When Carl E. Heastie leapt from obscurity to the top of New York State’s political power structure this year, he brought with him the potential of a new beginning in Albany. He vowed to bring accountability and integrity back to a statehouse that was reeling from the latest arrest of a lawmaker — the man he was succeeding as the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver.
But an episode from Speaker Heastie’s past that has never received public scrutiny casts new light on his claims of being a reformer.
About 16 years ago, when he had not yet run for public office but had already become entrenched in Bronx Democratic politics, Mr. Heastie was able to hold onto a home that prosecutors said his mother had bought with embezzled money and that a judge had instructed him to sell. Selling it years later brought what appears to be the only significant financial gain of his life.
An unusual string of legal lapses enabled Mr. Heastie to keep the home, an apartment in a three-story rowhouse in the Bronx. Carelessness of those involved in the case could be to blame, or something more questionable could have occurred given the Bronx Democratic Party’s influence on the court system and its long history of back-room deal-making.
An unusual string of legal lapses enabled Mr. Heastie to keep the home, an apartment in a three-story rowhouse in the Bronx. Carelessness of those involved in the case could be to blame, or something more questionable could have occurred given the Bronx Democratic Party’s influence on the court system and its long history of back-room deal-making.
“If it was purchased with moneys that were stolen, then no one should receive the benefit of that,” Justice Robert H. Straus told the Heasties during a hearing in January 1999 at State Supreme Court in the Bronx.
But Mr. Heastie did, indeed, profit from his mother’s crime.
Despite the judge’s instructions, Mr. Heastie was able to keep the apartment. His mother died at age 60 three weeks after being sentenced, and Mr. Heastie said he stopped trying to sell the property. When he finally did sell it — six years later for nearly $200,000 more than his mother had paid — he used the proceeds to buy a more expensive home.
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The first break for the Heasties came when the Bronx district attorney’s office did not require Mrs. Heastie to sign a formal forfeiture agreement, as is common in such cases. Prosecutors also did not pursue a civil action against Mr. Heastie to force him to sell the home, which they could have done even after her death, Mr. Levin said.
And when Mr. Heastie told the judge, through a lawyer, that he could not sell the property, the assertion went unquestioned. Prosecutors did not press Mr. Heastie, for example, about the “real estate salesperson” who he said was trying to sell it. So it never came out in court that the person was not a full-time real estate professional but another loyalist to Mr. Seabrook with a full-time job in city government.
Finally, a judgment against Mrs. Heastie that was signed by the judge was never filed in civil court by the Bronx County clerk’s office. The judgment, which essentially disappeared, could have been used to pursue money from her estate after her death.
This really is kind of mind boggling.
I understand that there are necessary compromises that a politician must make if they want to become a leader, but it seems that everyone in New York state government are ethically compromised.