The City Council Slush Fund Scandal Is Way Bigger Than Miguel Martinez
When Councilman Miguel Martinez resigned abruptly yesterday in the face of federal charges expected to be announced this week, a whole lot of Martinez’s colleagues at City Hall suddenly got very nervous.
After all, Martinez, who is the first elected official to go down for his role in the long-simmering slush fund scandal, is reportedly going to be indicted for activities that appear to be almost standard practice among his fellow councilmembers. And to make things worse for his comrades-in-crime, Martinez appears ready to enter a quick guilty plea, which generally means that he’s ready to sing like a canary in exchange for a lighter sentence.
What did Martinez do? Allegedly, he steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money into a questionable nonprofit on which his sister served as a board member. Was he alone in this practice? Absolutely not. In fact, dozens of his colleagues, including Speaker Quinn, have been under investigation for over a year for the exact same abuse of “member items” – better known to the public as earmarks. The U.S. Attorney’s probe has been so serious for so long that Speaker Quinn hired for herself and the rest of the council attorneys (at taxpayer expense) to represent the entire City Council as early as April 2008.
After vowing last year to put an end to the Council’s criminal slush fund – which Quinn’s former finance director has said publicly she operated with full knowledge of its abuse – Quinn declared yesterday that it was “a sad day for the City Council”. This is the exactly the same empty rhetoric Assembly leaders used to dismiss the recent convictions of disgraced Queens politicians Anthony Seminerio and Brian McLaughlin as isolated incidents in which formerly good apples inexplicably went rotten.
But for once, Quinn was telling the truth – inadvertently, of course. While she meant to imply that Martinez’s conviction was a sad day for the people of New York, who have for the umpteenth time been forced to suffer a perversion of the public trust, what she actually said was that it was a sad day for many of the City Councilmembers, who realized yesterday that, there is a third branch of government and prosecutors in Washington who are not elected locally and thus beyond the reach and control of the political machines, which protect incumbents and elect DAs who will look the other way when it comes to political corruption. The City Council has turned into a criminal enterprise. Wouldn't it be great if the FBI gets Martinez to rat on the way member items are cut up behind closed doors by the council's leadership, so we can get the big bosses in this crime against the people of New York.
The press has become the enabler of this political corruption. If the mainstream media muckraked like they did years ago, the Feds would have been forced to prosecute the slush fund scandal and half the seats in the City Council would be vacant overnight – and not coincidentally, most of those seats would belong to the 29 council members who voted to extended term limits so they could continue to serve (themselves to) their communities. Instead, however, the press is all too eager to repeat Quinn’s transparently phony calls for reform as if they were sincere and pounce on petty crooks like Miguel Martinez as rogue elements in an otherwise sound system.
But what the limp editorials the dailies churn out every so often after an elected official gets hauled out of office in chains fail to understand – or deliberately ignore – is that the problem is not the Miguel Martinez’s of the world, it’s the system itself. Besides being a dumping ground for family members who cannot find jobs, government funds for nonprofits have become the most important tools in the reelections campaign of incumbents. Nonprofits funded by the government have also turned into great places to fundraise and find campaign workers for most incumbents, as pointed out in the series of newspaper articles that were published last year about the council slush fund scandal. Almost no article has been published in the past year on the council scandal, because the media moguls and the handlers of the mayor must feel that if the scandal explodes during the reelection campaign of the mayor it can hurt his reelection chances. After all, the mayor also gave member item funds to his most loyal council members.
If it turns out, as it appears, that Martinez abused his office to profit or hire a family member using a nonprofit as a shell, it is hard to come down too hard on Martinez for his actions, because so many of his colleagues were doing it, they probably had all convinced themselves it was just one of the perks of the job.
Of course, that doesn't excuse their wrongdoings. On the contrary, they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But what it does demonstrate is that we need strong safeguards put in place to curb our elected official’s influence, since they clearly are unable of control themselves. One of these safeguards was the term limits law that the Mayor and the City Council were all too eager to discard. Unfortunately, however, when the term limits debate flared up last year the media conveniently forgot all about the fact that the entire City Council was under investigation for just the type of abuse of power the term limits law was designed to curtail, and framed the issue simplistically as a referendum on the then-popular Mayor’s saving the city in its worst economic crisis in a generation – just as Bloomberg, the media owners and big business had planned. Not a word was written about how the term limits law was put into effect after the Parking Violations scandal in the late 1980's demonstrating that Mayor Koch put an entire city agency was under the control of the Bronx and Queens democratic organization.
We need radical systemic changes, which would likely require a state constitutional convention to implement, we need an independent Department of Investigation, not controlled by the mayor or the political machines to live up to its name and come down on our elected officials hard. As long as our politicians see that only the stupidest or most unlucky of their colleagues get punished, they'll continue to play the odds and flaunt our legal system. It is only when our politicians live in fear of violating their oaths of office that they might finally remember that they are supposed to work for the public good, not their own.
