David Andreatta

@david_andreatta

Cheryl Dinolfo must want to learn how to come clean the hard way.

That much was clear from the fledgling Monroe County executive's announcement late Thursday that she fired her longtime political aide and confidante, Justin Roj, over his involvement in the I-Square debacle.

Nothing about his firing or Dinolfo's explanation for it came close to getting at the heart of perhaps the most pissant political scandal to ever claim the career of a high-ranking county official.

And I-Square-gate has enough life left to claim more.

Dinolfo said in a prepared statement that she asked Roj, her assistant county executive, to resign after he caused her to unwittingly mislead the public during what resembled an amateur-hour news conference earlier in the week.

The problem in a nutshell was that Dinolfo reported that a representative of the County of Monroe Industrial Development Agency had contacted Roj for advice in handling media inquiries about I-Square, when it was really the other way around.

Roj had reached out to a COMIDA lawyer for help because questions were mounting about the veracity of claims by the county's Republican Party chairman, Bill Reilich, regarding I-Square's non-compliance with a COMIDA tax-break agreement.

Reilich noted that I-Square was behind on its construction schedule — a fact that had never been made public — as a means of attacking Adam Bello, the Democratic supervisor of Irondequoit whom the governor had tapped to fill the county clerk slot vacated by Dinolfo, a Republican.

What Dinolfo neglected to address in her statement announcing Roj’s termination was why Roj cared enough to protect Reilich and how Reilich had learned about I-Square's shortcomings in the first place.

They're the questions at the heart of I-Square-gate, which won't die until Dinolfo confronts them.

The likely answers are obvious to anyone with an inkling of how Monroe County government has operated for a generation — Roj fed the information to Reilich and sought backup for him when Reilich got squeamish about the blowback.

On Friday, Reilich admitted in a statement to "set the record straight" that he got a call from Roj as he was preparing his attack on Bello and that Roj told him that I-Square was behind on its construction timetable.

As assistant county executive, Roj oversaw the county's Economic Development Division, which consists of about seven employees who conduct the everyday business of COMIDA, whose titular head is a politically appointed board of directors.

Culling information on the financial health of COMIDA projects would have been well within Roj's job responsibilities.

Sharing that information with outsiders would not. Indeed, Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley has said she's poking around for any "official misconduct," a misdemeanor crime in which a public servant carries out an act that relates to his office but constitutes an unauthorized exercise of his functions.

It's highly doubtful that Doorley's "informal inquiry" will amount to much, but Roj sharing I-Square information with Reilich is a perfect example of where the line between politics and government in Monroe County blurs.

To elected officials and their patronage hires, like Dinolfo and Roj, political bosses aren’t outsiders. They're family.

The bosses coordinated and funded their winning campaigns. The bosses are to whom most elected officials and their aides owe their careers -— not just their current jobs, but jobs they've had for decades.

Dinolfo and Roj go back to at least 2001, when Roj managed Dinolfo's campaign for County Legislature. When Dinolfo was elected county clerk, Roj became her deputy. Then he followed her into the county executive's office.

Reilich had said he got the information about I-Square from someone connected to COMIDA, and that the documents detailing the information could be found on COMIDA's website. Dinolfo has also suggested the information was online.

The information was never online prior to I-Square-gate blowing up. It also could have been obtained by anyone through an open records request, but that's not how Reilich got it.

Given the closeness of the players involved and their lack of forthrightness, it's not a stretch to imagine a scenario in which Roj fed Reilich with Dinolfo's knowledge.

A few hours before Roj's firing was announced, I asked Roj in an email copied to Dinolfo and her chief spokesman, Bill Napier, to either confirm or deny that Roj was Reilich's source.

No one responded.

That's the hard way to try to make this mess go away.

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