Nine months of town hall business re-told through attorney invoices

Town of Greenport, NY, October 19 — I recently obtained a copy of all itemized invoices from Greenport's labor attorney, Elena DeFio Kean, to the town via a FOIL request, covering nine months, from December 2025 to August 2026. While these invoices never tell a complete story and do not list specific legal advice rendered, they nonetheless provide interesting insight into what was going on behind closed doors and can easily be cross-referenced to events happening around the same time.

A lot of items on these invoices are exactly what you would expect: negotiations with unions, hammering out a work contract for a town employee, etc. But beyond those, some surprises are lurking, which I intend to focus on exclusively here.

The J.D. situation

Even before the new town board was sworn in, Supervisor Kathy Eldridge appeared to be concerned about a "J.D. situation" which required legal advice.

While I can't know that for sure, it's highly likely that J.D. stands for Jim Dolan, who had previously filed a FOIL request for code enforcement officer Albert Eldridge's job application to Greenport after Dolan became aware that Eldridge had his second NY State driver's license revoked.

If J.D. is indeed referring to him, Dolan will be pleased to know that he appears to live rent-free in Kathy Eldridge's head.

The termination of confidential secretary Debbie Mausolf

Numerous interactions with the labor attorney were dedicated to Debbie Mausolf and her eventual firing on May 19. What catches the eye is that months earlier, in January, Kathy had already begun laying the groundwork:

That means that four and a half months before Debbie was eventually let go, Supervisor Eldridge was inquiring if she had the legal authority to fire Debbie. At the first meeting after the termination, Town Attorney Rob Fitzsimmons publicly stated that the confidential secretary "serves at the pleasure of the Supervisor", when both Dolan as well as an irate public were pressing Eldridge to provide a reason.

No reason was presented to the rest of the town board until July and I had wondered in a previous article if that firing wasn't ultimately just retaliatory. Given that Kathy inquired about the legality in January but waited until May, this is a strong indication that Debbie was not fired for cause. Had Debbie truly done something wrong, she would have been fired the moment Kathy's January question was answered.

When it finally happened on May 19, the week leading up to it was spent refining the termination letter. It was fully drafted by the attorney, with no involvement from Kathy other than her signature:

Albert Eldridge's harassment complaint

By June, driver's license-bereft code enforcement officer Al Eldridge could no longer take Jim Dolan asking questions about the state of Albert's driving record and filed a formal harassment complaint against Dolan. Something that should have been promptly dismissed as frivolous was treated with the utmost urgency as the following invoice items show:

Deputy Supervisor Clayton Clark was apparently running point on this very important issue which, as far as I am aware, is still ongoing. I am curious when, or if, the public will ever get to see the outcome of this investigation.

Albert Eldridge overpayment gets discussed

On August 20, I published an article which reported on Albert getting paid $30/hr in the months of January and February of 2025, rather than the $27/hr that was approved by the town board. Then, an email was reviewed:

The date on this invoice item is in all likelihood wrong as that email went out the day before, on August 21. It is a pretty remarkable email for a few reasons:

This email alleges that a FOIL request had prompted Supervisor Eldridge to review the payroll data of her son Albert as a result of which she discovered the payment discrepancy. Guy Apicella, ever the cheerleader, was full of praise for Kathy's industry in his response.

I received the response to my FOIL of Albert's payroll data, referenced in the first sentence of the above email, on August 19. Contained in that response, however, was a notification that confidential secretary Lisa Pierro had sent to the acting town clerk Clarine Kyte on August 18. I published my article on August 20, a day before Kathy's email to the department heads and town board members went out.

The timing of the various documents makes it at least possible that Kathy, or more likely her confidential secretary, discovered the overpayment herself but the look of this email coming out after my article is still bad.

The most interesting part of this email though is Kathy pointing out—not once but twice—that this was the bookkeeper's fault. Very convenient for Kathy given that the bookkeeper at the time was none other than Debbie Mausolf and here it appears that Kathy was still looking for a reason why she fired Debbie.

Kathy is contradicting herself. Earlier this year, she penned an email to the Highway Department chief and the rest of the town board, pounding her chest: "First, it is important to note that as the Chief Financial Officer for the Town I am responsible to review information when I am signing the checks."

Thus, Kathy is either Chief Financial Officer or the victim of the vicious confidential secretary—whichever is more useful in the moment.

Intoxicated Greenport PD officer incident

A good chunk of the August invoices revolved around the August 2 incident when Stephanie Van Alstyne, then part-time officer of the Greenport Police Department, crashed a patrol car with a blood alcohol content of 0.15.

The Register Star article from August 7 stated that Van Alstyne had voluntarily resigned after the accident but the attorney invoices indicate that her fate was sealed anyway—Supervisor Eldridge, quite reasonably, was seeking to terminate the employment of Van Alstyne: