Kaminsky press conference interrupted by McGrath operative

Assemblyman Todd Kaminsky had a press conference about a bill that he was sponsoring in the Assembly interrupted by an operative from Christopher McGrath’s campaign.

Kaminsky, a Democrat from Long Beach, was holding a press conference outside of the office of former Senator Dean Skelos, and was joined by Assembly Democrats Chuck Levine and Michaelle Solages, to announce a bill he was putting forward that would require counties and other municipalities to create a publicly accessible database of their contracts to increase oversight.

“For too long, our contracting process throughout all the municipalities in our state has been shrouded in darkness,” Kaminsky said. “Today, we come together to introduce legislation that will shine a light: a light on what is happening with our precious taxpayer money.”

The bill that Kaminsky is sponsoring is the Assembly companion to a bill that Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria) put forward in the Senate. It would require that counties and municipalities to create an electronic database of all companies and individuals that apply for government contracts. The database would show who is submitting bids for contracts, show if the company has any bad records, if it has had disciplinary action brought against it and who the company has hired as lobbyists.

“[The bill] would have stopped scandals such as we saw with AbTech, which occurred right here,” Kaminsky said as he stood in front of Skelos’s office. Skelos and his son, Adam, were found guilty in December of corruption. One of the charges against them involved AbTech, a company from Arizona that Adam helped to secure a contract with Nassau County.

Levine and Solages joined Kaminksy to talk about how needed they felt the bill was.

“This not only deals with one assembly district or one senate district,” Solages said. “This is not even an issue regarding taxpayer dollars. This is about giving access to different communities. I have personally met with people who have tried to get access to contracts, especially women and minority businesses, or veterans, who want to get access to contracts but couldn’t, because they were not in ‘the loop.’”

But the conference was interrupted by O’Brien Murray, an operative from Chris McGrath’s campaign. Murray criticized Kaminsky for using taxpayer money to hold a press conference outside of his district.

“The reason I came here this morning is because Todd Kaminsky is a typical politician,” Murray said. “What he does is he speaks his words and he has no follow-through.”

Murray handed out a letter to everyone at the conference asking Lisa Bova Hiatt, the acting executive director of the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery, to follow-through on a state law that requires the office to report the number of disaster assistance claims. It was a law that was put forward by Kaminsky, his office said.

“Only someone working for the Skelos machine would attempt to interrupt a press conference about cleaning up Skelos's corruption,” said Evan Thies, a representative for Kaminsky’s campaign. “Long Islanders are looking for serious plans to clean up government and protect their tax dollars, like Assemblyman Kaminsky presented today — not hecklers trying to preserve a corrupt status quo.”