Seems that old-time NY Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno is up to his bellybutton in hot water, and that a lot of it has to do with horse racing and trying to take over the contract from NYRA when it expires at the end of 2007.
I’m behind on this scandal, but I want to get a few links down for future reading before I forget. It’s all going behind the fold, feel free to read on if you’re curious.
A quick glance, however, suggests the following: There are three consortiums that are looking to take over the franchise: NYRA, which already has the franchise, but filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year; Excelsior, which has been selected by a state government committee in a non-binding decision but may have members that are prohibited from taking it; and Empire, which now has some serious questions about whether Bruno greased the wheels to help a founding investor.
Bruno, BTW, would have a major role in awarding the franchise, along with Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver and Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer. One Excelsior partner, casino developer Richard Fields, has close political ties to Spitzer. And as long as we’re disclosing ties, my father co-owns some racehorses with Barry Schwartz, who ran NYRA for several years.
Place your bets, folks. And expect some bumping at the gate.
Ties Run Deep Between Bruno and an Investor – New York Times:
About seven years ago, the State Senate’s majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, met a wealthy investor from the Albany area, Jared E. Abbruzzese, through a mutual friend, and they quickly bonded over their shared affection for thoroughbred horses.
Skip to next paragraph
Multimedia
The Senator and His FriendGraphic
The Senator and His FriendHis love of horses inspired Mr. Abbruzzese to join a group of investors competing to operate the state’s thoroughbred horse racing tracks. And now Mr. Bruno, his friend and occasional companion at horse racing events, will play a central role in awarding that franchise.
In Albany, friendships between lawmakers and people with business before the state are hardly uncommon. But Mr. Bruno and Mr. Abbruzzese have developed a relationship that is unusually close even by Albany standards — one that state lobbying officials are now scrutinizing, though Mr. Bruno says no conflicts were involved.
Over the past four years, two of Mr. Abbruzzese’s companies have contributed more than $118,000 to a campaign committee controlled by Mr. Bruno. Mr. Abbruzzese’s wife bought property for $90,000 from a group involving Mr. Bruno. Mr. Bruno has also flown on Mr. Abbruzzese’s private jet at least half a dozen times. And in a February 2005 transaction that has not been previously reported, Mr. Bruno bought 2,000 shares in a small Texas securities brokerage in which Mr. Abbruzzese was intimately involved. Mr. Bruno says he invested in the firm, Tejas Inc., after discussing it with Mr. Abbruzzese.
The firm’s stock was not traded on any major exchanges and Mr. Abbruzzese’s own financial advisory company merged with Tejas several months later.
Over the same period, Mr. Bruno, the Legislature’s most powerful Republican, has been helpful to Mr. Abbruzzese. He has directed at least $500,000 in state money to Evident Technologies, a small, privately held nanotechnology firm that Mr. Abbruzzese financed. He was also instrumental in obtaining $2.5 million in state aid for a joint development project involving Evident and Russell Sage College in Troy, N.Y., last year.
A spokesman for Mr. Bruno, John McArdle, said there were no conflicts of interest in the two men’s relationship. He noted that Mr. Bruno ultimately lost money on the Tejas investment, although the stock’s price rose for at least two months after Mr. Bruno bought it.
He also said Mr. Bruno never talked to Mr. Abbruzzese about the state aid to Evident Technologies or about the purchase of property by Mr. Abbruzzese’s wife, Sherrie. The two men are friends who happen to share “a mutual love of horses,” he said.
“There’s no conflict there,” Mr. McArdle said.
Neither Mr. Abbruzzese nor his lawyer responded to numerous messages over the past week.
The Legislature — led by Mr. Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — and Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer will decide who gets the horse racing franchise, and a group including Mr. Abbruzzese is one of three that are in the running. The franchise entails operating the Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga tracks, which take in a combined $2.7 billion in bets each year.
