Michael Grimm pleaded not guilty to a 20-count federal indictment Monday on charges which included mail, wire and tax fraud.
The Republican congressman from Staten Island is accused of underreporting the payroll of his Upper West Side health-food establishment. Grimm allegedly paid workers under the table and failed to report as much as $1 million in gross receipts — which in turn is said to have led to underpayment of taxes.
So commonplace has it become to see New York politicians indicted, it barely raises an eyebrow these days. Our state’s dubious achievement is to have corruption which transcends all the usual divisions.
At the city level, for example, we’ve had fund-raisers for former city Comptroller John Liu, sent to the pokey for campaign finance violations.
At the state level, former Sens. Shirley Huntley and Carl Kruger are serving time for nonprofit double-dealing and bribery.
Meanwhile, at the federal level, reporting by The Post on Charlie Rangel’s financial irregularities led to House censure. And while various probes of Queens Rep. Greg Meeks have yet to yield formal charges, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington ranked him and Grimm on its “most corrupt” chart.
Our corruption also crosses party lines. In just two months, Sen. Malcolm Smith, a Democrat, will be tried along with two Republicans — City Councilman Dan Halloran and former Queens GOP leader Vincent Tabone — in a plot to sell Smith access to the GOP line on the mayoral primary ballot.
Even our third parties are competitive here, with the Working Families Party caught violating campaign-finance laws.
Male and female, black and white, Asian and Latino, Republican and Democrat — few have been left untainted. Somehow we suspect this is not what then-Mayor David Dinkins meant when he extolled New York’s “gorgeous mosaic” of diversity.
So while Rep. Grimm may be entitled to the presumption of innocence, we sure can’t say the same for New York politics.