That Pigeon Won’t Fly
Steve Pigeon
Here’s another example, this one two years old, of the way Steve Pigeon’s political committees are alleged to steer money to candidates illegally.
On September 15, 2006, the Pigeon-controlled PAC Citizens for Fiscal Integrity paid “RUR Strategy Group” $9,000 in consulting fees, according to CFI’s campaign finance disclosure forms.
That should be “RWR,” not “RUR,” and I’m told the check actually was issued September 6. But close enough. About the same time, the Committee to Elect Gary Parenti was paying RWR, too—a total of $42,000 in four installments between August 17 and September 1 of that year, for printing and mailing. Gary Parenti was running for State Assembly in the 138th District, challenging Democratic incumbent Francine DelMonte in the primary. The race was hot and lowdown, especially in the final month. Parenti lost.
CFI’s $9,000 almost certainly paid RWR for services rendered to Parenti’s campaign. “If CFI was paying RWR on Parenti’s behalf, and it seems highly unlikely it wasn’t, it would be an illegal contribution and fall under the felony section of the law,” said a source at the Erie County Board of Elections, who has been tracking the activities of the many committees Pigeon controls.
Parenti has long been close to Pigeon; both served on the staff of political consultants Byron Brown employed while a state senator. In 2004, Brown canned Pigeon as his chief aide; Parenti remained loyal to Pigeon and resigned from Brown’s staff. Brown was preparing to run for mayor of Buffalo at the time, and Pigeon’s reputation had become a liability. Discussing Pigeon’s firing with the Buffalo News, Brown said at the time, “Unfortunately, he has been unable to move beyond his attitudes toward those whom he believes have wronged him politically in the past…It was painfully obvious he just wasn’t a positive influence on my staff.”
Nor was he a positive influence as Democratic county chairman. His profligate spending drove the party into debt, and his heavy hand fomented internecine wars that made politics rather than policy the focus of local government for most of his tenure. That’s why Brown had to separate himself from Pigeon if he wanted to become mayor; major funders around here made it clear that Brown was welcome to the second floor of City Hall but Pigeon was not.
Brown and his chief political officer, First Deputy Mayor Steve Casey, have since reconciled with Pigeon, just as former Erie County executive Joel Giambra eventually reconciled with Pigeon, despite a rift so deep that it drove the ambitious Giambra to the GOP in order to seek political advancement. The patronage of Golisano, whose loyalty to Pigeon seems unassailable, has given him his strongest position yet.
Golisano shot back at at Erie County elections commissioners Ralph Mohr and Dennis Ward last week, and good for him: Mohr and Ward are anyone’s worst choice as enforcers of election law. Most years they don’t seem to give a damn about election law; neither do most elected officials, and neither does the state board of elections. So it’s difficult to take seriously Mohr’s noises about investigating Pigeon’s committees, including CFI and People for Accountable Government. On the issue of Responsible New York, the unauthorized committee that Golisano set up with $5 million and which Pigeon directs, Mohr and Ward are both fatally compromised: Mohr sought to cripple Joe Mesi, who was running what appeared to be a close race with Republican Mike Ranzenhofer for the 61st District State Senate seat. Ward’s brother, Dan, and his wife, Michele Iannello, both ran against Mesi in the Democratic primary for that seat, and Ward is allied with Len Lenihan, Pigeon’s successor as county chairman. There’s no love lost between the two.
Golisano is probably correct that Mohr and Ward were seeking political advantage. But that doesn’t mean Pigeon is clean, this election year or in past campaigns. And his association with Pigeon tarnishes Golisano’s good reputation, at least in Western New York.
The great mystery is why Pigeon is so valued as a political strategist and ally. His win-lose record is not great. Locally, in this last election cycle, the only winning candidates endorsed by Responsible New York were Bill Stachowski (for whom RNY did very little; he was rescued from the Delano insurgency by state Democrats) and folks like Mark Schroeder and Dennis Gabryszak and Antoine Thompson (who didn’t need any help). The local losers: Kavanaugh, Mesi—the challenging races in which Pigeon invested the most time and money. In the last month before the campaign, Responsible New York spread $1,000 donations to a slate of candidates statewide, which will have increased the committee’s total win-lose record. But Pigeon accomplished no change whatsoever in the local state delegation.
