Shame on Chaim

Brooklyn Councilman Chaim Deutsch, who it was revealed Thursday pled guilty late last month to a federal misdemeanor tax fraud charge for failing to report more than $80,000 worth of income, has said through his attorney that he has no plans to resign his seat. Deutsch may think he can stay because the law only automatically expels Council members if they are convicted of a felony. But if he had a modicum of self-respect or concern for the office he holds, he’d show it by giving up his seat immediately.

If he does not, the Council should remove him, as Speaker Corey Johnson is demanding. This same collection of pols, after all, removed Andy King over accusations of sexual harassment. Failing to pay federal income taxes, and pleading guilty to it in federal court, is no less grave a misdeed.

Whether Deutsch bows out now or clings to power until the end of his term, it’ll be the end of a long, ignominious and, it turns out, hypocritical stint in public service. Deutsch entered public life when he founded the Flatbush Shomrim Safety Patrol, a kind of neighborhood auxiliary police force, in the early 1990s, and has since missed no chance to voice his support for the rule of law, fairly applied. When he ran for Congress last year, he dodged debates while fanning the flames of division.

In 2016, he was among a small group of members who protested loudly when the Council banned outside income after giving its members a $36,000 pay raise. He kept earning that outside income, from a real estate management company he owned, until the ban fully took effect at the end of 2017. Turns out he’d cheated the IRS on income from the job in the years before the ban was enacted.

When first elected, questions swirled about whether he even lived in his district. Little did voters know he might be living in a federal penitentiary by the end of his term.