SUNDAY

W E AT H E R B A S E B A L L Colonie stopped TRACK

short of state title/E1 Saratoga
HIGH LOW star beats
64° 50° H O U S E • H O M E There’s a Hidden City > H O R S E R A C I N G Jazil’s late own national
‘‘Partly cloudy’’ never
looked so good!
Details/D2
in downtown Albany/H1 kick proves best in Belmont/E1 record/E9

FO R THE

$2.00 FINAL ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ALBANY, NEW YORK ■ SUNDAY, JUNE 11, 2006

DAVE
NEWCOMB,
a volunteer
Volunteer firefighters under siege
firefighter, Terr y raises his gloved hand to demon- t raf fic investigator. Outside, Dan Poole
works with
A proud tradition of helping
st rate the heat and calmly explains how waits. Poole, who has been a firefighter for
the Fuller neighbors is threatened as easily t he black smoke just inches overhead barely a month, has just qualified to use his
Road Fire sense of community fades could ignite. air pack. As the immaculate, yellow ‘‘Pro-
Department bationar y’’ shield on his helmet attests, the
‘‘This is awesome f ire,’’ says Terry, 33,
during its By JORDAN CARLEO-EVANGELIST 33-year-old Albany County correct ions
second-in-command of Fuller Road Fire
annual Staff writer officer has never before been inside a
Department in Colonie.
testing to burning building.
make sure Hunkered below racing tongues of Terr y missed a half-day of work to give
the hoses f lame, Kevin Terr y divulges t he secrets of t his lesson t hat could save the life of a Fewer men and women in New York,
are in good
t he blaze like a veteran teacher who knows fellow volunteer firef ighter. It is time he unlike Poole and Terry, are willing to do
shape.
his syllabus by hear t. could have spent wit h his wife and t wo t his work. W hile off icials struggle to
PAUL BUCKOWSKI/TIMES UNION His voice muted by a heavy air mask, daughters or at his job as a Colonie police Please see VOLUNTEERS A6 ?

Doling
out tax
dollars
in secret
State Senate Majority Leader Joseph
L. Bruno, Assembly Speaker Sheldon
Silver won’t lift shroud on how pork
is spent by state legislators
By JAMES M. ODATO
Capitol bureau
A LBANY — Senate Majorit y Leader Joseph L.
Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver refuse to
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY RICHARD LOVRICH, TOM PALMER/TIMES UNION
let anyone know how law makers are spending
hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

Member items help

Since April, the two pow-
erful polit icians have rejected
all requests to disclose the
names of legislators who ar-
ranged some $340 million in
The Political appropriat ions of the public’s
Piggy Bank money in recent years for
grease political machine
t housands of pet projects,
?This is the first story g rants and gifts. State senator from Bronx campaign accounts. Two of the charities
of an ongoing Times Some of that money went to BRUNO have been heavily financed by special
Union investigation used straw donors for legislat ive grants of taxpayer money —
churches, private clubs and
into how state
hundreds of obscure special campaigns, ex-loyalists say called ‘‘member items’’ — arranged by
lawmakers misuse t he senator’s son, Assembly man Ruben
taxpayer money. interest groups across the state
— all of it exempt from audit- By JAMES M. ODATO Diaz Jr. State law makes it unlawful for a
ing by state Compt roller Alan Hevesi. Capitol bureau person to give money in someone else’s
The special appropriat ions, called ‘‘member name to a candidate’s campaign, but that
items,’’ have become a secret piggy bank for Bruno A LBA N Y — Three people who is exactly what Sen. Diaz did, t hree
and Silver. As leaders, they decide in private how to LORI VAN BUREN/TIMES UNION worked at Bronx charit ies created by Sen. former loyalists said in interviews.
spend $170 million t he Legislat ure rout inely inserts THE USE of state money directed to Bronx charities Ruben Diaz Sr. say the state senator Hundreds of dollars in campaign dona-
into t he state budget each year for t hemselves and t heir and political contributions made by members has secretly gave t hem currency or money t ions from t he t hree appear on the Bronx
210 colleagues. They add another $30 million for raised questions about state Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr., a orders and instr ucted t hem to personally Democrat’s state and cit y campaign
Please see SPENDING A4 ? Democrat, and his son, Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr. SILVER contribute t he cash into his or his son’s Please see CASH A4 ?

