Panel Forces Silver's Hand
by Kenneth Lovett, NY POST, August 4, 2004
August 4, 2004 --
ALBANY - Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver may be forced to testify about a below-cost luxury suite he received from a Las Vegas hotel, after the state Lobbying Commission yesterday said it will go to court.
The commission voted unanimously to hire an outside lawyer to enforce a subpoena against Silver, who has refused to testify about
his Vegas trip.
The commission also found there is enough evidence to warrant a civil-penalty hearing into whether Caesars Entertainment violated a state law that bans companies doing business with the state to give lawmakers gifts worth more than $75.
Silver stayed at a $1,500- a-night suite at Caesars' Paris Las Vegas Hotel for $109. He has said he got a good rate because he went not long after 9/11, when hotels were trying to attract customers.
Caesars has maintained it has done nothing wrong.
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Lobby board to subpoena Assembly speaker over Las Vegas trip
By MICHAEL GORMLEY, Associated Press, August 3, 2004
LINKALBANY, N.Y. -- The state lobbying commission Tuesday said receipts aren't enough and will subpoena Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to testify about how he received a $1,500 Las Vegas hotel suite for $109.
In July, Silver provided the state Temporary Commission on Lobbying with receipts from the trip but refused to testify.
The commission is investigating whether Caesars Entertainment's Paris Las Vegas hotel violated the state law that bans gifts to lawmakers over $75 from companies lobbying to do business with the state.
The case led to a gag order in the spring on the commission's embattled executive director, David Grandeau, who was told not to comment on investigations before the commission acted. On Tuesday, the commission began a months-long review of Grandeau's job description that could limit his power.
Hours before, however, Grandeau was praised by a Republican assemblyman who said Grandeau is one of the few people in Albany working for the public good.
"This is one of the few beacons of integrity," said Republican Assemblyman Thomas Kirwan of Orange County. He said Grandeau has sought to rein in Albany's powerful lobbying groups, often headed by former top aides of lawmakers and the governor who ply their influence for large retainers.
"It gives sleazy politics a bad name," Kirwan said.
Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, has said that his trip was a personal one taken in the post-Sept. 11 period when many rooms in Las Vegas were going for bargain-basement prices. Caesars Entertainment officials said that while the suite Silver stayed in often went for several hundreds of dollars a night, it has also rented for as little as $25 a night.
The receipts from Silver made public Tuesday showed the speaker paid $109 for the suite that hotel documents show cost $1,500 a night, said Grandeau. The records show the suite was 1,140-square feet, usually used by high-rolling casino players, and can't be reserved in advance. Rooms in the hotel open to the public at the hotel known as the Paris are advertised at $350 to $550, Grandeau said.
The records also note a $50 tip was paid to a caterer for having "dinner flown in" for Silver and his guest. They don't note the cost of the meal. The tip wasn't from Silver. Grandeau said they have sought that information, but Silver and the casino firm haven't provided it.
Silver is mourning the death of his older brother and will comment at an appropriate time, said Silver spokesman Charles Carrier.
Caesars Entertainment, which has an office in New York City, could face a fine by the lobbying commission if found to have violated the gift ban. The commission is also planning to subpoena Caesars officials.
Caesars Entertainment has been trying since late 2001 to join with an Indian tribe in New York to open a gambling casino in the Catskill Mountains. Its $180,000-a-year lobbyist, James Featherstonhaugh, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Silver faces no sanction from the lobbying commission.
In his news conference hours before, Kirwan played a tape of conversations he had with front desk workers and supervisors at the Paris hotel in Las Vegas. Kirwan sought a special rate as a New York state legislator to prove Grandeau's investigation is probing legitimate questions about Silver's trip.
Hotel workers said there was no special rate for lawmakers, only for high-rollers.
The Republican supported another critic of state government, Democratic Assembly William Parment of Jamestown, who said in June that the influence peddling in Albany "could best be described as a criminal enterprise."
"It's certainly getting close," said Kirwan, a former state trooper.
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Lobbying commission Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press
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Lobby Agency Hires Law Firm In Caesar's Case
by John Caher
New York Law Journal
08-04-2004
ALBANY - The state Lobbying Commission yesterday retained an Albany-area law firm to enforce a subpoena against Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.
Cusick & Hacker of Latham was retained at a maximum cost of $15,000 to bring the legislative leader before the regulatory agency. The commission wants Mr. Silver to appear in person to give live testimony regarding an allegedly illegal gift made by a Las Vegas entertainment company lobbying the state.
Records show that in January 2002 Mr. Silver stayed in an exclusive suite at a Caesar's Entertainment hotel, paying $109 for a 1,140-square-foot room that is not available to the general public and is rented for between $25 and $1,500 a night to the highest-rolling gamblers.
Caesar's is planning to build a casino in the Catskills and has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying the Legislature for privileges.
