The Unethical Town of Monroe Ethics Board
Meet the Ethics Board members at the center of Monday Night's forthcoming controversy in the Town of Monroe.
At the August 4th, 2025 Town of Monroe Board meeting, you’re going to hear a lot about the Town of Monroe Ethics Board.
As we previously reported, it’s election season, and instead of working on a resolution involving the Village of Monroe’s police presence in the Town, Tony Cardone, Dorey Houle, and Sal Scancarello are instead going to use Town time and money to attack their political opponents: Monroe Town Councilwoman Maureen Richardson, and two candidates for Town Board, Beth Stephens and Luis Rivera.
The fun starts at 7pm EST over at 1465 Orange Turnpike, and you should probably be there.
I will be. (But that’s about an un-related issue to today’s post.)
Since little is known or written about the Town of Monroe Ethics Board, today I wanted to introduce you to the majority of the nine person board.
Meet The Monroe Town Ethics Board
Tom Sullivan is the Chairman of the Monroe Joint Fire District. He is also the Chairman of the Town of Monroe Ethics Board. Despite the latter position, during the recent Primary season where Town Supervisor, Tony Cardone, ran against Convicted Felon Tim Mitts for the Conservative Party Line, Tom Sullivan had a Tony Cardone campaign sign on his lawn.
He was one of only three Monroe residents to have one.
In the past, we’ve received allegations of bullying behavior by Tom Sullivan that could not be substantiated.
For example, last year, The Monroe Gazette was told by members of the Monroe Joint Fire District that Mr. Sullivan penalized a fellow member for writing a letter about their qualifications to be Fire Chief. The reason for the punishment? Letterhead of the fire house in which that member was based was used in this letter. Resulting in that person being barred from the fire house for a number of years.
Mr. Sullivan did not reply to our inquires on the matter, and the person penalized by Mr. Sullivan did not want to comment publicly on the matter either.
In July, members of the Monroe Joint Fire District approached The Monroe Gazette over concerns involving fellow Monroe Joint Fire District Commissioner, Pat Patterson, asking when Mr. Patterson was going to resign from his position, and why Tom Sullivan was, in their words, “covering for Patterson.”
You may recall that James “Pat” Patterson was simultaneously working as both an employee of Peckham Industries, a company that holds contracts with the Town of Monroe, and working as the duly elected Town of Monroe Highway Superintendent. According to Town residents, Mr. James “Pat” Patterson maintained both jobs at the behest of Tony Cardone.
Members of the Monroe Joint Fire District have raised concerns, ignored they claimed by Sullivan, over the fact that Patterson now lives in Montgomery, not Monroe. And stating that Patterson has repeatedly missed meetings of the Joint Fire District. We reached out to Mr. Sullivan over the calls for Mr. Patterson to resign his position, and for clarification concerning how many meetings Mr. Patterson has missed, if any.
This is the Chairman of your Ethics Board.
Then there is Town of Monroe Ethics Board member, Kathleen Aherne. Mrs. Aherne is also the District Secretary for the Monroe Joint Fire District, whether or not she’s participating in the alleged coverup over James Patterson’s absences is unknown. What is known is that Mrs. Ahearne is the second, of three Town residents, to have a Cardone campaign sign on their lawn during the primary.
In the case of Mrs. Kathleen Aherne, co-owner of The Captain’s Table in Monroe, a Tony Cardone fundraiser was also held at The Captain’s Table during Tony Cardone’s 2025 primary race against Tim Mitts.
Pictured Above: The fundraiser flyer for the Cardone Captain’s Table fundraiser, which was hosted by Monroe Town Ethics Board member, Kathleen Aherne. And yes, your eyes do not deceive you, that is Junior Mitts, Elias Cunningham, who’s name and email address appears on the flyer. (We like to call Elias Rosado-Cunningham “Junior Mitts” because his Facebook posts often read like Convicted Felon Tim Mitts’s Facebook posts. The only difference being, Elias turns his spell check on and gets his parent’s permission before posting.)
On the Town Ethics Board website, it states, “No member shall hold office in any political party, serve on a town election campaign committee, or be employed as a lobbyist in a town election campaign.”
Also on the Town of Monroe Ethics Board is Monroe Town Democratic Committee member, Lawrence H Lezak. According to a 2012 Photo-News story about the appointment of Mr. Lezak as an Acting Justice in the Village, Lezak is a retired director of law for the Water Front Commission, New York Harbor, and previously served as Special U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York and New Jersey.
Despite Councilwoman Maureen Richardson being the officially endorsed Monroe Town Democratic Committee candidate, both Bill and Peggy Kazdan, and Cristina Kiesel, set up fake Facebook Pages, utilized a page run by Kiesel — for a fake charity under investigation by the New York State Attorney general’s office — and repeatedly gaslit Monroe Town residents into thinking otherwise. Other members of the Town Democratic Committee, such as Susan Pendergast, participated in this gaslighting by consistently trolling posts created by The Monroe Gazette.
I don’t know if Mr. Lawrence Lezak is part of that crowd.
