Silver Bullock

Is Tony Bullock the most powerful man in the Hamptons?

Tony Bullock thumbs through his phone messages with a groan. "Peter Kalikow . . . the local veterinarian . . . Harry Macklowe . . . the crane operator ..."

What do two of New York's most notorious realestate barons want of the boyish East Hampton town supervisor? The same things his other constituents want: favors, permits, variances, and blessings. From Wainscott clear east to Montauk Point, Bullock, 36, wields the power to enforce a byzantine zoning code as strict as they come, and he does it with a song in his heart. Kalikow has sweated more than four years to win a permit from Bullock's board for his outsize dock; he's had to scale back his plans and promise to replant any displaced clams.

Macklowe may sell the town a wetland parcel that he probably can't develop anyway. "He's trying to give us the opportunity of buying it,"

Bullock says carefully, "before he puts it on the market."

For a onetime carpenter, Bullock says no to a lot of wellknown citizens. So why is he so often -accused of favoring them? Perhaps because he gets personally involved. After much scrutiny of his plans to put a pool on his Montauk property, Paul Simon found Bullock a good enough guy to invite to a party there after a Simon concert by the dunes. Casually, Bullock picked up a guitar and sat in with a couple of jazz players. "Hey," said Simon, "you can actually play." Two summers ago, Billy Joel was arrested on the Indian Wells beach for his symbolic breaking of a new state ban on the haul-seine nets traditionally used by the island's baymen. There was Bullock, getting arrested with him. "I thought he showed tremendous spirit and courage," says Joel. "And besides, he's a really good guitar player." Last summer, not far down the beach, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger held their covert wedding. Bullock made the discreet arrangements for the license and presiding judge. "He's a friend," says Baldwin, "but more importantly, he's a political ally. I'm a staunch, committed Democrat, and he's the head of Democratic politics out there. So when I'm called upon to work for him, I do."

Bullock takes pride in returning every call he gets, and says that only one in a hundred comes from a celebrity. There's no doubt he's a bit of a hotdogger. But why not? "The thing to remember about Tony," says his mentor and predecessor, Judith Hope, "is that he could be on Wall Street earning a fat six-figure salary like all his former classmates." Instead, graduating cum laude from Yale, Bullock found himself drawn into the politics of his family's longtime summer place when a Republican government in power for 50 years had the effrontery to abolish the planning department, opening East Hampton's last fields, woods, and wetlands to wholesale development. In his six years as supervisor, he has raised some $8 million for land protection, built ball fields and youth centers and housing for the elderly, and still cut taxes. What his detractors hate most about him is that he's good.

But not always victorious. Recently, Bullock and the town took big-league New York lawyer Michael Kennedy to court, claiming that Kennedy did not have the zoning board's permission to build a large rock revetment beside his oceanfront house to halt beach erosion. Kennedy did, however, have two other permits. "We went to court three times, and three judges sided with him." Bullock shakes his head in disgust. "His pitch was 'I'm just a guy trying to save my house' and the judges bought it."

Happily, East Hampton's most extravagant new homeowner has proved no trouble at all. When Ron Perelman bought the famous Creeks estate for $12 million last year around Memorial Day and dispatched scores of workmen to spruce it up by the Fourth of July, Bullock never even set foot on the property. "Nope. Had nothing to do with it. Because he didn't need any variances!" Bullock sighs. "I love it when that happens."

MICHAEL SHNAYERSON