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ALBANY---With his opponent asking Albany County district attorney to open a criminal investigation into the matter, state Comptroller Alan Hevesi has admitted using a state employee to chauffeur his wife, Carol for the past three and half years at taxpayer's expense, saying that he will repay $82,688 in restitution to the state.
J. Christopher Callaghan of Waterford, former Saratoga County treasurer who is challenging Hevesi for the state post, personally delivered a letter to the district attorney's office Monday requesting an investigation into Hevesi's "abuse". Soares has said that he will ask the public integrity unit to investigate the allegations.
http://www.callaghanfornewyork.com/press.php?op=job&jobid=148
Hevesi has requested that the state Ethics Commission review the matter.
Callaghan says Soares must decide whether this alleged misuse of public funds, which Callaghan says approaches $250,000, constitutes theft. "Certainly, the people of the State of New York deserve to know if a crime has been committed." Callaghan also said that his "accounting expertise reinforces my common sense notion that Mr. Hevesi's actions were grossly improper."
Callaghan explained in the letter that he had involved Soares instead of Attorney General Spitzer because his "previous request to him, that he look into a different ethical lapse by Mr. Hevesi, was ignored."
Hevesi has admitted, through a spokesman for his office, that Nicholas Aquifredda, an employee of the Office of State Comptroller, has been a driver for Mrs. Hevesi for the last three and a half years at taxpayers' expense, from March 2003, less than three months into Hevesi's term of office, until a few months ago.
Callaghan says that Aquifredda had previously rendered the same chauffeur service as a New York City employee when Hevesi was city comptroller. In May 2003, Hevesi asked the state Ethics Commission for an informal opinion on this practice and the commission advised him that he shouldn't do it absent a specific security concern. According to Callaghan, the Ethics Commission also advised Hevesi that any chauffeur service provided by a state employee to Carol Hevesi, not occasioned by specific security needs, would have to be reimbursed by him to the state. Callaghan says that since this opinion was solicited two months after the practice, the advice about reimbursement may well have referred to services already rendered. He says that in any event, the ethics commission invited Hevesi to request a formal opinion but he didn't do so.
Hevesi, through his spokesman, has acknowledged that chauffeur services, unrelated to any specific security concern, have been rendered to Carol Hevesi since March, 2003. Callaghan says. Hevesi maintains that he has always intended to repay the State for these services but, in three and a half years, he neither paid nor even calculated the amount due. "Under the circumstances, we can't take his claimed intentions to repay anymore seriously that we would those of a clerk who has borrowed money from a cash drawer", Callaghan said. 9-25-06
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© 2006 North
Country Gazette
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