from the board.

"I think we've lost the fund-raising public," one board member, Suzanne Dayton, said at the meeting. "Tom . . . it's time for you to wake up and do the right thing."

Henrika Conner, Patricia Mercer, and Lawrence Randolph, the three board members who called the special meeting, agreed, as did Helen T. Abel, Ellen Cromack, and Eleanor Ratsep, but there were 14 others who did not want Mr. Twomey to leave, so the seven were overruled.

Of them, only Ms. Cromack had decided to remain on the board by the end of the July 27 meeting. (Last week's Star omitted Ms. Abel's name from the list of those who had resigned.)

"I don't want to be a board of one," Ms. Dayton told the group. Ms. Ratsep, who had served on the board for 20 years, said she was resigning because she could no longer trust the board's president, "and you shouldn't either."

"I think the board has been hijacked by one person," Mr. Randolph said.

"I apologize to the board for the mistake I made which helped create the turmoil for which we're all here," Mr. Twomey said at the start of the meeting. "I'm really quite embarrassed. My enthusiasm for libraries and this library in particular colored my judgment. I feel terrible about the turmoil but we're here to talk about it."

He said he had poured his "heart and soul out" to help the library and wanted to continue working with the board.

At issue was a bill passed by the State Legislature in June that would have made the East Hampton Library, a free association library, exempt from special permit review by the village zoning board of appeals. The very specific language of the final bill, which was vetoed by Gov. George E. Pataki on July 26, made it applicable to only two libraries in the county - East Hampton's and Port Jefferson's.

Village officials were staunchly opposed to the legislation, saying it would undermine the local zoning process and charging it was crafted by State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, who is of counsel to Mr. Twomey's law firm, to help his associate.

Mr. LaValle denied this and said the original bill introduced in January was much broader. Mr. Twomey said last week that he realized only at the end of June that the final bill was so specifically targeted to East Hampton.

In his veto message, the governor agreed with the village's point about home rule. "Should the Legislature desire to exempt libraries from local zoning laws, it should propose to do so through the passage of a general law applicable to all such libraries in the state," he wrote.

The bill passed by the State Assembly and Senate would have allowed free association libraries in historic districts that have added two or more school districts to their service area in the last five years to expand by 8,000 feet or less without a special permit, provided the expansions met other zoning requirements and had been approved by the village design review board. The East Hampton Library has proposed a 6,800-square-foot expansion of its children's wing.

The bill was considered a "pilot project," Mr. LaValle said last month.

"I believed it would probably never see the light of day," Mr. Twomey said on July 27. "Things steamrolled and out pops that bill that I immediately realized had some implications here. It was Fourth of July weekend. I immediately should have called a special meeting then."

That explanation was not enough for some board members, who worried that the situation had put the library at odds with the village. "When I read this, I said, 'Oh my God, this is cutting the feet from under the zoning board of appeals,' " Ms. Conner said. "It wasn't any action specified by the board. The board was never told about it."

Mr. Randolph said he also felt there had been "a lack of candor" on the part of Ed Reale, the attorney who has been working pro bono on the library's expansion application, and that Mr. Reale and the firm Twomey, Latham, Shea, Kelley, Dubin, Reale, and Quartararo should be removed as counsel to the library. Seven board members agreed with him, but 14 wanted Mr. Reale and the firm to continue to work on the application.

"Ed here donated dozens and dozens of hours to help the library. He is a planning and zoning expert," Mr. Twomey said.

Ms. Mercer said she wished Mr. Reale had given the board more updates on the status of the children's wing application. Ms. Conner wondered whether the application before the Z.B.A. was put on the back burner in hopes that the library legislation might pass in the meantime.

"By really playing hardball with the village Z.B.A. . . . our counsel has assisted in alienating the village from the library," Mr. Randolph said.

The zoning board requested an environmental impact statement on the children's wing proposal last September. Mr. Reale said he had discussed that with the library board at several meetings.

"If you want to talk hardball, an [environmental impact statement] is a highly unusual step to take for such a small project," he said. "The village is playing hardball."

The impact statement is expected to be finalized by the end of the summer.

"We've been methodical here and there is no apology needed for the time it took," Mr. Twomey said.

"I got involved because I thought what you wanted to do made sense for the community," Mr. Reale said. "I don't want to be working against the board's interests."

"I think it would be counterproductive to start over with someone else," Ann Chapman, another board member, said.

Donald Hunting, a board member who is also the chairman of the village planning board, said he would "hate to think that the process with the village is about personalities rather than the application of law and good planning principles."

When the six board members announced their resignations on July 27, several others urged them to change their minds. "I think this is a sad day for the library," Howard Lebwith, a board member, said.

"The heart and soul of this library board just walked out of the room," commented Averill Geus, one of more than two dozen people in the audience at the meeting.

The remaining board members agreed that they needed to begin mending their fractured relationship with the village. That may not be easy.

"We have a zoning board and they in their wisdom have been doing their very best to work with the library," the mayor said at a village board meeting Friday. "I am cautiously optimistic that at the end of the day, all the parties . . . will be satisfied."

When Mr. Hunting stood up to "clear the air" about the library board's position, the mayor told him, "I actually think the entire library was remiss."

"The board is very happy that the governor did not sign this legislation," Mr. Hunting told the village board.