3 Guantanamo prisoners hang themselves MORE NEWS

Suicides are first reported
deaths at site for men
with alleged terror ties
By CAROL ROSENBERG
and LESLEY CLARK
Knight Ridder
WASH INGTON — Th ree
suspected terrorists at the Guanta-
namo Bay prison in Cuba hanged
t hemselves with clothing and bed-
sheets Saturday, becoming the first
detainees to die at the camp since
hundreds were rounded up in
A merica’s War on Terror.
The suicides of two Saudi cit i-
zens and a Yemeni man are likely to
increase internat ional pressure on
t he Bush administ rat ion to close
t he controversial camp, opened in
t he wake of the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks. The deaths come
just weeks after a brawl and four
attempted suicides at the center,
where some have been held wit hout
charges for as many as four-and-a-
half years.
The t hree dead men were all
being held at Camp 1, the highest
maximum securit y prison at the
center, and were participants in a
wave of hunger strikes staged to
protest conditions at the camp.
Militar y of ficials said the Yemeni
detainee had just ended his long
hunger strike.
A ll t hree left suicide notes writ-
ten in Arabic, but militar y officials
refused to divulge their contents,
noting t hat the U.S. Naval Crimi-
nal I nvest igative Serv ice has
opened an investigation to deter-
mine the cause and manner of
death.
The United States is holding
about 465 enemy combatants at the
remote Nav y base in southeast
Cuba. Just 10 of them have been
charged as alleged war criminals
before President Bush’s Militar y
Please see SUICIDES A7 ?
MICHAEL P. FARRELL
/TIMES UNION
DOUG MARSHALL pulls
lobsters from a pot Saturday.
? WORLD: Taliban insurgency
growing in Afghanistan
with daily clashes against
U.S. forces./A3
? NATION: Colleges,
employers are going online to
check out candidates’ Web
profiles./A3
> CAPITAL REGION: Art
gala, annual Lobster Festival
and high winds the main
events Saturday in Albany./D1

