His Brother’s Keeper

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

With the resignation on Friday of the deputy commissioner of the state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services – who also happens to be the brother of the Republican leader of the Senate, Joseph Bruno – the wrong member of the Bruno family is paying the price for this latest scandal out of Albany. After 27 years in the state Legislature, including 10 as majority leader, Senator Bruno betrays a distressingly feeble grasp of the proprieties of public service.


His younger brother, who was the beneficiary of a state sinecure that paid $127,500, had fetched up in a plush office suite at Saratoga Springs – 34 miles from most of his coworkers – in a building that happens to be owned by the Republican chairman of Saratoga Springs. The New York Post charged that this arrangement served little purpose but to reduce the apparently irksome commute of the majority leader’s brother, Robert Bruno.


It further came out that Robert Bruno had hired a neighbor of his, Donald Skaarup, as a “special assistant” at $75,000 a year. The state was paying for all this during what is ostensibly a time of belt-tightening, through the auspices of a drug-treatment program for ex-prisoners known as the Road to Recovery, which was added to state budget at the behest of – you guessed it – Senator Bruno.


Mr. Bruno did seek to justify the public outlay for the office, priced at $54,400 a year, not to mention the salary of his brother. He insisted that his brother, who has 17 years’ experience as a substance abuse counselor, is a dedicated public servant who is “out there administering” on Christmas and New Year’s. He explained that the Saratoga Springs office was convenient for the nature of the work, which involves visiting treatment centers on the fringes of the Adirondacks. In other words: Nothing to see here. Go on about your business.


Mr. Bruno might have had enough good will to ride out his neptotism gambit, but he has recently been draining his goodwill by going along with spending increases, kowtowing to labor unions, and generally mismanaging state government in a most un-Republican way. The low point came last year, when he conspired with the speaker, Sheldon Silver, to resolve a post-September 11 financial crisis by hiking income and sales taxes, and then to override all of Governor Pataki’s budget vetoes. If Mr. Bruno were doing a better job, people might be more willing to overlook a little nepotism. There are worse sins in a functioning democracy. As it is, this brotherly boondoggle rubbed salt in the taxpayers’ wounds.


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