DC 37 Insider Finds Himself on the Outs

For most of his eight years as president of Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375 of District Council 37, Claude Fort tried to be a good soldier.

He backed DC 37's leadership faithfully, to the point of distancing himself from Roy Commer, a former Local 375 leader who was removed from office for reasons that seemed to have more to do with his challenging that leadership than the minor offenses he was charged with.

When DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts was facing a strong challenge from Charles Ensley in the union's January 2004 election, Mr. Fort supported the incumbent. And later that year, at the convention of DC 37's international union in California, when Ms. Roberts asked him to put aside his quest for an international vice presidency to support Joan Reed, the veteran leader of a smaller local, he consented.

'Your Turn in '08'

"Lillian called me the night before the nominations and told me, 'Claude, four years from now it will be your turn,'" Mr. Fort recalled during a Jan. 8 interview. "I told her I felt it was my time and I would do the job well, but because she asked, 'I will step aside. But four years from now, I don't want to hear anything.' "

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow CAUGHT IN THE MACHINE?: Civil Service Technical Guild President Claude Fort (left) and his lawyer, Arthur Schwartz, claim that he is facing trumped-up internal charges by District Council 37's leadership in retaliation for his running against the organization's choice for an international vice president's post and then making an issue of what he contends was exorbitant spending at a union convention.

Ms. Reed died before completing her term. And three years after he deferred to her, in mid-2007, Mr. Fort started to hear rumors that Veronica Montgomery-Costa, the head of the largest local in DC 37, had set her sights on replacing Ms. Reed.

Ms. Montgomery-Costa is not the deferential type. The only time she is known to have yielded to a request was in 1999, after a column in this newspaper questioned why she had gotten a $36,000 pay raise after less than four months in office, and then-DC 37 Administrator Lee Saunders asked her to forego the increase as a gesture to smart public relations. She liked that idea so much that in 2002, after Mr. Saunders had moved on, Ms. Montgomery-Costa celebrated her re-election by having her board raise her salary $76,000.

Mr. Fort went to Ms. Roberts and reminded her of the promise she had made to him in 2004. Her only response, he said, was, "'Claude, you know I have no votes.' "

He said he would make the run anyway. And once Mr. Fort threw down the gauntlet in that way, he said last week, things began to happen. His status as an insider seemed to vanish.

In November 2007, acting solely on an anonymous letter, DC 37 Associate Director Oliver Gray contacted the union's ethical practices officer, Bruce Maffeo, about an allegation that Vincent Sawinski, Local 375's public relations chair, was not performing his union duties and Mr. Fort was permitting it.

The Local 375 president insists there was no basis to those charges, and that the issue had never been raised by other members of the local's board. Mr. Fort's lawyer, Arthur Schwartz, said of Mr. Sawinski, "He lives for '375.' To his discredit, he doesn't really have a life outside the union."

If anything, Mr. Sawinski may be a bit too ubiquitous for some people's tastes. One Tech Guild veteran said of him, "He's someone who has a brain but doesn't use it." A DC 37 official elaborates: "Vinnie creates people that are pissed with him. He makes a joke of things no matter how important they are to some other people."

Two Was a Crowd

Mr. Fort said personality clashes between Mr. Sawinski and a union officer with whom he shared an office, Executive Chair George Lawrence, prompted him to move Mr. Sawinski to his own office. But he considers him an invaluable sounding board, he said, seeking his counsel on correspondence and speeches. "I don't send anything out without him reviewing it."

In his report finding Mr. Sawinski guilty of abusing his release time privileges that freed him from his city job to tend to union business three days a week, Mr. Maffeo relied heavily on the testimony of Mr. Lawrence and the union's secretary, Ahmed Shakir, that they rarely saw him engaged in union work. Mr. Maffeo noted that both men had been elected as part of Mr. Fort's slate.

But they also, Mr. Fort said, harbored deep resentment of Mr. Sawinski. In Mr. Shakir's case, he said, the bitterness grew out of a personal tragedy: after his daughter died, he asked Mr. Sawinski to give him a copy of his videotape of her funeral, only to be told subsequently that he couldn't locate the tape.

"Vinnie does lose things," the veteran DC 37 official said, "including things Claude wants him to have."

Mr. Shakir's wife became so upset, according to Mr. Fort, that she told Mr. Sawinski, "and 150 people heard it, 'I hope you burn in hell.' "

Mr. Shakir did not return a call seeking comment on his dealings with Mr. Sawinski.

Mr. Maffeo issued his report ruling against both Mr. Sawinski and Mr. Fort late last September. A couple of weeks later, the report was discussed at a DC 37 executive board meeting, but more than a month passed without any action being taken, the Local 375 president said.

But at the next DC 37 board meeting, on Nov. 12, Mr. Fort brought up an issue he had previously raised before the board in September: a report he had heard of exorbitant spending for a party at the convention of DC 37's international union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a month earlier in San Francisco.

