By Henry J. Stern
October 31, 2006
A week from today New Yorkers will elect a new governor and a new attorney
general, filling the vacancy created when the old one ran for governor.
Two officials are up for re-election to a second term, the United States Senator
and the state comptroller. We all know that the Senator will be re-elected,
the issue is whether she will top the 71% that the senior senator from New
York received when he was re-elected in 2004..
The comptroller’s race was considered certain a month ago, but has been
transformed from a runaway to a contest by the underdog's challenge to
Comptroller Alan Hevesi's ' use of a state driver to chauffeur his wife on
numerous occasions over three years, despite having been told not to do so
by the State Board of Ethics in 2003. Rule 29-T "The trouble
is, the charges are true." Hevesi did the same thing while he was City
Comptroller, and was required in 2001 to reimburse the City the sum of $6439.
This time the restitution he paid the state for the driver's time was $82,688.
Another, older rule also applies in this case: 27-D "Every dog is entitled
to one bite." Hevesi took his first bite out of the treasury when he
was a city official. The second bite, revealed as an October surprise
in the midst of a political season, has exposed the comptroller to a far greater
penalty than restitution.
Now he is being treated as a political pariah, an uninvited and unwelcome
wedding guest. He faces an impeachment trial in the Senate, and possible
indictment by the Albany County District Attorney. He was specifically
disendorsed by his party's candidate for governor, uninvited to election night
celebrations, and abandoned by most Rof the people he believed to be his
good friends and supporters. They were in fact his friends and supporters
- until he needed them. To date we have not publicly heard from any
of them in his defense, or even in mitigation of his offense. We are
still listening. But so far he is being treated by his fellow
Democrats as if he were a Russian who had just been purged by Stalin, and
any association with him would mean Siberia or worse.
The reputation that the comptroller built over thirty-four years as an elected
public official has been seriously impaired, as a result of his own failure
to act. His name will be linked in the public mind to his misdeeds,
until they both are forgotten. That is a sad denouement to the serious efforts
of a lifetime.
Alan Hevesi did a great deal of constructive work in 22 years in the Assembly,
eight as City Comptroller and four as State Comptroller. He is considerably
more intelligent than many of his peers, and highly competent in financial
matters. Until a month ago, he was generally held in high regard despite
his indiscretion in improper use of the driver while he was City Comptroller.
Hevesi understands the budget, and can explain it to others.
He is also more fiscally responsible than the governor. He earned his
Ph.D. at Columbia University, and taught at the City University of New York
until he retired. He is no ordinary public figure, but a person of
unusual gifts. Sadly, he has some not so unusual flaws, and more sins
may come to light as the result of vigorous investigation. His few deficits
are magnified, however, because of his importance and intelligence.
And don't forget the
schadenfreude his
colleagues, rivals and victims feel at his distress.
This is all part of the melodrama of politics and leadership; we exalt people,
and then, when they stumble or disappoint us, we destroy them. The
chief financial officer of the State of New York, sole trustee of a $140
billion pension fund, should be a person beyond reproach. Clearly,
Mr. Hevesi is not an avatar of civic virtue. It is not only the wrongful
expenditure that is a problem, but the doubt it casts on his judgment and
his sense of propriety with regard to other matters of much greater consequence,
for example, which lawyers and underwriters he selects and how generous they
are to him. An important quality needed in a watchdog is fierce loyalty
to his master, in this case the people of the State of New York. Recent
events cast doubt, warranted or not, on the intensity of his commitment to
that task..
A great deal of ink has been spilled on this case, which is merited by its
public importance. We link to five editorials in New York City dailies:
The
News
is for Hevesi, and the
Times,
Post,
Newsday
and
Sun are for his Republican
rival, J. Christopher Callaghan, treasurer of Saratoga County. We also
cite a News op-ed piece by
Michael Goodwin,
who sees the Hevesi case as a challenge for Eliot Spitzer, and another News
column by Errol Louis, who writes quite critically about the Comptroller.
A piece in a different mood appears on B1in today's Times, a column by
Clyde
Haberman, "Money and Politics? Pots and Kettles". The columns
are particularly well written.
But none of the other characters in this sad tableau of greed and hypocrisy
is a candidate for sainthood, as Mr. Haberman wryly points out, and even the
blessed Mother Teresa had her detractors. We will not reconstruct here
the less than honorable incidents in the political and personal lives of
other office holders and their ambitious rivals. That would be
graceless; all of us are imperfect. The sins of minor officeholders
(legislators and county officials) are unlikely to come to public knowledge
until the minnows rise to positions of power. The majority of them never
really succeed (like most actors) and their iniquities consequently
escape public attention.
