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Assemblyman Eric Stevenson knew who he was working for — and it wasn’t his constituents.
Two days after Christmas, the Bronx Democrat was caught on tape brazenly telling a political fixer he’d happily let a bunch of businessmen author legislation to suit their needs — for a price.
“I just need you to tell me what they want. We prepare the bill . . . You can write down the language, basically what you want,” he said on one recording.
“Are Igor [Belyansky, one of the businessmen] and them putting together a nice little package for me, huh?”
The fixer, one-time Assembly candidate Sigfredo Gonzalez, assured Stevenson that more money was on the way.
“We’re gonna do that,” Gonzalez said.
Stevenson didn’t know that Gonzalez was wired, having cut a deal with the feds after he was caught bribing Stevenson’s fellow Bronx Democrat, Assemblyman Nelson Castro.
By that time, Stevenson had already pocketed $12,000, including $10,000 in an envelope he accepted outside a Bronx steakhouse on Sept. 7, the feds say.
Stevenson thought he was being careful, refusing to take the money inside the eatery for fear of security cameras. He had no idea the feds were watching from an unmarked car.
One video shows Stevenson stuffing the envelope “into his front pants pocket and covering his front pocket with the bottom of his shirt,” the feds said.
“All you gotta do is tell me what you want in the bill, and the bill drafter will put it together,” Stevenson told Gonzalez in December, to which Gonzalez responded: “We get that bill passed, we’re gonna be good money, you understand?”
In one phone call with Gonzalez, Stevenson said the bill was being put together to impose a two-year moratorium on the opening of adult day-care centers that would compete with those of the businessmen.
And in a Jan. 3 conversation with three of the businessmen, Gonzalez assured them, “If we pass a bill that no one can open up these adult day cares and then, eventually, you know, this’ll be a gold mine.”
He even offered them final approval of the Albany-bound legislation. “Can we look at it before it goes to committee, Eric?” Gonzalez asked.
“Yeah, yeah, you have to look at it, I can tell you quickly what it says,” Stevenson responded, before reading aloud the text of the bill.
Stevenson clearly seemed to know the risks he was running.
After noting that prison “put some age on” disgraced former state Comptroller Alan Hevesi, he told Gonzalez: “Bottom line . . . if half of the people up here in Albany was ever caught for what they do . . . they . . . would probably be in [jai] . . . s o who are they bull—ting?”
But Stevenson might have also talked himself into believing that he’d beat the rap, or get a cushy sentence, if he were ever busted.
“Look at this guy [former Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, he] got off on appeal and never went back. They had him for a million,” he said during the same conversation.
“Look at [former state Sen. Carl] Kruger . . . They got him in the easiest federal penitentiary you could ever be in.”
In January, however, Stevenson told Gonzalez he was worried that one of the businessmen, Igor Tsimerman, “might be recording their conversations.”
“Stevenson expressed concern that ‘they bring me down’ and said that if that happened, ‘somebody’s going to the cemetery,’” the federal complaint said.
The recordings also reveal Stevenson telling Gonzalez and two of the businessmen on Jan. 7 that he had “called the Buildings Department” to arrange permits for gas service at a center on Jerome Avenue.
Tsimerman, however, said they already had the permits, but were stuck “at the bottom” of Con Ed’s list to get the gas turned on.
Stevenson called his office, instructing a subordinate to call Con Ed and “expedite it . . . Call them now and get back to me.”
bruce.golding@nypost.com