A former top aide to ex-Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone has been slapped with an ethics fine for applying for a high-ranking job at a nonprofit seeking big bucks from a county fund she helped oversee.
Ryan Attard — who served as Bellone’s chief of staff and represented his office on the county’s Opioid Funding Selection Committee — was still on the county’s payroll when she applied for a post with the Family & Children’s Association.
FCA of Garden City had previously garnered $1.8 million in Opioid Funding grants before Attard was on the panel.
It applied for more money by the time she landed her position on the committee, although that application was denied.
She had turned in her resignation to the county in the waning days of Bellone’s administration, then submitted a job application to FCA — although she still had three three weeks left in her county job at the time.
She ended up landing a post as both FCA’s COO and VP. She no longer works there.
The county Ethics Board made it clear in issuing its $2,000 fine against Attard that she crossed the line by not stepping back from her panel’s funding process after applying to FCA.
“In hindsight, Ms. Attard acknowledged a technical violation of the ethics code,” said Attard’s lawyer, Mark Lesko.
FCA spokeswoman Kim Como stressed that Attard was not involved in securing the grants the nonprofit received.
The ethics violation is just the latest black eye for Suffolk’s $105 million opioid fund, which was created from fines against Big Pharma — and has been under fire for months.
Current County Executive Ed Romaine has already ordered a top-to-bottom review, and Comptroller John Kennedy’s blistering audit ripped the committee for operating behind closed doors, using a flawed scoring system, and leaving behind a paper trail so thin it “calls the entire process into question.”
“This was never supposed to be a political slush fund — this money was meant to save lives,” said Paul Sabatino II, former counsel to the county legislature.
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