David Andreatta

@david_andreatta

The dumbest scandal in Monroe County government history claimed its most prominent victim yet on Friday and potentially opened a rift between the county's Republican and Conservative parties.

Theresa Mazzullo, chairwoman of the County of Monroe Industrial Development Agency, resigned effective immediately, citing the controversy over the I-Square development in Irondequoit.

In doing so, Mazzullo called on the administration of County Executive Cheryl Dinolfo and "everyone else in this process" except herself to clear the air on the matter and restore public confidence in COMIDA (assuming there was confidence to restore).

Her statement amounted to a flipping of the bird by Mazzullo, a driving force in the Monroe County Conservative Party, on whose endorsement the county Republican Party has counted for years to aid its candidates, including Dinolfo.

Mazzullo is vice chairwoman of the Conservative Party. Her husband, Don Mazzullo, is the executive vice chairman. The party generally garners 13,000 votes countywide on its ballot line.

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► 3 COMIDA board members have resigned this week

Conservative Party Chairman Tom Cook said it wasn't immediately clear what effect Mazzullo's resignation would have on his party's alliance with local Republicans, and that he hadn't decided "what we're going to do."

Potential action could include issuing a public statement and withholding endorsements from Republicans, he said.

"We've had a good relationship with (Monroe County Republican Party Chairman Bill) Reilich and Cheryl, to some extent," Cook said. "But we're not wimpy people, and we're not afraid of anybody."

"You know, I recently saw Dirty Dancing," Cook added, "and a key line is, 'Nobody puts Baby in the corner,' and nobody's going to put Theresa Mazzullo in the corner."

He paused, then asked: "That is a line isn't it, 'Nobody puts Baby in the corner?'"

Actually the line was, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner," but Cook's point was clear:By virtue of Dinolfo’s inaction in this debacle, Mazzullo was made to look bad and was, thus, cornered.

Most of what transpired over the course of the I-Square debacle has become fairly clear.

► Andreatta: COMIDA 'phonies' clam up

I-Square not in default, COMIDA says

But none of the events has been acknowledged or condemned by Dinolfo, and therein lies the rub for the public at large, and now Mazzullo, two other COMIDA board members who resigned this week in protest, and the Conservative Party.

"I'm disappointed that the burden of all this has fallen on the COMIDA board," Mazzullo said in an interview.

"People were coming to the board as if we'd done something, which we had not," Mazzullo added. "I felt obligated to stand up and finally say, 'Look, we need to just set the record straight.'"

All the reportage suggests that the COMIDA board — seven unpaid political appointees with deep ties in the business community — had nothing to do with initiating I-Square-gate.

Although, all of the board members are guilty of perpetuating the controversy by failing to be more upfront about it. Mazzullo, for instance, let the public believe for a month that the board was looking into what occurred, when it was really doing nothing.

What happened was that Assistant County Executive Justin Roj, a longtime political aide to Dinolfo, learned honestly of potentially damaging information about I-Square's tax break deal approved by COMIDA.

Andreatta: COMIDA blew off I-Square probe

Roj came about this information — that I-Square appeared to be behind on its construction schedule — through the course of his job overseeing the county's Economic Development Division, whose employees put together the deals that go before the COMIDA board for approval.

He then shared the information with Monroe County Republican Chairman Bill Reilich so Reilich could use it in a political attack on Democratic County Clerk Adam Bello. Whether Roj did that independently or was pressured to do so is unclear.

Dinolfo eventually fired Roj, but never stated why. She only said that she had been made to misinform the public that Roj had told Mazzullo to contact COMIDA's lawyer to handle media inquiries about Reilich’s attack, when in fact it was Roj who had contacted the lawyer.

See what I mean by the dumbest scandal in county government history?

All it would have taken for Dinolfo to mend this mess early on would have been for her to concede that Roj was wrong to have fed Reilich the I-Square information and to denounce its use in a political hatchet job.

Of course, Dinolfo could have only done that if Roj had acted alone and not under her direction, and if she were prepared to implicate her political benefactor in Reilich.

Now who’s in a corner?

David Andreatta is a Democrat and Chronicle columnist. He can be reached at dandreatta@gannett.com.