Senate Majority Leader Bruno surrounded by controversy
BRIAN ACKLEY Political Columnist
Should New York State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno be welcoming 2007 by drawing up a list of New Year’s resolutions, he might want to make sure at the top of the page is no more dropping holiday bombshells without the expressed written consent of Republicans everywhere.

That shouldn’t be too difficult, since there are so few remaining in the Empire State. And in typical Albany fashion, capitol GOPers are gnashing their teeth, not so much over the news that Bruno has been at best dancing on the edges of unethical business deals (and at worst embroiled in a full-winded waltz of massive misappropriations of taxpayer’s money), but that good old Joe apparently forgot to mention to any of them that the FBI and a federal grand jury were investigating Bruno and some of his dubious dance partners.

At the center of the matter are relationships between Bruno and very close business and personal associate Jared Abbruzzese. While there are allegations of impropriety on a number of different major and minor levels, one of the main ones is focusing on a half-million dollars, which Bruno funneled to a technology company of which Abbruzzese was a one-time director. The largesse is particularly troubling because it came from Bruno’s personal barrel of pork. Complain if you will about member item spending, but almost always those funds go to nonprofits, no matter how narrow their scope, not private businesses.

Bruno, unbeknownst to many, has apparently been running some type of “consulting” firm out of his home, his $121,000 salary apparently inadequate on which to live. Abbruzzese, naturally, is one of his big consulting “clients.” The Albany Times Union, in fact, noted just before the New Year’s weekend that, “ It’s a safe assumption that many people in the Capitol Region were surprised to learn that Bruno has been running a consulting business out of his home. It’s an equally safe assumption that had it not been for a federal investigation of Mr. Bruno’s financial dealings, hardly anyone outside of the senator’s consulting clients and close associates would have ever known.”

Of course, colleagues (read cronies) couldn’t run to Bruno’s defense quickly enough, lest they be left with a broom closet for an office and Dixie Cup and string for a telephone come Jan. 3, when they will sweep Bruno back to his lofty perch, ethics be damned, in a city that has been sinking ever deeper into the cesspool of lawmaker scandal for the last three years now.

Two other developments during the Christmas-to-New-Year time period framed Bruno’s troubles in an even more interesting light. In a potential where-there’s-smoke-there’s-fire foreshadow, Abbruzzese was on Dec. 27 unceremoniously and unequivocally cut loose from something called Empire Racing Associates, a group that is hoping to get the state license to operate thoroughbred racing in New York. Abbruzzese was an initial investor and sat on the board of directors for the venture, which in the fall asked him to step down from that board seat and last week apparently asked him to leave the starting gate altogether. Bruno is more than just a casual dabbler in the horse-breeding and racing business.

The other relevant headline was the appointment of Michael Balboni to head the state’s homeland security efforts. Balboni is a Republican state senator, meaning the GOP’s shaky 34-28 hold on that house could become even more tenuous, since his Nassau County district has more enrolled Democrats in it than Republicans. A special election to fill that seat would be far from a GOP slam dunk.

For his part, Bruno has, of course, denied any wrongdoing, but just to be sure voters get distracted once again, within days of the news of the federal investigation was Bruno’s endorsement of $6 billion in taxpayer rebates. Since elections were already over, there was apparently no need to actually go on television, stare ruefully and repentantly into the camera and apologize his way to another term in office.

If Eliot Spitzer is a breath of fresh air – and indeed we need to withhold judgment on that for a while – then Bruno is a reminder that the hallways of the state Capitol continue to be buffeted with such a guttural gale that the stench can be sniffed from one end of Interstate 90 to the other.

(Opinions are those of the author.)