Posted on 12/10/2007 10:36:43 AM PST by Liz
Late in his tenure as mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani billed tens of thousands of dollars in travel expenses to little-known city agencies as he was beginning an extramarital affair, a political Web site reported Wednesday.
The report, on the Politico Web site, cited documents obtained under the New York State Freedom of Information Law. But it was unclear from those documents whether Giuliani allocated those travel costs, from 1999 through 2001, to obscure city offices in an attempt to conceal expenses associated with the relationship or for some accounting purpose.
The administration of Giuliani's successor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said in 2002, several months after taking office, that the Giuliani administration had kept the budget for the mayor's office artificially low by paying more than $5 million in salaries through other city agencies. The agencies to which Giuliani billed the travel expenses were outside the mayor's office.
The New York mayor always travels with a security detail, and the expenses for the police detectives assigned to protect him are normally paid for by the police department when he travels on city business.
Asked about the travel expenses during the Republican presidential candidates' debate, Giuliani said: "I had nothing to do with the handling of their records. And they were handled, as far as I know, perfectly appropriately."
One of Giuliani's chief political advisers, Anthony Carbonetti, said earlier Wednesday that any suggestion that the former mayor had sought to hide anything was "nonsense." "As far as we are concerned, these are all legitimate expenses incurred by the NYPD while performing their duty protecting the mayor," Carbonetti said.
Carbonetti told reporters, "There was no effort to hide anything - on the mayor's part definitely because this is stuff he has never seen." He said it would have been easier to conceal the expenses had they been billed to the Police Department, which routinely declines to provide information about security.
The documents obtained by the Politico, which were described as American Express bills and travel documents, detailed hotel, gas and other costs for the detectives on trips to Southampton, N.Y. The woman with whom Giuliani was having an affair, Judith Nathan, who became his third wife, had a condominium in the well-to-do Long Island beach community.
The Politico said it was impossible to know whether all of Giuliani's trips to Southampton were undertaken to see Nathan. In fact, little is known about the trips, and the Giuliani campaign Wednesday did not provide details. The fact that Giuliani was carrying on an extramarital affair at the time he made the trips, and that he had been accompanied by his security detail, was widely reported in 2000.
But the unusual accounting practices highlighted by the Politico Web site, in which the costs for the security detail's travel expenses were billed to small agencies, had not been reported previously. The disclosure served to refocus attention on that period of Giuliani's life now a little more than a month before the first votes are cast in the Iowa caucuses. This article appeared on page A-14 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Whoa there.
Giuliani diverted $5M in mayoral funds to other city agencies?
And this was known for the past five years?
And NOTHING was done about it?
Man, this guy's got more tricks than a Park Avenue call girl.
Hey, that sounds like his comrade in arms, Arnold:
Details of governor’s travel costs lacking
http://www.latimes.com/la-me-arnold10dec10,0,6092067.story?page=2&coll=la-home-center
Liz, this is the eighteenth gabillion I hate Rudy article you have posted in the last 8 seconds. And this one is from November. What gives? It’s not like anyone here endorses him.
Clever guy. Run as a Republican, even though you are a flamin g Democrat, and get the RINO vote in its entirety.
Too bad some conservative doesnt try running as a Democrat, and get the whole “blue dog” vote, and be a “front runner”.
Julie is (and has been for a while) toast. NYC is a hotbed of graft and corruption (for centuries).
There are people here who endorse him, such as myself. It’s just that they are flamed for doing so, when this is supposedly a site dedicated to conservative discourse.
Thanks for the LAT link.
Now, the NEW wrinkle in this thread is the discovery by Giuliani's successor, Mike Bloomberg, in 2002, several months after taking office, that the Giuliani administration had kept the budget for the mayor's office artificially low by paying more than $5 million in city salaries through other city agencies.
WRT ARNIE:
Giuliani appointed Arnold Schwarzenegger to the Twin Towers Fund board (along with his mistress Nathan)---Rudy and Arnold used tax-exempt Twin Towers funds to help launch Arnie's profit-making movie, "Collateral Damage," with Rudy, Nathan, and his entourage joining in on the gala event.
BACKUP In February, 2002, Giuliani insisted upon transferring guardianship of the $100 million remaining in the city-run Twin Towers Fund to a private charity he controlled. The families of the police and fire rescuers who died in the attack balked at Giuliani's plan to take up to a year to dole out the money, with his new organization billing $2.2 million in anticipated administrative expenses (including six-figure salaries for friends he appointed as officers).
The families argued that the fire union had far more quickly distributed $111 million with an estimated administrative cost of just $30,000. Under embarrassing pressure from the victims' families Giuliani backed down. He promised to distribute the money within 60 days and fund his overhead from new donations. The families of the deceased rescuers, the real heroes of the September 11 attacks, received a one-time benefit of about $230,000 each from the Giuliani-privatized fund in 2002. That year, the former mayor earned some $8 million in speaking fees alone, more than $650,000 per month.
The discovery by Giuliani's successor, Mike Bloomberg, in 2002, several months after taking office, that the Giuliani administration had kept the budget for the mayor's office artificially low by paying more than $5 million in city salaries through other city agencies.
I wonder what Judi will do if these investigations unearth other Rudy affairs.
Good thing Monica confided in Linda Tripp and kept some evidence.
IIRC, Linda was the last person to see Vince Foster alive. That friendship probably protected both of them.
“$5 million in city salaries through other city agencies.”
This statement doesn’t say anything about using Mayoral funds or Mayoral staff. All it says is that Rudy organized things differently than Bloomberg by having fewer staff under the umbrella of the Mayor’s office and utilized staff from other city agencies.
I’d rather have an executive that chooses to use under-utilized resources that are already paid for than an executive that staffs up internally and allows existing resources to sit idle.
If it wasn’t proper to allocate expenses to other departments, then that is an issue. But the line you chose to quote doesn’t indicate any wrongdoing.
We here in Boise, Idaho are quite familiar with politicians using public funds for their own enjoyment.
New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). Aug 15, 2002. pg. B.1
(snip)
The Bloomberg officials said that the Giuliani administration kept the mayor’s budget artificially low last year by paying many City Hall employees from the budgets of other city departments. Nearly 100 people working for various mayoral offices last year, the officials said, were paid a total of $5.3 million by other city agencies.
They said some workers in the mayor’s legislative affairs office, which serves as a liaison with the City Council, the comptroller and the borough presidents, had been paid by the Department of Finance. The Department of Environmental Protection paid at least one member of the mayor’s federal affairs office in Washington, and more than a dozen workers paid by the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications actually worked for the mayoralty, the officials said.
... Mayor Bloomberg spoke publicly about finding mayoral workers who were paid by other agencies when he released his budget plan in February. “The number before did have some people on loan,” he said then.
Administration officials said recently that they found a total of 93 mayoral workers, some of whom earned more than $100,000 a year, who were on loan from roughly 20 city agencies.
The salaries of several aides to Rudy Washington, the former deputy mayor for business services and community development, were paid by the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development, the officials said.
Sunny Mindel, a spokesman for Mr. Giuliani, declined to comment.
reference bump!
Heheh-——yeah. Would not be surprised AT ALL.
Nice find-—thanks.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.