INSIDE INDEX Comics Inside Obituaries D7 Stocks — and more

Crosswords G2,J5 Perspective B Check out the weekly stock market
‘‘Punk’’ penetrates the
Arts ● Events I House Home
● H Scoreboard E6
world of dissertations review. Plus: Find out who’s on the
Business C Life ● Today G Sports E
and fellowships. Calendar D2 Lottery A2 Travel ● Books J move, buying property.
Life • Today/G1 Classified F Movies I8 Weather D2 Business/C2-6
A4 Sunday, June 11, 2006 *****
SPENDING: Secrecy shrouds trail of tax money
/ CONTINUED FROM A1
Gov. George Pataki to use as he
wishes.
Despite repeated requests
from the Times Union made
through New York’s Freedom of
Information Law, the two elected
leaders for weeks have claimed
the public has no right to see
records showing which legisla-
tors arranged what deals — and
how much money each lawmak-
er’s projects received. Bruno and
Silver say the information is se-
cret, even though their volumi-
nous lists of member-item pro-
jects become an official law of the
state each year.
There are plenty of reasons for
taxpayers to worry about mem-
ber-item money.
A continuing Times Union
investigation of member items
has found hundreds of thousands
of dollars from the Senate being
funneled to a Bronx charity con-
trolled by former Republican
Sen. Guy Velella, even after Ve-
lella was convicted of taking
bribes in 2004. The cash was still
flowing this year despite the
ouster of Velella, who was re-
placed by a Democrat.
Other large sums from the
Assembly are sent to a Brooklyn
senior citizen group controlled
by Democratic Assemblyman Vi-
to Lopez. The charity pays Lo-
pez’s girlfriend $108,593 a year
for a 25-hour-a-week job. Lopez
also is the new chairman of
Brooklyn’s Democratic Party,
succeeding ex-Assemblyman
Clarence Norman, who was con-
victed earlier this year of taking
bribes in exchange for doling out
judgeships.
Bruno and Silver also have
disregarded a handshake agree-
ment with Senate Minority
Leader David Paterson, promis-
ing him an itemization of this
year’s member items by mid-
May. Paterson is the Democratic
candidate for lieutenant gover-
nor.
In April, Paterson threatened
to block a Senate override of
Pataki’s veto of state spending
bills, including a $200 million
allotment to replenish the state’s
member-item fund, unless the
Legislature made its member-
item process public. Patterson
compromised by agreeing that
the Legislature could publish an
itemized list of member items
and make information about fu-
ture projects public 30 days be-
fore an expenditure.
The governor was to get $30
million to spend from the mem-
ber-item bill he vetoed, with $85
million going to each house of
the Legislature. The state’s
member-item fund, also called
the 007 Account and the Com-
munity Projects Fund, already
had more than $250 million in
unspent cash on hand.
Member-item dollars, doled
out in closed-door negotiations,
receive only rudimentary over-
sight by state agencies or public
authorities chosen to implement
the funding. Many member-item
grants are buried within large
state contracts that bear little or
no connection to the member
item’s purpose.
Lawmakers conceal their iden-
tities from the Office of the state
Comptroller, which must issue
checks, sometimes for $1 million
or more. The comptroller re-
views contracts of $50,000 or
more to make sure the recipient
doesn’t owe taxes and the con-
tract is in order. He also can audit
agencies that are supposed to
monitor member-item contracts,
but otherwise has a minimal role
in overseeing member-item
spending.
In April, it took Pataki, Pater-
son and Assembly Minority
Leader James Tedisco just one
week to honor the Times
Union’s request for details on all
their member-item projects
funded in the 2004 and 2005
budget years — including the
names of lawmakers sponsoring
each grant, the names of the
recipients and contact informa-
tion.
Yet despite a series of FOI
letters requesting the same dis-
closure, Silver and Bruno won’t
budge. Silver declares the materi-
als are ‘‘intra-agency’’ and ‘‘pre-
decisional,’’ even though tens of
millions of dollars already have
been spent on the projects at
issue and the legislation authoriz-
ing them has been enacted.
Bruno argues the documents
are not covered by the state
Freedom of Information Law,
without offering any explanation
for his position.
State spending records show
Big bucks beneficiaries
Many recipients of so-called “member item” money are well-known cultural institutions or estab-
lished charities fulfilling government contracts. The Empire State Development Corp., which acts as
