Five Fundraisers

New Fundraiser Coordinator Fails his First Test of the Summer

By Dan Rattiner

Frank J. McCarthy, the highly paid Gala Commissioner for the Hamptons, has been fired for scheduling five galas on the same night - June 20.

The five galas he scheduled - it was his job to see to it that there were no conflicts in the scheduling of the various galas - were Live at Club Starlight for the Ross School, the Heart of the Hamptons Ball at the Hayground in Bridgehampton, the Love Heals Gala at Luna Farm for AIDS Research in Sagaponack, the South Fork Natural History Museum Safari Dinner Dance in Bridgehampton and the Group for the East End's 20th Anniversary Gala, Ecofabulous, in Sagaponack. All five took place on Saturday evening beginning at 6:30 p.m. and all ended Saturday evening at 10:30 p.m. All were within five miles of one another.

"This guy is about as competent as the guy from FEMA who ran the operation in New Orleans," said one gala employee, after noting the low attendance and contribution totals at each event.

McCarthy was hired last autumn to head up the new Gala Commission after several gala conflicts were noticed in the Hamptons last summer. He had previously worked as a croupier at the Hit 'n' Win Gambling Casino in Las Vegas, had attended many galas in that community and was the brother-in-law of the wife of the Associate Mayor of the Hamptons.

"He made a really good living as a croupier," the Associate Mayor Bill Havermeyer, said, when asked about his salary at that time. "He worked on salary plus commission. He was really smart and he did not come cheap."

It had been the Associate Mayor's task to find the man for this job. He had hired an executive headhunting company run by his brother, Frank, in Westchester. "It was really expensive to get him," Havermeyer said. "But we believed he would be worth it." He said that his salary had to be in six figures and with a performance bonus if no conflicts occurred.

Havermeyer suggested that since this had only been the first weekend of galas for the summer and he had made just this one mistake, he should be allowed to keep going. But Mayor Bartleberry, after numerous phone calls, overruled Havermeyer and dismissed the Commissioner. He did note that McCarthy had negotiated a good golden parachute. "We will honor our commitments," the Mayor said.

The error came about, according to those in the know, because McCarthy had created and staffed six different parallel departments to deal with gala scheduling requests. These five requests had all come in to five different departments. The Heart of the Hamptons Ball came in as to the Medical Research Gala Department, Club Starlight at the Ross came into the School Gala Department, the South Fork Museum request came in to the Educational Gala Department, the Luna Farm Love Heals Gala came in to a special AIDS Department and the Ecofabulous came into the Environmental Gala Department. Our informant did not know what the sixth department was, but did comment that nobody has yet filed a request with that department, whatever it was. "None of the six know about the others," this informant told us.

Employees of the Gala Commission have been concerned about the possibility that the Suffolk County DA might investigate the financial arrangements of the Commission, as he is now doing with the financial books of the Town of East Hampton.

"The different departments of East Hampton Town, we have been told, had been operating with 40 separate checkbooks," Associate Mayor Havermeyer said when we asked about this. "It is understandable that it would be difficult to keep everything straight. The Gala Commission only uses 12 checkbooks. And all of this was set up at the very beginning, last August, when they were negotiating to get McCarthy. He drove a very tough bargain. And of course, those were very prosperous economic times."

Although there were just 26 major galas to keep track of and keep from having conflicts, the Gala Commission was staffed with more than 50 people, including some who worked in a department tasked with determing whether or not something was actually a gala. If it was not a gala, it would not be under the jurisdiction of the Commission.

"The Dan's Papers Kite Fly is not a gala," Commissioner McCarthy famously announced in February, when this newspaper filled out the seven-page form for a gala date. Our staff cheered him for that at that time. "Hold it anytime you want."

The Dan's Papers Kite Fly will take place on August 9.

McCarthy is expected to clean out his fourth floor office in the newly completed Hamptons Gala Scheduling Building in Southampton on Monday at five, after the staff there holds a good-bye catered luncheon for him at 2 p.m.

"Our luncheon for him is not a gala," said our informant.

Assistant Gala Scheduling Planner Harriet Fromage said that the Commissioner was so important to their organization they wondered how they could continue without him.

"There are only 26 galas to schedule," Southampton Town Supervisor Linda Kabot said. "It's not my business, but how hard can it be to keep them from conflicting? You'd just need one person to do this, it would seem to me."

McCarthy had no comment for this story, as he is currently on vacation in Costa Rica, but in his absence, his personal assistant Bubbles VaVoom did have a comment.

She said that she's been asked by him to file a lawsuit against the Town for breach of contract.

"I think the word was breached," Bubbles said. "You could look it up."

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