Fallen New York senator Joseph L. Bruno dies
Joseph L. Bruno, a Rensselaer County Republican who rose from poverty to a pinnacle of power as the New York state Senate majority leader, but fell from grace when he spent a decade fighting corruptions charges of which he was ultimately acquitted, died late Tuesday at his home in Brunswick, New York. He was 91.
The death was confirmed Wednesday morning by Dena Ackerman, a spokeswoman for the family. Bruno had been treated for cancer in recent years.
A Korean War veteran, regimental boxer and millionaire businessman, Bruno was a state senator for nearly 32 years, from 1977 to 2008, and majority leader during his last 13 years in office. Near the end of his tenure, he doubled as acting lieutenant governor for three months after Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in a sex scandal.
With the governor and assembly speaker, Bruno was one of the “three men in a room,” Albany’s feudal triumvirate that controlled budgets and legislation. As majority leader, he kept senators in line by rewarding loyalists with leadership posts, stipends called “lulus” and “member items,” unregulated funds that they distributed to favored groups in their districts.
Bruno thrived in the often opaque world of state politics, squaring off with governors, including Mario Cuomo and George Pataki, and especially with Sheldon Silver, speaker of the Democratic-controlled Assembly. But he did not make his bones on landmark laws or government programs. His most notable legislation was a 1983 “lemon law,” protecting used-car buyers.
His legacy derived, rather, from his reputation as a champion of upstate New York, particularly the Albany area and his senate district, which runs north along the Hudson from the capital’s eastern suburbs, where he raised thoroughbred horses on a farm near Troy, through blue-collar Glens Falls, where he grew up. He helped steer $3 billion in state aid to the region.
Critics had complained for years that state legislators were unethically mixing official and personal business, and a federal inquiry found that Bruno, from 1993 to 2006, had reaped $3.2 million in fees by getting unions and others doing business with the state to invest pension and other funds in his private concerns.
Prosecutors did not call the payments bribes; they were “gifts,” they said, that Bruno was required to report to the state. By not doing so, they charged, he was depriving the people of his “honest services” under a federal law used to prosecute politicians and business executives. Bruno resigned his Senate seat in 2008 as the investigation closed in.
In December 2009, he was convicted in Albany federal court of two counts of fraud for concealing $280,000 in payments from Jared E. Abbruzzese, a capital-area entrepreneur who had sought his help for various ventures, including a nanotechnology company.
Bruno was acquitted on five other counts, and the jury could not reach a verdict on a sixth. Bruno, who did not testify but insisted that he had done nothing wrong, was sentenced to two years in prison. Pending an appeal, he remained free.
Prosecutors in Albany obtained a new indictment in May 2012, accusing Bruno of taking $440,000 in bribes and kickbacks disguised as $360,000 in consulting fees, and $80,000 for a worthless racehorse. The indictment said the payments had been made by Abbruzzese in return for legislative favors and for Bruno’s influence in directing large sums of public money to organizations connected to Abbruzzese.
Bruno pleaded not guilty and was released in his own recognizance. His lawyers contended that a new trial would constitute double jeopardy, but the 2nd Circuit appeals court rejected that claim in August 2013, clearing the way for a new trial.
In May 2014, a federal court in Albany found him not guilty of fraud charges, ending a legal battle nearly a decade in the making. “This system, it works; sometimes it’s slow, but it works,” Bruno said on the courthouse steps. “It is over.”
Joseph Louis Bruno was born on April 8, 1929, in Glens Falls, one of eight children of Vitaliano and Catherine (Ricciardelli) Bruno. His father was an Italian immigrant laborer who never learned to read English. His mother died when Joe was 17. In 1951, he married Barbara Frasier. The couple had four children, who survive him. Bruno is also survived by Kay Thompson, his longtime partner; five siblings, seven grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.