A Closer Look At The Monroe Town Attorney's Political Donations
Brian D. Nugent claims he represents all members of the board regardless of political party, but campaign contributions may suggest otherwise.
Would you believe this was supposed to be a short post today?
Given the length, let’s get to it …
On January 4th, 2016, Brian D. Nugent, of Feerick, Nugent, and MacCartney PLLC, was appointed by the Town of Monroe as their designated attorney. (Documents from 2016 are missing from the archive of Monroe Town Board Agendas.)
The firm was established in 2005. The same year Mr. Nugent was admitted to the bar in New York on January 12th, 2005.
The firm of Feerick, Nugent, and MacCartney PLLC have made only eight reported campaign contributions according to the New York State Board of Elections between 2019 and 2023.
5 of those contributions were to Judge Tom Walsh’s political organization, Walsh for D.A. That organization was created to support Judge Walsh’s run(s) for Rockland County District Attorney. $4,500 in total was donated by the firm to Mr. Walsh’s campaign.
In 2019, Feerick, Nugent, and MacCartney PLLC made three additional donations. Two to the Rockland County Republican committee, totaling $580, and one to the Town of Monroe Republican Committee for $100. This latter donation was made on October 11th, 2019, while Mr. Nugent was serving as Monroe’s Town Attorney.
There are 15 publicly identifiable campaign contributions made by Brian D. Nugent, according to the New York State Board of elections, dating between 2006 and 2023.
Of those, the contributions directly related to the Town of Monroe that came after Mr. Nugent was appointed Town Attorney include:
-$1,000 to Cardone for Supervisor, the Town of Monroe Supervisor Tony Cardone’s political action organization, on May 11th, 2021.
(Note: Unlike every other campaign contribution made by Mr. Nugent, this is the only one to appear as a donation from both Brian and Tracy Nugent.)
-$100 to Friends of Valerie Bitzer, the Town of Monroe Clerk’s political action organization, on September 29th, 2021.
Most, but not all, of Mr. Nugent and Feerick, Nugent, and MacCartney PLLC’s donations have gone to Republican candidates and Republican political organizations.
There’s nothing wrong with that when examined in isolation.
But …
Nothing Happens In A Vacuum
The $1,000 donation to Cardone for Supervisor is the second largest donation ever made by Mr. Nugent, according to the NYSBOE Public Records Database.
The first was a $1,250 donation to Pat Withers, a former Town of Ramapo Councilman on March 9th, 2017. Withers, it should be noted, has his own sketchy legal history.
During the March 4th, 2024 Town of Monroe Board Meeting, Supervisor Tony Cardone stated:
“We have an attorney here that represents both Democrats, Republicans, Conservatives, and anyone else that is before this board. He is as fair as they get. And to infer that he does not represent Councilwoman Richardson or Councilwoman Bingham is far from the truth.”
Mr. Nugent then said:
“I don’t care what gets said at public comment, but to somehow infer that I’m not representing members of this board without any basis or knowledge or fact, and to come up and make those remarks is … First of all I don’t look at it like Board members as a minority or the majority of the board. I work for the Board. I probably have every single Board member that has ever sat on this board not happy with some advise I gave them, disagreed with the advice I gave them, this board is no different. But I give it. And I’m not here about politics, and I do resent the fact that you [former Councilman Dan Burke] come up, especially as a former Board member that should know better. And if you think its the job of the attorney to stand up for a minority board member and say ‘point of order’ than you just don’t have any knowledge of what the Town attorney does. That’s not the Town Attorney’s job.” [Emphasis Added]
Given the $1,000 donation to Supervisor Cardone’s re-election campaign in 2021, the previous $100 donation to the Town of Monroe Republican Committee made by the firm, the currently sketchy nature of Cardone’s use of liaison assignments to punish Councilwoman Richardson and the Town Attorney’s silence on the matter, I think it’s fair for Monroe residents like Mr. Burke to question Mr. Nugent’s actions.
After all, Mr. Nugent has not donated to any of the more recent Democrats that have served on the Monroe Town Board, including former Councilman Colon, and current Councilwomen Richardson and Bingham.
But he has donated to the Republicans, and the majority of his — and his law firm’s —publicly available campaign contributions heavily favor that party over the Democrats.
One last thing. According to the Consolidated Laws of the State of New York, Chapters 62, Article 3, there’s not much said about what the Town attorney can and can’t do. But it does say this:
(b) The town board of any town which shall not have established the
office of town attorney may employ an attorney to give it such
professional service and advice as it may require, and the town board of
any town which shall not have established the office of town engineer
may employ an engineer to give it such professional service and advice
as it may require. [Emphasis Added]
Just my opinion here, but I think Mr. Nugent’s comments about the job of the town attorney at this board meeting may have been misleading. Because if I’m reading this above law correctly, then you could argue that “professional service and advice” may include standing up for minority Board members at Town Board meetings, and pointing out when other Town Board members are bending the rules in potentially illegal ways.
