The feds are investigating explosive claims that elected officials and power brokers in Rockland County’s Clarkstown bought the support of minor party lines by parceling out jobs to party insiders, The Post has learned.
The town’s hiring practices could land it under the microscope of Gov. Cuomo’s powerful new Moreland Act commission, empowered to root out political corruption.
The Post has obtained secret video recordings captured by Rockland GOP legislator Frank Sparaco that suggest a possible plot to depose Clarkstown’s longtime elected highway superintendent, Wayne Ballard.
Sparaco — who has sway with the Independence and Working Families parties — also works for Ballard as a part-time, $75,000 constituent-services director.
The videos — now in the hands of the FBI — appear to show Dennis Malone, a Democratic contender for highway superintendent, GOP Councilman Frank Borelli, a Ballard foe, and Rockland Democratic lawyer Larry Weissman talking with Sparaco about flipping Independence and Working Families support from Ballard to Malone.
Sparaco told The Post, “My integrity is not for sale. Political corruption in New York is occurring at every level, and I could not stay silent as I saw it unfolding before me.”
On the recordings, all three suggest offering Sparaco a fatter-paying full-time town job with benefits if he helps deliver minor-party support and Malone wins.
If he doesn’t play ball, they threaten to brand his current job with Ballard as a quid-pro-quo patronage gig.
“Where does that leave me?” Sparaco asks Malone, if he helps elect him.
“You’ll be happier than you are now. I’ll tell you that,” Malone responds in a March 24 meeting.
Malone denied he was trying to buy off Sparaco.
“I don’t do things like that,” Malone said.
Borelli also denied any wrongdoing. Weissman declined to comment on the allegations, saying he’d given legal advice to Sparaco.