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Wayne Barrett on Bruno

by: phillip anderson

Wed Oct 10, 2007 at 11:41:32 AM EDT

The Bruno Files: Exploring the Record of the State Senate Leader Calling for a Spitzer Probe
The immaculate record of the state senate leader calling for investigations of Eliot Spitzer

As often as Bruno impacts our lives, we are rarely offered a glimpse of his world, which is crowded with donors and lobbyists, and are only vaguely aware of the facts surrounding the year-old federal probe of his business dealings. His son became a $50,000-a-month lobbyist whose clients prospered in the senate. His brother took a $127,500 post in the Pataki administration and got his state agency to pay $54,400 a year to the local Republican Party boss to rent an unnecessary office just a stone's throw from his house.

The senator, meanwhile, set up a consulting business in his sprawling farmhouse-and even though he neither advertised the firm nor even listed it in the phone book, clients rushed to his door. He still won't say who those clients are, just as he won't say whom he visited on his much-publicized recent trips to the city aboard state aircraft. But the names of a few of those clients have leaked out in occasional news coverage of the FBI probe, including a businessman he steered a half-million-dollar state grant to, and an investment firm that handled the millions he's raised for the senate campaign committee. In real-estate ventures unconnected to the consulting company, Bruno partnered up with two Albany lobbyists in one and purchased property from a state contractor in another. The lobbyists, of course, lived at the senate trough, and an investor in the second deal-personally recruited by Bruno to bail another son out of the deal-got two state grants with the senator's help.

...

While it's common for elected officials to dip into their campaign committees for an occasional personal meal or other perk, the filings for Bruno's three committees suggest that he may never pick up his own tab. In 2006 and the first six months of 2007, the committees have spent more than $92,000 on restaurant and country-club bills for "meetings" or "meals," not including any expenses that are listed for "fundraising" purposes. Calls to some of the restaurants confirm that Bruno eats there regularly, often with guests. It's not at all uncommon for multiple meals to be billed for the same day, or for the committee to cover virtually an entire week of dinners (including the weekend), usually in restaurants near the capitol and his home. It is possible that some of these meals are for staff, but one committee has no full-time staff, and it's the one with $38,000 in restaurant billings alone.

MUCH more on the flip...

In addition, the committees have spent an astounding $18,225 at the track, including expenses virtually every other day during the 36-day summer season at Saratoga, where horseman Bruno reigns as a local potentate. He also appears to take at least a yearly "fundraising" junket to Florida, where he has spent $55,000 in the last year and a half-far more than he's ever raised there.

As extraordinary as these totals are, there's also the $211,381 attributed on the Bruno filings to "Cardmember Services," an affiliate of the World Perks Visa Card; $55,621 to "Commercial Card Solutions," an affiliate of J.P. Morgan Chase; and $26,000 to a third credit-card company. These entities, which are cumulatively listed at five addresses on Bruno reports, "consolidate transactions" and "help manage travel and other miscellaneous expenses" for small businesses. In addition, the committees report $36,507 in "unitemized expenses," often listed by the thousands at the end of a reporting period. The law requires that any expenditure over $50 be specified. Ironically, while two of the committees serve the senate majority, the third-which has spent $4.5 million since 2000-is in business purely to re-elect Bruno himself, in a district where he hasn't faced a real opponent (and sometimes no Democrat at all) in a decade.

Asked to explain a detailed list of the credit-card payments, John McArdle, the senator's spokesman, said that they had been itemized "elsewhere in the filings," which is puzzling because it suggests that the same meal, for example, is listed twice-once as an itemized expense and again as part of a bulk payment. In any event, McArdle insists that the apparently personal use of the committees by Bruno is appropriate. "The expenditures that are listed on the Board of Elections report," he said, "are for expenses that are used either for his election or for maintaining the majority in Albany, and are legitimate, and are within the boundaries established by the board." Of course, the Board of Elections consists of four members nominated equally by the Republican and Democratic party chairs, with one actually appointed by Bruno, and, as such, it is constitutionally incapable of identifying violations of law. Even Bruno himself couldn't get satisfaction from the board: Despite his screaming lately about what he says were the multimillion-dollar illegal loans that Spitzer's father made to his 1994 and 1998 campaigns for attorney general, the board considered the matter and couldn't muster the votes to find a violation.

The Albany Times Union reported in 2000 that Bruno's committee had paid $4,200 for a pool cover, landscaping, and extermination services at his home, an expense that Bruno justified by saying that he used the A-frame behind his house for political meetings. "I spent money making it people-friendly and attractive," said Bruno. McArdle added at the time: "Somebody like Senator Bruno, it's difficult to say where he stops being majority leader." The 2000 story also identified questionable restaurant and Florida expenses, which were then a fraction of what they are now.

Seriously, go read the whole thing.