The state’s lobbying commission is investigating Mr. Bruno’s use of Mr. Abbruzzese’s Mitsubishi MU-300 business jet, trying to determine whether Mr. Abbruzzese violated state laws by allowing Mr. Bruno free or discounted use of the plane even as Mr. Abbruzzese’s group was lobbying on the racing franchise.
Aside from the issue of the plane rides, whether any of Mr. Bruno’s dealings with Mr. Abbruzzese potentially run afoul of state laws is open to interpretation.
One section of the ethics law exempts legislators from the specific prohibition on state officials making personal investments, like Mr. Bruno’s Tejas stock, that could pose a conflict. Mr. Bruno was not even required to disclose his ownership of the stock.
However, another section broadly prohibits state officials, including lawmakers, from accepting any gift worth more than $75. A stock tip could qualify as a gift, several legal experts said, if it could be assigned a value at the time it was given. Mr. Bruno bought his shares through a public offering of Tejas stock, directly from the underwriter, a relatively exclusive process not easily accessible by average investors.
While getting in early on a public offering, as Mr. Bruno did with Tejas, often requires knowing someone involved in it, such favoritism is common in investment banking and is generally not considered illegal.
Mr. McArdle said that although Mr. Bruno talked to Mr. Abbruzzese about buying Tejas stock, the conversation did not amount to a tip. Mr. McArdle said that the senator could not recall precisely how he first learned of the potential investment, but that he also talked to the chief executive of Tejas before deciding to buy the stock.
Skip to next paragraph
Multimedia
The Senator and His FriendGraphic
The Senator and His FriendIn any event, Mr. McArdle asserted, the issue is moot because Mr. Bruno lost $19,000 on the investment. For more than three months, however, his shares were worth as much as $10,000 more than he paid for them.
Some ethics experts contend that the value of an investment is irrelevant to whether there is a potential conflict.
“The motivation is the issue, not the result,” said Richard D. Emery, a Manhattan lawyer who served on the State Government Integrity Commission in the 1980s and is part of a panel advising Mr. Spitzer on government reforms.
David Grandeau, the executive director of the lobbying commission, declined to comment, as did Melissa Ryan, executive director of the Legislative Ethics Committee, a panel of lawmakers who review conflict-of-interest cases involving their peers.
The ties between Mr. Bruno and Mr. Abbruzzese run deeper than mutual business interests. The two men have been friends for about seven years, and each has owned horses.
For most of the 1990s, when Mr. Bruno was rising through the ranks in the Senate, Mr. Abbruzzese, 52, ran a communications company, CAI Wireless Systems, which he sold to WorldCom in 1999 for about $400 million. Since then, Mr. Abbruzzese has offered financial advisory and consulting services in the Albany area, where Mr. Bruno has worked to stimulate the growth of technology companies through legislative initiatives.
Mr. Bruno has been the driving force behind several state-financed investments in Evident Technologies, including grants in 2002 and 2004 totaling $500,000. (The firm has also received aid from the administration of George E. Pataki.) Evident, a maker of sophisticated materials used in optical devices, was founded in 2000 with financing arranged by Mr. Abbruzzese, and securities filings show that in 2004 his consulting firm owned stock in Evident valued at about $310,000.
Evident executives did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. McArdle said the state grants to Evident had nothing to do with Mr. Abbruzzese, and were intended to support a worthy local company that was trying to expand and add jobs. “What we’ve done with Evident is no different than what we’ve done countless times with other companies,” he said.
In November 2004, a limited liability company controlled by Mr. Abbruzzese’s wife bought an undeveloped plot of land in Rensselaer County for $90,000 from a partnership involving Mr. Bruno, according to county property records. Mr. McArdle said that the senator’s 25 percent interest in the partnership had been placed in a blind trust in 1992, and that he had “no involvement whatsoever” in any of its dealings after that, including the sale to Mrs. Abbruzzese.
A month later, Mr. Abbruzzese and others founded Friends of New York Racing. The group registered as a lobbying entity, and eventually produced a report contending that the state’s three thoroughbred racetracks, operated since 1955 by the nonprofit New York Racing Association, should be contracted to a private commercial enterprise.
