The Chief
October 29, 2004
Razzle Dazzle: The Mayor’s ‘Guy’ Problem
By Richard Steier
The biggest problem with politics, as Mayor Bloomberg continues to learn, is that it forces you to deal with politicians.
An insight into the grief this has caused him was provided indirectly --
and indiscreetly -- by the Mayor’s designee to run the Local Conditional
Release Commission, Daniel Richman.
Mr. Richman, a law professor at Fordham University, was asked during an Oct.
18 City Council hearing what mandate the Bloomberg administration had given
him regarding the agency, which made the controversial decision to give former
State Sen. Guy Velella an early parole just three months into a year’s sentence
on a bribe-taking conviction.
‘Keep It Out of the Papers’
He replied, “To follow the law and keep this thing out of the newspapers.”
He quickly sought to amend the record by saying that restoring the panel
to its previous obscurity was his idea, not anyone at City Hall’s, but it
was easy to believe that he had received just such an instruction.
Mr. Bloomberg, who at the outset of the stirrings over Mr. Velella’s early
release sought to distance himself from the event by saying, among other
things, that he hadn’t even been aware of the commission’s existence, over
the past month saw the story ferment, like some particularly ripe trash that
had been placed outside his doorstep.
And as the odor grew, the Mayor was forced to sharply alter his position
on a story that absolutely wouldn’t stay out of the newspapers.
On Sept. 27, the day Mr. Velella was released, Mr. Bloomberg disclaimed involvement
even after the fact, saying of the conditional release panel, “It’s an independent
board, and they’re going to do what they think is right.”
But 15 days later, after forcing the panel’s chairman to resign, the Mayor said, “I don’t know what possessed them to do it.”
The deposed chairman, Raul Russi, insisted he had pressed to grant Mr. Velella
early release out of pity for him after learning of tearful phone calls the
former Bronx State Senator had made to commission staff from Rikers Island
that led him to believe he might be suicidal.
Mr. Velella was never placed on suicide watch while at Rikers, however. And
there were other elements to the case that suggested that, rather than receiving
a mercy pardon, he had been the beneficiary of a carefully orchestrated if
rather transparent political fix.
For instance, the early release by the panel a month prior to Mr. Velella’s
prison exit of Manuel Gonzalez, one of the other two men jailed with Mr.
Velella after their convictions in a scheme that allowed them to collect
$137,000 in bribes for using Mr. Velella’s influence to gain public works
contracts for various vendors.
Gonzalez the Bag Man
Mr. Gonzalez, a former aide to Ramon Velez -- the one-time baron of South
Bronx patronage that ranged from anti-poverty programs to jobs at Lincoln
Hospital -- had been Mr. Velella’s bag man in the scheme, collecting the
bribes from contractors seeking state business.
There has been no indication that he made tearful phone calls to the commission
that might inspire concerns for his safety. Nor were such calls made, by
all available evidence, by the third man jailed in the shakedown enterprise,
Hector Del Toro, who was released on the same day as Mr. Velella. Nor is
there an indication that any prominent officials wrote the commission advocating
their early release, as luminaries ranging from former Mayor Ed Koch to State
AFL-CIO President Denis Hughes and Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association head
Pat Lynch did on behalf of Mr. Velella.
Yet they joined the Crying Guy as three of just five convicted felons who secured early release this year.
This seemed something more than coincidental given Mr. Russi’s own political
connections. He had served as both City Sheriff and Probation Commissioner
during the mayoral administration of Mr. Bloomberg’s fellow Republican, Rudy
Giuliani.
And when the current Mayor pointed Mr. Russi in the direction of the private
sector as the source of his full-time employment upon taking office in 2002,
fate smiled on Mr. Russi in the form of a job as the $125,000-a-year executive
director of a Bronx non-profit drug treatment agency named BASICS that gets
referrals of recently released inmates from the Department of Probation.
Seven months ago, Mr. Russi was appointed to the city Board of Correction
at the recommendation of Martin Horn, who serves as both Correction and Probation
Commissioner. More recently, as the Daily News reported last week, BASICS
received a $24 million city contract from the Department of Homeless Services.