Mr. Silver, who dined with lobbyist Kim Sinatra during his stay, has said he is not a gambler and his visit to the company's Paris Las Vegas Hotel was strictly personal and did not involve government business. Regardless, if Caeser's gave Mr. Silver a gift worth more than $75, it violated the Lobbying Act, according to David M. Grandeau, executive director of the Lobbying Commission.
Mr. Grandeau stressed that the Manhattan Democrat is not a target of the Lobbying Commission's probe. Caesar's is the target, and yesterday the commission concluded there is probable cause to find the company violated the Lobbying Act.
Since Caesar's and its attorney, James D. Featherstonhaugh of Albany, have refused to cooperate, the agency is seeking information from Mr. Silver, according to Mr. Grandeau.
Mr. Silver is also refusing to cooperate. Rather than appear before the agency, Mr. Silver submitted an affirmation describing the Las Vegas trip as a personal vacation.
But the commission wants to question him face to face, which the speaker calls an affront he will not allow. When the attorney general declined to choose sides between the agency and the Assembly leader, the commission tapped outside counsel.
Cusick & Hacker was hired to obtain a court order, if that is what it takes, to bring Mr. Silver before the agency. Correspondence between Mr. Silver's office and the commission suggests that is exactly what it will take.
A July 21 letter from Assembly majority counsel William F. Collins to the Lobbying Commission accuses the agency and its staff of orchestrating an inappropriate and possibly illegal fishing expedition and said Mr. Silver will not subject himself to an interrogation by the executive department.
Mr. Collins alleged the commission staff leaked information about the investigation to the New York Post in violation of Civil Rights Law §73. He suggested the agency should investigate its own officers - apparently meaning Mr. Grandeau and Commission Counsel Ralph P. Miccio - rather than the Assembly speaker.
In the letter, Mr. Collins said Mr. Silver will not willingly submit to "what surely would have been an abusive deposition that, too, would be leaked in violation of the law" and called for an internal probe to "review . . . the improper tactics being employed by the Commission staff in this matter."
Allegations of Leak
The allegations of improper tactics, leaks to the press and alleged violations of the Civil Rights Law echo those made by Mr. Featherstonhaugh in an unrelated Article 78 proceeding pending in Albany County.
In a matter involving Bolton-St. Johns, one of the top lobby shops in Albany, Mr. Featherstonhaugh suggested that Messrs. Grandeau and Miccio leaked information about a pending investigation to the Post, violating §73 (NYLJ, Aug. 3) of the Civil Rights Law.
The attorney general counters that Civil Rights Law §73, enacted in reaction to "McCarthyism" in the 1950s and drafted to protect people from unsubstantiated attacks by government officials, does not apply to the Lobbying Commission. And even if it did, according to Assistant Attorney General Nancy G. Groenwegen, there was no violation.
Focus on Grandeau
Meanwhile, Mr. Grandeau's use of power has sparked a backlash from leaders in both houses of the Legislature and resulted in a sometimes testy commission meeting yesterday. The commissioners voted to examine Mr. Grandeau's legal authority and the way he exercises that authority.
"We are the ones who give you power, not the other way around," Commissioner Andrew G. Celli Jr. told Mr. Grandeau.
Mr. Celli, the only lawyer on the commission, is a partner at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady.
A former top aide to Attorney General Eliot Spitzer - with whom Mr. Grandeau has sparred in the past - Mr. Celli was recently appointed to the commission by Senate Democratic Minority Leader David Paterson of Manhattan. It was on a motion of Mr. Celli earlier this year that the commission essentially imposed a gag order on Mr. Grandeau and barred him and other staff from speaking publicly about pending investigations.
Mr. Grandeau's aggressive pursuit of lobbyists and recent battles with Mr. Spitzer, Speaker Silver and others have the Capitol abuzz with speculation that he will soon be out of a job. Support from key Republicans who put him in the position has been conspicuously absent.
But yesterday, a renegade Republican member of the Assembly, Thomas J. Kirwan of Newburgh, held an unusual press conference in which he defended Mr. Grandeau and said his colleagues should embrace rather than discourage aggressive enforcement of lobbying laws.
Mr. Kirwan, a retired state trooper, said the wheeling and dealing between lobbyists and lawmakers in Albany "gives sleazy politics a bad name" and portrayed Mr. Grandeau as one "of the very few beacons of integrity" at the Capitol.
"For him to be muzzled would be such a disservice to the taxpayers and the people of the state of New York," Mr. Kirwan said. "Everybody is complaining about this guy doing his job. After all, it is kind of rare in Albany for anybody to do his job."
Also yesterday, Mr. Kirwan played for the media a tape recording of a telephone call he made last week to the Paris Las Vegas Hotel.
The assemblyman, a gambler, said he was curious about Mr. Silver's stay and called to see if he could rent the same suite provided to the speaker and at what cost. Mr. Kirwan was told, according to the tape, that the room is not generally available, that there is no "government rate" (the rate Mr. Silver and Caesar's claim the speaker was charged) and that the suite is rented only to high rollers.
- John Caher can be reached at jcaher@amlaw.com
