Buy, buy Silver & Skelos
To Shelly Silver, convicted of illegally wielding power as Assembly speaker, and to Dean Skelos, on trial for illegally wielding power as Senate majority leader, every piece of legislation had a market value. The greater the financial stakes, the higher the value. In New York, capital of finance, real estate and health care, the stakes are often huge. Tweaking a tax formula by a fraction of a percent could cost an industry millions of dollars. So, too, slightly adjusting regulations governing rent controls. The New York way, as described by lawyers for Silver and Skelos, entailed taking cuts of the action.
Silver and Skelos separately targeted Glenwood Management, a large development company that has thrown money around Albany as a cost of doing business. Wittingly and unwittingly, Glenwood executives put money into the personal pockets of Silver and of Skelos’ son, Adam.
Call it bribery, while also understanding that the transactions were but a hair’s breadth removed from massive, yet legal, money gifts showered by Glenwood on the campaign operations of Silver, Skelos and Gov. Cuomo.
New York’s campaign finance restrictions are as porous as Swiss cheese without the cheese.
Where presidential campaign donors are limited to $2,700 per candidate, individuals can give as much as $60,800 to each candidate for governor, controller and attorney general. Corporations are limited to giving $5,000. As if slathering that much grease were not enough, New York also has the so-called LLC loophole.
LLC stands for limited liability corporation, but the state Board of Elections treats LLCs as if they are people. Thus an LLC can donate $60,800, and a businessman like Leonard Litwin can, and did, create dozens of LLCs through which to flood officials with money. Glenwood emails introduced at Skelos’ trial revealed the corrupting effect. “Tell Dean we are giving 300000 thru Joe.” And: “Whelan can put more money into Tommy L pac called Empire something or other. That Ok with Dean?”
And: “Please send us the list of senators Dean wants us to help.” Then: “Ok. All through LLC.”
And: “Should I follow up with (lobbyist and lawyer) Richard Runes about the make-up and timing of the checks we are seeking from Glenwood?” And: “Skelos needs money.” And: “Another $25K. Jeez.” At Silver’s trial, Runes testified that he enclosed with his contributions his Glenwood business card, in a Glenwood envelope, to ensure that the recipient knew exactly who was donating.
Glenwood is the single largest LLC donor in the state, having given $1.6 million to Republicans since 1999. The company’s LLCs also gave Cuomo $1.1 million — part of his total LLC haul of $4.3 million during last year’s reelection, with $1.4 million more in 2015.
That’s the New York way, and the governor and the successors to Silver and Skelos will be part of it unless they close what is charitably called the LLC loophole and should be called the access code to a graft ATM.