Pigeon also failed two years ago to unseat a number of Erie County legislators. His one-time protege, Anthony Nanula, who was once touted as a future governor of New York State, is out of politics. So is Greg Olma, of course; his ouster was Pigeon’s last great success. That was 2001, and it cost Pigeon $150,000 to drive Olma out of the county legislature. Was that a good deal?
In a couple weeks, when the next round of campaign disclosure forms is released, we’ll know exactly how much of Golisano’s $5 million Pigeon spent in the last three months and balance that against the committee’s goals and its accomplishments.
October 28, 2008
Chasing Pigeon: The Bad Reporter
The Buffalo edition of the September 9 Niagara Falls Reporter, with Sam Hoyt on the cover. These copies, according to the guy whose car trunk this is, sleep with dead presidents now.
In this week’s Niagara Falls Reporter, editor Mike Hudson writes:
Speaking of the Buffalo News, you may have noticed that Bob McCarthy — who seems to be assigned to the Tom Golisano beat — didn’t write a word about the Buffalo Sabres owner’s $10 million gift to Niagara University a couple of weeks ago.
It was the largest financial endowment in the august 152-year history of the venerable institution, after all.
But I think I have it figured out. McCarthy is paid by Warren Buffett and who knows who else not to report on Golisano in any generally accepted use of the term. In reality, he makes his money by smearing Golisano at every opportunity.
Anyway, we’ll see whether he writes about it next week when grand larceny charges against the sole source he used in attempting to harm the reputation of the Niagara Falls Reporter in a fraudulent Sept. 28 News story are filed by the Niagara Falls Police Department.
We’re guessing he won’t, since the charges will serve to completely discredit his earlier attempt at journalism.
As a rule, I won’t rush to the defense of the Buffalo News generally or Bob McCarthy specifically. And, though I don’t much care for the politics of Steve Pigeon, who so far has spent $3,283,730.06 of his patron’s money this election season, I do like Tom Golisano. (What’s not to like? The Sabres are winning. His company prints my paycheck twice a month. He’s pro-windpower, anti-casino, and the Buffalo Niagara Partnership leadership hates him.) But I wonder why Hudson thinks a political reporter like McCarthy should write about a donation to a university? What was wrong with Jay Rey’s front-page, above-the-fold Buffalo News story on October 8? Was that insufficient coverage of the gift?
No, it’s that “fraudulent Sept. 28 News story” that draws Hudson’s bile. Former Reporter publisher Bruce Battaglia accused Hudson of taking money from Pigeon in exchange for editorial services rendered—two attack pieces on Sam Hoyt, for example, and a piece promoting Joe Mesi—and McCarthy wrote a piece about the resulting squabble. Hudson, meantime, convinced the Reporter’s board and shareholders that Battaglia was stealing money from the paper. Hudson and the paper’s soon-to-be-new publisher voted to kick Battaglia off the three-member board; then, using proxy votes obtained from the majority of the paper’s shareholders, the two fired Battaglia as publisher. Whether or not this sad family drama will actually end in criminal charges remains to be seen. I hope not, for the karmic health of all parties.
At the shareholders meeting in which Battaglia was fired, Hudson acknowledged that Pigeon had in fact paid for an extra press run and expanded distribution of an edition sporting a cover story about Hoyt’s affairs with interns. (At least, that was the cover in Buffalo—the papers distributed in Niagara Falls that week had Mayor Paul Dyster on the cover. Hudson claimed Pigeon had not paid for the extra expense for printing separate covers.) Responsible New York, the committee funded by Golisano and directed by Pigeon, supports Mesi and opposed Hoyt in his primary against Barbra Kavanaugh. So Pigeon’s motive in picking up the tab is clear.