A Very Expensive Party?

"DC 37 had a party that they usually have for the staff," Mr. Fort said. "It was a buffet-style party, but somebody told me it cost $250,000 to $300,000. There were maybe 300 people there. I said, 'You've got to be kidding.' "

Referring to a dinner he had for the Local 375 members attending the convention, where he lost the vote for the international vice president's spot to Ms. Montgomery-Costa, Mr. Fort said, "I took my people out to a nice restaurant, soup to nuts, and I spent $4,000 for 40 people. If you spent $300,000 for 300 people, it should be investigated."

He directed his inquiries to Maf Misbah Uddin, DC 37's treasurer. "He wouldn't give me an answer, so I became a little suspicious." At the November board meeting, he said, Mr. Uddin offered the same response as in September: "He still doesn't have the bill."

The Local 375 president asked for a ballpark number. Both he and one other union official said Mr. Uddin replied, "Four hundred thousand," which they took to mean the entire cost of the trip to DC 37. Even so, that seemed astonishingly high, Mr. Fort said, considering that DC 37 was responsible only for the hotel and travel expenses of its staff; the locals pay the tab for their officials who attend.

'No Coincidence' Charges Return

The day after the November board meeting, Mr. Fort said, he was presented with a new copy of the charges from Ms. Roberts and Mr. Gray. "Maybe they were hoping I would stay quiet if the charges wouldn't resurface again," he said. "It can't have been a coincidence."

A detailed list of Mr. Fort's allegations submitted to DC 37's communications director, Zita Allen, as well as a request to interview Mr. Gray, were responded to with a brief e-mail statement.

"Your information regarding both the DC 37 AFSCME convention expenditures and the election of AFSCME International Vice Presidents is completely inaccurate," the statement said.

Regarding the charges against Mr. Sawinski and Mr. Fort, it stated, "District Council 37 has a policy of zero tolerance for corrupt or illegal acts. Officers of Local 375 have been under investigation for almost a year as a result of allegations about the misuse of release time," culminating with Mr. Maffeo's findings and the submission of charges by Ms. Roberts and Mr. Gray to the AFSCME Judicial Panel. "As of December 16," the statement concluded, "more recent similar allegations are also being investigated by the Ethical Practices Officer."

Thought Gray Was Setting Him Up

Dec. 16 also happens to be the date on which Mr. Schwartz sent a letter on behalf of Mr. Fort requesting a meeting with Mr. Maffeo about what he said was an improper approach by Mr. Gray. Six days earlier, Mr. Schwartz stated, Mr. Gray notified Mr. Fort of another anonymous letter he had received, this one alleging that Local 375 First Vice President Jon Forster was abusing release time, and asked about meeting with the Local 375 president to discuss how they could "make this go away before it becomes a big thing."

Mr. Fort said that, cognizant of Mr. Gray's handling of the anonymous complaint regarding him and Mr. Sawinski a year earlier, he asked whether he didn't usually forward such letters to the ethical practices officer. When Mr. Gray replied that he did, Mr. Fort said, he began to worry that this meeting was designed to "set him up" for charges of interfering with a new investigation.

At the same time, copies of Mr. Maffeo's report, which had been disseminated on a limited basis, suddenly found their way to Mr. Fort's political enemies within the Tech Guild, Mr. Schwartz said. One of those rivals in particular, New York City Transit Chapter Chair Behrouz Fathi, tried to use the report and the charges brought by Ms. Roberts and Mr. Gray for maximum political mileage.

Bribe Citation in Error

In doing so, he overshot, largely because the two DC 37 leaders cited the wrong section of the AFSCME constitution in their charges against Mr. Fort. They accused him of having deliberately interfered with the investigation of the ethical practices officer, but the statute they cited, Article X, Section 2k of the AFSCME constitution, actually entails the solicitation or acceptance of a bribe, an issue that never came up in Mr. Maffeo's report. Another statute they cited, which covers "misappropriation, embezzlement or improper or illegal use of union funds," could apply to Mr. Fort in only the most-tangential way, since it was Mr. Sawinski who was accused of being paid for work he didn't actually perform.

Asked whether he regretted accusing Mr. Fort, in a letter published in this newspaper, of bribery-related charges based on the erroneous citation, Mr. Fathi responded disingenuously that it was not his duty to interpret the meaning of the charges brought by Ms. Roberts and Mr. Gray.

He and several other chapter presidents, including Uma Kutwal, who replaced Mr. Commer when he was ousted by AFSCME nine years ago and was subsequently defeated by Mr. Fort when he sought a full term, have called for the Local 375 president to resign based on the charges now before the AFSCME Judicial Panel.

Mr. Fort said he had no intention of stepping down. But he argued that he had become the victim of the same type of orchestrated effort on the part of leading DC 37 officials and inhouse opponents that resulted in Mr. Commer's removal on questionable charges after he was harshly critical of his superiors at both DC 37 and AFSCME.

