Ex-Quinn Aide Fined For Campaign Solicitation Calls

MAURA KEANEY: Lands on her feet. A former Deputy Chief of Staff to Speaker Christine Quinn Feb. 1 was fined $2,500 by the Conflicts of Interest Board for soliciting campaign donations from unions three years earlier. That same day, she was hired for a new $147,000-per-year job by the Department of Education.

In another COIB case, a former DOE Janitor was fined $5,000 for using a subordinate handyman to paint his house and boat and perform repairs on his car without paying him.

Said She Didn’t Know

Maura Keaney, who worked for Ms. Quinn from 2006 to 2009, told the COIB that she unknowingly violated conflict-of-interest rules when she made “between approximately six to twelve calls to union representatives to ask that they serve on the Host Committee” for a fundraising event, a role that required a contribution to Ms. Quinn’s re-election campaign.

Ms. Keaney also called UNITE HERE, the union that formerly employed her, to ask it to donate space to host the event, she said. The calls were not made on a city telephone, she testified. “After being informed by the Chief of Staff to the Council Speaker that these calls were inappropriate, I stopped immediately and had no further involvement in campaign fundraising.”

She also insisted that while she helped draft a 2007 campaign finance law enacted by the Council that exempted labor unions from limits on candidate contributions, this had no connection to contributions later solicited for Ms. Quinn’s campaign.

Jumped on Mayor’s Bandwagon

Ms. Keaney stopped working for Ms. Quinn a year ago to become a staffer in Mayor Bloomberg’s re-elec- tion campaign, and received a $150,000 bonus after he was re-elected. She was appointed Executive Director of External Affairs for the DOE the same day that her $2,500 fine was announced. Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein praised her in a statement as being “an innovative thinker and advocate with a record of serving the interest of New Yorkers from positions both in and outside of government.” He noted “her experience in working with large and diverse communities across the city.”

Defending her appointment, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters, “What she did she did with the best of intentions, and when you screw up, you ’fess up to it and pay your penalty and get on with it,” according to the Daily News. “She went voluntarily to [COIB]; asked whether she [broke any rules]. They ruled she did and said she should pay a fine. She paid it, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s all you could ask for.”

In the other COIB case, Janitor Joseph Dziekanowski was fined $5,000 for using a subordinate as personal free labor at P.S. 089X in The Bronx.

Mr. Dziekanowski, employed by the DOE from 1994 to 2009, hired a handyman to work at the school in 2005.

A Personal Servant

During that year, he directed this subordinate to paint his private residence in The Bronx, along with his boat, which was parked in his driveway. He also made the handyman change the front brakes and transmission fluid on his Chevrolet Tahoe and change the fluid and shocks on his other vehicle, a Cadillac.

The handyman, who was not identified, was not compensated for any of this work. Before being fined by COIB, Mr. Dziekanowski was suspended by DOE for a month in 2007, at a cost of $6,747, which the board took into consideration. Without the suspension, the fine would have been higher.