KANGAROO COURT OF LAST RESORT

Kangaroo Court of Last Resort

John Seferian, the Judicial Panel chairman of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, over the years has displayed a remarkable gift for tipping the scales of justice in favor of whomever is running AFSCME's flagship affiliate, District Council 37.

Even by his own standards, however, Kangaroo John tilted credulity to a dangerously precarious angle earlier this month when he acquitted DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts of charges that she had violated her fiduciary responsibility to union members when she seized control of the DC 37 Health and Security Plan two years ago.

Mr. Seferian presented an interesting rationale for reaching the opposite conclusion to what a Federal judge in Manhattan did last August: he claimed District Court Judge Denise Cote didn't have all the relevant facts when she found Ms. Roberts guilty in the matter.

He stated her decision was based solely on Ms. Roberts's push on June 7, 2004 to make herself the sole union official responsible for appointing trustees to the Health and Security Plan. After that move sparked a lawsuit brought by a majority of the DC 37 executive board - with even some of Ms. Roberts's allies concluding she and Associate Director Oliver Gray were in violation of their fiduciary duty - Ms. Roberts on July 28, 2004 put forth an additional amendment to the trust agreement governing the welfare fund, creating an executive committee (which she was to head) to appoint trustees.

Mr. Seferian ruled that this change was appropriate, adding, "It seems unlikely that [Judge Cote] would have reached the same conclusions if this amendment had been before [her] in August 2005."

This undoubtedly was news to Judge Cote, since she made clear the amendment was out of bounds in issuing her preliminary injunction against Ms. Roberts's power grab in August 2004. She stated then, "The attempt to cure the June 7 amendment through the July 28 amendment, while ineffective, is evidence that the defendants themselves acknowledge the flaws in the June 7 amendment." She concluded both of them "violated their fiduciary duty to the trust."

One of the plaintiffs in the AFSCME case, Faye Moore of DC 37's Local 371, said of Mr. Seferian's ruling, "It would kind of shake my faith, except I don't have faith in the process anyway."

Her lack of faith has been justified many times over by Kangaroo John's past decisions. Last year, he misquoted a portion of the AFSCME constitution - which in theory, anyway, is his Bible - in order to deny an election challenge brought against Ms. Roberts's most-powerful political ally within DC 37, Veronica Montgomery Costa.

Not long before that, he reversed a ruling by DC 37's then-ethics officer that Ms. Roberts was guilty of a conflict of interest when she steered a $180,000-a-year contract to her nephew's law firm. The position of ethics officer had been created by AFSCME in the wake of the corruption scandal of the late 1990s that ruined DC 37's reputation and brought it close to bankruptcy; Mr. Seferian's willingness to overturn the first significant decision produced by that officer made clear the post was supposed to be a cosmetic one.

Even in the case of the corruption scandal, he heard testimony that DC 37's then-executive director and treasurer had allowed former Local 372 head Charles Hughes to receive more than a million dollars in questionable payments while also regularly exceeding spending limits they had agreed to in writing with him, but took no action against either of Mr. Hughes's enablers.

There is a common thread for all of these cases: Ms. Roberts and her predecessor, Stanley Hill, have been steadfastly loyal to AFSCME Executive Director Gerry McEntee. Mr. Seferian is in essence the judicial arm of the McEntee political machine, doling out his unbalanced justice as if it were patronage. He is reputed to be the third-highest-paid AFSCME official, but a comfortable salary and a lofty title can't hide the reality that he is closer to a bagman than a judicial officer.

It's not the kind of business that gets its practitioners - or its beneficiaries - sent to jail, but that doesn't make it any less corrupt than the financial plunder of a decade ago.