'No Question There's a Conspiracy'

"There is no question in my mind that there is a conspiracy; that they are using my [local] opponents as pawns," he said. He declined to specify who "they" was aside from Mr. Gray, saying he would not accuse Ms. Roberts "unless I had evidence."

But given that Mr. Gray serves at Ms. Roberts's pleasure, it is hard to imagine that he would be trying to put the screws to Mr. Fort without her approval.

And Mr. Schwartz noted that recent anti-Fort literature circulated within Local 375 by someone identified as "Insider" has had a change in tone; it has begun focusing on Mr. Schwartz while referring to him as a "DC 37- bashing lawyer." This is curious, Mr. Schwartz said, because he is also the attorney for the man who until recently was Mr. Fort's most-prominent in-house critic, Mitchell Feder, and has had a friendly relationship with one of the officials urging Mr. Fort to resign, Fred Newton. It was reminiscent, Mr. Schwartz said, of the anonymous flyers during the 2004 DC 37 election that virtually ignored Ms. Roberts's opponent, Mr. Ensley, and instead savaged his running-mate, then-DC 37 Treasurer Mark Rosenthal (who is actually mentioned in one of the recent flyers, though he has no direct connection to Local 375.)

Mr. Fort insisted that both Mr. Sawinski and Mr. Forster had been falsely accused of abusing release time in an attempt to retaliate against him for not meekly retreating once Ms. Roberts decided to go back on her promise of 2004 and back Ms. Montgomery Costa for the international vice presidency, then continuing to demand an account of the spending at last summer's AFSCME convention.

Local Foes 'Being Used'

"I do not follow people around; I trust them as professionals," he said regarding Mr. Sawinski and Mr. Forster. "If you say you're at [the Department of Buildings], I figure you're at DOB. To try to pull me into this, they've got to have an agenda. Those guys [within his local] are after Vinnie, but maybe they're being used."

When Mr. Fort was first elected with the support of Mr. Commer, who had the sympathy of many Tech Guild members who believed AFSCME improperly removed the man they had chosen as president, he opted not to appoint him to a staff position. There was speculation at the time within DC 37's reform movement that Mr. Fort had been persuaded by Mr. Saunders not to give him a paid position and a platform within the local, something Mr. Fort again denied last week.

"They never told me," he said of DC 37's leadership at the time. "Roy himself kind of overwhelmed me. He came to me the same week [he was elected] and said, 'The members are complaining; they want you to hire me.' So before I could even get any direction, I felt him pressuring me," and he decided against hiring him.

A Signal to DC 37 Leaders

That may be accurate, but he surely was aware of the signal he was sending to his parent union by rebuffing Mr. Commer after his support had been so valuable in the election.

Mr. Sawinski, too irrepressible to exercise discretion when Mr. Fort by word or gesture tries to rein him in, recounted a meeting they had with Mr. Saunders and his top deputy not long after Mr. Fort came to power. He said they told the two DC 37 officials, "We're not here to do what Roy did.You leave us alone, we'll leave you alone."

Mr. Fort did his best to live up to that pledge until he concluded that Ms. Roberts had gone back on her own vow to support him for international vice president. He wasn't the first DC 37 official to discover that honor wasn't one of her cardinal virtues; Mr. Ensley had agreed to support her as a compromise candidate for DC 37 executive director seven years ago after getting what he took for an assurance that she would not seek a full term in the 2004 election.

But that is not to suggest that Mr. Fort is a victim here. He set aside any reservations he had about Ms. Roberts and her leadership abilities to support her on the presumption that his loyalty would someday be rewarded with advancement, and became a vocal critic only after he realized he'd been taken for a ride.

Message Cuts Both Ways

Mr. Sawinski contended that in treating Mr. Fort this way, DC 37 leaders were sending "a message to a lot of the new [local] presidents that if you step out of line, the same thing can happen to you that happened to Claude."

It could be argued that there is a corresponding message that setting aside your principles to support a union leadership whether it's wrong or right is no guarantee that you'll benefit in the long run.

The truth is that there are more than a few instances in which DC 37 officials on release time are not serving their members properly; even those who are where they are supposed to be on any given day are not accomplishing much. It is a flailing political machine, much like the one run by Stanley Hill before a corruption scandal chased him from office, sent many of his allies to jail, and brought Mr. Saunders in from AFSCME to restore order under the big tent.

But as Mr. Ensley once famously remarked, there may be a different ringmaster, but it's the same old circus. Until now, the Roberts regime had not come under suspicion of the kind of thievery that was the stock in trade of the old DC 37 wrecking crew. One of the primary tributaries for their plundering was union parties and conferences where the bills were astronomical considering the number of people in attendance.

Which is why someone in law-enforcement might want to ask a few questions about the union's tab at the AFSCME convention.