State Senator From Queens Is Warning of Her Arrest
By THOMAS KAPLAN and RANDY LEONARD
Published: August 25, 2012
Adding to the long list of Albany lawmakers accused of misusing their offices, a Democratic state senator from Queens said on Saturday that she expected to be arrested as part of an ongoing corruption investigation.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez is accused of sexual harassment and has been censured.
The senator, Shirley L. Huntley, said she would surrender to the authorities on Monday. She said she did not know the charges, but her announcement came months after one of her aides and three others were charged with stealing taxpayer money that had been directed to a nonprofit group that Ms. Huntley founded.
Ms. Huntley spoke to reporters on the street in front of her home in Jamaica, Queens, surrounded by several dozen supporters, some of them holding campaign signs. The senator’s spokeswoman had e-mailed reporters late Friday, urging them to attend “an emergency news conference.”
“I want my day in court,” Ms. Huntley said. “I don’t know the charges. I have no idea what this is about.”
Ms. Huntley’s announcement, which comes after the censure of Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez on Friday because of allegations of sexual harassment, suggests that Albany’s string of corruption and ethics scandals has not ended.
Already this year, one former State Senate majority leader, Pedro Espada Jr., a Democrat, was convicted of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the nonprofit health care network he founded; another former majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, a Republican, was charged by federal prosecutors with taking bribes, and a former Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Carl Kruger, was sentenced to seven years in prison for taking bribes. Multiple elected officials, including Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, as well several law enforcement agencies and ethics panels, have vowed to reform the capital. The investigation into the nonprofit formed by Ms. Huntley is the product of one such effort — a new partnership between the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, and the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, who have vowed to crack down on public corruption.
James Freedland, a spokesman for Mr. Schneiderman, said the attorney general’s office would not respond on Saturday to Ms. Huntley’s comments.
“The appropriate forum in which to respond to the senator is a court of law, where the attorney general will prove all facts according to the rules of evidence,” Mr. Freedland said. “Those facts will speak for themselves.”
Ms. Huntley, 74, was first elected to the Senate in 2006. She had previously served as the president of a community school board. She was one of three Democrats who opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2009 but switched positions to support it last year, contributing to its passage. She has not, however, been a particularly visible presence in Albany; she missed more votes during this year’s legislative session than any other senator, according to an analysis by the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Ms. Huntley said she called the news conference for a notification that she acknowledged was “strange,” because she did not want her supporters “to wake up in the morning or tonight or tomorrow and see it on the news” that she had been charged.
“We’re going to be fine,” Ms. Huntley said. “I’m not unaccustomed to being arrested. In the ’60s and ’70s, I was always dragged into precincts, so it’s not a new thing for me.”
Some of Ms. Huntley’s supporters accused Mr. Schneiderman, who served in the Senate with Ms. Huntley, of acting with political motivations. Ms. Huntley faces two challengers in next month’s legislative primary, including City Councilman James Sanders Jr.
“The timing is a little suspect,” Ms. Huntley’s lawyer, Sally Butler, said.
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