The extra papers and distribution could not have cost too much, in any case; the bill certainly did not approach the $5,000 mark, at which point Responsible New York would be required by state election law to itemize the expense.
Here’s the germane paragraph:
Whenever a person or entity, such as a consultant acting on behalf of a committee which supports or opposes candidates for any pubic office or party position or which supports or opposes any proposition, subcontracts for finished goods or services, the treasurer of the committee shall, in addition to reporting the expenditure made to such consultant or agent, report the name, address and amount expended to each person or entity providing such goods or services the cost of which exceeds, in the case of a committee supporting candidates for statewide office, $ 10,000 and all other committees, $ 5,000.
Leave aside whatever petty cash Pigeon has thrown Hudson’s way for advertisements, extra papers, and extended distribution. There’s no crime there except against journalistic sensibilities.
But that provision of the election law suggests that Responsible New York should itemize and report payouts over $5,000 by limited liability corporations like Landen Associates (a consulting firm controlled by Pigeon), which spent $93,103 of Golisano’s money on print ads in the last month alone. And what about New York Media Strategies (controlled by Pigeon associate Jack O’Donnell), which has spent $1,286,000 of Golisano’s money in the last month on TV advertising? Certainly some of those expenditures exceeded $5,000.
The law allows Responsible New York to file itemized breakdowns of its consultants’ spending on behalf of candidates after the election, but don’t count on that happening: This section of New York election law is routinely ignored. (A source at the local board of elections said Eliot Spitzer was the only candidate to have complied in recent years.) And Responsible New York did not file such reports after the September’s primary election, as the law requires.
More on Pigeon’s bad reporting on Thursday.
October 24, 2008
Chasing Pigeon: The GOP Joins the Chase
Steve Pigeon
Today Buffalo News politics reporter Bob McCarthy writes that GOP county election commissioner Ralph Mohr is asking DAs an three counties—Erie, Genesee, and Niagara—to investigate Steve Pigeon’s squirrelly campaign finance maneuvers. In doing so, he joins Sam Hoyt operative Jeremy Toth, who has asked the DAs in Erie, Monroe, and Albany counties to investigate Responsible New York, the $5 million committee funded by Tom Golisano and directed by Pigeon. Toth alleges that Responsible New York illegally coordinated its activities with the Barbra Kavanaugh campaign. Rivals of Joe Mesi, whom Responsible New York supports for the 61st District State Senate seat, have made the same accusation of coordination, which is a felony.
According to McCarthy’s piece, Mohr has latched onto Citizens for Fiscal Integrity, which was started in 2005 and spent a great deal of money on Erie County Legislature races that year; among its donors were the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, which gave an eye-popping $20,000, and then County Executive Joel Giambra, who gave $11,000.
Here’s the registration form for CFI. A curious fact: Angela Irvin, designated as CFI’s treasurer, was just 18 when this form was filed in 2005, and registered to vote at 119 Treehaven Road, which is Steve Pigeon’s mother’s house. The other authorized check signer for CFI, Alexandra Lawkowski, is also known as Alexandra Schmid, who also worked for Change WNY Now, a Pigeon-controlled PAC, and for People for Accountable Government, another Pigeon-controlled PAC run by Pigeon’s ally David Pfaff.
Earlier this year Schmid received $1,000 in consulting fees from CFI, which itself received $4,000 from Responsible New York. CFI also gave $1,000 to Mesi, $500 to Kavanaugh, and $500 to Frank Sedita—the front-runner for Erie County DA, who, if elected, will decide whether to investigate Pigeon’s money-handling. CFI made these donations even as it was, according to its campaign finance disclosure forms, in the hole more than $7,000. So CFI, with no money of its own to give, must have acted as a pass-through—laundering Responsible New York money, essentially, as Mohr alleges in his complaint.