The Dishonor Roll - The Shame of New York Newspaper reports of Councilmembers misuse of member items and their office
True News has been publishing exclusive after exclusive on the City Council slush fund scandal and the growing corruption in New York's government, examples follow: Member Item Slush Fund Cover Up *** Massive Lobbyist Scandal at City Hall *** Cover Up At City Hall Continues *** Inspector Clouseau Investigates *** Organize d Crime Politics, Rigged Elections *** The Real Campaign is to Suppress Challengers *** Brian McLaughlin Rats, Only the Daily News Does the Right Thing *** Organized Crime Politics Part 1 *** New York’s Political Mob Wars *** Council's Puppetgate, Burning Up Education Blogs *** Political PARTIES 4 SALE, Organized Crime Politics
Council's Pay to Play DI$GRACED COUNCILMAN CALLS IT QUITS (NYP) *** City Councilman Steps Down as Criminal Charges Loom (NYT) *** Council's slush fund probe claims its first culprit: Manhattan's Miguel Martinez to plead guilty (NYDN) *** Councilman Martinez Resigns As Feds Close In: Report (WNBC) **** NYC councilman resigns amid slush fund probe (Newsday) *** City Councilman Resigns Amid Federal Probe (NY1)
Play to Play Albany Two-Ton Tony's got a pair of brass balls Tony Seminerio, who abruptly resigned his seat last month and pleaded guilty to a corruption charge, is soliciting his former colleagues to write a "character letter of reference" on his behalf prior to his Oct. 20 sentencing *** The DN accused the Senate Democrats of holding Walder's appointment for "ransom" *** Assemblywoman Ann-Margaret Carrozza said "personal issues" led her to show up for work in Albany just 36 percent of the time and called her own attendance record "abysmal". (She hasn't yet decided whether to seek re-election in 2010)
Too Big to Be Indicted? Black Star News' Edward Manfredonia wonders why AG Andrew Cuomo hasn't indicted Steve Rattner A Crack In Steve Rattner Protection Racket (True News) *** NY Quadrangle Probe Intensifies (Washington Post)
Road to City Hall DA RACE IS VERY CLO$E (not vote wise) *** Time for Joe Crowley to go Dear Editor (Queens Chronicle) *** Early Word on Paterson's Fund-Raising *** Snyder leads in cash for DA campaign; raises $1.4M *** Bloomberg was endorsed by Washington, DC Mayor Adrian Fenty.
More City News Fruit Stands Wage Midtown Turf War *** Always putting a good light on problems NYT In Manhattan, Softer Rents, Better Deals *** Look out, they're watching you *** Comptroller: No raises for non-union city workers
State Senate HONEYMOON'S OVER SENATE DEMS LOSE AN AYE AS NEWLYWED SPLITS Chaos gripped the state Senate anew on the eve of the long-awaited mayoral-control vote, as some Democrats balked at passage -- and a leading proponent was on his honeymoon (NYP) *** NYPD PHEW! With a troubling lesson in state politics under their belt, 274 NYPD recruits were sworn in yesterday to begin six months of schooling at the Police Academy. The swearing-in had been delayed (NYP) *** Dems reward turncoat pol with stipend, chairmanship
Democratic leaders quietly reinstated a $12,500 stipend for indicted Sen. Hiram Monserrate - one of two lawmakers who briefly joined Republicans in a coup attempt and then flipped back *** Mayoral control not set in stone The battle over mayoral control of the city's schools could be decided today. The state Senate is to return to session, and a number of lawmakers said they expect to act on a bill that would keep the mayor in charge of the school system.
More Albany Man Who Lifted London Transit Picked for M.T.A. *** So Much Unfinished Business After a month of paralysis, New York State legislators are getting to work but are neglecting other matters: to restore control of New York schools to the mayor and legalize same-sex marriage (NYT Editorial)
Washington Nominee Says Identity Wouldn’t Distort Decisions *** House Health Plan Outlines Higher Taxes on Rich *** Massachusetts Takes a Step Back From Health Care for All *** Obama Attacks on Economy and Seeks Billions for Community Colleges ***
Nominee's Touch of Confidence (Washington Post) *** Unemployment is rising. Foreclosures are surging. Lending is still constrained. So why exactly is the Obama administration waiting to act?
International Goodbye Iraq, and Good Luck Iraqis know who they were, and they don’t always like it, but they still have not figured out whom they want to be as a country *** Germany Has Been Slow to Fix Its Banks *** A Deeply Divided Honduras
Wall Street Mess Poor Bankers Forced to Time-share Yachts *** Goldman Sachs Announces $3.44 Billion Profit *** With Big Profit, Goldman Sees Big Payday Ahead *** Derivatives Are Focus of Antitrust Investigators *** In Wake of Madoff, S.E.C. Head Says Agency Will Do More to Protect Investors
Media Times Co. Agrees to Sell WQXR Radio *** Times Co. Agrees to Sell WQXR Radio
