Cover photo: Former Suffolk County Legislator Sarah Anker (D-Mt. Sinai) (Credit – Suffolk County Legislature)
The Suffolk County Legislature has begun the process of investigating a former colleague.
Former Legislator Sarah Anker (D-Mt. Sinai), who represented the Sixth District from 2012 until January of this year, is alleged to have destroyed and/or removed physical files from the district office and electronic or digital files from County hardware.
The announcement of the investigation comes just about a month until Election Day. Anker is facing Senator Anthony Palumbo (R-New Suffolk) in a bid to deny him a third term.
At last week’s general meeting of the Legislature, a vote was passed unanimously to investigate the state in which Anker handed her office to her successor, Legislator Chad Lennon (C-Rocky Point).
The Messenger sat down with Legislator Lennon to discuss the state of the office as he inherited it.
“When we walked into the office, the same office that Legislator Anker had occupied in Mount Sinai, there were maybe three files in total, but the filing cabinets were pretty much empty,” said Lennon. “There was no information about anything that had been done previously. Some constituents had contacted the office and we started working on the omnibus grants from the hotel/motel tax. We intended to compile the civic groups and organizations that were to receive money and in what amounts, but there were no physical copies of anything. We start looking and there’s nothing digitally. We get share drive access, but there’s no information in it.”
Lennon says that information about any constituent and their history was nowhere to be found in the office.
“There might have been a constituent concern that was closed a year ago, but we have no record of that. We had no points of contact in the district of anyone who worked with the previous Legislator. We were pretty much starting from scratch,” said Lennon.
He adds that his office initially did not bring up the absence of records because it was simply “odd” and that he and his team were busy working to continue the progress of his predecessor.
“The Light Bulb Goes Off”
Lennon says that it first occurred to his office that the conspicuous lack of information might have been intentional about two months in.
“We thought that the records were put someplace; we were trying to give our predecessor and her staff the benefit of the doubt,” Lennon told The Messenger. “The only thing I had was a post-it note that said ‘good luck’ on my keyboard, signed by Sarah Anker. At first, I thought it was just a nice gesture, but it later clicked what that might have meant.”
Lennon says that he and his staff began receiving emails forwarded to his office from Dorothy Cavalier and Jennifer Satchell, two staff members of the Anker office. Cavalier served as Anker’s chief of staff, whom Lennon had defeated for the open seat in the 2023 elections. Along with Anker, Cavalier and Satchell had taken jobs at the Suffolk County Board of Elections.
“I find it very hard to believe that Sarah Anker did not receive one email to her that was supposed to be for the incumbent Legislator,” said Lennon. “It is my understanding that they still have the same email addresses from when they were in office.”
Lennon says that emails of constituent concerns had been forwarded to his staff from Cavalier and Satchell, which he says begs the question of just how much contact they have with former constituents.
“We also had voicemails dating back to September 2023 that were not answered. We started going through the voicemails, calling people back, and telling them that there is a new Legislator,” said Lennon. “Then we start seeing that the mail is being thrown underneath the door. We were curious as to why they didn’t just knock. My staff told the postal workers that they were able to come into the office. They told us that nobody had been in the office for months. The impression we got was that there was about two or three months of nobody working in that office.”
Lennon says that he and his team had heard from other people in the building that there hadn’t been anyone in that office for a while.
Summer
By summer, Legislator Lennon had been in office for six months and was still making inroads in the community.
“Rails to Trails is a big part of my district; so many people are concerned about it and want to take care of it. I wanted to establish an advisory committee to oversee its maintenance and get everyone on the same page,” said Lennon. “We met with the Department of Public Works (DPW) to find that that had already been done. Sarah Anker already had stewards for Rails to Trails, but we had no record of that.”
Lennon also recounts seeing Anker at a Shoreham Civic Association meeting, where he said that his office was looking for stewards for the Rails to Trails. He says that Anker tried telling his chief of staff that the records regarding the Rails to Trails stewardship program were in specific parts of the office.
“We have pictures of empty file cabinets. We went through cabinets, desks, nothing. The closets were a mess, but no records,” said Lennon.
Lennon has prior legislative aide experience to Congressman Nick LaLota (R, NY-01) and Senator Anthony Palumbo (R-New Suffolk). He says the cleaned out office is anomalous to previous governmental conditions under which he has worked.
“I heard that this had happened to Legislator Anthony Piccirillo (R-Holtsville) when he took office in 2019. He then submitted a bill to make cleaning out an office and destroying or otherwise moving files and information an offense. Lennon says he is working to further strengthen that law.
A Broken “Covenant”
“It was my understanding that there was a covenant between the Republicans and Democrats. Forget about what letter is next to my name,” said Lennon. “We believe this was done intentionally to set me up to fail. She thought so much of her constituents that she threw out their information and now has the audacity to run for State Senate. I don’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat. Whoever does something like this is not qualified to represent anyone ever again. What this did is it failed the people we’re supposed to represent and only enhances peoples’ opinions that politicians are in it for themselves.”
Lennon says that the three files found in the office were not open cases. They contacted the constituents and the cases required no additional follow-up.
“We tried reaching out to the people in our district. We would cold call civic groups and community organizations. Most were responsive, but some weren’t. There were some chambers who were teetering on being able to function, so we did a civic roundtable at the Longwood Public Library,” said Lennon.
From the closets, Lennon says bags of naloxone, otherwise known as Narcan, were recovered, as well as office supplies and random fliers for different organizations.
Lennon cannot confirm what information might have been on the files that are currently not recoverable.
“If you throw files with personal information in the dumpster, for instance, then everyone’s personal information is now in a dumpster who knows who gets is,” says Lennon, painting a picture of what kinds of privacy breaches could entail.
Lennon also says that he did not want to leave the Mount Sinai office, but that the decision to move came down to an issue with the landlord, not the state of the office left behind by Legislator Anker. The new Sixth District office is located 745 Route 25A, Suite D, in Rocky Point.
“I believe this was done to set me up for failure. Whether it was personal or political, I can’t speak to that,” said Lennon. “The fact that someone would do this demonstrates their value of the people whom they represented. Our job is to make peoples’ lives better.”
Lennon closed with what an individual said to him on the matter.
“Someone said to me, ‘you’re the victim.’ I’m not the victim, the constituents are. I represent the people; they’re the ones who are harmed in this, not me,” said Lennon.
The Legislature is scheduled to issue subpoena powers for this investigation on Friday.