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Rockland Green’s Legal Fee Budget Exceeds Its Payroll; Outside Counsel Now Involved In Hi Tor Litigation
By Tina Traster
Rockland Green’s legal budget rose exponentially between 2022 and 2023 from $2.2 million to $4 million due to its takeover of animal management in the county. Costs will continue to escalate as the quasi-public authority that runs on taxpayer funds continues its contract dispute with Hi Tor Animal Shelter of Pomona.
The taxpayer-supported quasi-public authority founded to handle solid waste management spent more than $4 million for legal representation in 2023, nearly $1.4 million more than what the Authority had originally budgeted for that year. The budget did not include the salaries for two in-house attorneys and a paralegal.
For 2024, Rockland Green projected $3.1 million in legal fees, but that figure too is likely to climb. Final numbers for 2024 will not be made public until March 2025, but it remains unclear whether the projected $3.1 million will come in on target given that Rockland Green has been locked in a dispute with Hi Tor for 17 months. Since May 2024, Rockland Green spent eight months trying to prosecute Hi Tor Board members individually, and the former Executive Director*, who was not party to the two-year contract Rockland Green and Hi Tor signed in late-December 2022.
In November, Board Members were voluntarily dismissed by Rockland Green’s Attorney Lawrence Garvey. Nonprofit board members are generally immune from being sued individually. Then after months of litigation, the court dismissed all of the claims against Hi Tor’s former Executive Director. In January 2025, Justice Thomas Zugibe of Rockland County Supreme Court calling Rockland Green’s legal effort “entirely without merit” and “wholly unsupported.” While the Executive Director’s motion to dismiss was pending, Rockland Green racked up additional legal fees trying to salvage its case. Until the motion was ruled on, the contract dispute case with Hi Tor case had been stayed.
Now litigation on the contract dispute, the real case, begins with both sides gearing up for a potentially protracted legal battle.
In May 2024, Rockland Green filed a lawsuit against Hi Tor for allegedly breaching its two-year contract. Hi Tor counter-sued for breach of contract, saying Rockland Green terminated its contract without giving the contractually-required 30 days written notice and 30 days to cure perceived ills.
At Rockland Green’s monthly meeting in January 2025, the Authority passed a resolution to hire the Westchester-based West Group law firm for an annual contract. Three attorneys from the firm, including attorney Lee Apotheker, were present at the two-hour meeting in the Town of Clarkstown. The resolution does not state the per-hour rate for West Group, nor does it have a cap on legal fees.
On Feb. 13, Rockland Green and Hi Tor made their first appearance before Justice Zugibe. The brief hearing laid out a discovery schedule. No details of the case were raised before the court. Notably, Garvey, who represents Rockland Green (he was made a full-time employee last November shortly after he lost his bid to remain the Rockland County Republican Chair) was accompanied in court by Attorney Lee Apotheker of the West Group. Apotheker did not “make an appearance” in front of the justice, meaning he did not tell the judge he was there in a formal capacity.
When asked by email why he was present in court, Apotheker said, “West Group Law attended the Court conference on February 13, 2025 in its capacity as longstanding outside counsel to Rockland Green.”
After the hearing, Garvey, Apotheker, and Robert Blanton, Hi Tor’s attorney, spent roughly 20 minutes speaking outside the courtroom.
Apotheker, the attorney, is the brother of Jeremy Apotheker, who joined Rockland Green as its special projects coordinator in April 2021 and was Rockland Green’s point-person for the animal shelter beginning 2023. Jeremy Apotheker likely will be a key witness in the case his brother is serving as outside counsel on.
It remains unclear why two attorneys were necessary to appear for a routine scheduling conference. What it does highlight are taxpayer concerns over Rockland Green’s rising legal budgets. Rockland Green has raised its projection for legal fees in 2025 to $3,185,000 — an increase of $50,000 from 2024’s projection. But if legal fees rise to nearly $4 million in 2024 and 2025, as they did in 2023, it would represent nearly 5 percent of the Authority’s $88 million operating budget. In fact, it would exceed the amount budgeted for salaries, overtime, and seasonal workers for the entire Rockland Green staff for 2025. The only expense larger than legal fees is the approximately $5 million budgeted in 2025 to pay down a portion of Rockland Green’s long-term debt obligations.
