FOR THE RECORD

A longtime critic of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani has asked State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to investigate whether he and ex-Fire Commissioner Tom Von Essen broke the law in permitting a campaign contributor to have access to the city's 911 system and "derailing" a probe into Fire Department radios that became a major issue after 9/11.

Richard McAllan, a former president of Emergency Medical Service Local 2507 of District Council 37, had his lawyer write Mr. Spitzer, as well as the man he is replacing as Governor, George Pataki, to request the probe.

Attorney Michael Sussman noted that Mr. Giuliani in 1999 - at a time when he was preparing for his aborted run for U.S. Senate - accepted $10,500 in what turned out to be illegal campaign contributions from Stephen Zakheim, who was then the chief operating officer of Transcare/Metrocare Ambulance Company, while his administration was permitting the company to become the first private one to begin operating within the 911 system.

Mr. Zakheim, who made what were later determined to be more than $30,000 in illegal contributions to various politicians, eventually pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor count and received a sentence of six months' probation. He also contributed $10,000 legally to Mr. Giuliani's campaign fund in 1999.

U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf concluded that Mr. Giuliani did not know of the illegal donations at the time that his administration gave expedited approval to the company's application to be included in the 911 system.

Mr. Sussman on behalf of Mr. McAllan also questioned the Mayor's role in short-circuiting a probe by the Department of Investigation that was requested by then-City Comptroller Alan Hevesi into how a $3 million "needs replacement" contract with Motorola turned into a $14 million deal under which the Fire Department was supplied with digital radios that it turned out had never been field-tested and displayed serious flaws when first used by firefighters in March 2001.

While Mr. Giuliani accused Mr. Hevesi of playing politics on the issue, Mr. Von Essen - who had also signed off on admitting Transcare into the 911 system - shelved the new radios and resumed firefighters' use of the old Motorola analog model. That model, which experienced problems during the FDNY's response to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, also malfunctioned on 9/11.

A spokesman for Mr. Spitzer at the State Attorney General's Office declined comment Dec. 6 - nearly four weeks after the request by Mr. Sussman was sent - except to say, "Once we're received the letter, we will respond appropriately."

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Although the largest health-care union in the state, Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, has indicated that it will not lobby against adoption of a state hospital commission's report advocating the closing of nine hospitals and the potential loss of 7,000 jobs statewide, other labor organizations are raising their voices in protest.

The report was produced by a panel tapped by Governor Pataki and has been embraced by Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer, making its adoption a virtual certainty. Local 1199 President Dennis Rivera was bowing to the political realities when he decided not to spend any capital trying to convince the State Legislature to derail the recommended changes.

But state unions including the Public Employees' Federation and United University Professions came to an Albany hearing by the Health Committee of the State Assembly Dec. 11 to urge legislators to reconsider before allowing cuts they said would undermine public health care while making unwise consolidations of public and private health-care providers and teaching institutions.

Their concerns are shared by State AFL-CIO President Dennis Hughes, who in a Dec. 7 statement charged that the Governor's Commission on Healthcare Facilities had "offered shortsighted solutions that will disadvantage patients, the general public and communities across this state for years to come. For upstate communities, these recommendations are a death knell for public health care."