“These charges go to the very core of what ails Albany—a lack of transparency, lack of accountability, and lack of principle joined with an overabundance of greed, cronyism, and self-dealing.”
— U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara
January 21, 2015
U.S. Attorney Bharara has said it before, but this time he got the biggest fish, the King of the Assembly. What did he do(allegedly)?
•Silver sent State funds to a doctor who sent asbestos cases to a law firm where he did no work, and the firm paid Silver $3million in “referral fees”.
•Silver got another $700,000 in “referral fees” from a real estate firm to which he had sent two major developers—who happened to have business in front of the State.
•Silver actively pushed Governor Cuomo to close the Moreland Corruption Commission after it subpoenaed his outside income information. I am a civil rights lawyer and usually give the accused the benefit of the doubt, but I know the asbestos referral world, and it is rife with money and cute ways to flout both law and ethics. Government should be run by people way above suspicion, not people under indictment who are out on bail. Preet Bharara summed it up best when he asked whether we could be sure that any piece of legislation is free from taint.
When I first tackled this piece, I emphasized that SHELDON SILVERSHOULD RESIGN. After a few efforts to name a “temporary” governing group, Silver was forced to step down as Speaker when a few brave souls in the Assembly began to speak up, first Keith Wright from Harlem (son of the famous judge Bruce Wright) and then Brian Kavanagh from Stuyvesant Town/East Village. They understood that even if Silver wins his criminal case, the case will smell up our government and distract from the critical work the Assembly needs to do in the coming years. No matter how much his fellow Assembly Democrats fear him, neither Andrew Cuomo or State Senate Republican Leader Skelos would fear Silver’s political power the way they once did as they carry out the “three men in a room” form of governance, an undemocratic form of governance if there ever was one.
What bothers me the most (other than the fact that a greedy, all-powerful man had so much power over our lives),is that our Assembly Member, Deborah lick, stuck with “Shelly” until he was almost under water. Deborah Glick has built a career out of slavishly serving Sheldon Silver. Almost from her first days in the Assembly, when she lined up to elevate him to his position of power, Deborah has been his lap dog. That became clearest when he used public money to buy the silence of staffers who had complaints about sexual harassment by his friend Vito Lopez. Glick, supposedly a “feminist,” said nothing. When Silver kept on a Chief of Staff ( Judy Rapfogel)whose husband had stashed millions of dollars in stolen cash around their house, Glick said nothing. When it came out that Silver was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by a law firm he did not work for, Glick said nothing, not a word, not even after word of a second unpaid “job” surfaced.
I want government representatives who are squeaky clean. I want my children to believe in the good motives of their elected officials. During Silver’s—and Glick’s—20 years you would never confuse the State Assembly with a Hall of Integrity. A DOZEN Assembly Members went down on corruption convictions over those 20 years. It has become more likely that an Assembly Member will be indicted than lose a reelection campaign.
I don’t mind if my representatives are practical and play the game of government chess well. But I want my representative to be someone who not only isn’t corrupt, but who also doesn’t look the other way when corruption rears its ugly head. Brad Hoylman, our State Senator, was the first elected official to call for Silver’s resignation. His principles deserve praise. But our Assembly Member Glick, who stood by Silver, who supported Cuomo after he shut down the Moreland Corruption Commission as it was sniffing at Silver’s heels, who has never called for ethics reform, who supported Christine Quinn after she built a campaign based on the money of real estate developers—as I have said in these pages before, it is time for her to go too.
“Greed, cronyism and dishonesty” don’t need to be synonymous with “government.”
Arthur Z. Schwartz is the Village’s Male Democratic District Leader.
