Razzle Dazzle
AFSCME's Turkey Ruse

By RICHARD STEIER

The attitude of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees toward its flagship New York City affiliate shone brightly earlier this month: while District Council 37's largest local subverted democracy yet again, AFSCME was worried about free turkeys being distributed to union members.

AFSCME General Counsel Larry Weinberg, in a memo summoning memories of the role a turkey scam played in the massive corruption scandal uncovered at DC 37 in 1998, stated regarding the holiday giveaways that "the potential harm that could be done to the Union far outweighs any goodwill that might result from such a program."

The memo conveniently overlooked the fact that the turkey profiteering by a few presidents at small DC 37 locals a decade ago wasn't the prime reason that the union had its reputation tarnished while its assets were drained. Far greater harm was done by wholesale looting in the union's two largest locals, and that was made possible by a concentration of political power with those locals' presidents coupled with vote-tampering in union officer elections and the 1996 DC 37 wage contract vote.

Suspicious Removal of a Critic

Yet Mr. Weinberg had nothing to say about a contest earlier this month for an executive board seat in Education Employees Local 372 of DC 37 in which a critic of the local's president was thrown off the ballot in suspicious circumstances. His silence would have been curious except that it is consistent with a previous attempt by the head of AFSCME's Judicial Panel to rewrite the international union's constitution to justify rejecting a challenge to the last Local 372 election 2-1/2 years ago.

Back then, Larry Luther Davis protested that confining voting to just a four-hour period at a single location - DC 37's Barclay St. headquarters - denied Local 372 members the right to participate in electing their representatives. That claim seemed amply supported by the fact that just 547 of the local's 26,000 members had cast ballots, with nearly 80 percent of them backing incumbent President Veronica Montgomery-Costa.

DEMOCRACY GETS STUFFED: While the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has waved a stern finger against giving holiday turkeys to District Council 37 members, President Gerry McEntee (left) has permitted Veronica Montgomery-Costa to get a $76,000 raise and make it retroactive for nearly three years and use a variety of questionable practices to thwart political opponents in Local 372 elections.

AFSCME Judicial Panel Chairman John Seferian rejected Mr. Davis's petition, ruling that it was improper because it included an amendment that was submitted too late in the process. But where Mr. Seferian contended that the international's constitution required that such amendments be submitted within 10 days of an election, Mr. Davis countered - correctly - that the constitution stated that amendments merely had to come within 10 days of a ruling on a protest by a "subordinate body." His amendment had been received exactly 10 days after the Local 372 election committee issued its ruling against his original protest.

In the most-recent instance of election chicanery at Local 372, a close supporter of Mr. Davis, Tony Ferina, was ruled off the ballot for the Local 372 board position on the grounds that the woman who nominated him, Belinda Boyd, was not a member in good standing.

Yet Ms. Boyd has a card issued by AFSCME that affirms such membership, and in all other respects - including being permitted to vote in that disputed 2005 election - has been treated like a bona fide local member.

Hiding Financial Transactions?

And so there was credibility to Mr. Ferina's claim that he was cheated out of a spot on the ballot for the board post because Ms. Montgomery-Costa feared having a political foe "privy to any board information" after she has been able to rule the local by fiat and fear for more than eight years.

"I've been requesting for over two years to review the books to see where the money is going," Mr. Ferina said.

She first gained office in July 1999 after the local was removed from a 17-month administratorship that was imposed because it was discovered to have incurred $10 million worth of debt under its previous president, Charlie Hughes. Mr. Hughes personally embezzled $3 million of that amount through unwarranted payments for overtime and unused vacation time and extravagant personal spending, and eventually went to prison under a case brought by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.

Lee Saunders, who at the time was serving as DC 37's administrator, had conferred with the officials who oversaw Local 372 after Mr. Hughes was removed and decided that his successor should be paid $99,000 a year. But within four months of taking office - with no notable achievements during that period - Ms. Costa persuaded her board to increase her salary to $135,000. After a column here raised questions about the justification for the huge raise, Mr. Saunders pressured her to reconsider, and she announced that she would forsake the pay hike.

In early 2002, however, Ms. Costa was among the DC 37 officials who forced an end to the administratorship and elected Lillian Roberts as the union's executive director. Later that spring, she was re-elected, although only slightly more than 500 Local 372 members cast ballots for the walk-in vote. Soon after that, Ms. Costa made up for lost income by persuading her board to grant a pay raise of more than twice the original hike: $76,000. In a further slap at Mr. Saunders, who remains a top AFSCME official, the board made the raise retroactive to when she first took office.

Why AFSCME Allowed It

AFSCME's willingness to allow this raid on the union's treasury - and the egregiousness of boosting her pay for her entire first term by $40,000 above what Mr. Saunders had decided was excessive - should be no more surprising than its support of Ms. Costa's restrictive election process that has disenfranchised 98 percent of her members during the last two elections. (A particular irony of her efforts to minimize member participation was that when she first ran for office - back when she was willing to talk to this newspaper - she said that one of her goals was to increase rank-and-file involvement in the union.)

One retired DC 37 official, who spoke conditioned on anonymity, said AFSCME President Gerry McEntee actually preferred having Local 372 members apathetic, with the local controlled by someone whose political loyalty he could count on as long as he didn't threaten her power.

"He wants New York to be weak and ineffectual because it doesn't pose a threat to him," this official said.