a clearinghouse for many member item grants, is the state’s central economic development orga-
nization. Other groups appearing here are obscure legal entities, often created to let a politician
manage his or her own slush fund, or private institutions doing research that can benefit for-profit
businesses.
Top 10 recipients of member item cash, 2003-05 (fiscal year)
THE GOVERNOR’S MONEY
Empire State
Development Corp.
American Museum
of Natural History
Natural Heritage Trust
Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer
Associates, LLP
Lincoln Center for
the Performing Arts
Museum of
Women’s History
Plug Power Inc.
NYS Energy Research
Development Authority
Hudson River Museum
of Westchester
National Baseball Hall
of Fame and Museum
THE ASSEMBLY’S MONEY
Empire State
Development Corp.
Prisoners Legal Services
of New York
Research Foundation
of SUNY
City of New Rochelle
Treasurer
Legal Aid Society
New York University
Educational Alliance Inc.
Metro NY Coordinating
Council on Jewish Poverty
EAC Inc.
Ohel Children’s Home
and Family Services Inc.
Source: Office of the State Comptroller, Times Union research
that only about $100 million to
$120 million was actually spent
annually on member items in
recent years. Many lawmakers
are willing to discuss the spend-
ing, but they don’t really like
exposure of their own items, Pat-
erson said.
‘‘Members don’t want any-
body looking at their money
trail,’’ Paterson said.
Blair Horner, legislative direc-
tor for the New York Public
Interest Research Group, said
withholding the information is
‘‘indefensible’’ and suggests poli-
ticians have something to hide.
The vague member-item re-
cords that are available to the
public lead down thousands of
trails that hide a hundred rats’
nests of questionable tax grants
— intertwined with typical gov-
ernment charity for popular pub-
lic institutions or the arts and
intriguing political relationships
between giver and receiver.
Gift keeps giving
For instance, tax money kept
flowing to former Sen. Guy Velella
of the Bronx even after he left the
Senate as a felon and served a
one-year sentence.
The project was the ninth big-
gest single recipient of member-
item funds during the state’s 2004
and 2005 budget years — and the
No. 1 largest grantee of Senate
majority funds: the North Bronx
Westchester Neighborhood Res-
toration Association.
Officials with the organization
say Velella, a Republican, spon-
sored the funding, a total of $1.4
million over two years.
Sen. Jeff Klein, a Democrat who
now represents the district, said the
organization served as an arm of
Velella’s political machine. ‘‘It’s a
total waste of money,’’ Klein said.
Yet the organization was still
preparing vouchers to receive the
last remnants of its secret member-
item cash this year.
The nonprofit corporation is
being closed down, according to its
new executive director, John Ree-
hill. Its programs for the communi-
ty, such as graffiti removal, are
essentially over. But the group’s
longtime executive, Dorothy De-
Layo, paid $75,000 annually until
she was let go at the end of 2005,
contends the charity did good work
in spite of its direction by Velella’s
handpicked board.
‘‘We did a lot of good stuff for
the community,’’ she said. ‘‘Did it
bounce back on Guy Velella? Yes.
Is it such a horrible thing to know
who brought them the money? ...
Was the end result helpful to him
F R O M T H E
THE SENATE’S MONEY
Empire State
$9,157,738.39 Development Corp.
North Bronx Westchester
$2,426,111.00 Neighborhood Restoration
$751,200.00 Association
Putnam Community
$569,786.08 Foundation
Development Authority
of the North Country
$450,000.00
$443,432.70
Upstate Safety
Association/P.E.A.C.E Inc.
$322,600.00 Pace University
Relief Resources Inc.
$263,509.00 Metropolitan Development
Association of Syracuse
$250,000.00 and Central NY
Cornell University
$250,000.00 School District Account,
NYC Commissioner of Finance
$4,953,000.00
$4,570,000.00
$1,634,360.82
$1,604,150.00
$1,538,470.97
$1,537,142.78
$1,197,077.14
$1,187,266.15
$1,082,049.76
$1,028,180.00
in his campaign? There is no
denying it.’’
DeLayo says she now wonders
how $95,000 in cash remaining
when she was forced out is being
used under the direction of Reehill,
whom Velella arranged to replace
her after the senator became an-
gered with her allegiance to a
Republican boss the senator no
longer favored.
Jennifer Farina, of the state
Division of Housing and Commu-
nity Renewal, said her agency keeps
issuing money to the Bronx-West-
chester charity at the direction of
Majority Leader Bruno’s office. A
