ALBANY — Patricia Lynch, a top lobbyist and former key aide to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, will pay $500,000 and will be banned from lobbying the state comptroller for five years for giving “gifts and favors” to top officials, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced yesterday.
Cuomo said Lynch improperly “sought to curry favor” with former Comptroller Alan Hevesi’s chief of staff, Jack Chartier, by arranging a job for the daughter of Chartier’s girlfriend and steering campaign contributions to Hevesi in exchange for access for her clients to the state’s huge public-employee pension fund.
Lynch — who entered into a consent agreement with Cuomo that also requires her firm to adopt a “code of conduct” — is the latest casualty in the attorney general’s sweeping “pay to play” probe of the Comptroller’s Office, which has resulted in multiple felony indictments and guilty pleas from Hevesi and his top political adviser, Hank Morris, as well as Chartier and former Liberal Party leader Raymond Harding.
Lynch, at Chartier’s request, arranged in 2004 for a client, the Walt Disney Co., which was seeking access to influence pension-fund decisions, to hire the daughter of Chartier’s girlfriend, former “Mod Squad” actress Peggy Lipton, as a $12,000-a-month “consultant,” according to Cuomo, who will take over as governor Jan. 1.
Lynch, who was receiving $10,000 a month in lobbying fees from the client, was also accused of contributing and “bundling” tens of thousands of dollars of campaign contributions from her clients to Hevesi’s re-election campaign, as well as the election campaign of his son, Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi (D-Queens), in a direct attempt to buy influence.
Lynch’s efforts apparently paid off.
According to a statement of charges issued by Cuomo, “During Hevesi’s tenure, Lynch had preferred access to high-level staff, meeting at least several times per year with the Comptroller, the Chief of Staff, and/or the First Deputy Comptroller in connection” with her lobbying business.
Lynch was also charged with improperly obtaining $52,000 in placement fees by gaining access to investments from a New York City Police and Fire pension fund without the necessary securities license.
