October 10, 2004
WESTCHESTER
A Hard Look at Yonkers, NY TIMES

You think it's fun being mayor? Look how Philip A. Amicone suffers in Yonkers.

Everyone's a critic. People say his financial plan doesn't add up, just because one little chunk of it - O.K., $200 million - is fictional. The mayor says the fault is not his but Albany's, where he says lawmakers have shortchanged Yonkers for years. But the state budget director is not buying it. She rejected his plan in September, calling it unrealistic.

People concerned about the schools are saying mean things, too. Parents, teachers and other district employees are furious about a $25 million hole in the school budget that Mr. Amicone tried to close with imaginary money. Imaginary money, of course, can be spent only on imaginary teachers, librarians and security guards. But when the school year started, hundreds of real people were fired. That left the schools staggering under the effects of drastic layoffs and program cuts.

Now the N.A.A.C.P. wants a court to determine whether the cuts have harmed school programs that were established under a settlement agreement to lift student achievement. Mr. Amicone's critics fear the city may be violating the settlement. That would be just what the mayor needs - more trouble with a federal judge.

The second-guessing does not stop there. Politicians with ties to Yonkers - State Senator Nicholas A. Spano; Assemblymen Richard L. Brodsky, Gary Pretlow and Michael Spano; and City Council members John M. Murtagh and Dee R. Barbato - have gone public with their concerns about Mr. Amicone's money problems. The local paper has pointed out numerous ways that the mayor and his allies have been piggy with city finances and lax with conflict-of-interest rules - taking no-bid city contracts for sideline businesses, for example, and driving around in sleek, city-leased S.U.V.'s. Even the Chamber of Commerce president has weighed in, joining others who have frowned at the tangled web connecting Mr. Amicone and his City Hall friends with various autonomous, unaccountable institutions set up to promote development in Yonkers, notably the Yonkers Industrial Development Agency.

The agency and various spinoff corporations - whose members include Mr. Amicone; his predecessor, John R. Spencer; and a few friends - have been moving around millions of dollars for a range of projects in Mr. Amicone's strapped city. Do these ties constitute a conflict of interest, and could the money that flows to these corporations be used in better ways to patch Mr. Amicone's tattered budgets to benefit all the residents of Yonkers?

It's all so confusing. But help is on the way. Alan G. Hevesi, the state comptroller, already has his hands full with a financial crisis at Westchester Medical Center and a school district scandal on Long Island. But he's a sharp money guy, and if anyone can get to the bottom of the Yonkers muddle, he can. Mr. Amicone may have been too shy or proud to ask for help. But those politicians named above were not, and since they asked, Mr. Hevesi has agreed to audit Yonkers's books. He is starting with the city's overall financial operations, and may expand his investigation into other areas, like the schools and the industrial development agency.

Perhaps the Hevesi investigation will yield good news for Mr. Amicone, because if everything the mayor says about how he runs Yonkers is true, then the numbers - hard, solid, audited numbers - will bear him out. And that will finally get the grumblers, do-gooders and naysayers off his back. The the investigation could also turn out badly for the mayor. Either way, we can only hope that Mr. Hevesi's arrival is the beginning of the end of Yonkers's troubles.