The retired disabled NYC Police officers are behind the eight-ball because of their disability!


"THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE BELL"

Wednesday, June 4, 1997
To U.S. Senators and Representatives: Enough is enough !

Please pass or back the "inquiry bill", to investigate the wrong-doings of the New York city P.B.A..
We the retiree have been informing the legislature of the PBA back room deals, the dirty "taxi-cab" ride to Albany when a contract was changed in 1968. The PBA attorneys, lobbyists and union leaders are corrupt, as you can see and read in the daily newspapers!
The retirees "need" representation at the bargaining table, so as to avoid all the corruption. We are a forgotten bunch, but we still maintain our voting privileges in the state of New York. We want to see these corrupt leaders behind bars where they belong! We want "equal" representation at the negotiating table equal to the that of active men, and all paid for by the PBA! We want a by-laws change so retirees can run for office of president of the PBA etc., but we have "NO" voice.How many times do THEY crew the retiree, before our representatives re-act!

The following is a disgrace. I am appalled that the legislature has not investigated this corruption no matter how far up the ladder it goes. They all should be in jail !

New York News

City Cops have beaten back crime to its lowest level in a generation, but some of the biggest crooks in town a apparently have been working right under their noses -their own union's lawyers and advisers. With three of the Patrolmen's Benevolent association’s top advisers indicted on racketeering charges, Mayor Giuliani wants the union to be required to disclose, how it spends its mon-ey. And so it should be. The PBA, solely a city union, is not bound by federal disclosure rules that work to keep national unions honest but it receives huge sums from both the public treasury and members' dues. Where is that money going?

The last time anyone tried to answer that question, a city controller’s audit found that the city poured $3.7million in 1991 into the union’s legal services and just for a single law firm, Lysaght; Lysaght &, Kramer. All that city money could have gone for raises if the union paid less for legal help.

It's not irrelevant that two of that same firm’s principals and an associate are now at the center or a federal racketeering indictments that focuses on kickbacks allegedly paid to leaders of' the defunct transit police union. The indictment charges that the firm got union business at inflated prices, then kicked back

$450,000 to the union leaders who hired them.

While the PBA and Its officials don't figure in the indict-ments, federal investigators are focusing on the 28,000-member union because the same trio made millions providing the PBA with virtually the same Services.

Most rank-and-file transit cops, of course, had no inkling that a massive kickback scandal hinged on their union benefits and dues. But that's because nobody was watching the store. Had the transit union been required to open its books, cops might not have been taken to the cleaners.

With the probe now turning to the PBA, the same logic holds. Members could be keeping more if their union weren't making millions in questionable payments. Union dues running about $8 a week, for example, could be cut if the union spent less

By far, the most questionable payments involve Richard Hartman, a former PBA lawyer who was forced to surrender his law license in 1986 amid allegations he dipped into union es-crow funds to pay gambling debts, Yet, a year later, the PBA gave him a $2 million contract as a labor consultant, followed by another $2 million in commissions as its insurance broker.

When are cops going to take off the blinders? Instead of blast-ing Giuliani's demand for disclosure, they should embrace it, And maybe catch crooks stealing fund their own cookie jar.

Sunday February 2, 1997 Daily News

By William K Rashbaum and Kevin Flynn

When the president of the city's Patrolmen's Benevolent Association proudly notified his 20,000 member officers in 1991 that the union had secured a terrific new life insurance deal, he left out an interesting fact:

The commissions on their policies - millions of dollars- had gone to a degenerate gambler who had dipped into union funds for more than $800,000.00 to cover just a fraction of his losses at the gaming tables in Atlantic City.

The sins of that gambler -Richard Hartman - mattered not to the PBA's then-president, Phil Caruso, who dispatched the union's 300 delegates to persuade cops to buy policies.

Thousands did, and Hartman kept his position at the pinnacle of the union money machine, an informal PBA Inc.
Hartman and his confederates, James Lysaght and Peter Kramer, form a clique of lawyers-consultants who have prospered through deals conferred on them by police union leaders. They have, in turn, bestowed benefits on union brass.
The business ties among the union and the PBA inc. troika are being investigated by federal prosecutors and the FBI.

