Scandalized Blas 'Koch'es a break
IT is a tale of two scandals. And how one crooked City Hall was rocked by prosecutions and another got a free pass. With Mayor de Blasio apparently coasting to re-election, it is useful to look back at his brush with the law — and how things might be very different today if prosecutors were as aggressive with him as they were during Ed Koch’s final term in the 1980s.
For one thing, we would have had a more competitive mayoral race this year. For another, de Blasio and other sneaky pols would be careful because of the consequences of getting caught.
It was only last March that federal and state officials closed yearlong investigations of the mayor without charges despite finding a pattern of end runs around donation laws and clear favors to big donors.
Among the reasons cited were “the clarity of existing law” and the difficulty of getting juries to convict without “evidence of personal profit.” In other words, prosecutors concluded that because they couldn’t prove de Blasio put money in his pocket, no jury would convict him or anybody around him.
If that standard had applied 30 years ago, the last great municipal scandal might never have surfaced. And huge numbers of crooks and swindlers would have gotten a license to keeping feeding at the taxpayer trough.
New York was rocked soon after Koch’s third-term inauguration in January of 1986. Federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani, who attended the inauguration to get a look at some of the people he was investigating, would soon unveil a web of corruption probes that eventually involved city officials from several agencies, borough presidents, federal officials and private-business owners.
Queens Borough President Don- ald Manes committed suicide rather than face bribery and other charges, and a raft of scammers, including Bronx power broker Stanley Friedman, were packed off to prison.
Bess Myerson, a commissioner under Koch and a close friend, was acquitted after a sensational bribery trial involving her lover and a federal judge.
Despite the involvement of so many allies and subordinates, Koch himself was never personally implicated. Not a shred of evidence emerged to show he even knew of the widespread graft, let alone profited from it, so Koch was able to finish the term, but lost when he sought a fourth in 1989.
Over the next 24 years, through the combined six terms of David Dinkins, Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, no scandal came close to matching that one. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of that era is that official corruption, while hardly absent, receded as a defining political issue.
And then came de Blasio. Within days of being elected, he set up a slush fund that would be central to the subsequent probes. He and aides, along with private consultants, targeted developers, unions, vendors and lobbyists with business pending before City Hall and asked for huge donations to fund the mayor’s ambitions.
The money came pouring in — more than $4.3 million — and went out almost as fast to the consultants and advertising firms. Some of the cash also paid for the mayor’s many trips around the country that aimed to boost his national standing.
When the donors started getting what they wanted, from permits to sweetheart union contracts to vendor deals, the unmistakable odor of corruption couldn’t be denied. The pay-to-play probes seemed certain to end in charges, a startling potential given that no sitting mayor had been indicted in modern times.
Smelling blood, top fellow Democrats began lining up to challenge de Blasio — but only if he were indicted. Otherwise, Comptroller Scott Stringer and others calculated, they could not defeat him in a primary.
And then, suddenly and surprisingly, the prosecutors surrendered. Stymied in part by a US Supreme Court ruling that limited the definitions of official corruption, they waved the white flag and brought no charges against anyone at City Hall, though they slapped the mayor’s conduct through public statements.
The ramifications already are enormous. No important Democrat had the guts to challenge de Blasio and he sailed to victory in the primary as 86 percent of registered Dems stayed home.
Similarly, his general-election campaign has a run-out-the-clock feel to it, with the establishment convinced he is guaranteed a landslide over Republican Nicole Malliotakis and independent Bo Dietl.
It’s hard to imagine a worse outcome.
A sweeping win would leave no effective political or legal barrier to de Blasio again raising huge sums and doling out favors to big donors — all while using the money to advance his political ambition.
Because he has fantasies about running for president in 2020, the nuts and bolts of city management would get even less of his time as he courts audiences across the country. Homelessness, education, crime, quality-of-life, the budget all would be afterthoughts in a second de Blasio term.
Almost as certainly, corruption will be through the roof. With prosecutors gun shy and nobody minding the ethics store, New Yorkers are likely to find themselves awash in fresh waves of graft.
And nobody will be held accountable.