"APPOINTED PUBLIC OFFICIAL CHIEF ACCUSED OF CRIMES"

Ulster County Unable To Unload Bridge Authority Case

April 1, 2004

KINGSTON - Ulster County taxpayers will be asked to foot the bill for a local grand jury investigation into alleged wrongdoing by the former head of the state Bridge Authority, even though the state attorney general is willing to take the case.

Darren Dopp, a spokesman for Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, said Spitzer stands ready to take over the investigation of Jack Gaffney's alleged financial misdeeds - if only someone will give it to him.

"We were prepared to do it and are prepared to do it," Dopp said.

But that can't happen, he said, because no one has formally referred the case to Spitzer's office. Legally, the attorney general cannot, of his own volition, initiate a criminal investigation.

Ulster County District Attorney Donald A. Williams said that, over the past several months, he repeatedly has asked representatives of state Inspector General Jill Konviser-Levine and state Comptroller Alan Hevesi - the two officials who are so empowered -to make an official referral to the Attorney General's Office, but to no avail.

Williams does not have the authority to make such a referral himself, though he does have jurisdiction to prosecute the case because the Bridge Authority's main office is in the Ulster County town of Lloyd.

Williams announced on Monday that, at the end of April, he will begin a grand jury investigation to determine whether Gaffney, the former executive director of the Bridge Authority, should be charged with bilking the authority out of tens of thousands of dollars.

A report issued last summer by the state Inspector General's Office said Gaffney was allowed to set his own travel budget and used $24,750 in Bridge Authority money for personal trips to Florida, California, Texas, Hawaii and Japan. The report also stated Gaffney claimed weekend work that allowed him to receive $32,000 in unused annual leave and $2,400 in unused sick time; and ran up $80,000 in credit card expenses during his five years at the authority's helm.

"Once we received the information from the inspector general and we realized the enormity of the case, and the fact that there were potential witnesses in Texas, San Francisco, Florida and potentially Japan and Hawaii ... because of our limited resources, we felt it would be more appropriately handled at the state level," Williams said.

"I spoke to the (offices of the) inspector general and comptroller. I made it clear to them ... that I felt this would be most appropriately handled at the state level," Williams added. "The inspector general and the comptroller declined to legally refer it to the attorney general."

Jeffrey Gordon, a spokesman for Hevesi, said the comptroller declined to make the referral because his office did not conduct the initial investigation.

"Typically, we would not refer a matter to the attorney general if we didn't do the investigation ourselves," Gordon said.

Steven DelGiacco, a spokesman with the inspector general's office, said: "We conducted an investigation, we reached findings, and we made those findings public. We did not make a referral to a prosecutor, but we did make our findings available to anybody who might have an interest in looking further into any aspect of it."

Gaffney was appointed to the authority's top job in 1997 by Gov. George Pataki and is the father-in-law of Pataki confidant Kieran Mahoney. Gaffney resigned his $137,700-a-year post in May 2003, shortly before the inspector general's report was made public.

Pataki, Konviser-Levine and Williams are Republicans. Spitzer and Hevesi are Democrats.

The Bridge Authority oversees the operations of five Hudson River crossings: the Rip Van Winkle, Kingston-Rhinecliff, Mid-Hudson, Newburgh-Beacon and Bear Mountain bridges.