RIVERHEAD, N.Y. (Legal Newsline) - Hours before hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal advertising would have begun flowing to the county's newspaper of record, legislators took an emergency vote to rip up a contract it had with the South Shore Press, and instead allocated those taxpayer dollars to a competing paper owned by a GOP figurehead and party contributor.
News director for the South Shore Press Stefan Mychajliw called the action a "political dirty trick," and suggested potential litigation or criminal investigation could follow.
"A reasonable person could infer this last minute, secret deal should be referred to the New York State Attorney General’s Office for criminal investigation," Mychajliw said. “I’ll leave it up to Letitia James to decide whether or not this warrants further criminal scrutiny."
County legislators on July 30 bypassed the minimum four-day requirement for introducing proposals before votes can be cast by invoking a “certificate of necessity” in passing a resolution redirecting legal advertising to a competing newspaper, the Smithtown Messenger.
“We could find no precedent for such a vote being taken mid-year, and our request for further explanation has gone without response,” Mychajliw said.
He called the move “sloppy and suspicious.”
Smithtown Messenger owner and publisher Jim Cotgreave, who also operates Cotgreave Insurance Agency of Ronkonkoma, is a campaign contributor to sitting county legislators. He also serves as vice chair of the Smithtown Republican Party.
For years, Cotgreave has hosted political fundraisers at his home for many Republican candidates and causes in the Town of Brookhaven and Suffolk County, according to Mychajliw.
“An investigation is needed to determine who pulled the strings of politicians here,” Mychajliw said. “Who ordered and orchestrated this? A logical person knowing the facts could conclude this is a classic kickback scheme, one where legislators send taxpayer dollars to a politically connected vendor, with the purpose of having the cash given back to the Suffolk GOP as campaign contributions.”
The emergency resolution introduced by deputy presiding officer Steven Flotteron passed unanimously 15-0, with three legislators absent.
All 15 county legislators who supported the resolution have been contacted for comment explaining their decision and why it was passed under a certificate of necessity, but none have responded.
By law, the county formally adopts a newspaper of record once per year to receive legal notices that are required by law to be published. Those notices include foreclosures and public hearings, for example.
Mychajliw said the South Shore Press would have received “a significant chunk of advertising revenue” at the stroke of midnight on July 31.
He called the last minute maneuver “arbitrary and malicious.”
He said that the South Shore Press had only heard through the “political grapevine” that it would be losing the county’s legal advertising.
A former Erie County Comptroller and former investigative reporter for NBC and ABC affiliates, Mychajliw appeared before legislators ahead of the vote and pleaded with them to table the resolution.
He said the South Shore Press had already spent significant resources preparing to publish legal notices, and no one bothered to inform the newspaper of the county’s planned action.
Six weeks of legal ad inserts had been proofed and approved for publication beginning July 31 by a county official, according to Mychajliw. He said the South Shore Press had previously been designated by the county legislature to serve as newspaper of record for all of 2024.
Advertising revenue keeps community newspapers like the South Shore Press “afloat,” he said.
“We most certainly budgeted for the entire year to receive this taxpayer supported revenue, since this is exactly what the legislature passed,” he said.
Mychajliw said that no reason has been provided to explain the county’s decision.
“The motive certainly appears to be some combination of corporate sabotage and money laundering,” he said. “Killing the South Shore Press while shipping a significant amount of taxpayer funded revenue to a politically connected entity.”
(Editor’s note: This article is the first in a series of investigative reports on Suffolk County legal advertising and the politics involved).