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Law enforcement officials investigating the troubled Laborers Local 91 here are said to be zeroing in on the organization's Political Action Fund records, required to be filed under Federal Elections Commission regulations.
Incomplete records, questionable disbursements and unusually high administrative costs are all raising red flags for investigators examining the fund.
"The fund is one of several areas that are being looked at," said one lawman, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "It's an area of concern."
Despite the fact that the local has a documented history of labor violence going back at least a quarter of a century, and that the entire organization has been the target of a federal grand jury probe since February of last year, most area politicians are only too happy to take the Laborers' money.
The question is, "What are they paying for?"
Area elected officials who have not accepted campaign contributions from Local 91 can be almost counted on the fingers. Gov. George Pataki and former state attorney general Dennis Vacco each refused $1,000 donations during the 1998 election cycle and, locally, records show Congressman John LaFalce, state Sen. Byron Brown, Niagara County District Attorney Matthew J. Murphy, county Sheriff Tom Beilein, Niagara Falls City Court Judge Kathleen Wojtaszek-Gariano and Mayor Irene Elia have never taken any money from the organization.
Still, the political masterminds at the local's Seneca Avenue headquarters seem to have spread their money around wisely. Judges, city council members, school board members, mayors, county legislators, state assembly members and state senators have all stood eagerly in line to get their fair share of the loot.
Since 1995, state Sen. George Maziarz leads the pack, having accepted a total of $10,500 from the Local 91 Political Action Fund over the past six years, most recently a hefty $5,000 contribution on July 17, 2000, a full five months after the grand jury investigating the union local was seated in Buffalo.
In the state Assembly, Rep. Francine DelMonte has received a relatively modest $2,600 from the fund since June, 1998. Records show Local 91 supported her opponent, Rob Daly, during the 1998 election cycle, but dropped the affable Republican like a cold potato in 2000.
Although area judges are often called upon to preside over cases of assault, sabotage and other violence members of the local are accused of, they are no more immune than other politicians to the lure of the greenbacks offered by the fund. While judges and judicial candidates are forbidden by law from knowing who donated to their campaigns, some think they should inform their campaign treasurers not to accept contributions from questionable sources.
A case in point would be the one many say "made" union boss Michael "Butch" Quarcini's image as a Niagara County power broker, when he beat a drunk driving charge in September, 1993, despite testimony from three Niagara Falls city police officers who said he blew an illegal 0.15 on the Breathalyzer, failed simple balance tests and couldn't recite the alphabet past the letter "P."
The city's chief judge at the time, Anthony Certo, not only dismissed the charge but sealed the records of the case from public view. Certo, of course, was a frequent beneficiary of the local's munificence, at the end of his career accepting a $1,000 donation from the fund in January, 1996, records show.
Quarcini routinely declines comment on the case today.
More recently, city court Judge Mark Violante has taken $5,500 from the fund over the past four years, city court Judge Robert Restaino received $2,000 in March of this year, state Supreme Court Judge Amy Fricano got $1,000 during her 1999 campaign and county Judge Peter Broderick benefited by a total of $1,000 in 1998.
In the county legislature, Dennis Virtuoso beat out Renae Kimble for the most money accepted from the fund. Virtuoso has accepted $4,000 over the past four years while Kimble has taken $2,750 since August, 1995, records show. Honorable mention goes to legislature Chairman Clyde Burmaster, who has recently picked up $2,000 from the fund.
The race isn't even close in the Niagara Falls City Council. Barbara Ann Geracitano has amassed a whopping $5,300 over the past six years from the fund. But other past and present members of the council, including Tony Quaranto, Paul Dyster, Guy Sottile, Ralph Aversa, John Accardo and Vince Anello have also shared the wealth. Accardo and Anello stopped taking money from the fund in 1998 after a dispute with the local, records show. Both city councilmen subsequently had their automobiles vandalized.
Many other local politicians and wanna-be's are listed in the records, including Buffalo Comptroller Anthony Nanula, Erie County Democratic Chairman Steve Pidgeon, state Assemblyman and possible future judge David Seaman, Niagara County tourism honcho Cyd Bennett, school board and Local 91 member Mark Zito, Wheatfield Supervisor Tim Demler and more.
It is worth noting that the sums given out by the fund do not reflect the full measure of the local's generosity, since the approximately 650 members are permitted to donate up to $1,000 to each candidate individually. Furthermore, money sent by the fund to state political action committees often comes back to the Niagara Frontier to line the pockets of politicians favored by the local.
While it is not unusual -- and certainly not illegal -- for a union local to give money to political candidates, few unions are as controversial as Laborers Local 91.
The local has been the target of investigations since 1965, when Quarcini was elected business manager.
"I was elected on a Saturday," he told a reporter last year. "On Sunday morning, two FBI agents were at the doorstep of the guy I beat, asking all kinds of questions about me." Indeed.
By 1978, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jack Anderson was writing about the Niagara Falls labor situation in what was then the best-read newspaper column in the United States, the "Washington Merry-Go-Round."
Anderson cited the Senate subcommittee testimony of Robert Stewart, then head of the federal organized crime task force offices in Buffalo, N.Y. and Newark, N.J.
"There have been persistent rumors over the past five years of extortionate demands upon industry, acts of property destruction and assorted misconduct," Stewart told the subcommittee. "Authorities have found it impossible, however, to develop a viable prosecution because no one is willing to testify."
Anderson wrote, "We have identified this racketeer-ridden union as Local 91, which is run by Michael 'Butch' Quarcini."
More recently, while Maziarz, Certo, Virtuoso and Geracitano were accepting money from the fund, union members were implicated in a number of highly publicized and lurid incidents, including:
The money in the local's fund is generated by a small surcharge tacked onto union members paychecks for each hour worked. A set of the FEC financial records for the local's fund -- dating back to 1995 -- was obtained by the Reporter. While the filings in many cases appear to be incomplete, several unusual patterns emerge.
In some cases, suspiciously large disbursements were paid into the local's general fund as reimbursements "deposited in error."
And, although the local has a sizable war chest -- more than $233,000 in January of this year -- contributions to local candidates seem almost paltry, with the lion's share of cash disbursements going to office overhead, accountants, attorneys and payouts to top union officials.
One frequent beneficiary of the campaign fund disbursements was former Local 91 vice president Robert "Bobby" Malvesuto. In 1995, Malvesuto shot his wife several times in the head during a domestic dispute. Apparently a poor marksman, Malvesuto succeeded only in wounding the poor woman. The charges were reduced to simple weapons possession and he was sentenced to a short prison stay. As a convicted felon, he was no longer permitted to hold union office, but was given a full pension and a $34,000 Lincoln Continental by the local's leadership as a "retirement gift."
More recently, in 1999 and 2000, the Local 91 Political Action Fund spent $77,591, the records show. Of that, $35,367 went to administrative expenses, including $15,828 to send union boss Quarcini and five top lieutenants to attend a "legislative conference" in April, 1999.
Of the remainder, just $24,920 -- 32 percent -- went to the campaigns of candidates running for election in Western New York, with the rest, $17,303, going to outside political action committees, statewide candidates for office or candidates running in other parts of New York.
The federal grand jury currently seated in Buffalo may or may not come back with indictments against current and former members of our infamous union local.
In the meantime, local politicians might be well advised to remember that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck ... It's probably a duck.