Spitzer Probes Have Inside-the-Beltway Feeling
With so many investigations under way, Albany is beginning to resemble Washington, D.C.
A week after Attorney General Cuomo released a report accusing the Spitzer administration of using the state police in an effort to tar a political opponent, two separate investigative offices have taken up the allegations. One, the state inspector general, has already concluded there was no wrongdoing, although it failed to use its subpoena power during its probe. The state's Ethics Commission, which has confirmed that it is reviewing the matter, will likely take months to issue any report.
A troubling prospect for Mr. Spitzer is the possibility that the Ethics Commission finds the conduct of members of his administration violated up to two separate counts of the state's public officer's law.
A former executive director of the commission, Karl Sleight, said the commission "could focus on a couple of potential violations."
Mr. Sleight pointed to one section of the law that states a public official "should endeavor to pursue a course of conduct which will not raise suspicion among the public that he is likely to be engaged in acts that are in violation of his trust."
The attorney general's report found that two top advisors to Mr. Spitzer had ordered the state police to research Majority Leader Joseph Bruno's use of a state helicopter and ground escorts, in order to give a story to a newspaper reporter. Mr. Spitzer has since suspended one of the advisors, Darren Dopp, and reassigned another, William Howard.
One small point in the report could prove especially intriguing to the Ethics Commission, Mr. Sleight, now with the firm Harris Beach in Albany, said.
The report criticized the state police's willingness to release information about Mr. Bruno's travel schedule without first conducting a security review.
"One thing that's interesting is whether some of this information was truly confidential," Mr. Sleight said. "Subsection C says that no officer should disclose confidential state information," he said, referring to a section of the public officer's law.
Violations of the public officer's law include fines of up to $40,000 and can lead to removal from office.
Mr. Spitzer has said he knew nothing of his deputies' plan to conduct research on Mr. Bruno, who is an opponent of his in the Senate. But the case may not rest with Mr. Spitzer's word. Senate Republicans have said they would start hearings on the matter.
"This is a mini version of what happens in Washington all the time," a D.C. defense attorney and former counsel to the House of Representatives, Stanley Brand, said. "I think this is headed for a major investigative undertaking." Regarding the governor's role, Mr. Brand said: "It becomes an appearance issue. Even if at end of the day it turns out that nothing untoward occurred, you can't conceivably convince the public at the outset that that's the case."
Any investigative undertaking is likely to progress slowly, and Mr. Spitzer is not going to be subpoenaed any time soon.
"I don't think that there's necessarily a basis on which to proceed to empanel a grand jury or anything," a former state prosecutor in Manhattan, Thomas Curran, who is now of Ganfer & Shore LLP, said. "I don't think we're there yet. But there is a basis to start walking down that road." Mr. Curran did say that one possible crime committed by Spitzer administration officials was a "scheme to defraud Senator Bruno."
"This becomes a problem because in New York a scheme to defraud must generally have a monetary loss aspect," Mr. Curran said. "But any time that people think a particular conduct is not covered by the penal law in the state of New York those people are invariably proven wrong. The law is an elastic and developing resource for prosecutors."
