NYS Senate Recommendation to Expel/Censure Senator

by: Andrew C. White

Thu Jan 14, 2010 at 15:58:30 PM EST

Full text of the report here.

Monserrate was elected to the Senate in Nov. 2008 to the seat formerly held by Sen. John Sabini. Monserrate narrowly lost a primary to Sabini in 2006 and challenged him again in 2008. Meanwhile Sabini had been pulled over in Albany the previous November, failed a field sobriety test and refused a breathalyzer. He pled guilty to a reduced charge of DWAI (Driving While Ability Impaired). Sabini decided against running for re-election and instead was appointed Chairman of the Racing and Wagering Board by Gov. Paterson in June of '08.

December 19, 2008, after his election to the Senate but before his swearing in, Monserrate was arrested for assault in an incident in which he slashed his girlfriend Karla Giraldo in the face with a broken drinking glass during an argument in his Jackson heights apartment.  

In the NYS Senate, Even Convicted Felons Get Fundraisers

by: robinia

Tue Dec 29, 2009 at 21:08:52 PM EST

There are no disclosure requirements for legal defense funds - not even if you're still holding elected office - (see: Monserrate, Hiram; or Gonzalez, Efrain).

So, we'll never know exactly who is ponying up cash to support Bruno, who certainly doesn't lack for admirers in spite of his conviction - especially in the Capital Region.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/blo...

If you got an invite and want to pay $250-1000 for  me to go in your stead, lemmee know.  I'm going to be in Albany that weekend, and I sure would love to be a fly on THAT wall.

Wheels of Justice Slowly Turn in Bruno Case-- As His Lawyers Whine "Not Fair!"

by: robinia

Fri Jul 24, 2009 at 09:30:53 AM EDT

The full letter of complaint is at the Politicker NY.  They make a big deal of it that one of Bruno's top employees was served a subpoena the day after making a whine to the press that Bruno was really innocent-- but Bruno's guys have been doing lots and lots of that... In fact, their nonsense website, "Justice for Bruno" (by which they mean getting away with it...) comes up first on a Google search of Joe Bruno, ahead of the Wikipedia entry, even (and there are Google ads for it running alongside, too). Somebody is trying to try this case in the court of public opinion, methinks.  Justice shouldn't be like running for election.

It's all part of a strategy to delay the trial until Bruno joins Kenny-boy Lay in the "rich old guys who beat the justice system through delay and died comfy without atoning for their misdeeds" club.

Bruno party: urges staff of CMA Consulting to turn up the "righteous indignation" noise

by: robinia

Tue Jan 27, 2009 at 09:20:35 AM EST

Joseph Bruno, the former senator indicted last week, sent out a personal letter to his employees at CMA Consulting last Friday, emphasizing: "If there was ever a time to be righteously indignant, that time is now." The missive arrived  by e-mail from Bruno the day before CMA's holiday party at Prime at Saratoga National Golf Club, where Bruno was spotted  "laughing, joking and shaking hands like nothing had happened," another source said. About 250 people attended the 25th anniversary of CMA bash and Bruno gave a short speech.

If there were ever a time to counter the lies of those who want to maintain a corrupt and dysfunctional system of highly-centralized governance... that time is now.

Is a Joe Bruno Indictment Coming Soon?

by: robinia

Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 15:33:52 PM EST

However, Liz has some "Bruno Pals" leaking that it is, indeed, likely to come soon.  Those of you who hold a shred of hope that law enforcement and prosecution in this country are not politically-motivated will despair about the reason for the timing, in Liz's "observsers'" estimation:

Observers surmise prosecutors want to wrap up the Bruno probe before President-elect Barack Obama takes office next month and brings in his team.

I'd observe that the decision about what kind of indictment to bring may have less to do with what the investigation found than with what the departing "team" thinks their partisans can get away with....

Hack, Hack, Hack.... Good Luck Finding Real Change As The Same Cast of Albany Characters Recycles

by: robinia

Mon Dec 08, 2008 at 10:16:49 AM EST

Of course, the Gang of Four (Three) Musketeers ascending to power that they extorted rather than deserved was depressing.  But, we continue to look for signs of reform from some of the others in Albany.

