Saturday, March 6, 2010

Paterson connected to illegal lobbying

From the NY Post:

In apparent violation of the law, a top adviser to Gov. Paterson's now-ended campaign provided thousands of dollars' worth of services to the governor for free while lobbying him for the controversial Aqueduct casino contract.

Bill Lynch, a prominent Democratic operative and longtime Paterson associate, was signed to a $7,500-a-month contract by would-be Aqueduct operator SL Green on Nov. 1 for the purpose of "assisting in the venture's bid for a license to operate the video lottery facility at Aqueduct," a copy of the contract filed with the Public Integrity Commission (PIC) shows.

But from Nov. 1 until early February, when Lynch abruptly left SL Green's employ, he regularly gave "free" campaign advice to the governor, who made the final decision on awarding the Aqueduct contract, Lynch and Paterson campaign manager Richard Fife conceded.

A state ethics panel ruled in 2002 that "gifts" of services by a registered lobbyist to a person whom he or she is lobbying were illegal.


Photo from the NY Observer

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ya think SL Green was trying to get themselves picked with a little political grease? I do.

Anonymous said...

Ackerman is connected to illegal lobbying...Claire Shulman too!

So why are these smelly old asses still warming their seats of power?

PHEW!

Time to dump their rotting polluting carcasses!

But not in the Flushing River please...it already stinks bad enough!

Anonymous said...

This whole thing is getting ridiculous.

The heinous crimes Paterson is accused of, they say he showed favoritism to AEG because his old friend Floyd Flake was involved, yet they show no evidence of quid quo pro.

Now they claim he broke the law by talking to his old friend Bill Lynch about politics while Lynch worked for one of the losing bidders!

At what point is it the lobbying laws that are the farce and not the politicians who "violate" them.

Bill Lynch and Paterson go back many years in the Harlem political world. Lynch was Dinkins campaign manager when he was Mayor.

Are we actually to expect that friends who work in politics stop talking among themselves?

That is not reasonable, for that matter neither is wasting time investigating the Governor over a couple of free ballgame tickets.

Georges said...

I guess fat Lynch didn't get promised a bigger ownership cut with SL Green. It hard to work with an above board Company. You can't work your magic with people whom are experts at giving smell tests.