Claims 'Political Hit'
Trial to Begin On Commer's Ouster

By RICHARD STEIER

The former president of the Civil Service Technical Guild is seeking reinstatement of his union membership and $5 million in compensation on the grounds that he was improperly barred by officials of its parent unions seeking to silence a critic of their regimes.

ROY COMMER: Says candor cost him.

Roy Commer, who was exiled from the union for failing to reimburse it for more than $11,000 in unauthorized mailings, will go into U.S. District Court in lower Manhattan Oct. 3 to argue that he was a victim of political retaliation.

Cites DC 37, AFSCME

Named as defendants in the case are past and present officials of the Guild, District Council 37 - in which the Tech Guild is Local 375 - and its international union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. It was the AFSCME Judicial Panel that ordered Mr. Commer's removal from office in June 2000 and his ban from union membership a year later.

Mr. Commer, who won a bitter election against longtime Tech Guild President Louis G. Albano in November 1997, only to have to win again in a re-run vote after the ballots disappeared from a locked room in DC 37's offices before the tally could be completed for other union positions, claims that his acerbic criticism of DC 37 and AFSCME prompted a conspiracy to drive him from office. On Nov. 2, 1998, he alleges in the suit, a majority of the Tech Guild executive board brought "baseless internal union charges" and suspended him from office "to prevent him from effectively engaging in [speech critical of those entities] in the future."

UMA KUTWAL: Scandal vindicated Commer.

Clashed Over Fund

While the charges were adjudicated, Mr. Commer's suspension was lifted by AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee. Mr. Commer, who had antagonized several Tech Guild board members by demanding a financial review of its Professional Employees Legal Services fund, said he continued to be thwarted in his efforts to have the fund audited. He blamed Mr. Albano, who had continued to be active in the local's affairs, and Michelle Keller, who was a trustee of the fund.

Ms. Keller responded, "I have no comment."

Mr. Albano, however, said of Mr. Commer, "He's making accusations because he didn't do the job he should have done."

Under the Tech Guild constitution, Mr. Albano noted in a Sept. 22 phone interview, "He's required to hold a yearly audit. If he had gone to the board and done his duty, I don't know how anybody could have stopped him."

In June 1999, the AFSCME Judicial Panel found Mr. Commer guilty of sending out a mailing regarding Tech Guild delegate elections without the required authorization of his executive board, and ordered him to reimburse the local for the $10,000 cost. Seven months later, he was served with a new charge of failing to get board authorization for a mailing alerting union members to a vote for the Tech Guild's representative on DC 37's executive board, and the Judicial Panel eventually ordered that he reimburse the local for that $1,200 cost.

Partial Payment Made?

Mr. Commer has asserted that he wrote a check for $3,800 for part of the amount he owed, and sought to have the remainder covered by waiving reimbursement for unused vacation time. Then-Tech Guild Treasurer Bob Mariano denied having received a check from Mr. Commer, even though another Tech Guild official, then-Vice President David Grant, said he had been given the check by Mr. Commer's attorney, Arthur Schwartz.

When Mr. Commer was removed from office, Uma Kutwal, a union vice president who gained office on his slate but then was a leader in bringing charges against him, became Tech Guild president. Mr. Kutwal, who lost the next election for the post to the current incumbent, Claude Fort, has said in an interview that his view of Mr. Commer was transformed by subsequent revelations of corruption involving the Tech Guild's longtime bookkeeper, Lloyd Clarke.

Foes Were Negligent

Mr. Clarke last year was criminally convicted of having looted $2.4 million in union funds, most of it from PELS at the time when Mr. Commer was seeking to have the legal program audited. The head of that program, as well as Mr. Mariano, were removed from office shortly after the thefts were discovered in mid-2004 because they both acknowledged that they had not checked financial records.

According to Mr. Commer, Mr. McEntee wanted him removed from office because in April 2000 he had raised questions about a no-bid contract DC 37 had entered into with a prescription drug provider that employed both Mr. McEntee's daughter and his ex-wife. He said in an interview last week that Mr. Kutwal is prepared to testify that Eliot Seide, a ranking AFSCME official whom Mr. McEntee installed as a deputy administrator of DC 37 following that union's massive 1998 corruption scandal, had called Mr. Commer "a devil [who] must be removed from the union." Calls to AFSCME and to Mr. Seide were not returned.

Mr. Commer has indicated that if he wins his lawsuit and is reinstated to union membership, he intends to run for president in the Tech Guild election scheduled to be held in November.