Take down Albany's 'for sale' sign

Editorial

Well, well, well. The Daily News turned over rocks in Albany, and guess what was squirming underneath: friends, business partners and cronies of the state's top political leaders, peddling influence for big bucks.

News reporter Greg B. Smith has documented that the same lobbyists who dominate the Legislature are doing a land-office business in the Department of Transportation. Under cover of darkness, they scored $1.3 billion in contracts for clients in just two years.

Conveniently, the Pataki administration avoided old-fashioned competitive bidding to award most of the contracts, an arrangement that enables connected types to cajole, wheedle and pull strings. Gov. Pataki's old law partners, his top political consultant, the state GOP's chief attorney and a dear friend of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver were among those who won deals for clients.

Bringing the facts to light took work. The governor and Legislature have long allowed the folks who hustle for contracts, known as procurement lobbyists, to operate in secret. Only by digging through files and searching computer records could Smith throw back the curtain on the goings-on at a single agency.

The News' findings should compel lawmakers and the governor to muck out Albany's stables, right now, before adjourning for the summer. For starters, they must:

• Require full disclosure of procurement lobbying. State law requires lobbyists who work the Legislature to register with the Lobbying Commission and submit bimonthly reports on how much they've earned. The same rules should apply to the mouthpieces for contractors. Anyone who is paid to help a private interest grab taxpayer money should be subject to public scrutiny.

• Prohibit lobbyists from dealing with their pals. Deal seekers and their representatives should be restricted to communicating with specified professional contracting officers. Extracting favors from political appointees must stop.

  The big picture here is that Pataki, Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno have allowed a "for sale" sign to be hung on the Capitol. They've created a culture in which lobbyists openly trade on connections. The leading practitioners of this art include Bruno's son, Ken Bruno; Silver's former aide and confidante, Patricia Lynch; Pataki's mentor and pal, Al D'Amato; former state GOP chairman Bill Powers, and former Assembly Speaker Mel Miller.

  If Pataki, Bruno and Silver don't have the decency to tell their buddies - and in Bruno's case, his blood - to take a hike, the public's only hope is to put every shady deal on the record.

  Influence-peddling is a growth industry in Albany. The fees collected by lobbyists working the Legislature more than doubled from 1999 to 2004, to $144 million. This year will blow that number out of the water, thanks to the lobbying war between the Jets and Cablevision over the West Side stadium. And these mammoth amounts don't count fees paid to procurement lobbyists - who don't work cheap. Infamously, one contractor paid D'Amato $500,000 for making a phone call to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

  What Smith established is that in a two-year period, the DOT awarded 353 contracts to companies represented by lobbyists. Deals worth at least $16 million went to clients of Pataki political consultant Kieran Mahoney. An additional $8.6 million went to companies who hired the governor's old law firm, Plunkett Jaffe. Lynch clients bagged $10 million worth of state work.

  In other departments, this type of insider dealing is impossible to track. Although Pataki ordered his agencies to record contacts with procurement lobbyists two years ago, DOT seems to be the only one that keeps this information in a central location. The others bury it in countless files on individual contracts.

  The Health Department, for example, awarded a $25 million Medicaid contract to a D'Amato client, First Health Services. The News asked to see the lobbying records a month ago. We're still waiting.

  Corruption is guaranteed. In the past 2-1/2 years, two members of the Legislature and a Pataki labor commissioner went to jail over procurement lobbying. One convicted pol, former Sen. Guy Velella of the Bronx, was among those shilling for DOT work: Prosecutors caught the department's chief counsel on tape in 1998 saying he would bend the rules even though it was "costing the taxpayers a lot of money."

  Add it all up: billions of dollars in taxpayers' money. No-bid contracts. Fixers climbing all over the place. Who knows how much money is being stolen?