In another of those isn’t-life-funny coincidences, the contract was awarded
on Sept. 22, the same day that Mr. Velella’s early release was approved by
Mr. Russi’s panel.
This creates a somewhat awkward situation for Mr. Horn, beyond the question
as to whether under any circumstances the Correction Commissioner should
be picking the people who evaluate him. Mr. Russi is part of the body that
serves as the outside watchdog for the jail system, giving him a platform
from which he could either embarrass or protect the Correction Commissioner
who in his other role at Probation has helped steer his firm business.
The Homeless Services contract is now part of the overall probe of Mr. Velella’s
early release that is being conducted by the Department of Investigation
and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
Stain Invisible Here
It seems odd that Mr. Russi, having been deemed by the Mayor to be too tarnished
to head the parole commission, could nonetheless retain his spot on the Board
of Correction.
Then again, that particular post may be a special mayoral sinecure for the
ethically challenged, since its previous occupant was Fred Patrick. Mr. Patrick
had to vacate it because of his conviction for using funds from the Correction
Foundation to pay the bills that he and some jail system inmates ran up in
a phone sex scandal.
He stole more than $130,000 that way; what still hasn’t been explained is
an additional sum of more than $700,000 from the foundation that was never
properly accounted for. The decision by top city officials during the Giuliani
administration to keep Mr. Patrick on as head of the Correction Foundation
even after he left a Correction Department post to become Juvenile Justice
Commissioner is just another of those things that make you go “hmmmm.”
When the Mayor was asked about the justification for letting Mr. Russi stay
on at the Board of Correction, he indicated that his expertise in correction
matters could be an asset to the panel.
Blissful Ignorance?
That begs the question, however, as to why Mr. Russi, who from Mr. Bloomberg’s
description was presumably knowledgeable enough to be aware of the fact that
Correction places some inmates under a suicide watch, did not check with
officials in the jail system about whether they believed Mr. Velella might
harm himself if he remained confined.
Which is one more reason to conclude that political machinations rather than
mercy were at the heart of the early release. The investigation of the release,
according to the Daily News, is focusing on whether any of Mr. Velella’s
Albany friends leaned on Mr. Russi for favorable consideration after their
corrupt former colleague’s first request for parole was denied.
If such persuasion was applied, it would not necessarily have been countered
by concerns on Mr. Russi’s part that an early release would displease the
Mayor. Mr. Bloomberg, after all, had attended a September 2002 fundraiser
meant to help cover Mr. Velella’s legal costs. (A $10,000 personal contribution
Mr. Bloomberg made to the Bronx Republican Party, which Mr. Velella headed
until his conviction, was also used to defray lawyers’ fees, but there is
no reason to believe the Mayor knew the money would be used for that purpose.)
It could be argued that there was nothing inappropriate about the Mayor attending
the fundraiser inasmuch as Mr. Velella had been indicted but not convicted
of any crime at the time. But alongside the presumption of innocence, Mr.
Bloomberg had to be aware that the case against Mr. Velella, which was made
by the Manhattan DA in conjunction with the State Police, was a strong one.
A Strong-Arm Threat
And details of the indictment which made it into the papers four months earlier
made clear that Mr. Velella was accused of seamier stuff than mere favor-trading.
When a state housing official, Judith Calogero, blocked approval of a subsidized
housing project being sought by the Hunts Point Multi-Service Center -- the
power base of Mr. Gonzalez and his old boss, Mr. Velez -- Mr. Velella, according
to the indictment, threatened to arrange for her firing if he became head
of the Senate Housing Committee.
One person with extensive dealings with Mr. Bloomberg, asked how he would
react if another elected official was threatening a member of his staff in
that fashion, replied, “He’s very protective of his employees. If he thinks
you’re taking an unfair shot at one of them, that’s when his back really
goes up.”
Asked whether there wasn’t an inconsistency then in Mr. Bloomberg attending
the fundraiser, this official said it was possible the Mayor hadn’t been
aware of the details of the indictment beyond the basic bribe-taking charges.
And given Mr. Velella’s close relationship with Senate Majority Leader Joe
Bruno, who a couple of months earlier had helped the Mayor push legislation
through giving him control of the city school system, attending the fundraiser
was almost an obligatory observance of political etiquette.