Bruno spokesman said he thought
the program had ended.
The agency, as a rule, holds back
10 percent of grants. That with-
holding on Velella’s 2003 member
item for the group, which totaled
$950,000, is being disbursed now
that the group provided a final
budget, Farina said. ‘‘We get our
marching orders from Senate Fi-
nance,’’ she said, referring to the
powerful committee controlled by
Bruno.
Velella said in an interview that
DeLayo was removed by the board
for overspending on rent and de-
manding severance. The organiza-
tion, he said, was simply drawing
down from the grant after his
departure and there is nothing
nefarious going on. Klein, accord-
ing to the former senator, ‘‘speaks
from envy’’ and may be worried
that Velella would run again, win,
and return to the Senate. The
numerous groups that benefited
from his member-item funds, Ve-
lella said, from Little Leagues to
senior centers, would testify to how
he provided for constituents.
‘‘It didn’t go in my pocket,’’ he
said, ‘‘it went to the people who
voted for me.’’
Family affairs
Another organization has re-
ceived nearly $700,000 over the
same two-year period under the
sponsorship of Democratic Assem-
blyman Vito Lopez. It is the Ridge-
wood Bushwick Senior Citizens
Council Inc. in Brooklyn, which
employs a part-time executive di-
rector, Christiana Fisher, for nearly
$129,000 a year and 17.5 hours per
week. That’s roughly $141 per
hour.
The council also employs Lo-
pez’s girlfriend, Angela Battaglia,
as a housing director. She’s paid
$108,593 a year for 25 hours a week
of work — roughly $84 per hour.
Lopez and both women did not
return calls, and the assemblyman’s
spokesman had no comment. The
C O V E R
$2,968,000.00
$1,444,791.84
$924,935.91
$810,000.00
$767,422.51
$751,784.17
$625,000.00
$608,733.39
$575,278.12
$552,021.00
CARIN LANE/TIMES UNION
council’s comptroller, Wesley Hit-
ner, said he was not authorized to
discuss the organization.
Critics of Lopez say the organi-
zation offers good programs for
senior citizens but that Lopez rules
over which elderly people get to
participate. They also claim the
council provides patronage jobs
and political help for the assembly-
man.
‘‘They’re all tied in with his
political club,’’ says Arthur Steier,
70, who has complained to the
Brooklyn district attorney’s office.
Pataki gets his cut of the so-
called 007 Account the Legislature
has nurtured. Pataki gave $443,000
in recent years to a new group, the
Museum of Women’s History.
The board of directors of the
nonprofit includes his former di-
rector of communications, Zenia
Mucha, now an executive at the
Walt Disney Co. Evelyn Rollins, a
$119,200-per-year deputy director
for Pataki, is president. The corpo-
ration listed the governor’s Man-
hattan office and telephone num-
ber as its own. State employees field
questions for the still unbuilt muse-
um and return calls left for Rollins.
Informed of this, Pataki’s
spokeswoman, Carmela Uzzi, said
Rollins’ use of the governor’s office
was ‘‘just an oversight’’ over the
past two years. She said Rollins has
been instructed to change her
business address.
Yet another beneficiary of mem-
ber items has an especially intimate
relationship to the Assembly.
The Metropolitan New York
Coordinating Council on Jewish
Poverty, which received $1.23 mil-
lion in funding, almost all of it from
Assembly Democrats, employs
William Rapfogel as its $273,181-
per-year executive director. He is
married to Judy Rapfogel, Speaker
Silver’s chief of staff.
William Rapfogel said his orga-
nization had received member-
item money for decades, even
before he arrived 14 years ago, and
that a slew of members help obtain
the funds. He said he does not
lobby Silver or anyone else for cash
and that legislators expect nothing
in return.
‘‘They’ve never asked us to raise
money for them in campaigns or
fundraising, which is quite surpris-
ing,’’ Rapfogel said of his politician
benefactors.
The money pays for services to
all people in financial and domestic
crisis, he said, as well as for clothing
and furniture for poor people.
? James M. Odato can be reached
at 454-5083 or by e-mail at
jodato@timesunion.com.
Albany, New York
ASSEMBLYMAN RUBEN DIAZ JR. in the Assembly chambers in
Albany. His campaign accounts have generated questions.
CASH: A llegations of
st raw donors in Bronx
/ CONTINUED FROM A1
disclosure reports, as do thou-
sands of dollars more from doz-
ens of employees and former
employees of not-for-profit or-
ganizations Sen. Diaz controls.
‘‘He would hold a fundraiser
and go to the employees and give
them cash or money orders,’’ said