Talk of Paterson continuing to promote dynastic rule by appointing Carolyn Kennedy Schlesinger Senator, ascending to power that she inherited rather than deserved was depressing... Bush, Clinton, Cuomo, Spitzer, Paterson... makes you think that Brian Keeler's real problem may have been "who's your daaaadddy?".  It sure does help to be an heir; not being a part of the ruling nobility makes it mighty hard.

But, sometimes a self-made pol gets a foothold in the Albany scene, and, when they do, they are as rooted and permanent in the pantheon of the Albany Court as any born-to-it noble.

Who is the latest self-made (self-stole?) hack that Democratic electeds are looking to for help among the Court Hacks of the Capital District? Joe Bruno.  Believe me, I wish I were kidding, but I am not. Full story on the flip.

Spitzer Mans Up and Returns Campaign Contributions-- What Will Bruno Do?

by: robinia

Thu Jul 17, 2008 at 10:25:35 AM EDT

In the category of "he's finally doing what I tell him to" (could have benefitted by catching on to that earlier, though), Eliot Spitzer is not going to use his no-longer-needed-for-campaigning campaign funds for personal expenses on the thin but legal fiction that he might one day run for some office.  More than 1.5 million dollars will be or has already been returned to donors.

Now, Bruno has about the same amount of money last I looked (ok, you geeks!  fill in the precise numbers for me in comments).  What is he doing as he "rides off into the sunset"?  OH, how, well, very Bruno of him!  He is giving six million dollars of our tax money to Saratoga Springs, and NONE of his "own"!  Take my nifty "What should Bruno do with his campaign warchest" poll on the flip!

Up is down, down is up

by: simonstl

Sun Jul 06, 2008 at 14:50:03 PM EDT

Well, it's not quite that bad, but an op-ed in today's New York Times - You Had a Friend in Albany - is pretty strange.

NYU Professor Mitchell Moss seems to think that Upstate and suburban State Senators are going to descend on poor New York City without Joe Bruno's strong leadership to keep them in line.

I've been wondering what a Democratic State Senate might mean for Upstate, but somehow I don't think anything terrible is going to happen to NYC because of the Bruno-less Republican State Senate between now and November. Even if the Republicans were to hang on, their razor-thin gerrymandered margin isn't likely to improve, so there isn't much opportunity for Senators to start pushing hard on New York City in future years.

Strange reading - anyone else have thoughts on the piece?

What a year!

by: simonstl

Sat Jun 28, 2008 at 15:29:45 PM EDT

Every once in a long while, State Senator George Winner is right: it's been a crazy year.

"If anybody had correctly predicted what would happen in the last 12 months and wrote it down, they would have been committed," said Senator George H. Winner Jr., a Republican from Elmira.

Even my Upstate 2050 (and more recent Legislature 2020) pieces didn't have room for anything like this year in the forecast.

Where does the turmoil leave our state? The hopes of ending "three men in a room"? Our political institutions? Our voters' willingness to take state politics seriously?

It's a warm Saturday afternoon. Share your ideas!

SD-43: Is Bruno's seat in play?

by: Amherst Guy

Tue Jun 24, 2008 at 00:00:11 AM EDT

Short answer: yes.

Long answer after the jump.

The end of Joe Bruno = the end of Shelly Silver?

by: Amherst Guy

Mon Jun 23, 2008 at 22:45:19 PM EDT

Silver has found himself faced with rapidly decreasing support from his own membership over the last decade. As the number of Democratic Assemblypersons has increased, particularly upstate, the new Assemblymen have often run as anti-Silver candidates, and the percentage of Assemblypersons who truly support Silver has decreased. Once in the Assembly, they fall in line out of necessity, but every once in a while you see the cracks.

The most recent exposure was in 2007 when Tom DiNapoli was appointed Comptroller. Behind closed doors Spitzer almost got enough Assemblymen to flip to join the Senate Democrats and Assembly Republicans in opposing DiNapoli.