As Friends of New York Racing was getting off the ground, Mr. Abbruzzese was busy with another, unrelated business venture — one where his interests would soon intersect with Mr. Bruno’s. This time it involved Tejas, a small brokerage in Austin, Tex., whose stock had once traded for as little as 63 cents and was held by only about 400 people at that time, in early 2005.
Mr. Abbruzzese’s company worked closely with Tejas on a joint project in 2004, and by early 2005 they had embarked on plans to merge, according to securities filings. The merger was publicly announced in early May; Mr. Abbruzzese was made vice chairman of Tejas and became one of its largest shareholders.
Although Tejas did not have a well-established market for its stock, it came to Mr. Bruno’s attention in early 2005. His decision to buy came just a few days after he flew to Washington on Mr. Abbruzzese’s private jet. Mr. McArdle said the trip was for political purposes, paid with campaign funds, and did not involve Mr. Bruno’s investment in Tejas.
Mr. Bruno paid the public offering price of $15.75 a share, and over the following weeks the stock rose as high as $20.90, before taking a long downward slide to end the year at about $6 a share. He sold his shares in December 2005 for a $19,000 loss, according to a trade confirmation statement his office provided.
A spokesman for Tejas said the company would not comment on its dealings with Mr. Abbruzzese or Mr. Bruno’s investment.
Because Mr. Bruno lost money on the stock, and liquidated it before the end of the year, he was not required to list it on the annual financial disclosure report he filed with the ethics committee. But in May 2005, an aide who was preparing his 2004 disclosure mistakenly included it, making it appear that he owned the stock in 2004, a year in which the value of Tejas shares skyrocketed almost 900 percent. After The New York Times raised questions about the stock, Mr. Bruno’s staff provided documentation showing he actually invested in 2005, and lost money.
Throughout 2005, as Mr. Bruno continued to hold his Tejas shares, he and Mr. Abbruzzese met often, according to records filed in State Supreme Court in Albany in connection with the lobbying inquiry. The documents include testimony from the former director of Friends of New York Racing, who said Mr. Abbruzzese invited him to chat with Mr. Bruno about the state racing franchise “during an informal visit by the senator to Mr. Abbruzzese’s home” in the spring of 2005. The former director, Timothy Smith, later referred to the meeting in a memorandum to the group’s board, saying it had been arranged by Mr. Bruno’s “close friend” Mr. Abbruzzese.
Friends of New York Racing disbanded this year, and many of its members, including Mr. Abbruzzese, re-emerged as investors in a new group, Empire Racing Associates, one of the three competing to operate the state’s horse racing system.
Empire Racing narrowly lost a round in the bidding process last month when the Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of Racing, created by Governor Pataki, issued a recommendation favoring a competitor, Excelsior Racing.
In his response to the committee’s findings, which are not binding, Mr. Bruno used a horse racing metaphor to emphasize the closeness of the outcome, calling it “a photo finish between the two top bidders.”
Yonkers Raceway Casino Rises to Top Earner – New York Times:
December 17, 2006
Update
Yonkers Raceway Casino Rises to Top Earner
By JULI STEADMAN CHARKESYONKERS
THE casino at Yonkers Raceway opened for business in mid-October amid unfinished construction and a dispute between management and horse owners. Eight weeks later, the gambling site appears to have hit the jackpot. Figures released by the State Lottery Division show that the raceway is the top earner of the eight racetracks with slot machines in the state.
Empire City Gaming at Yonkers Raceway earned $35.6 million from Oct. 11, the day the casino opened, through Dec. 8, well above the other seven tracks that offer electronic casino games. The second-highest amount earned was $19.2 million at Saratoga Gaming and Raceway. A portion of the Yonkers earnings, $19.2 million, will be allotted to state education under the conditions set forth by the State Legislature when it approved electronic gambling at racetracks in 2001. Saratoga’s education portion will be $10.2 million.
