It's who you know

From Gotham Gazette:

The Queens Democratic Board of Elections commissioner, who in the past has come under fire for conflicts of interest, is quickly becoming one of the highest earning recipients of Queens court patronage, Gotham Gazette has learned.

In 2014, Jose Miguel Araujo, then the newly elected BOE president, was fined $10,000 by the city's Conflicts of Interest Board (COIB) -- the maximum penalty for nepotism -- because he gave his wife Rita Patron Araujo a job as a temporary clerk between 2010 and 2012.

The fines issued against Araujo and other BOE employees followed a scathing 2013 Department of Investigation (DOI) report, which found the agency to be rife with nepotism, incompetence, and overall dysfunction.

"The imposition of the maximum legal fine on the Board’s President should send a powerful message that this conduct will not be tolerated,” DOI Commissioner Mark Peters said in a statement at the time of the fines.

Despite the incident, Araujo was renominated for the position by the Queens County Democratic Party and reconfirmed for a four-year term by the City Council in 2016. Since then, his law practice has become one of the top earners of Queens Court patronage doled out by the Queens Surrogate’s Court and Queens Supreme Court, raising questions about his impartiality as a BOE commissioner and other conflicts of interest this outside business might present.

Before he became a commissioner, from 2005 through 2007, Araujo earned significant payments from the Queens Surrogate’s Court, which settles estates of Queens residents who die without wills. The appointments required Araujo to act as a “guardian ad litem,” to advocate for individuals incapacitated by age or mental illness. After Araujo joined the BOE in 2008, the appointments stopped. Several payments trickled in again in 2011, but after the 2014 COIB fine, the appointments escalated from both Surrogate’s Court and also Supreme Court, which gave Araujo work as a court evaluator or counsel for guardians of incapacitated individuals.

Of the roughly $140,000 Araujo earned from Queens court appointments since 2005, half of the money -- $69,513 -- flowed to Araujo’s practice in the last two years, according to records obtained from the New York State Unified Court System.

Daily News exposes the Queens Machine

From the Daily News:

For 30 years, the same three men have effectively controlled one of the largest Democratic organizations in America.

They are Gerard Sweeney, Michael Reich and Frank Bolz, the powerful attorneys who serve Rep. Joe Crowley, the chairman of the Queens County Democratic Party. Reich is the executive secretary of the party, a spokesperson and wrangler of district leaders. Bolz is the law chairman, entrusted with keeping county-approved candidates on the ballot and knocking their rivals off.

Sweeney wears no official hat within the party infrastructure. But Queens insiders say he is arguably its most important strategist, helping guide the party’s political machinations on the homefront as it jousts for influence in City Hall and Albany.

He is also the one who gets to be very rich.

As the appointed counsel to the Queens public administrator, a job he has held without interruption since 1992, the 63-year-old Sweeney raked in just over $2 million last year administering in Surrogate’s Court the estates of people who died without leaving wills. Over the past decade, his haul is even more stunning: $30 million since 2006, according to an analysis of court records.

It’s impossible to know how many millions Sweeney received in his first 14 years on the job because the state’s Office of Court Administration, which oversees Surrogate’s Court, says it doesn't keep those figures.

The three men, with Crowley’s blessing, still determine what type of justice is served in Queens County. No Queens judge rises through the ranks without the party’s blessing and regular donations to its housekeeping account.

Large collection of historical records to be better preserved

From NBC:

Long buried inside the granite of Surrogate Court, what was ancient history to New York is alive again. Geog Huth and Joe Van Nostrand aren't merely history buffs -- they're history's keepers. Their task now is to dust off New York's old court records and deliver them to a larger, safe space. John Chandler reports.

Surrogate system is all in the family

From the NY Post:

If you’re a lawyer in New York, there’s no sweeter deal than getting assigned to an estate case in Surrogate’s Court.

The work is often routine — selling assets, paying bills, contacting heirs — but the pay can reach into the millions.

Landing such a gig requires currying favor with one of the city’s seven surrogate judges, who handle wills and estates. They have the power to appoint lawyers and approve their sometimes jaw-dropping invoices.

The jobs often go to the judges’ friends, associates or campaign contributors, court authorities admit. Looting of the estates can sometimes result.

Let's remember that in Queens, the lawyering Crowleys and their cronies are the biggest profiteers at the Surrogate's Court because Joe Crowley appoints the judges who in turn appoint them. Nice, eh?

The way things work for the Machine

From the NY Times:

All of this might have Democratic Party leaders — Representative Joseph Crowley is the party boss in Queens — wailing and rending palm cards. Except that isn’t how it works in Queens. Power and money are found not so much in the voting booth as in the machine-controlled judicial conventions that pick judges, and in the courthouse on Sutphin Boulevard.

That is where you find Surrogate’s Court, otherwise known as widows and orphans court. This court appoints guardians who make handsome fees processing the estates of those Queens residents who die without wills.

To enter this court is to stumble upon Ponce de Leon’s own spring, an eternal source of easy money for the politically wired. The Surrogate’s judge appointed the public administrator, Lois M. Rosenblatt, who is a fierce and battle-tested elections lawyer, Democratic division.

Ms. Rosenblatt reappointed the court’s counsel, who for about a millennium has been Gerard J. Sweeney. In 2010, Mr. Sweeney’s office pulled down $2.284 million administering estates. This year has been slower; through the end of October, his take was $993,764.

As legal sinecures go, it is bearable.

Mr. Sweeney’s law firm on Queens Boulevard is a beehive of Queens Democratic worthies; Michael Reich and Frank A. Bolz III are partners and top party officers.

The geographic metaphysics of their party membership is curious. All three “Queens” Democrats — Messrs. Sweeney, Reich and Bolz — live on Long Island. The current Surrogate’s judge, Peter J. Kelly, is admirably frank about the ways of this world. He even frames the questions for you.

“Do I know Sweeney’s related with the Democratic Party and close to Congressman Joe Crowley?” the judge offers. “I would be a moron if I didn’t know that.”