Razzle Dazzle
Why McLaughlin Had to Go

By RICHARD STEIER

The money quote in the case against Brian McLaughlin comes 33 pages into the 186-page indictment brought by the U.S. Attorney's Office and is triggered by a colleague's allegedly telling him that they can't use money from a Little League fund to pay the rent on Mr. McLaughlin's Albany apartment because someone already spent it on, of all things, baseball-related items.

The indictment quotes Mr. McLaughlin as instructing his cohort to tell the man identified as Officer 3 that "all that f------ money he's
f------ spending on other stuff, that ain't his money ... that's mine."

Took a Bat to His Image

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Michael Garcia didn't reveal whether that account was based on a taped conversation, a somewhat surprising reticence considering the Oct. 17 indictment itself left very little to the imagination. It was enough, however, to convict Mr. McLaughlin in the court of public opinion, and if captured on tape, those remarks alone might make the deposed labor leader's efforts to refute the 44 counts in the indictment an exercise in futility.

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow 'MEMBERS WERE HIS BIGGEST VICTIMS': In outlining racketeering schemes in which Brian McLaughlin took payoffs from contractors on matters from bid-rigging to the use of nonunion labor, U.S. Attorney Michael J. Garcia told reporters, 'No one was more victimized by this scheme than union members,' some of whom saw their jobs eliminated as part of the allegedly corrupt bargains.

After all, a guy who'd steal from a Little League that services the children of his own members in Local 3 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers - and express outrage that someone actually tried to spend the money for its intended purpose - would probably not hesitate to do all the other nefarious things the indictment charges.

Mr. McLaughlin's colleagues in the labor movement who dealt with him extensively in the past said all the requisite words about presuming him innocent until he's proven to be otherwise. None of them, however, disputed the need to bounce him from his position as president of the AFL-CIO New York City Central Labor Council - from which he'd been on paid leave until two days after the indictment - when the issue came up in a conference call among them.

"We really decided it based on the parts of the indictment that included the financial improprieties affecting union members," State AFL-CIO President Denis Hughes said in a phone interview after the unanimous decision was reached by the CLC board.

He said Mr. McLaughlin had given them no inkling that the charges against him would include allegedly taking payoffs to permit nonunion workers to do streetlighting maintenance and repair work, or the diversion of Local 3 and CLC funds and members for Mr. McLaughlin's own use. Nor did he mention the alleged enlisting of four confederates from Local 3 to enable his various corrupt schemes while placing them simultaneously on the payrolls of the other offices he ran, including his State Assembly position.

"Everything came as a complete shock," Mr. Hughes said. "I didn't know they were looking at the financial records. They said it was a bid-rigging scheme."

Makes Kerik Seem Small-Time

The alleged bid-rigging accounted for a large share of the $2.2 million that Mr. McLaughlin allegedly misappropriated, according to Mr. Garcia. But the indictment indicates that it was merely one large stream in a river full of corrupt schemes in which Mr. McLaughlin was engaged. If the charges are true, his misdeeds would make small-timers of such miscreants as Bernie Kerik and Anthony Scotto, the former International Longshoremen's Association leader whose straddling of the political and labor worlds and eventual downfall when he was convicted of labor racketeering 27 years ago most closely resembles Mr. McLaughlin's career arc.

Prosecutors from the Southern District waited until Mr. Scotto's trial to present evidence that strongly implied that one reason he extorted payoffs from those his union did business with was to subsidize his extramarital adventures. Mr. Garcia's office didn't hold back for a jury; the indictment and the press conference he held turned over enough cards to bust out Mr. McLaughlin's character long before the case gets to court - if in fact it does. The indictment is so detailed and so damning that Mr. McLaughlin himself might not be willing to bet the mortgage on his home in Nissequogue that he could prove his innocence at trial.

The alleged Little League ripoff accounts for only $95,000 of the boodling imputed to Mr. McLaughlin, but like Laura Blackburne's pink couch, it creates an image that adds value to the charge. So does the alleged chicanery in which one of Mr. McLaughlin's relatives - a foreman in Local 3's J Division who held other jobs in the CLC and Mr. McLaughlin's Assembly office and had his own practice as a chiropractor besides - became the head of a CLC Commission on the Dignity of Immigrants. According to prosecutors, the relative did very little work other than to deposit the checks for the job and then write matching checks to Mr. McLaughlin.

Matching-Fund Scam

If the indictment reflects the truth, Mr. McLaughlin also borrowed from the greatest hits collection of such disgraced ex-union officials as former Transit Police union President Ron Reale and police union lawyer and negotiator Richie Hartman. He is charged with persuading colleagues and family members to make $250 contributions to the campaigns of two Queens City Council Members - the maximum amount that could be given and earn them a full 4-to-1 match from the Campaign Finance Board's public funding program - in return for full reimbursement from the CLC's coffers.