I do know that Mr. Lezak, in recordings of Town Democratic Committee meetings shared with The Monroe Gazette, certainly gives the impression of having a personal beef with Monroe Town Councilwoman, Maureen Richardson. His campaign contributions support that hypothesis.
Lezak made campaign contributions to Richardson’s Democratic Primary challenger, David Rabbits, on 5/9, 5/22, and 5/30 of this year, totaling $450.
Mr. Lezak has only made, according to the New York State Board of Elections, six campaign contributions in his entire life.
All but one came between May and early July of this year.
Aside from one $250 donation on June 2nd, 2025 to David Rabbitt’s running mate, Weirdo Paul Phelan, the other beneficiary of Mr. Lezak’s campaign contributions was State Senator James G. Skoufis.
A man who was accused of harassing Monroe Town Councilwoman Maureen Richardson, and when his advances were rejected, set up an Independent Expenditure Committee known as Protect Monroe-Woodbury to attack Mrs. Richardson.
Mr. Skoufis spent about $3,000 to attack Richardson according to records found within Facebook’s Advertising Library. Skoufis tried to defame Mrs. Richardson by taking out of context a voice mail she left for him where Richardson told Skoufis to stop harassing her. (As of this writing, the website for Protect Monroe-Woodbury is no longer active, but the voice mail can still be found in the Advertising Library.)
Pictured Above: Because Southern Orange County elected officials, and their friends, like to gaslight the public, we thought it was important to share proof of the ad’s existence and how much State Senator Skoufis spent attacking a woman he was credibly accused of harassing.
Unfortunately, when you only have one locally published newspaper, and few other media outlets, what happens is everyone figures they can just compulsively lie to you on Facebook.
And usually, they’re right. Just ask Woodbury Mayoral candidate, Brandon Calore.
There are two other Ethics Board members I want to highlight before we wrap up.
There is former Monroe Village Mayor, Joseph Mancuso, who as we reported previously, is getting ready to run for the Monroe Village Board next year, with Tony Cardone’s support, alongside Alex Melchorrie and Nancy Peifer. (You should know, The Monroe Gazette did put in a FOIL request to find out how much Alex Melchorrie is getting paid by the Town to do apparently very little in terms of “negotiating” with the Village of Monroe over the expansion of the Village Police to cover the Town. The Town of Monroe, as it is want to do with FOIL requests, is going to stretch out the time to respond to this inquiry as long as it can. We are tentatively supposed to hear back from them by the end of August.)
The only other Ethics Board member worth flagging today is Michael McGinn, who ran with Tony Cardone with the support of United Monroe for the Town Board back in 2013. And yes, that is Weirdo Paul Phelan — also a former Ethics Board member — standing behind Mike McGinn with a Tony Cardone campaign sign.
In the race to replace Mike McGinn in the Fall of 2023, Bill “Don’t Talk About My DWI” Kazdan narrowly lost to current Republican Re-Tread, Steve Thau, who is again running for the Town Board this Fall.
Mr. Thau is the third Monroe resident with a Tony Cardone campaign sign on his lawn during the primary.
The reason for the defeat, as cited by people who worked on Mr. Kazdan’s campaign, was not because he deceived the Town of Monroe Democratic Committee over his DWI arrest.
But because Kazdan just didn’t put any effort into the campaign, expecting that Monroe Town Councilwoman Maureen Richardson would do all the work. Which is why I need to stop right here and remind Monroe residents: If you don’t like anything that Tony Cardone has done over the last two years, Bill Kazdan specifically is to blame.
Had Kazdan won, Mary Bingham, Maureen Richardson, and Bill Kazdan would have held a 3-2 Majority on the Town Board. So while it’s funny to call Tony Cardone “Tax Hike Tony,” the fiscal irresponsibility demonstrated by both Dorey Houle and Tony Cardone — which led to the near 11% tax increase in 2025 — would not have occurred with Kazdan-Bingham-Richardson in the majority.
(The reason for the tax increase is because Houle-Scancarello-Cardone have been using money from the Town’s reserves to paper over their documented fiscal mismanagement, and they can no longer get away with doing so.)
Just something to remember the next time either of the Kazdans pop into your Facebook feed to bad mouth Councilwoman Richardson.
After leaving the Monroe Town Board, and despite ethical concerns being raised over the nature of Mike McGinn’s close relationship with Tony Cardone, Cardone, Dorey Houle, and Sal Scancarello appointed Mike McGinn to the Town of Monroe Ethics Board.
That’s The Majority Of The Monroe Town Ethics Board
So, of the 9 members of the Town of Monroe Ethics Board, four of them are either Cardone campaign boosters or associates, and the other — Lawrence H. Lezak — actively supported the candidacy of people running against Monroe Town Councilwoman Maureen Richardson, Luis Rivera, and Beth Stephens.
We think context matters, because you’re going to be presented with a circus on Monday, wherein a Town Ethics Board — that has never ruled against Tony Cardone — is going to loudly complain to all who listen about how ethical they are, and how they try to not be political.
Everything I just documented for you says otherwise.
I don't know which is greater: my admiration for your work or my worry over your well-being. What a sorry picture of an ethics committee---or, better said, a non-ethics, un-ethical, contra-ethics committee.