New Rules in Yonkers
Voters in Yonkers will have a chance in November to change the city charter to adopt a much-improved code of ethics. By giving the city's ethics board things it has long lacked - a pulse, for starters, and a set of teeth - the code will institutionalize the ideals that the city has long failed to live by. It will be a rare chance for voters to lock in the benefits from a sudden outbreak of responsiveness and good governance that has gripped the city lately. The measure deserves to pass.

We like its chances, although, this being Yonkers, there is always the possibility that a mysterious duffel bag of "no" votes might turn up at the Board of Elections, borne in by aliens on a beam of light. Barring that, a lot of Yonkersites will have cause for satisfaction. This includes John Murtagh, the Republican City Councilman and judge's son who took the lead long ago in pushing for reform in his beloved but troubled city. There is also Mayor Philip A. Amicone, of course, who appointed the charter revision panel and who has followed through on a pledge to be more responsive, holding public forums that have given residents an unfamiliar taste of government openness and accessibility.

But some credit should also go to the tribe of the cranky, mostly anonymous gadflies and political obsessives who populate the message boards of local political blogs, most notably YonkersTribune.com.

It's impossible to tell exactly what effect, if any, the bloggers have had on all the recent legislation, the prosecutions and the reform-minded buzz that has swirled in and around City Hall and the Board of Education. It is hard to pin down cause and effect in the ephemeral on-line world, where substance and blather mix freely.

But if there has been any single locus of political engagement in this deeply political city, it has not been sedate editorial pages like ours but the Yonkers Tribune, run by the tireless Hezi Aris, a bearded gnome with a digital camera who goes to all the meetings and writes everything down, in a baroque prose style that overflows with well-mannered outrage, like someone pounding on an off-key harpsichord.

The site certainly got under the skin of City Hall. Mayor Amicone ordered that all computers at City Hall and the Board of Education be blocked from connecting to it, fearing that government employees were spending too much time gossiping online - often attacking him and his friends - and not enough time doing the people's business.

But you could argue that exposing scandal is the people's business. The Web site takes credit, for example, for breaking Yonkers's biggest corruption story in years, the saga of the Baffler from Bayonne, Pietro Barberi, a previously unknown young man who parlayed his affection for the daughter of School Superintendent Angelo Petrone into a top job as senior accountant at the Board of Education.

What started as rumor-mongering was picked up by the newspapers, including this one; the buzz soon became an investigation, and Mr. Petrone and the schools' finance director, Frank Lutz, were indicted. Yonkers Tribune message boards lit up with glee as Mr. Petrone went through the five stages of political dying: Denial, Evasion, Seclusion, Resignation and Conviction. When he pleaded guilty, bloggers happily supplied suggestions for how he could perform his mandated hours of community service.

It's safe to say that the acid-tongued bloggers' batting average in exposing hidden outrages is not particularly high - rants and gossip are most often just rants and gossip - but it would be foolish to dismiss Mr. Aris's creation out of hand. There is a lot of thoughtful, passionate citizenship taking place on the site, and local officials are smart to take it seriously. Visit Yonkers Tribune sometime, and if you have trouble navigating your way to the juicy stuff because of all the campaign ads and smiling politicians' mug shots, you will know what we mean.

October 2, 2005
In Yonkers, Mr. Petrone, It's Time For Payback
By MAREK FUCHS, YONKERS

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REMEMBER that calculus teacher or school administrator who did you wrong way back when? What if, abracadabra, you now had the power to hand them any punishment you wanted? What if you could choose to send the principal to reform school, or give that heavy-handed teacher 50 lashes with a wet noodle?

As this school year began, former Superintendent Angelo Petrone pleaded guilty to two felonies: lying under oath and obstructing justice by tampering with official documents. He had been facing a maximum of seven years in prison, but through a plea deal will instead be required to perform 750 hours of community service.

Because it was Yonkers's 27,000 students who bore the brunt of laid-off teachers and program cuts while Mr. Petrone was in office, it seemed somehow fitting to ask a few of them to choose what form his community service should take. The court may not listen, but there's always the court of public opinion.

"What is just for Mr. Petrone?" echoed Omar Yafaie, a junior at Gorton High School. "I say hard labor, like scrubbing toilets. He should be a janitor in one of the schools - a hard job." Omar explained his reasoning, and it wasn't redemption. He mentioned that his classes, which should have 25 students tops, have 40. Spanish class, where one-on-one conversation is so important, is now so big that it is held in an auditorium. And the junior varsity football team was eliminated, which meant his giving up any chance to play, because he was too slight to make the jump right to varsity.

And through it all, Omar added in disbelief, Mr. Petrone was taking for himself, making sure his daughter's boyfriend, even though unqualified, had a job that paid nearly $100,000. "He just didn't have the power to do what he did," Omar said, waving a hand. "It was not legally right, or right in any way. I say he should have gotten jail time."