Those transactions, which remain under investigation, do not yet show any apparent financial benefit to Mr. McLaughlin, unlike in the Reale case, when he and Mr. Hartman were looking to pocket the campaign finance cash themselves. If that doesn't change, it will be among the few schemes covered in the indictment that do not directly line Mr. McLaughlin's pockets, a pattern that led city Investigation Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn to recycle the line about "lifestyles of the rich and famous" that she previously used about Mr. Kerik and former Correction Chief Anthony Serra, both of whom pleaded guilty without a trial.

A Country-Club Guy

The fact that the line was a rehash did not diminish its accuracy, however. One measure of how much Mr. McLaughlin's life had diverged from those of the people he represented was his membership in a country club that carried an initiation fee of nearly $25,000. That's a long drive from the public golf courses in Queens where the average construction worker or fireman might spend a leisurely morning.

Mr. McLaughlin when he first took over the CLC reins in 1995 - a point when the indictment against him indicates the alleged thievery took root as well - was seen as a breath of life for an organization that had grown stodgy and stale under Thomas van Arsdale, the son of legendary CLC leader Harry van Arsdale. Political consultant Norman Adler once memorably remarked that the younger van Arsdale - who reportedly left his post at Local 3 a week before the McLaughlin indictment - was "no more equipped to be the leader of the New York City labor movement than he was to be a runway model in the Garment District."

Mr. McLaughlin, in contrast, seemed passionately engaged in union business, although last week's charges put an ironic spin on a tribute paid to him nearly a decade ago by former Teamsters Local 237 President Barry Feinstein.

'He Was an Operator'

"He's a hands-on guy - always was," Mr. Feinstein said in a 1997 interview. "He would go out and put it together and get it done. He was a consummate operator."

Mr. McLaughlin succeeded in reviving the CLC as an organization that was seriously involved on important labor issues, from pressing for legislation requiring vendors with city contracts to pay their workers the prevailing industry wages to lobbying against Wal-Mart setting up shop in the city because of its antilabor policies and job conditions that exploit workers. Where Tom van Arsdale embarrassed himself and the CLC by first offering tepid support during the Daily News strike 15 years ago and then bouncing Local 1199 President Dennis Rivera from the organization's board after he committed $2 million in aid to the strikers, Mr. McLaughlin became active in both supporting strikes and settling them, including last year's three-day transit walkout.

But his power base, Local 3 of the IBEW, was once characterized as "a schizophrenic union" after its members crossed picket lines at NBC in 1987 and the Essex House in 1991. According to the indictment, Mr. McLaughlin also wasn't a stickler for trade-union principles if they interfered with him making a living.

Ripoffs and Kickbacks

It charges him with misappropriating funds from a Local 3 J Division account to which both union members and contractors contributed - with some of that money going to unidentified "female friends." He is also accused of requiring J Division members to kick back to him a portion of the money they made selling scrap metal and other materials they salvaged from construction projects. The greatest alleged violation of his union principles involved taking payoffs from contractors for allowing nonunion workers to be deployed on their projects.

This charge has echoes of similar allegations made against one of the CLC's problem children, Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, whose longtime secretary-treasurer, Julius "Spike" Bernstein, entered a sealed guilty plea two months ago after being accused of shaking down school bus contractors for payments to permit them to use nonunion labor.

Mr. Bernstein is a longtime friend and reputed associate of Genovese Crime Family boss Matty "The Horse" Ianniello, who pleaded guilty last month to corrupting Local 1181's operations.

One of the few things last week's indictment doesn't accuse Mr. McLaughlin of is organized-crime ties. Then again, his positions in Local 3, the CLC and the Assembly gave him the power to influence the flow of illicit funds without having to resort to the kind of threats and violence that give mob guys their leverage.

Broadsides on Target

As honest labor leaders like Roger Toussaint and Randi Weingarten could readily testify, the tabloids don't need the facts on their side to vilify and caricature union officials who are caught up in controversy. In this case, however, the front-page headlines of "King of Greed" in the Daily News and "Boss Hog" in the Post seemed disturbingly appropriate given the charges in the indictment.

If Mr. McLaughlin is guilty of even half of what he's accused, he's earned a place alongside Matty the Horse in the livestock wing of the Federal prison system.

And the sense that he might be, and that prosecutors had good cause for the double black eyes inflicted on what had been the face of the labor movement in New York City, left the CLC board with no choice but to cast out Mr. McLaughlin. The presumption of innocence to which he is entitled was the only argument against throwing him out the door without bothering to open it.

 

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