The contract dispute with Hi Tor will likely drag on for many months. Sources expect the two sides may ultimately agree to a settlement, rather than go to trial but the court has given both sides until late May to conduct discovery. Rockland Green is claiming damages over a breach of contract. Hi Tor has counterclaimed, claiming Rockland Green owes the nonprofit a hefty sum for breaching its two-year contract as well as the value of all the equipment and property taken when Rockland Green unilaterally shuttered the shelter in September 2023 and locked out Hi Tor’s management and employees.
On Dec. 20, 2022, Rockland Green and Hi Tor signed a two-year contract to provide care to and shelter for animals in the county. The contract said: “In the event the Solid Waste Management Authority sought to terminate the contract due to a purported default by Hi Tor, it was to provide 30 days’ written notice to Hi Tor of the intent to terminate the contact and afford Hi Tor the opportunity to cure any alleged default,” Hi Tor’s countersuit says, using direct language from the written contract.
Rockland Green never issued a notice of intention to terminate the contract between January 1, 2023 through September 21, as required under the terms of the agreement. Without notice or discussion, Rockland Green unilaterally decided the relationship was over because it didn’t approve of how the shelter was being run.
In the meantime, Rockland Green will continue to shell out legal fees to prosecute its case and defend against Hi Tor’s counterclaim, while Hi Tor is represented by its insurance company attorney, which means the dispute is merely costing them time spent on the case, but no legal fees.
Rockland Green’s animal management takeover is turning out to be a far more costly endeavor than anyone could have projected, even beyond escalating legal fees.
When Howard Phillips, Chairman of Rockland Green, came to the Rockland County Legislature in 2022 to include animal management in the Authority’s wheelhouse, he said a new animal shelter could be built for $8 million. In December, the Rockland Green board signed off on a resolution to finance construction with the proceeds of an $18 million bond. Three Rockland Green board members dissented.
To begin, taxpayers will be on the hook to foot the bill to pay principal and interest on the bond over the next thirty years. The bond is a 30-year “Special Obligation” bond with a face value of $18 million that carries a 5.5 percent interest rate for about $9 million of the issue, and 6.25 percent for $9 million that matures in 2049 and 2054. The bonds are rated Aa3 (a high rating with a low credit risk backed by taxpayer dollars).
The debt service will cost about $1.3 million annually through 2054. The total amount of interest on the bond will be $21,419,788. With the repayment of principal and interest, the total amount paid for the bond will be $39,419,788. Nearly $40 million. And that does not include the annual operation of the shelter, which will levy taxpayers $2 million in 2025 and rise steadily every year.
More than 520 people have signed a petition opposing the project, over its high costs and the proposed location of the shelter, which is in a flood zone, sandwiched between a closed landfill that leaches methane and an uncapped construction landfill where a 454,000 square foot truck depot is proposed. It is also next door to the Joint Sewer Authority, which emits bad odors. The deal will not be sealed until four of the five towns agree to an Intermunicipal Government Agreement for the shelter. Orangetown uses the Hudson Valley Humane Society for its animal management, and the Bond Offering Statement says only four Rockland County towns will participate.
The long saga of Rockland Green’s animal management takeover has had many hidden or unanticipated costs, from the $225,000 rental of the warehouse building the Authority later purchased for $3.8 million, to its ongoing litigation with Hi Tor.
In September 2023, Hi Tor board members failed to seek an injunction to stop Rockland Green tossing them from the shelter, nor did they file a lawsuit charging Rockland Green with a breach initially. They say they regret that now. Instead, they hired Kantrowitz, Goldhamer & Graifman to negotiate with Rockland Green for more than six months to sort out its remaining conflicts with Rockland Green. The stalled negotiations, which cost the shelter nearly $10,000 in legal fees, went nowhere. Rockland Green, also racking up legal hours, maintained it was owed about $150,000 in unused salary expenses while Hi Tor at the time said it was out more than $225,000 in unpaid reimbursement and much more in the value of its possessions retained by Rockland Green and later provided to Four Legs Good, the entity chosen by Rockland Green to replace Hi Tor.
Rockland Green is seeking $5 million in damages, but it remains unclear what “damages” the Authority has suffered because they are not laid out in any specifics in the lawsuit.
*The Former Executive Director is affiliated with RCBJ.