More than a few DC 37 veterans believe that former Executive Director Stanley Hill tolerated Mr. Hughes's questionable financial practices for so long for the same reason. They contend that it was only after Mr. Hughes began casting his eye on one of the AFSCME vice presidencies held at the time by Mr. Hill and his closest supporter, then-Clerical-Administrative Local 1549 President Al Diop, that DC 37's then-leader concluded that Local 372's debt was too big to ignore and called in AFSCME, while also triggering the criminal probe that sent Mr. Hughes to prison.

Big Locals' Veto Power

After Mr. Diop was found to have stolen nearly as much as Mr. Hughes from his own local's coffers, as well as playing the pivotal role in fixing the 1996 contract vote, it was almost universally accepted that Mr. Hill had been too indulgent toward the heads of DC 37's two largest locals because they essentially exercised veto power over his position as executive director through their control of union delegates.

The most-logical solution would have been to end the practice of having delegates cast weighted votes for DC 37 officers in favor of the one-person, one-vote process that is standard for nearly every other municipal union. Doing so, however, would have made it more difficult for AFSCME to exercise control over who held power in DC 37, and so it declined to make the change when it had the power to do so. After the administratorship ended, while DC 37 reformers pushed for direct election, Ms. Roberts - who initially promised to champion the idea - took a neutral position that was viewed as bowing to the wishes of Ms. Costa. The delegates, a majority of whom are loyal to Ms. Roberts and her allies and had a vested interest in not stripping themselves of their power, have twice voted against resolutions providing for direct election.

Stealing is Only Taboo

In the five-plus years since AFSCME ended the administratorship, Mr. McEntee and his top aides seem to have overseen DC 37 with the viewpoint that they will tolerate irregular and anti-democratic behavior just as long as outright stealing - the kind that brings District Attorneys into the situation and causes embarrassing national headlines - is not part of the bargain.

And so Ms. Costa's $76,000 raise and its retroactivity went unchallenged, either by AFSCME or by Ms. Roberts, who said it was the Local 372 board's decision and that she respected the autonomy of her locals.

It is anybody's guess whether Ms. Costa has gotten further hefty pay increases in the five-plus years since that bonanza. The local's newsletter has not been published since the spring of last year, and even when it did appear, it offered general financial data rather than specific salaries for union officers. And that data only covered the local's payroll costs through Dec. 31, 2004, several months before Ms. Costa won her third term and, presumably, left her fellow board members in the mood to be generous once again.

Questions Her Record

Mr. Ferina questioned what exactly Ms. Costa has done for Local 372 members during nearly 8-1/2 years in office, pointing out that although recent DC 37 contracts have included money that could be allocated to additional raises for any titles where it was deemed that a salary boost was warranted, she had yet to seek a review of any of the titles she represents to determine whether they qualified.

His protest over being knocked off the ballot is under review by the AFSCME Judicial Panel, but Mr. Ferina is no more confident that he will get satisfaction than Mr. Davis is that AFSCME will attempt to increase membership participation in the upcoming Local 372 election next spring by ordering that a mail ballot be conducted.

The fact that just 27 members turned out for the executive board vote underscored the impact that inconvenience combined with apathy has had on voter participation in Local 372. And given that the two candidates who remained on the ballot after Mr. Ferina's disqualification are both reputedly supporters of Ms. Costa, local members might seem justified in concluding that their showing up to vote wasn't worth the trip to lower Manhattan because it would have had no impact on how the organization was run.

Not Miss Congeniality

While Ms. Costa is sometimes talked about as a potential successor for Ms. Roberts, who is 81, officials from other locals say she has such a grating personality that many delegates who support Ms. Roberts would not back her. She refers to herself as Big Mama, but those in-house critics say Big Nasty is more like it.

On the other hand, there is no reason for Ms. Costa to seek to move up - and place herself in the spotlight - as long as she retains her position as the power behind the throne.

Someone who has not been capable of averaging even 500 votes from her rank and file in the past two local elections would certainly seem vulnerable to a challenge from Mr. Davis or at least one other potential candidate in the next election. But Ms. Roberts has shown that whatever her limitations as a union leader, she retains an important quality for any politician - good counting skills - in repelling two challenges by reformers in the past five years. There's a good likelihood that if Ms. Costa needs more votes to win a fourth term, the DC 37 leader or AFSCME could provide the buses, cars and favors needed to get out a larger contingent on her behalf.

Turkeys Small Potatoes

They know where their bread is buttered and their turkeys are basted. That is why AFSCME serves as an enabler while Ms. Costa ensures her hold on DC 37's largest local through blatantly dishonest practices. Meantime, Mr. Weinberg gets righteous about a giveaway program that is only problematical when - as was the case in the past - top union officials turn a blind eye to chiseling that they see as minor stuff (that not incidentally was engaged in by political allies of the ruling regime).

The most blatant example of gouging a local under the old turkey program involved the purchase of 250 turkeys for $44 apiece by the old leadership of Motor Vehicle Operators Local 983. Since turkeys back then sold for an average of $20, the total graft from the excess payment in that transaction amounted to about $6,000.

That's small gravy indeed to ladle over Ms. Costa's $76,000 raise. Not to mention the $585,000 in salary and other benefits Mr. McEntee received last year, the $222,000 paid to Mr. Seferian and the $216,000 collected by Mr. Weinberg.

It's not hard to figure out why they'd want DC 37 members to be focusing on turkeys rather than the cost of feeding them.

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