The pull of such customs became evident from comments made last week by United
Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. No one from Mr. Velella’s
camp asked her to write a letter on his behalf, but she said, “I wouldn’t
have written a letter asking that he be released early, but I would’ve written
a ‘character letter,’ given his record as a legislator.”
‘Wrong to Forsake Them’
She might be repelled by the crimes he had committed, she explained, but
over the years Mr. Velella had consistently supported key issues championed
by the UFT. “When people run away from someone who’s helped them before just
because it’s convenient to do so, I think it’s wrong,” Ms. Weingarten said.
“I think the measure of a person is what you do when someone is going down,
not what you do for them when they are going up.”
Mr. Koch has taken both sides of that fence. In early 1986, after Queens
Borough President Donald Manes tried to kill himself, Mr. Koch went from
expressing compassion for his close political ally to accusing him of a betrayal
when it became clear that Mr. Manes had attempted suicide -- he succeeded
on a second try not long afterward -- because he was about to be implicated
in a massive bribery scandal.
This time, Mr. Koch’s letter on Mr. Velella’s behalf stated that he know
nothing about his crimes “other than what I have read in the media. However,
I can state without reservation that in all of my dealings with him, I have
found him to be an honorable person whose word was his bond.”
This seemed a surprisingly broadminded assessment to anyone who remembered
what amounted to a mantra for Mr. Koch: “Public service is the noblest of
professions if done honestly and done well.”
A Political Bargain
The former Mayor undoubtedly was forced to reconsider his old sense of self-righteousness
by the corruption scandal that marred the last of his three terms. He was
not directly implicated, but the two prime players, Mr. Manes and then-Bronx
Democratic County Chairman Stanley Friedman, had been given excessive sway
in his administration, including roles in key appointments. Mr. Koch contended
that was the bargain he accepted in return for their support on the old Board
of Estimate, but the truth was that he valued their backing in his political
campaigns probably more than he did their votes on land-use issues. Along
with other corrupt political leaders like Brooklyn Democratic boss Meade
Esposito and Mr. Velez, Mr. Manes and Mr. Friedman played key roles in his
initial election in 1977 and in limiting the seriousness of his opposition
in two subsequent re-election runs.
Mr. Bloomberg, like Mr. Koch during that 1977 run, positioned himself as
a reformer who was willing to take on the political bosses, as well as the
unions. In truth, he kept on some of the politically wired operatives who
had worked for Rudy Giuliani, who himself made the transition from a reformer
to a patronage dispenser who valued loyalty over competence to a far greater
degree than some prior Mayors who came out of the Democratic clubhouses.
One irony of Mr. Bloomberg’s relationship with Mr. Velella is that the deposed
Republican County Leader was among those who early on accused him of not
giving enough jobs to the party faithful. Among those with ties to the Bronx
State Senator who had ambitions for top positions in the administration was
Tony Serra, whose past political service earned him a rise to the third-ranking
position in the Correction Department during Mr. Giuliani’s tenure despite
a penchant for violating the agency’s rules and regulations.
Unfortunately for Mr. Velella, by the time he entered the jail system himself,
Mr. Serra was not there to ease his transition to life at Rikers. He had
been indicted for misusing department equipment and employees to spruce up
his home and to run a political operation for Governor Pataki that earned
him over $233,000 for a few months’ work in 2002.
Bad Company
The cases of Mr. Serra and Mr. Velella are object lessons for Mr. Bloomberg
in the danger of entangling alliances with politicos for whom honesty isn’t
a prerequisite.
On the other hand, as Mr. Velella’s constituents and several prominent labor
leaders of varying political stripes have attested, he used his clout to
the benefit of their members, even while he was lining his own pockets. If
his ability to deliver made him valuable to them, it also made him someone
for Mr. Bloomberg to cultivate and indulge, at least to the point of attending
his fundraiser while he was under indictment.
That’s a reality of the universe in which the Mayor is now operating. The
flip side of it is that he can be sure his Democratic challenger for re-election
next year will try to wallop him with the Velella pardon for as long as he
or she can punch.
It might be enough to make Mr. Bloomberg wonder why he left the ivory towers
of the business world for a safari in the political jungle.
© 2004 The Chief-Civil Service Leader