This presumes, of course, a faith in the accuracy of CFI’s campaign finance filings. That faith is difficult to sustain: The committee quit reporting after a flurry of initial activity in 2005, then suddenly began filing again this year, when election officials began to scrutinize the committee’s finances. One curiosity that scrutiny uncovered, according to a source at the Erie County Board of Elections, is a habit of skipped checks in the committee’s checkbook. For example, there might be accounts of check numbers 1001-1005…and then the next check accounted for is number 1014. What happened to all the checks in between?
Unfortunately for Pigeon, it seems Tom Golisano is not so careless with his checks. According to Mohr’s complaint, Golisano signed a Responsible New York check and noted on the memo line that it paid for consulting fees in the 61st District. An unauthorized committee such as Responsible New York may purchase advertising for a candidate it supports, but it may not directly purchase services for that candidate. It may not pay a consultant to the candidate. That would constitute coordination.
Last month, Golisano told Artvoice that what Responsible New York’s discosure filings called “consulting” fees—specifically, consulting fees paid to Pigeon’s firm, Landen LLC—were in fact used to purchase radio and TV advertising. He said the disclosure forms were “wrong.” Perhaps that’s the case, too, with the check Mohr is waving around now.
October 21, 2008
Voter Purge in New York State
Voting rights watchdog Bo Lipari reports that more than 1,500,000 voters have been dropped from New York voter rolls. That includes voters designated as “inactive” or “purged.” Lipari, a retired software engineer who wrote a program to analyze documents he FOILed from the state’s voter registration base, says 14 percent of Erie County’s voters have been removed from the rolls—half marked as inactive and half purged completely. Those voters will not be able to vote at the polls on election day.
October 10, 2008
Chasing Pigeon: Past Is Prologue
Steve Pigeon
In making his case that Responsible New York—the political committee endowed with five million of Tom Golisano’s dollars and operated by former Erie County Democratic Party chairman Steve Pigeon—coordinated illegally with the committees of the candidates it supported, Sam Hoyt supporter Jeremy Toth refers back to North District Common Councilmember Joe Golombek’s primary challenge to Hoyt in 2004:
In that campaign, Steve Pigeon directed the expenditures of hundreds of thousands of dollars against Sam Hoyt on behalf of his opponent Joe Golombek. These expenditures, all derived from the PAC Renew NYS, which was funded primarily by then County Executive Joel Giambra, far exceeded all campaign contribution limits.
Here’s Toth’s full complaint against Pigeon and Responsible New York, which he sent to the district attorneys of Erie, Monroe, and Albany counties. Toth hopes that the circumstantial case he makes that Responsible New York staff coordinated its activities with the Barbra Kavanaugh campaign—a felony—will compel the DAs to take a closer look at Pigeon and company.
Hoyt filed a complaint about the Golombek campaign and Renew NYS with the state Board of Elections in September 2004 and followed with documentation a month later, but received no response after nine months. So he wrote the Board of Elections again. Finally, in January 2006, the Board of Elections closed the complaint against Golombek—because in the interim, Renew NYS had changed its filing status from a PAC to a a multi-candidate committee, under which its illegal activities would have been legal.
Except that Renew NYS was a PAC when it spent money against Hoyt. “It’s a little like making a horse thief simply return a stole horse after winning the Kentucky Derby with it,” Hoyt wrote to the NYSBOE in response. The message, he said, was: Break the law with impunity during the campaign, apologize later, and skate away scot-free.
Pigeon has a history of skating away from campaign finance shenanigans. Take, for example, People for Accountable Government, another PAC controlled by Pigeon. People for Accountable Government started funneling donations and buying ads and literature for candidates in September 2007, but did not file a campaign finance disclosure form until July 2008.
That’s a minor (and all too common) infraction, whose piddling nature is somewhat offset by how easy it is simply to comply with the election law. On Monday we’ll explore allegations of more egregious violations.
September 18, 2008
Paladino Wants a State Constitutional Convention…
…which I think is a pretty good idea. He explains how it works in this interview. But that’s not why I’m posting it; I’m posting it, of course, for the neat little slam he slips in at the very end against me and AV contributors Mike Niman and Bruce Jackson.
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