The probes turned their sights on the PBA as an out-growth of an investigation of the now-defunct Transit Police Benevolent Association.

Hartman, Kramer and Lysaght had similar business deals with the TPBA, and there, federal and prosecutors alleged in a racketeering indictment, the three paid $450,000.00 in kickbacks to the union leaders who retained them.

PBA brass deny all wrongdoing, and it is unclear how the probe will result. Still, the investigation has shed light into the union's closed reaches.

What emerges is a portrait of labor organization that has huge sums at its disposal thanks to taxpayer and city cops and that gets little scrutiny because, as a municipal union, it is exempt from disclosure rules that apply to most labor unions. In that environment, nearly every dollar that the PBA has paid for legal bills, insurance commissions and labor and pension advice has gone to HARTMAN, LYSAGHT, and KRAMER- or their wives. They kept the work, despite embarrassing fiascoes. Not even criminal charges could easily dislodge them.

For seven days after his indictment, Lysaght held on to his position as lead negotiator in the PBA's most contentious labor dispute in years, even as some union leaders fought to oust him. His firm is still the PBA's legal counsel.

What follows Is a look Inside PBA Inc. - who runs it and how they have spent the millions of dollars entrusted to them in union dues and city payments health and welfare and other benefit funds.

Legal Fees
Richard Hartman, the son of a Long lsland grocer and bookie, always had a head for numbers. After growing up an Long Beach, L.I., he studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earned a law degree at New York Law School and worked for the Nassau County district attorney.

By the mid-1970"s, he was making a name for himself as the mad genius of police labor negotiations. He won record raises for Nassau and Suffolk county cops, accomplishments that brought him a $750,000.00 labor consulting deal with the city's PBA. He conducted himself with flair, to put it mildly. Stories of having shifts of secretaries taking dictation around the clock became the stuff of legend-as did his appetites. He once ordered 50 ice cream sundaes delivered to the bargaining table. He ate three, and the rest melted.

Hartman's role as the PBA's legal counsel expanded under Caruso, who was then the union president, and the two men grew close. In 1980, the lawyer dropped off a gift in CARUSO's driveway: a new Jeep wrapped in a huge bow - a present that Caruso was questioned about years later in a grand jury investigation. His legal fees from the union grew!

New York Post, Friday, January 24, 1997
Indicted union big cries dirty politics

by AL GUART

Two former police union leaders and three lawyers pleaded not guilty yesterday to what authorities caIled a "SORID" conspiracy to defraud rank-and-file members of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Ron Reale, former president of the Transit police Benevolent~Association charged Mayor Giuliani orchestrated 13-count federal indictment because of the bitter dispute over a new police labor contract.

"I think the charges against me are politically motivated." Reale said after the federal court hearing. "I think the mayor has been behind it from the beginning.

"He'd better grow up and get the bargaining table and stop acting like the Nixon White House."

Reale former housing police head Jack Jordan, disbarred lawyer Richard Hartrnan and two members of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association's law firm, James Lysaght and Peter Kramer surrendered to authorities yesterday.

They face more than 20 years in prison on a variety of charges including racketeering and campaign finance fraud because of what U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White called a "sordid" scheme to loot the unions' pension fund and kick back inflated legal bills. The five were ordered to surrender their passports and any weapons they own. Lysaght said he is "absolutely innocent" - and would continue to represent the PBA in negotiations with the city.

"I'm a labor professional. I've always been a labor professional " Lysaght said. I'm not going to stop." Six other men have pleaded guilty to taking part in the scam. REALE said one of them, former TPBA treasurer Ray Montoro, was "a very desperate man" and a source for the allegations against him.

Reale, who ran for city public advocate in 1993, denied he had authority over the union funds. "They want to use me as some kind of example," he said.

