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| Sheldon Silver leaving Court January 2015 |
Everyone knew about Assemblyman Sheldon Silver's backroom politics, and no one did anything until Preet Bharara stepped in.
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| A 2011 episode isn’t part of Sheldon Silver’s corruption indictment, but prosecutors want to use it to support their case. Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times |
Sheldon Silver, Former Assembly Speaker, Helped Developer Block Methadone Clinic’s Relocation, U.S. Says
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When a methadone clinic sought to relocate to Manhattan’s financial district in 2011, parents, local business owners and others rallied in opposition. Perhaps the most prominent opponent was Sheldon Silver, then the powerful speaker of the State Assembly who represented that neighborhood.
“I made it clear to everyone involved that this does not seem to be an appropriate location for this facility,” Mr. Silver said in a statement released at the time.
But what Mr. Silver did not reveal then, federal prosecutors said in court papers filed last week, was that a real estate developer who owned a building near the proposed location had asked him for his help in blocking the project — and that Mr. Silver had a secret interest in providing such assistance.
Mr. Silver, prosecutors said in the filing, was receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal payments disguised as referral fees from a law firm to which he had steered some of the developer’s legal business.
The clinic episode is not cited in the indictment against Mr. Silver. But the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, asked in the filing that Judge Valerie E. Caproni allow the government to present it in support of its case.
Mr. Silver, who was forced to step down as speaker after his arrest in January, has pleaded not guilty to charges that include extortion under color of official right and honest services fraud.
Mr. Silver’s lawyers have not yet responded in court papers to the government’s claims about Mr. Silver’s role in the clinic real estate deal.
Steven F. Molo, one of Mr. Silver’s lawyers, said on Monday, “Mr. Silver served his constituents and the people of the state of New York well in connection with that matter and committed no crime.”
A lawyer for Glenwood Management did not respond on Monday to a message seeking comment.
Mr. Bharara’s office said in its filing that in November 2011, after the state’s Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services had tentatively approved the clinic’s move to 90 Maiden Lane, near one of Glenwood’s buildings, the developer requested Mr. Silver’s assistance “to prevent such clinic from opening.”
Prosecutors say that Mr. Silver responded by “intervening with the relevant state agency and further advocating against” the clinic’s opening.
When the clinic’s proposed relocation became public, it drew sharp criticism in the community, and Mr. Silver said at the time that he arranged for the clinic to make a presentation, which occurred before a committee of Community Board No. 1 in Lower Manhattan.
Catherine McVay Hughes, the community board’s current chairwoman who was then its vice chairwoman, recalled in an interview on Monday that the meeting, held on Dec. 7, 2011, was “packed with parents and local business people.”
Among people’s objections was that the clinic had not notified the board in advance of the proposal, and that the location was too close to a school for young children. One resident presented petitions with 600 signatures in opposition that were collected over just a few days, Ms. Hughes recalled.
“This was a hot-button issue,” she said.
Ron Vlasaty, then the chief operating officer of Gramercy Park Services, the clinic’s operator, said on Monday that the company had proceeded with the location because it believed it had the state’s “blessing.”
But one day after Mr. Vlasaty appeared before the community meeting and saw the extent of the opposition, he said, the company withdrew its application.
After the project was dropped, a Glenwood Management lobbyist drafted a letter to the residents of the firm’s nearby building, praising Mr. Silver’s “outstanding efforts,” the government said in its filing.
“Assemblyman Silver sprung into action as soon as it was revealed that this application was pending,” the letter said.
Two years later, a proposal was made for another substance abuse center on Maiden Lane near that same Glenwood Management building.
“I thought Shelly killed this damn thing?!” a Glenwood representative wrote in an email that prosecutors attached to their filing.
“We need to kill this again,” a lobbyist for the company responded, the government said.
The substance abuse center did not relocate to the Maiden Lane address, the government said in its filing, which does not state whether Mr. Silver played a role in blocking it.
Thomas Kaplan contributed reporting.