SUNY foundation under mounting scrutiny
SUNY's Research Foundation administers $900 million per year, but a report raises questions about its management. Credit: SUNY
Glimpses of a costly mess recently emerged when John J. O'Connor quit as president of the state university's research foundation. A state ethics panel found O'Connor -- who during a decade-long tenure resided in Connecticut -- had employed former Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno's daughter in an $84,000-a-year virtually "no-show" job.
Aides to state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and Inspector General Ellen Biben are probing. The potential depth of the underlying problem comes through in parts of an 89-page report on the foundation prepared by lawyer Clifford Stromberg for SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher. It says, for example: "Overall, New York's portion of national sponsored research declined from 10 percent in 1980 to about 8 percent today." Patents, licenses and royalty income from SUNY research have been "extremely weak." Stromberg calls it "shocking" how many SUNY campus leaders see the foundation as following "its own agenda."
O'Connor, who resigned following the report's release in May, has denied any wrongdoing.
The 50-year-old foundation, administering $900 million yearly, sounds like one of those chronic off-budget underground-government entities -- created for the public, then turning separate and secretive. All this, as state officials talk tuition hikes.
CROSSING THE LINE? GOP sources say State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) has privately let his displeasure be known that his fellow Nassau Republican, County Executive Edward Mangano, appears as "special guest" on invitations to a fundraiser -- for one-time Skelos power rival Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-St. Albans). All three and their aides declined to comment about the golf event July 25 at the Woodmere Club.
Gary Melius, owner of the Oheka Castle, said he'd helped put Smith and Mangano together to talk. "I admire both -- and the fact that both are willing to cross party lines to do what's best for government," he said. Melius denied this involved state Independence Party politics, though he's an ally of state party chairman Frank MacKay, and Melius' employee and ex-son-in-law Richard Bellando was named in May as "point person" recommending Nassau endorsements to MacKay's state executive committee.
BREAKING BREAD: They announced plans to split up, but Rep. Steve Israel (D-Dix Hills) and his soon-to-be ex, acting Supreme Court Justice Marlene Budd, were spotted dining al fresco last week -- with MacKay and Melius -- at Maroni Cuisine in Northport, Newsday's Rick Brand reports.
