BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | Sheldon Silver, the powerful, longtime leader of the New York State Assembly, is the focus of a federal investigation, The New York Times reported in its lead article on Page One on Tuesday.
According to the Times, prosecutors from the office of Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, are investigating “substantial payments” made to Silver by a small firm that specializes in seeking tax reductions for commercial and residential properties in New York City.
Prosecutors and F.B.I. agents have allegedly found that Goldberg & Iryami, P.C. — a two-person firm — has been paying Silver for over a decade, but that he did not list this income on his annual financial disclosure forms, as is required.
The payments were not made to Silver as outside income as part of his private law practice. In addition to being the Assembly speaker, Silver is a personal-injury lawyer with the firm of Weitz and Luxenberg.
The U.S. attorney and F.B.I. reportedly are now trying to determine exactly what work Silver did in order to receive the payments.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the investigation — and would not confirm or deny to Downtown Express that there even is an investigation. No one has been charged, the spokesperson noted.
Silver’s spokesperson did not respond by press time to a request for comment.
Since 2001, Goldberg & Iryami has also made relatively small contributions to Silver’s campaigns for a total of $7,600.
New York State legislators are allowed to hold outside jobs, but good-government groups have long criticized this situation for creating the potential for conflicts of interest and payoffs.
In Silver’s case, his salary as speaker is $121,000 while his outside income as a private attorney was more than $650,000, according to what he reported in 2013.
According to the Times, Silver “is not known to have any expertise in the complex and highly specialized area of the law in which Goldberg & Iryami practices, known as tax certiorari, which involves challenging real estate tax assessments and seeking reductions from municipalities.”
Goldberg & Iryami has represented properties on the Lower East Side, seeking real estate tax reductions for them, the Times reported. These include large co-op complexes, including Hillman Housing Corporation, on Grand St., where Silver lives, and the nearby East River Housing Corporation.
East River Housing’s manager, Harold “Heshy” Jacob, in a 2009 letter to shareholders, noted that the city had raised the complex’s assessment to $28 million, and that its tax certiorari lawyer “was very successful in reducing what could have been a $3,000,000 increase to a $750,000 increase” in taxes, according to the Times.
In a Times article last month on Silver and his outside income, a Silver spokesperson said “none of his clients have any business before the state.”
Currently, state ethics laws do not require legislators to disclose details about their outside work or who their clients are.
Several local politicians did not comment for this article, including Assemblymembers Deborah Glick and Richard Gottfried and District Leaders Paul Newell, who challenged Silver in 2008, and Jenifer Rajkumar.
One person who did comment was Village Democratic District Leader Arthur Schwartz.
“I have problems with legislators getting paid for work when they don’t do work,” Schwartz said. “It’s an easy way to pass a bribe.”