“We’re happy that things seem to be off to a good start,” said Timothy Rooney Jr., the raceway’s general counsel and son of the owner, Timothy J. Rooney.
The opening of the $240 million casino transformed the Yonkers Raceway from an outdated harness track that faced closing into an increasingly popular destination for gamblers eager to try their luck on the 3,679 video-lottery machines housed over two floors. With a second building scheduled to be completed by the end of this month, the casino will eventually have 5,500 machines.
On a recent late Saturday afternoon, the casino was filled with visitors playing video-lottery-game machines like Big Money and Alien Attack, which provide electronic versions of popular casino games like poker, before heading to an area called Redemption to cash in their earnings.
Toni Ricciardi, a Yonkers native who was playing the machines with her mother-in-law and adult daughter, said that when she was a child, it was horses that drew families to the track.
“I remember coming to the races and it would be absolutely packed, but nowadays this is what appeals to me more,” she said, pointing to the rows of video-lottery machines lined up behind her, with their cacophony of bells, chimes and rattles.
Others said they were tempted by proximity. “Who wants to sit behind the wheel of your car and drive to Atlantic City?” asked Joe Gentile, a Yonkers resident and former croupier in Las Vegas and elsewhere.
Mr. Rooney said he hoped that the casino’s success would rekindle interest in harness racing, which resumed Nov. 17 after the racetrack was closed for 510 days to rebuild it. The shutdown angered the Standardbred Owners Association, which claimed the extended delays led to economic hardship for the hundreds of jockeys and horse owners forced to compete at other tracks during the interim. But “that’s all water under the bridge now,” Mr. Rooney said.
Two floors above the casino, horse-racing fans gathered to watch the trotters and pacers compete. Among those watching was Carmelo Calderon, of Mount Vernon, who said he had been coming to the track for decades. Mr. Calderon said he was neither interested in nor tempted by the frenzied activity below.
“I come for the horses,” he said. “If they don’t have horses, they won’t see me, and my money will stay in the bank.”
Baseball and Casinos Don%u2019t Mix, or Do They? – New York Times:
On Baseball
Baseball and Casinos Don’t Mix, or Do They?*
* Reprints
* Save
* Share
o Digg
o Facebook
o Newsvine
o PermalinkArticle Tools Sponsored By
By MURRAY CHASS
Published: December 19, 2006What’s good for the goose is supposed to be good for the gander, but in this case, who is the goose and who is the gander?
Skip to next paragraph
Mary DiBiase Blaich for The New York TimesSteve Swindal, a Yankees general partner, has bid on a racing franchise that would include slot machines.
M.L.B.* Schedule/Scores
* Standings: A.L. | N.L.
Wild Card Standings
* Stats: A.L. | N.L.
* Team ReportsYankees
* Schedule/Results
* Individual Stats | Team
* Roster | History
* Discuss the YankeesMets
* Schedule/Results
* Individual Stats | Team
* Roster | History
* Discuss the MetsThis case is about baseball and slot machines, about Steve Swindal and Bob Nutting. Swindal is one of two managing general partners of the Yankees. Nutting is chairman of the board of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Both have other business interests, and that’s where the slot machines come in.
Nutting, a West Virginia resident and the chief executive of the Ogden newspaper chain, bought the Seven Springs Mountain Resort in western Pennsylvania earlier this year. His original idea was to build a casino of 500 slot machines at the ski resort, enhancing the resort and its revenue.
But he has abandoned his plan because baseball doesn’t permit a club owner to own or operate a casino.
“We withdrew the application for slot machines because the rules in baseball are very clear,” Nutting said yesterday by telephone. “Rather than try to come up with a structure that maybe would have subverted the intent, we thought it was appropriate to respect the intent of the rule and withdrew.”
Swindal is a partner in Excelsior Racing Associates, which last month won the recommendation of a committee to take over New York state’s thoroughbred racing franchise. The franchise covers the Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga tracks. The New York Racing Association has owned the franchise for 50 years, but its license expires at the end of next year. The State Legislature will designate the next franchise holder from among Excelsior, NYRA and Empire Racing.