To Peter Nukho, a senior at Gorton High School, the essential element to Mr. Petrone's community service should be that it raise money to pay the district back. "He stole," Peter said, "so he should work toward those debts, giving back what he owes." Peter shook his head. "He kept saying, 'The district is underfunded, underfunded, underfunded.' And then he took for himself and his family."

Another Gorton High School student, heading toward an ambulance converted into a hot dog truck outside of the school on a recent afternoon, was not sure. Taking off a pair of earphones, the girl, who asked that her name not be used, said that Mr. Petrone had been her principal at Yonkers Middle School. She said that although strict, he had truly been a good principal once, and that no matter what he had done as superintendent, his earlier contributions should be factored in.

That is exactly why the community service should not be punitive, said Jim Bostic, executive director of the Nepperhan Community Center, which works with children from about 30 middle schools who need an alternative setting. Mr. Bostic said that Mr. Petrone still had a lot to offer as an educator and should serve his hours working with children at risk.

Legally, although Mr. Petrone is now a felon, he may still be able to work with children in a school setting. Jonathan Burman, a spokesman for the New York State Department of Education, said that as in other cases involving teachers who have committed crimes, all the factors will be weighed at his hearing before any decision is made on whether he loses his license.

But caution is in order, said Patricia Puleo, president of the Yonkers Federation of Teachers. "While community service in the Yonkers schools sounds like a good idea," she said, "let's just make sure someone strong is supervising it and not one who will be intimidated and just sign off on whatever he says he's doing."

Reisman: Ex-Yonkers school chief's crime was lying
By PHIL REISMAN, THE JOURNAL NEWS, Original Publication: September 15, 2005

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When he's sentenced in December, Angelo Petrone will be ordered to perform 750 hours of some kind of community service.

Suggestions for his punishment have been predictable. Many are humiliating.

Make him clean up litter on the Yonkers waterfront. Have him drive a school bus or serve as a custodian. Here's one idea going around: Stuff Petrone in a Santa suit and make him ring a bell in Getty Square at Christmastime. Ho, Ho, Ho.

They go on and on in this unrealistic vein.

Some people have more thoughtfully suggested that the former schools superintendent tutor homebound students or volunteer with the district's alternative high school. A variation of those reasonable ideas will surely take hold, but they still don't directly address Petrone's offense.

Which is that he lied.

Seduced by the self-serving whispers of greed and cronyism, Petrone cynically lied, tampered, covered up and ultimately threw away a 30-year career in education. His downfall from a job that paid $235,000 a year was nothing less than a tragedy for him and his family. What a shameful, stupid waste.

But Petrone got off easy. Appearing in court Tuesday, he admitted he perjured himself and rigged the game to hire his daughter's 24-year-old boy-pal to serve as the district's senior accountant when all along he knew the young man was barely qualified to balance a checkbook, let alone do spreadsheets on a $400 million budget.

Unlike Martha Stewart, a much more famous perjurer and Westchester resident, Petrone won't go to jail. He'll get to keep his fat pension. And if he's extra lucky, he'll also get to keep the $34,000 in vacation money he managed to scrape out of the district's coffers without formal approval from the nine-member Board of Enablers, er, I mean the Board of Education.

From the minute this newspaper put the heat on Petrone back in October, he hid behind the enabling board. Even when it was obvious that the city inspector general had caught him in the act of deceit and the city's taxpayers were calling for his scalp, they all but said to leave Petrone alone because he was doing a "heckuva job."

Where are they now?

Of course, the biggest victims in this tragic mess were the children  the 26,000 or so students in the Yonkers public school system, who every year have been held political hostage to dreary, demoralizing threats of teacher layoffs, cancellation in bus service and cuts in sports, music and art. All that time, no one in Petrone's wide circle of family and friends seemed to be suffering from the anxiety of job insecurity and the prospect that they might not have a means to get to school or work.

It's ironic that for a while, Petrone and his gang of enablers wanted to put the kids in uniforms to enforce some semblance of discipline when it turns out they couldn't restrain themselves from overindulging in patronage. Test scores went up in some areas, sure, but the standard of conduct that was set from above was quite low.

During Petrone's brief tenure as superintendent, he put his name on thousands of diplomas. Imagine that. Think of all those young Yonkers graduates who proudly entered the outside world with an official document of achievement, only to learn that the sheepskin's most important signature belonged to a perjurer.

That's the real shame.

And the shame lingers because restoring integrity and trust in the Yonkers school system will take more than merely forcing Angelo Petrone to work free of charge for a while. For one thing, the search for a new superintendent should be thoroughly scrutinized.

Every prospective candidate should be directly questioned on the record and out in the open about ethics, about accountability and about the virtues of honesty and fairness.

Petrone's community service can only help the redemptive process.

He ought to be compelled to go to each of the district's 39 schools and simply give a talk on the perils of lying.

That alone would represent at least 39 hours of tough work with 711 hours to go.

New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi Agrees to Audit the Books in Yonkers

Hiring Scandal in Yonkers New York: School Superintendent Angelo Petrone Resigns and is Indicted

Former Yonkers school head pleads guilty in hiring scandal

Educational Malpractice and Corruption in Yonkers