SLEEPLESS IN SYOSSET
Right now the $82 million mortgage fraud case is still in its pre-trial phase. It is expected to get underway later this year. Some hardcore enthusiasts can’t wait for all that juicy testimony from the S&M denizens of Arena Studio about straw mortgages and mortgage stacking with “washed title reports.” But that’s not what the political class is panting to know.
A Democratic Suffolk legislator who asked not to be named said there’s all kinds of talk in his circles about whether this conviction is going to spur the district attorney to pursue the campaign contribution claims raised by Ellner about Levy. Asked by the Press, Spota’s office would not comment about the prosecutor’s intentions, but this same source said the district attorney is far from done with looking into allegations against the county executive, some stemming from the state ethics disclosure form he started filing in 2006 instead of the Suffolk County form, which asks for more detailed questions regarding his private business.
This issue arose last summer when Levy was contemplating running for governor on a third-party line after he switched from Democrat to Republican but lost his bid to get the party’s nomination.
Presiding Officer William Lindsay (D-Holbrook) soon after formed a committee to investigate the independence of the county’s Ethics Commission, which told Levy to use the county form over the state form.
Lindsay, who represents Levy’s old district, has questioned if the disclosure-form-gate shows that the county exec has undue influence over the commission. Levy has adamantly denied it. That investigation is ongoing—but some legislators told Spota at the time the investigation began they’d been threatened by Levy. A spokesman for Spota has declined to confirm the existence of an investigation into the threats.
Predicting how these cases will affect a possible—but so far undeclared—Levy re-election campaign in November is hard to judge, says Legis. Ed Romaine (R-Riverhead), who noted that the ethics disclosure form controversy “was very hot at the time but then it cooled off since. People have very short memories.”
As for Guldi’s allegations involving Ellner, Romaine says, “You don’t know how the Democratic Party is going to play it.” He speculated, “They may decide, ‘Let’s concentrate on the issues and not muddy the waters with other things.’”
The Guldi conviction was not an indictment of Suffolk’s political culture, insisted Robert Clifford, a spokesman for the county’s district attorney.
“This trial was about a former elected official indicted for serious crimes involving fraud and the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he tells the Press. “At sentencing we will recommend the defendant serve a significant period of incarceration in an upstate correctional facility.”
As for Ethan Ellner’s continuing cooperation with Spota’s office, Clifford would only say that Ellner “is expected to testify in the upcoming mortgage fraud trial.”
“Tom Spota has clearly demonstrated that he is a non-partisan D.A.,” says Suffolk Democratic Chairman Rich Schaffer with a laugh. “He prosecutes politicians of any party who’ve done something wrong. In fact, I think he’s probably prosecuted more Democrats than Republicans!”
Schaffer has known Levy since they met in the county legislature in 1988. As his party’s chairman, he used to help Levy run for election and got to know him very well. When Levy changed parties last year, Schaffer felt betrayed, which no doubt fuels his drive to replace Levy with a Democrat.
Babylon Town Supervisor Steve Bellone, who is widely expected to run for county executive but hasn’t formally announced his intent to run, has already raised more than $1 million compared to the more than $4 million in Levy’s coffers. Schaffer said that he and other people who worked closely with Levy “were stunned” that they had never heard of Ethan Ellner before the news broke last summer.
“If Ellner were just a friend of Levy’s and had nothing to do with county government,” Schaffer tells the Press, “then there would not be any issue. Since what has been introduced into all this is that Ellner worked for the county taxpayer, through the county attorney’s office, and Levy has said he wanted to give him a second chance after his felony conviction, the public is owed an explanation who Ethan Ellner is.”
Having a history with Levy like he does, Schaffer said, “If he’d heard as a legislator that some guy, a convicted felon, had gotten title work after making contributions to a politician, he’d be the first guy demanding a hearing! This is Steve Levy, former chairman of the [county legislature’s] ways and means committee! He would have already scheduled a hearing on this!”
Then he paused and said that if he ever crossed paths with Levy, “I would say, ‘Do as you would have done as that elected official that I once knew.’”
Some Levy opponents urged restraint.
“In all fairness, the county executive has not publicly been named,” says Majority Leader Cooper. “But reading between the lines, everyone knows it was Levy, and these are very serious allegations. The relationship between Levy and Ethan Ellner raises a lot of questions.”
“Being a public official is difficult enough and one may have to deal with these distractions at times, as we saw when both Tom Suozzi and Supervisor Steve Bellone were accused in court matters of quid pro quos,” said Republican Chairman LaValle. “To paraphrase Supervisor Bellone after he was accused by a mobster—who later recanted—of expecting something in return for his actions, the public should not be surprised to hear that one criminal would lie to another.”
As for George Guldi, one observer of the trial predicted that the former legislator, who will appeal this conviction, is “so smart he’ll probably die before he ever gets hard time.”
And that could portend a lot of sleepless nights to come for Suffolk County Executive Levy.