Edward Padilla, executive direc-
tor of Soundview Community In
Action. ‘‘It wasn’t the employees’
money.’’
Sen. Diaz and his son, Assem-
blyman Ruben Diaz Jr., both
refused to comment.
Soundview Community in Ac-
tion is a Bronx nonprofit group
that formerly employed Sen. Di-
az, his wife and his former wife,
the mother of Assemblyman Di-
az. Soundview received hundreds
of thousands of dollars in so-
called legislative ‘‘member-item’’
funds through the senator’s son
while his family members were
employed.
That act apparently violated
Assembly guidelines that render
an organization which employs
an elected official’s relative ineli-
gible for such funds. A recent
story in the Times Union about
the Diaz family’s use of member
item money prompted Assembly
Speaker Sheldon Silver to give
Assemblyman Diaz a stern lec-
ture, according to a source famil-
iar with the confrontation.
Silver said he has since bol-
stered oversight of member-item
spending by bolstering monitor-
ing staff and investigatory re-
sources.
Soundview employees had be-
gun to rebel at being used as
political tools when Diaz Sr. rose
from his position as a city coun-
cilman to become a state senator
in 2003. Both the senator and his
assemblyman son then began
steering hundreds of thousands
of dollars in member-item mon-
ey to Christian Community Be-
nevolent Association, another
Diaz organization. Its staff is
closely affiliated with Christian
Community In Action, which
employs Sen. Diaz’s wife.
State records show Sound-
view’s director, Padilla, contrib-
uted two checks of $500 each in
2002 to Assemblyman Diaz’s
campaign — money Padilla said
came from the senator. Sen. Di-
az’s filings for his last City Coun-
cil campaign also list Padilla,
misspelling Padilla’s first name
but using his Bronx address, as
providing a total of $1,120 in
June of 2001 in three checks —
money Padilla says he did not
provide from his own pocket.
A woman who worked for
Christian Community In Action,
whose name is being withheld by
the Times Union to protect her
from retaliation, said she also
SENATE MAJORITY LEADER Joseph L. Bruno, left, and Assembly
Speaker Sheldon Silver have rejected calls to shed more light on
special appropriations known as member items.
TIMES UNION
LORI VAN BUREN/TIMES UNION
received money from the senator,
who also is a minister, to make
contributions. She is listed as
contributing to Assemblyman
Diaz in 2000.
The woman also is listed as
contributing to the Rev. Diaz’s
City Council campaign in 2001.
That source said the orders to
donate and a supply of money
orders came from the elder Diaz.
‘‘He’s the only one with the
audacity,’’ she said.
A third source, who still works
for one of the charities, said he
received money to donate to
campaigns as well. He is listed in
2002 filings as having given hun-
dreds of dollars to both the sena-
tor’s and assemblyman’s cam-
paigns. That worker said the
senator provided the cash for the
contributions.
‘‘He would make money or-
ders and just ask us to put our
name on it,’’ he said.
The allegations that Sen. Diaz
has used straw contributors were
corroborated by a fourth source
who worked with Diaz, but they
were disputed by several employ-
ees at Christian Community In
Action, when reached at work.
Those employees say they donat-
ed their own money to both the
senator and his son.
Even while earning less than
$30,000 a year, some gave hun-
dreds or thousands of dollars to
Diaz campaigns. They insisted
the money came from their own
funds. Many more would not
comment and several others re-
fused to take calls. Finally, a
woman identifying herself as a
lawyer for the group threatened
legal action and demanded the
Times Union stop contacting
workers.
In recent years, Padilla and
others who worked for Sound-
view complained to Attorney
General Eliot Spitzer that the
senator forced the nonprofit em-
ployees to work on voter cam-
paigns, raise election funds and
fill out money orders for cam-
paigns, Padilla said. Spitzer, Sen.
Diaz’s filings show, donated $150
in 2002 to the elder Diaz’s city
council campaign. A spokesman
for Spitzer could not explain the
donation.
Spitzer’s office concluded its
investigation of Sen. Diaz by
allowing the senator to use his
campaign treasury to reimburse
the state and federal government
for misused public grants. Those
grants, intended to help Sound-
view keep kids off the streets,
were used to buy furnishings and
audio speakers found at the sena-
tor’s district office.
? James M. Odato can be reached
at 454-5083 or by e-mail at
jodato@timesunion.com.
LUANNE M. FERRIS/TIMES UNION