Silver has through all of this kept his job through the political cover of George Pataki and Joe Bruno. If an Assemblyman opposed Silver, Bruno and Pataki would block any state appointment for any friend of that Assemblymember or even any fellow county Assemblymember's friend, thereby putting the pressure on the Assemblymember to fall in line. Jobs at the state level that went to Democrats went through the Assembly, and therefore through Silver, Bruno, and Pataki. Play nice, and we'll throw jobs your way.

Now Silver has lost all of his political cover; he has to go through Gov. Paterson and Sen. Smith, fellow Democrats who he treated like opposition party members (as did his strongest supporters, SEIU and NYSUT) during their respective terms as Senate Minority Leader. They will not be jumping out of their chairs to support Mr. Silver. They may very well work to undermine him as punishment for his treatment of them over the past decade-plus.

They will not find it hard to find Assemblymen who will privately speak for change; if they can find 53, not as difficult a task as it may seem, Mr. Speaker may find himself Mr. Assemblyman sooner than you think.

More on Bruno bolting

by: devtob

Mon Jun 23, 2008 at 19:31:52 PM EDT

And rush to TAP to break the good news, and young Robert already had it.

He is good, and well deserving of a DFA Netroots Nation scholarship.

So, Plan B is this non-breaking diary, based on a prescient Metroland story last Thursday.

Here's a taste:

For months, speculation about the senator's future has made the rounds in the Capital Region's political class. Many of these rumors have focused on stories of federal subpoenas and indictments tied to an FBI investigation into the embattled politician's outside business deals. Other rumors weigh the senator's options in the face of a historic loss by the Republican party of the Senate majority.

More below.

Boss Bruno has a challenger

by: devtob

Wed Jun 04, 2008 at 21:42:51 PM EDT

State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno has a challenger this year -- Brian Premo.

Premo is an attorney who's running on a basic "change" platform that should resonate with voters in Rensselaer and Saratoga counties.

Premo would, in every way but pork, be a better, more honest representative of the Senate district.

Why, below.

The Problem with Challenging "Sheldon Silver"

by: simonstl

Sun Jun 01, 2008 at 19:55:57 PM EDT

In comments here, here, here, here, and here, we've seen a pretty frequent cycle of conversation, and not a particularly helpful one.

If you suggest that Sheldon Silver controls his conference or the Assembly, his defenders rise up and claim that no, he's not a dictator. He just does the will of his conference. Er, without consulting too many folks publically, because that would be, er, inconvenient. And all those strings he controls, like member items, capital spending, lulus, and so on... it's just part of the job. He'd never abuse them, right? Or use his power cynically to increase his personal power by, say, trading the Republicans the right to gerrymander their house so long as he gets to gerrymander his. It's just tradition, right? It couldn't be a betrayal of progressive politics because he's always fighting the Republicans.

Given the general dodging that comes from Assembly members when you push on these questions, it's hard to pin down just who's running the show. Silver himself is probably the least interested in clarifying who's in charge, a situation that serves him well since a failed long-ago coup.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this conversation, however, is that it offers an endless circle of claims and counter-claims without getting to the central point. Whether Silver himself is really the problem, or just the figurehead the rest of the Assembly hides behind, the results are still a mess. I wrote earlier:

When Silver's accused of being a dictator, his defenders claim he's only doing the will of the conference. At the same time he has no small amount of leverage over his conference.

My explanation is that it's a mutually-reinforcing disaster, where legislators fear and hide behind Silver as is convenient for them, and reap the benefits if they stay with the pack.

I know a lot of TAP folks are excited to see Paul Newell and Luke Henry challenging Speaker Silver. I'm certainly delighted myself, glad to see that someone is willing to take on so powerful a legislator by challenging the very way he works.

I worry, though, that we need to be looking well beyond the Speaker's chair. Even if a reformer were to knock Silver out in a primary, it's not likely a reformer would become Speaker. The rest of the Assembly is still there, with plenty of legislators who've spent a long time learning from Silver and their colleagues how to make this system work.