The men were released on their own recognizance after being arraigned before U.S. Magistrate Andrew Peck.

PBA, lawyers' office- It's all in the family
By Joe Calderone
Daily news staff writer

The daughter of Patrolmen's Benevolent Association boss Lou Matarazzo and the children of two other top PBA leaders work for the law firm at the center of a police union corruption probe.

Matarazzo's daughter, Anna Marie Barbieri, 33, who has worked seven years as a part-time secretary at the firm of Lysaght, Lysaght & Kramer, acknowledged yesterday that she got the job through her father.

The Long Island-based law firm also employs the daughter of PBA Treasurer Ronald DeVito and two children of the union's recording secretary, James Higgins, a union spokesman said.

James Lysaght and Peter Kramer, the firm's lead partners, were charged Wednesday with racketeering, bribery and conspiracy in connection with an alleged scheme that drained the former transit police union of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Federal prosecutors say Lysaght and Kramer paid kickbacks to transit union leaders to get work and inflated their bills to cover the cost of the kick-backs. They have denied wrongdoing.

The federal probe is focusing on whether similar schemes took place at the PBA, which has absorbed the smaller union. The law firm has provided legal services to the transit union and to the PBA for nearly a decade.

The PBA's legal work is worth $6 million to $10 million a year to the Lysaght firm, sources said. Federal officials declined to say if the hiring pattern at the law firm is part of their investigation. But a law enforcement official close to the probe said: "When relatives are hired, that could be evidence of a corrupt relationship.

Matarazzo's spokesman, Howard Rubenstein, said the union leader's daughter is qualified and that her job is unrelated to any business the firm receives. There was "absolutely no quid pro quo" involved in her hiring, he said. "A handful of relatives of members of the union have from time to time worked for the law firm. They all report to work, work hard and are not no shows," Rubenstein said. The firm is paid with city funds to provide routine legal services - from house closings to the drawing up wills-to members of the 28,000 member PBA. The firm also represents the union and its members in labor negotiation. More than 35 lawyers and a 70-member support staff provide the services.

Some rank-and-file officers have questioned how the firm can continue representing the union in labor negotiations with the city with its lead partners facing criminal charges.

Matarazzo has kept the firm despite the indictment and criticism from Mayor Giuliani, who questioned Lysaght's ability to negotiate a contract.

Higgins' daughter Rita works full time at the firm, and his son Paul works part time. Susan DeVito, daughter of the PBA treasurer, is a full time employee. "My daughter went to Stony Brook college for three years, and she's qualified... She got the job on her own merits," said Higgins.

The law firm also employs the widow of former PBA president Charlie Peterson and once employed Lynda Nicolino, a lawyer and the daughter of Matarazzo 's predecessor, Phil Caruso.

Devito said his daughter's position at the law firm would not influence his decisions.

U.S. Department of Justice
APR 26 1995

Dear Sir:

President Clinton has requested the Department of Justice to respond to your letter concerning the "Variable Supplement Fund" established for disabled New York City police officers and firemen. You allege that retired disabled officers have been unfairly treated in relation to other participants in the Fund and recommend that disabled retirees have a representative on the Fund's board of directors.
Because your letter does not allege facts which indicate that a violation of the federal criminal laws governing the operation of employee benefit plans has occurred, this office is unable to pursue your inquiry further. As you may know, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which regulates employee pension benefit plans in the private sector, does not apply to plans which are established or maintained by the government of any State or municipality for its employees.
However, we have referred your letter for further review to United States Department of Labor at the address below. That office can advise you whether the particular fund to which you refer is subject to ERISA and whether you have any civil remedies under that law. In the event that any further inquiry by the Department of Labor results in evidence that the federal criminal laws governing employee benefit plans may have been violated, the Department of Labor will refer such evidence to the Department of Justice for consideration of possible prosecution.
Please forgive the administrative delay in responding to
your inquiry which was received by this office on April 20, 1995.
Sincerely,
Assistant Chief Labor-Management Racketeering
Organized Crime and Racketeering Section