Free Republic

ALBANY, Oct. 11 — The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun an inquiry into oversight of the New York State pension fund, which is drawing increasing scrutiny over claims that investment firms paid friends and relatives of former Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi in exchange for business. The S.E.C. began its examination several weeks ago, people with knowledge of it said, and is looking into potential civil violations of federal securities laws. The move follows an investigation of the same issue begun by the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, in January, along with an inquiry by P. David Soares,...

ALBANY, Sept. 12 — Few political partners have been closer than Hank Morris and Alan G. Hevesi. --snip-- Mr. Morris ran Mr. Hevesi’s breakthrough political campaign, an upset of City Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman in 1993. He was the guiding force behind Mr. Hevesi’s combative last race, when he won re-election as state comptroller amid scandal last November. And he was Mr. Hevesi’s main adviser when he resigned a month later after pleading guilty to using state workers to chauffeur his wife. Chief strategist, image maker and personal confidant, Mr. Morris, 54, has been far more than just a consultant to...

If Gov. George E. Pataki seems less than certain about what to do with Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi, there is a good reason: no statewide elected official has been removed from office since Gov. William Sulzer in 1913, and that case remains debatable to this day. The accusations that may deliver Mr. Hevesi to the Legislature’s rusty gates of justice center on findings of the State Ethics Commission that he broke the law by using state employees to chauffeur his ailing wife. He has apologized for not reimbursing the state promptly. The Ethics Commission also said that the amount he...

Off the Trail As the state comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi, twisted in the wind like a political piñata last week over using a state employee as his wife’s driver, other New York leaders seemed a touch defensive about their own driving habits. When asked, Gov. George E. Pataki, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and both the State Senate majority leader, Joseph. L. Bruno, and minority leader, David A. Paterson, strongly denied ever — ever! — using state vehicles for personal errands without quickly reimbursing the state. Senator Bruno, in particular, bristled when he was asked if his driver ever drove his...

--snip-- He is also a conservative on nonfiscal matters, whose political views would put him at odds with many New Yorkers. In interviews and in this week’s debate, he has been extremely unimpressive, hardly the man whom voters would normally want to hire as the state’s chief fiscal officer and sole trustee of New York’s $140 billion pension fund. But one of the main jobs of the comptroller is to make sure people who handle taxpayers’ money understand the very clear line between their personal expenditures and the public treasury. There is no way Mr. Hevesi can fulfill that vital...

ALBANY, Oct. 26 — Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the Democratic nominee for governor, withdrew his support from the embattled state comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi, on Thursday, and made it clear that he expected the State Senate to consider removing the comptroller from office for using a state employee to chauffeur his wife. Gov. George E. Pataki, meanwhile, was returning early from a trip to Hungary to deal with the Hevesi situation. His aides said he would decide by Friday whether to call on the Senate to consider removing Mr. Hevesi; in the meantime, they considered selecting several well-known former prosecutors...

J. Christopher Callaghan, the Republican candidate for New York State comptroller, has a secret friend. “I don’t know his name,” Mr. Callaghan said in an interview. But one thing is clear: For some reason, he said, the person clearly despises his opponent, the incumbent, Alan G. Hevesi, a Democrat. It was this secret friend who whispered rumors to Mr. Callaghan that Mr. Hevesi’s wife was being driven around by a state employee at taxpayer expense. When Mr. Callaghan made the charges public last week, his long-shot candidacy was given new life, and Mr. Hevesi was forced to apologize. The comptroller...