State union chief is outspoken - sometimes
CSEA president Danny Donohue, right, speaks during a news conference about state worker layoffs. (April 8, 2009) Credit: ALBANY TIMES UNION/CINDY SCHULTZ
For years, Steven Raucci managed Schenectady School District facilities - while also representing its employees as head of a Civil Service Employees Association unit. He did so, that is, until authorities accused him of placing explosives at homes and on cars to terrorize workers he deemed enemies. He was convicted April 1 of 12 criminal counts including arson.
At his trial, a union secretary testified about meeting in 2008 with CSEA state president Danny Donohue to try to get the imperious Raucci bounced from his labor post. Raucci was ousted, but only after his 2009 arrest. Union higher-ups had received unsigned complaints about him long before. Donohue's response? No comment, says spokesman Steve Madarasz.
Yet Donohue, who started in the 1960s as a truck driver at the Central Islip Psychiatric Center, seeks attention in other ways. On Thursday he blasted Gov. David A. Paterson's emergency move to put off wage hikes. Meanwhile, Donohue runs for the powerful secretary-treasurer's job at CSEA's parent American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees. Opposing him is former District Council 37 administrator Lee Saunders, now a top aide to AFSCME president Gerald McEntee.
RICE READY: Strategists for Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice say she'd be an especially good Democratic candidate for attorney general if Suffolk Executive Steve Levyheads the GOP ticket. But she's no Levy backer. Of his illegal-immigration remarks, she says: "I believe elected leaders set policy and that words, and tone, matter . . . Levy always seems to get them wrong by saying divisive things."
POSITIVE SIGN: Levy's police chief, Robert Dormer, last week circulated a favorable Associated Press article. It stated that, with the trial of Marcelo Lucero's alleged killer under way, "immigrants say the Suffolk Police Department has made a visible and seemingly committed effort to reach them."
WFP WORD: Working Families Party executive director Dan Cantor on Albany's fiscal fight: "The question is how to provide property tax relief and adequate funding for education during an economic crisis. And the answer is, you make smart cuts, you borrow, and you raise taxes on the very wealthiest New Yorkers, who have gotten huge tax breaks."
SPECIAL PLACE: Suffolk Democratic chairman Richard Schaffer says of the county's sudden prominence in statewide campaigns: "It must be something buried under the aquifer that acts as a magnetic field, like the 'Poltergeist' house."
