TO ALL READERS: The link to the documents published in this statement contains 399 pages
Today, the Town Attorney’s office released certain internal memoranda and other documents reviewed in connection with its ongoing investigation into the Town’s suspended DEFM Director, Michael Gianatasio. The released documents include a detailed report from Siemens Industry, Inc. related to its contracted work with the Town of Clarkstown, along with an independent review by the Town Comptroller verifying both the Siemens report and the accuracy of the payments made by the Town for the work provided. The Town’s independent investigation has been conducted by the law firm, Hodges, Walsh & Burke.
In addition, each document identified and developed has been reviewed by the Town Attorney’s office and found to be in full compliance with the contract between Siemens and the Town of Clarkstown and each represented a proper issuance of payment(s) within the contract’s requirements. The payments from all previous years were also subject to annual independent audit review by the Town’s outside auditors with no issues found.
To be clear, Mr. Giantasio is not a whistleblower. He is a liar.
The released documents demonstrate that Mr. Giantasio personally approved all payments and AIA approvals to Siemens across 17 different payment vouchers. Directly disproving his false and manufactured whistleblower claims, Mr. Giantasio solely and directly approved via wet ink signature all payment vouchers. Notably, the documents prove he approved voucher #10 last year for the playground project, which his deputy further confirmed the exact same amount in a follow up email to the Town Comptroller’s office.
Moreover, documents show that the $680,320 paid for labor under the contract, which Mr. Giantasio has repeatedly misrepresented to justify his false claims, exactly matches the Town’s flat fee agreement for this project and includes many expenses, such as procurement, planning, overhead design/project development, project construction management, commissioning and safety, hourly labor costs, subcontractor costs, insurance bonding and project contingencies. By the express terms of the agreement, cerified payrolls was only one small component of the project’s total cost. As included in today’s released documents, email correspondence to Mr. Giantasio and his deputy show he was directly informed of the many aspects of the charges included in the “labor” billing.
Further, it is important to note that the playground project was significantly reduced in scope from the original location and design in the agreement, securing the town a $1.5M credit from the original plan. Notwithstanding Mr. Giantasio’s attempt to distract from his own malfeasance, this shows prudent planning and foresight by Town leadership. Mr. Giantasio’s false claims regarding the boiler project similarly ignore the terms of the master contract between the parties and the total cost for all work performed by Siemens under that agreement.
The Town’s records incontrovertibly debunk each of the false claims and statements made by Mr. Gianatasio and expose his efforts to manufacture false claims and divert attention from his own misconduct and Ethics Code violations. We look forward to the completion of the investigation.
The Town will forward the documents released today to the Town Ethics Board and any other entities actively investigating Mr. Giantasio.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ic2m0ZciDVzLlhadyKT6bO7qp77KWKKi/view?usp=sharing
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