Fun With New York State Campaign Election Law
In May of 2021, Supervisor Tony Cardone was running unopposed for a second term as Town Supervisor. He would be re-elected in November of 2021 with 2,638 votes recorded.
Also running in 2021 was Dorey Houle. Houle would go on to win a seat on the Monroe Town Board, defeating former Councilman (and Democrat) Rick Colon by 1,937 votes to Colon’s 1,405 votes.
But unlike Supervisor Cardone, Mrs. Houle was not registered with New York State’s Board of Elections until her 2022 run for the New York State Senate.
So, there are questions here about the activity involving the Cardone for Supervisor political organization, since Cardone was running unopposed, and its potential use of funding to support Dorey Houle’s concurrent campaign.
And remember: That $1,000 donation from Town Attorney Brian Nugent came on May 11th, 2021, during both Dorey Houle and Supervisor Cardone’s campaigns for election and re-election respectively.
I’m not sure when the cutoff is to register as a candidate for Town Supervisor, so it’s possible Cardone didn’t know yet that he was running unopposed. That said, it’s fair to ask:
Was that $1,000 contribution used by Supervisor Cardone to support then candidate Dorey Houle’s Town Board campaign?
According to Kathleen R. McGrath, Director of Public Information for the New York State Board of Elections, “If one candidate’s authorized committee was paying for another candidate’s authorized committee’s expenses, those would:
Need to be disclosed by the recipient on disclosure reports as in-kind contributions; and
Be subject to contribution limits”
There are exemptions to this, as Mrs. McGrath explained:
“Campaign finance disclosure reporting is required of candidates (or their authorized committees, as the case may be) running for offices across New York State.
However, I will provide a caveat, describing two circumstances where a candidate is exempt from filing campaign finance disclosure reports. These circumstances, as described in NYS Election Law, are:
A single candidate is not going to raise or spend in excess of $50 for the entire campaign, including personal funds (E.L. 14-124(5)).
For those running for office at a city, town, or village level with a total population under 10,000: A candidate or single candidate authorized committee or ballot proposition committee where the total receipts or expenditures will not exceed $1,000 in the aggregate for the campaign (E.L. 14-124(6)).
In either of those circumstances, the candidate/committee is under no obligation to register with the State Board nor file disclosure reports. If the circumstances that allowed for the exemption are no longer valid, the candidate/committee must register with the State Board and file all required disclosure reports.
While I make no assertion to the circumstances about the candidate you reference, I wanted to point out the exemptions that may have applied to the candidate in the 2021 race.”
According to census data, the Town of Monroe’s population was listed at 21,287 in 2022. So, the second exemption would not apply for Mrs. Houle.
Because there is no data in the NYSBOE Public Reporting Database, it is not known how much Mrs. Houle raised or spent for her Town Council-member campaign.
Mrs. Houle and her husband did contribute; however, to Cardone for Supervisor twice in 2021:
No financial exchange between Cardone for Supervisor and Dorey Houle's campaign is documented. Below you will see the disclosed 2021 Campaign Contributions from Cardone for Supervisor.
In 2022, after Dorey Houle registered with the New York State Board of Elections for her first State Senate run, Cardone for Supervisor is listed as contributing twice to her campaign. First on June 10th, 2022 for $250 and then again on October 12th, 2022, for $500.
Of the $12,736.57 spent by Cardone for Supervisor in 2021, there are at least five items worth investigation by the New York State’s Board of Elections. I’ve filed an official complaint with them asking to investigate.
3 of those expenses involve The Captain’s Table in Monroe, where $2,000 was spent on May 19th, 2021.
(I sure hope some of that wasn’t Attorney Brian Nugent’s $1,000 that he contributed a week earlier.)
A $350 expenditure that doesn’t identify the Captain’s Table by name but says CASH and uses the address of the Captain’s Table on May 17th, 2021, and another $300 expenditure at The Captain’s Table on November 2nd, 2021.
I enjoy the Captain Table’s pulled pork sandwich as much as the next guy, but those are some big expenses for a candidate to make that was running unopposed.
The other two expenditures are $100 to the Greater Monroe Chamber of Commerce on April 23rd, 2021, and for a Chicago-based company, 4imprint, on October 13th, 2021 for $1,949.89. 4imprint is a company that sells customizable products that you can slap a logo on.
I’ll let you know what, if anything, the Board of Elections says if they choose to investigate this further.
Regardless, I think it’s more than fair to suggest to Monroe residents that the Town Attorney’s proclaimed neutrality may not be all it appears to be.