We turn to William Shakespeare: “
Uneasy lies the head
that wears the crown” can apply not only to the assassination or overthrow
of a monarch, but more broadly to one’s loss of reputation because of improper
or unpopular actions or words. If you have an important position, there
will be those who will call attention to your shortcomings, perhaps even
to seek your office for themselves. You should consider that possibility
when you do anything that you shouldn't. What the
Bard of Avon called
"
the insolence of office"
often impairs that insight. It is cousin to "the arrogance of power",
the title of a book by Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright
(1905-1995), which could have been borrowed from Delaware Senator
Joseph Biden.
There are a number of ironies in this sticky situation: Hevesi was
himself elected City Comptroller in1993 by savaging the then-incumbent, Elizabeth
Holtzman, on an integrity issue, concerning her campaign having borrowed money
from Fleet Bank, a company which she had favored with city business.
Ms. Holtzman, in turn, had gained a national reputation in the early 1970's
by her fervent attacks on President Nixon when she was a member of the House
committee investigating Watergate. Do chickens in fact come home to
roost?
The Comptroller’s first obstacle will be the election, now seven days away.
If he defeats Mr. Callaghan, he will have to face the governor, who will decide
to order him tried by the State Senate. It would require a two-thirds
vote of the 62 senators to convict him and remove him from office.
There are currently 34 Republicans and 28 Democratic senators. After
November 7, the ratio may well change, but the new senators will not take
their places until January. We cannot predict what decision these solons
may make, but it is not likely to be based on any principles other than self-preservation
and self-enhancement, the coin of the realm for our dysfunctional legislature.
Meanwhile, the Albany County District Attorney is proceeding to determine
whether a crime has been committed, whether he should have Mr. Hevesi arrested
and prosecuted, and if so for what level of offense. It would be somewhat
unseemly for a local district attorney to compete with the legislative branch
over who should pursue an elected official in the executive branch.
New York State has the conventional three branches of government, which are
often in disagreement. For many years, the two houses of our legislature
have been controlled by different parties. Whether this is good or
bad is hard to tell. Unlike some other states, New York has two independent
statewide elected officials besides the governor and the lieutenant governor,
who run as a team. We elect the Comptroller and the Attorney General
individually, they may or may not be of the same party as the governor. They
sometimes check and balance each other, especially if they want to be governor
some day, an ambition which has not escaped many of their agile minds.
BTW, if you are interested, the Comptroller-General of the United States
is David M. Walker, appointed by the President for a fifteen-year term, with
the advice and consent of the Senate. Mr. Walker was appointed in 1998
by President Clinton. Before that, he was a partner at Arthur Andersen,
a firm that later came to grief over Enron and other cases. The Comptroller
oversees the GAO (General Accountability Office), a legislative branch agency
founded by Congress in 1921. The agency and Mr. Walker are held in
high regard for their non-partisan work.
The Hevesi scenario will probably take months to decide, unless he resigns.
If he is defeated, the controversy will be largely mooted by the public's
vote. If he is re-elected, which is quite possible, the scene will shift to
the governor’s office, then possibly the senate, and the independent investigation
by the Albany DA. The Senate will be lame duck after November 7, some
of its members will not be returning.
This plot will continue to unfold. If the Comptroller is re-elected
Tuesday, it will give some credence to the point that the public knows of
the charges, and believes he is still the superior candidate. It seems
more difficult to remove a candidate who has just been re-elected for alleged
and well-publicized derelictions committed prior to his re-election. If
he wins, he should receive a proper inauguration, whether the other winners
like it or not. The lieutenant governor could swear him in
if it would make somebody feel better.
Do we want a new Comptroller chosen by the Governor or by the Speaker of
the Assembly. Or is the public interest better served by a little-known
figure whose experience is limited and whose intelligence is unexceptional,
but who appears to have a fierce reluctance to spending money not absolutely
necessary? Or do we want the Comptroller to continue in office, in respect
of his undoubted ability and experience, and in faith that, chastened by
humiliation, the better part of his nature will prevail and advance the interests
of the state and the public in a way that a less able person could not.
The last governor of New York State to be impeached,
William
J. Sulzer, was unjustly removed from office in 1913 by the State Senate
for trivial offenses. His real sin was in not taking orders from Tammany
Hall, which had elected him.
Can you imagine an impeachment trial presided over by Joseph Bruno, majority
leader of the State Senate?
We close by citing
John
8:3: "So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said
onto them, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone
at her."