Reformers need to be very careful in how they approach Sheldon Silver - not because he's so wonderful personally, but because of the way he's carefully assembled a story and a supporting cast. Allowing Republicans the Senate has let him cast himself as a progressive, and his battles with the Governor's office have let him cast himself as the defender of legislative prerogatives, the leader of "the people's house".

Effectively challenging the support Silver gets demands more than just challenging Silver. It's not hard to tell true and dismal stories about the Speaker for contrast. Unfortunately, it keeps us attacking the biggest and most prominent head of a hydra. We need to be showing voters the hydra, how it reaches their districts directly, and how their own representatives are a part of it.

Silver is too important to ignore. At the same time, however, focusing our ire on Silver (and similarly on Bruno) is to target only one aspect of Albany's dysfunction. Silver's job titles certainly include that of lightning rod, taking heat himself, keeping it away from his conference. If we want to reform the New York State Legislature, we need to start looking at all of its members, not just the ones who happen to be on top of the heap.

We need to break a vicious cycle that's limited New York for decades. Challenging Sheldon Silver on his own turf is certainly part of that, but we also need to challenge everyone who keeps this cycle going. That's going to mean regular criticism of the Assembly, not just its Speaker.

As Democrats, we're pretty good at challenging Republican Senators across the board, not just Bruno. We need to accept that the same lesson applies on our own side of the aisle, in the Assembly. That won't come easily.

Truce?

by: simonstl

Mon May 26, 2008 at 13:33:50 PM EDT

It's been a busy few days, but I figured someone else would get to this piece on the 'detente' between Bruno and Paterson:

It is a shift that is turning Albany upside down and making some of Mr. Paterson's fellow Democrats privately uneasy. Mr. Paterson has quietly declared a political truce with Mr. Bruno and his party, and though he is committed to raising money for the state's Democrats, he has been reluctant to recruit candidates to run against incumbent Republicans at a time when the Democrats appear tantalizingly close to taking over the Senate for the first time in more than 40 years....

Still, despite their affection, the two men are politicians, and making peace has potential political benefits as they pursue their respective agendas. Mr. Paterson, who admits that he was unprepared to be thrust suddenly into the role of governor, is trying to define himself to the public as someone who can get things done, so he can buttress his chances of being elected in 2010 on his own merits. An amenable Legislature will help, though he may need to reassure some Democrats.

I've liked Paterson pretty well thus far, but this sounds to me like we're heading back to the world in which there are (at least) three Democratic Parties operating at the state level in New York:

1. A Democratic Party pushing to retain and expand its control of the Assembly, but with little fondness for anything that might diminish the party's power within the body, whether redistricting, rules or any of those other annoying "goo-goo reforms".

2. A Democratic Party pushing to finally take the State Senate back, whose members have suffered for decades under the thumb of an autocratic Republican majority, and who are - at least for now - very fond of those "goo-goo reforms".

3. A Democratic Party that's all about keeping the Governor's mansion. Reform? Well, if it helps us win...

One of the things I liked about Spitzer was that he let at least #2 and #3 come together, and deprived #1 of the "but there's an evil Republican Governor..." excuse.

Perhaps that, like many things, is now over.

Mop and broom for whom?

by: simonstl

Sat Mar 08, 2008 at 08:25:24 AM EST

This morning's New York Times includes an editorial called A One-Party New York State that every Democrat should read.

The Times agrees wholeheartedly that Joe Bruno must go, but there's a problem: they don't particularly trust the Democrats with the power that will come from control of all three Men in a Room. Given that, they would really like to have to have a "counterweight" in Albany:

The ideal way to achieve that would be for moderate Republicans to adopt a mop and a broom as official symbols and become the party of reform. They could vow to clean up campaign finance and put in place tough new rules about legislators' outside employment.

But wait, you ask, shouldn't the Democrats be doing that? Isn't that, in effect, the original purpose of this very site? If I had things my way, the Times wouldn't have the room to suggest this credibly.

