November 3, 2005

Alan Hevesi, NYS Comptroller Remarks - Press conference with DA Dillon

Thursday, November 3, 2005

Denis, thank you very much - hi everybody and thank you for mentioning in your press release Louie Hernandez, who is behind me to my left who is (inaudible) Director of Investigations for the Comptroller (inaudible) and Deputy Comptroller Bob Brackman.

This is a new agency we created during my term the last couple of years and because of the frequency with which our audits and investigations and this group does investigations - they're trained former police investigators and prosecutors and they (inaudible) where appropriate, make the referrals as we work cooperatively with Denis Dillon. I don't mean to jump in and I want to be sensitive to some of the issues that have been publicly raised. But let me put in context this arrest.

This is the next (inaudible) in a series of actions taken by the District Attorney's office working cooperatively and jointly with our office. There have now been school officials arrested in six Long Island Districts: Roslyn, Hempstead, Wm. Floyd (a district out in Suffolk County), Mineola, Three-Villages and the Nassau BOCES (did I get that right?). I have in my office also a CCC Committee to Correct the Comptroller that are very willing to jump in when appropriate. These are ongoing...we've completed now 19 audits of the 26 original audits we had planned for school districts and we found corruption in a number of them; we found good management in some of them and we found some management problems and now we are moving upstate as well and we have begun these audits in upstate school districts that were never confronted with this for the last 25 years and we are going to find similar problems: well-managed districts, some with management problems and some with corruption problems and you'll be hearing more, so this is very very important. But the idea that you would somehow close down an investigation in a fit of anger without dealing with those you have arrested who have information about others I think is not a good idea.

(I'm trying to say that sensitively and subtly.) I think the decision to charge Frank Tassone with up to 12 years in prison plus full restitution I think is very appropriate in light of the fact that a failure to do that and to use the strategy of using potential sentencing in order to obtain information would have prevented the prosecutors from finding who other perpetrators are. It is a valid tactic, it's strategy which is used by every District Attorney and every prosecutor and every US attorney all over the country. Otherwise, you shut yourself down and alot of bad people get away with actions that they shouldn't get away with.

So I thought I'd throw that in unsolicited (that is part of the public debate; and I think that the (actions) have been more than appropriate; they have been successful in breaking the back of this conspiracy to defraud the taxpayers of Roslyn of huge amounts of money and the tactic will also serve the same purpose in other districts throughout Long Island.