Aquinnah select board member Gary Haley said he was attempting to help the town, not make money, when he did electrical conduit at Aquinnah Circle.
At a Massachusetts Ethics Commission hearing that began on Monday, Haley was one of several witnesses to testify. The hearing is scheduled to continue on Tuesday with more witnesses called.
In May of 2021, the ethics commission accused Haley, a master electrician, of allegedly overbilling the town of Aquinnah by more than $4,000 for electrical conduit work in 2018 at Aquinnah Circle. The commission also alleged that Haley approved the payment to himself and two assistants, which was placed in the town’s expense warrant.
Commissioner Eron Hackshaw facilitated Monday’s hearing.
When the commission last met in October, the parties agreed to move the case to mediation. However, attorneys Candies Pruitt, staff counsel for the commission’s enforcement division, and Richard Gross, representing Haley, returned before the commission to conduct cross-examination sessions with sequestered witnesses. The witnesses called in to Boston on Monday were all, except for Comcast employee James Baronas, Aquinnah officials. Among them, select board chair Juli Vanderhoop, Aquinnah Police Chief Randhi Belain, officer Steven Mathias, highway superintendent Jay Smalley, town accountant Emily Day, and town administrator Jeffrey Madison. Haley was also called to testify.
Two witnesses, who were scheduled to testify on Monday, were not present due to medical and funeral reasons. Their testimonies were scheduled to take place on Tuesday, the second day of the hearings.
Pruitt and Gross took turns asking their series of questions, including their backgrounds and relationship with the town or the project. The attorneys asked questions about the project and the people allegedly involved, such as asking members of the Aquinnah Police Department what they saw during their patrols at Aquinnah Circle at the time the project was being done, safety concerns related to the project to Baronas and Smalley, and procedures of approving paperwork to Day.
The hearing also became an opportunity for Haley to tell his version of what happened.
Haley said he offered to do the work on a volunteer basis “part-time at the end of the day” to Madison because it was an “emergency” and “had to be done.”
“I think the town of Aquinnah is the greatest town in the world and I’ll help them out in any way that I possibly can. Not only myself but other people in town,” Haley said. He said it was not uncommon for Aquinnah residents to offer volunteer services to the town.
Haley also said he was using his own machines and needed to pull in two assistants from a previous project on Lighthouse Road.
“There was no help in town, nobody wanted to work,” Haley said. The work was also done around late spring, so schools were not out yet. Hiring students or summer help was out. Haley told the panel he paid the two assistants with cash. “I told them from the beginning that’s what the deal was and the only way I can get stuff done in Aquinnah when need be is to pay by cash.”
The assistants were collectively paid a total of $7,800.
Because of how long the project took, coordination with Comcast and Verizon, a local contractor who Haley claimed was “nasty” to work with, among other reasons, Haley said he felt he needed to get paid. Haley said he brought the invoice to Madison at town hall, who was “surprised to see it.”
“I told Jeffrey [Madison] that because of the situation of what happened there and how the job specs were changed … because of the amount of time that it took, I had to get some sort of payment also, and handed them the invoice,” Haley said. He mentioned “hand-shoveling the sand” and paying the assistants. Initially, Haley had estimated the work would cost between $2,000 and $3,000 to complete.
However, Haley said he was not pursuing a contract. Haley told the panel he expected this payment request would show up in the annual town meeting warrant as an article, which he would have had to explain to voters. Had the voters voted no, he would have “had to eat it” as a loss. Instead, Haley said a check for $17,000 showed up in his mailbox.
“It came so fast. Nobody mentioned anything to me about it and I didn’t know where the money came from,” Haley said, claiming he was not aware his invoice for the conduit job was in the town expense warrant. He would have been a part of this warrant’s approval process as a select board member.
When questioned by Pruitt, Haley held his position that he ended up saving Aquinnah money.
The commission adjourned the meeting after the attorneys finished asking Haley questions. The hearings will continue on Tuesday. During the hearing, Gross said he planned to file a motion to dismiss the case.
The ethics commission is empowered to impose up to $10,000 in fines for conflict of interest violations.