Alas, we Democrats haven't lived up to our reformist rhetoric. The editorial notes Spitzer's efforts to work around his reform promises, and the latest of Sheldon Silver's many missteps, appointing a senior partner from his outside-job firm to the judicial nominees panel.

I'm sure there are Democrats who'll read the piece and sputter "but we're going to win, and be better than Joe Bruno". Unfortunately, better than Joe Bruno is far too low a standard on many different levels, especially when the whole state may go to one-party rule. Sheldon Silver is also far too low a standard, and he's in our party.

The Times' conclusion seems to me like the story we should be telling, the actions we as a party should be taking - though I can't say it's likely to happen:

if the Democrats want voters to hand them one-party rule in November, they need to earn it.

That means upgrading the rules on ethics and elections. The governor should urge the Legislature to create a nonpartisan legislative redistricting commission, like the one Iowa uses. Fair mapmaking is a fundamental route to better government. New York is also long overdue for campaign finance reform. It needs a system with public financing, tighter limits on contributions and more transparency on reporting.

One-party rule in Albany could mean that important bills - on such issues as civil liberties and gay rights - long blocked by Republicans will become law. But giving one party so much power would require a leap of faith by voters. Now is the time for Democrats to show that this faith would be well placed.

Can we convince Democrats with power to change their ways? I believe that we will win the Senate this November - the hard question is what we'll do to earn New York State government the voters' trust once we're there.

Bruno, Bloomberg, Best Friends Forever

by: simonstl

Sat Mar 01, 2008 at 08:52:49 AM EST

A few days ago ago I said nice things about Mayor Bloomberg for his congestion plan.

Today, we need to remember that despite the Mayor's occasional flashes of smarts, his political judgment remains strange.  Bloomberg and Bruno, sitting in a tree...

It's an interesting contrast to Darth Rudy's endorsement of Mario Cuomo way back in 1994 - but I suspect it will work about as well.

More Republican dog-whistle racism

by: devtob

Mon Feb 04, 2008 at 20:41:28 PM EST

"They" down there in New York City were, in thousands of ads and mailers over the years, derided as "those people" who were sucking down upstate taxpayers' dollars for their welfare, other social services, illegal drugs, etc.

The fact that state tax revenues from the five boroughs more than make up for state expenditures down there is conveniently ignored by the upstate dog-whistlers.

Who are the "they"? "They" are the "other" for white upstaters conditioned to hear the dog whistle -- black and brown (and sometimes Jewish) residents of New York City.

There was more of that today at a GOP McCain lovefest press conference, courtesy of a Boss Bruno (Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno) hack.

Details, below.

Subpoenas about Bruno's side job

by: simonstl

Mon Feb 04, 2008 at 08:36:46 AM EST

Those part-time jobs can create real hassles for a majority leader, it seems: the Times-Union reports that the FBI sent subpoenas to unions who had invested with Wright Investors Service, Bruno's old gig. (Bruno had suddenly resigned from that in December.)

I'd like to hope that our legislators will take this as a sign that maybe they should focus on legislating and drop their side jobs, but I'm not counting on it, even if they do give themselves a raise.

Bruno's part-time job

by: simonstl

Sat Dec 01, 2007 at 16:40:02 PM EST

Joe Bruno, when it suits him, portrays himself as a great fan of labor. The Times reports that there might be more to it than that, as unions send business to his other employer.

Mr. Bruno's outside business interests have been the subject of a federal criminal investigation for at least a year. Mr. Helm declined to say whether his company had been subpoenaed or approached by investigators....

"It's an outside business that he's entitled to do as a part-time legislator," Mr. McArdle said. "The fact that you found out who some of the clients are and they said they had no idea Bruno was involved, that should tell you everything you need to know."

The state ethics law allows officials to have outside employment, though they cannot engage in activities that create or appear to create a conflict with their public duties, and they are barred from obtaining unwarranted privileges for themselves or others.

Of course, no one involved in these transactions seems to realize that Bruno's paycheck might have some connection to their business:

Officials from several of the unions that have given money to Wright to manage said they did not know Mr. Bruno was employed at the firm.

Some definite denials - nothing going on here, of course.