Folks stealing from charities to line their pockets is an old story. Unfortunately for New Yorkers, so is folks funneling ill-gotten money to Albany in exchange for favors. This week, the two came together when criminal charges were filed against William Rapfogel, former head of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.
Rapfogel is accused of helping to steal $5 million from the Met Council beginning shortly after he became its CEO in 1993. Prosecutors say he got the money by working with someone at Century Coverage to inflate the price the Met Council paid for insurance — and then he and his co-conspirators shared the difference. Though Rapfogel is said to have kept a million for himself, a chunk of the loot went to political contributions given under the names of Century owners and employees.
In short, it’s a case that speaks to the way the political game is played in New York — and how thoroughly rotten our political system has become. To no one’s surprise, once again we find Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver at the center.
It’s not just that Rapfogel and Silver have been close friends and political allies for decades. Or even that Rapfogel’s wife, Judy, has served as Silver’s chief of staff since the 1970s. It’s that the stolen money was also used to make donations to politicians who returned the favor by sending the Met Council millions in public funds via agency contracts and legislative member items.
Silver himself received Century Coverage donations, and the taxpayer dollars sent to the Met Council would never have gone without his sign-off. Maybe it’s true he and his chief of staff didn’t know what her husband had been up to these past 20 years. Still, there was a day when the bar for stepping down wasn’t a criminal indictment.
But this is Shelly Silver’s Albany. So Judy Rapfogel stays where she is. The Moreland Commission is told to go to hell when it asks lawmakers to list their outside income.
And Shelly lives to collect another day.