Baseball owners have long owned racehorses, at least since John Galbreath in the 1940s. No owner is believed to have owned a racetrack. Certainly no owner has owned a track with slot machines on the premises. But that’s what Excelsior plans to do. Swindal said Aqueduct had 4,500 slot machines ready to become operative.
Swindal, who is George Steinbrenner’s son-in-law, said he had spoken to Commissioner Bud Selig about his participation in Excelsior.
“I have kept the commissioner informed about Excelsior and the bid process; I got his permission before I went into it,” Swindal said in a telephone interview Friday. “I haven’t encountered any problems. Before I went into it, I wanted to make sure. I said: ‘I want to bid on this franchise. It involves parimutuel racing.’ He said, ‘O.K. but keep me informed.’ ”
Swindal said he told Selig about the slot machines, too.
“He was informed of that,” Swindal said. “I did let him know that Aqueduct had 4,500 machines that were part of the bid. Most parimutuel facilities have slots now. It’s not an uncommon thing. They’re trying to get people back to the track.”
In addition, Swindal said, he told Selig that one of his Excelsior partners was Richard Fields, a casino developer.
Steinbrenner is not involved in Excelsior, Swindal said.
Selig, saying he didn’t want to comment on the matter, did not confirm Swindal’s characterization of what was said or blessed.
“When we have all the details,” Selig said yesterday by telephone, “we’ll be able to make a judgment on whether it violates our rules or is in the spirit of what I think clubs should be involved in.”
Baseball has long had a concern about casinos, although when Bowie Kuhn was the commissioner (from 1969 to 1984), he seemed to be more strict about the issue than his successors. Las Vegas has had a minor league team for 25 years, and the city has tried to recruit teams to hold spring training there. Most interestingly, Major League Baseball has scheduled its 2008 winter meetings for Las Vegas.
“Baseball has always been held to higher standards, like with steroids,” Nutting said. “The gaming thing is an awkward and difficult situation with baseball.”
Nutting said he had a number of discussions with Tom Ostertag, baseball’s general counsel, “as we tried to put together a structure that would keep us separate from any interest in slot machines, but we were unable to put together the kind of structure that would have satisfied the gaming commission.”
Baseball has approved a structure for the owners of the Detroit Tigers where casinos are concerned. The Ilitch family has vast holdings in Detroit, including a casino, but Michael Ilitch is listed as the owner of the Tigers and his wife, Marian, is not listed as an owner.
Marian Ilitch, though, was listed as an owner in the team’s media guide the first five years of the family’s ownership. Her name disappeared from the guide when the Ilitch casino was on the horizon. Marian Ilitch operates the MotorCity Casino in Detroit, and her husband is not listed as a casino owner.
The arrangement has raised some eyebrows among some baseball people, but Selig has sanctioned it.
Nutting couldn’t separate ownership of the resort and the slot-machine casino to satisfy baseball because Pennsylvania Gaming Commission rules don’t permit separate ownership.
The only way Nutting could have owned the casino was to sell his ownership share in the Pirates, which he doesn’t want to do. The Nutting family is the biggest shareholder of the Pirates.
Nutting and Swindal would not comment on the other’s venture, each saying he didn’t know enough about it.
Asked if he would be surprised if Selig sanctioned Swindal’s venture, Nutting said: “I don’t have any knowledge of how those deals would be structured. I don’t know enough to comment.”
“The regulations are pretty clear,” he added. “Gaming interest is very broadly defined.”
Swindal, on the other hand, said, “I would be surprised” if Selig didn’t let him go forward with the Excelsior enterprise.
What would be surprising is if Selig said yes to Swindal after Nutting assumed the commissioner would say no to him.
Federal Inquiry Focuses on 2 Bruno Firms – New York Times:
Federal Inquiry Focuses on 2 Bruno Firms
By MIKE McINTIRE
Published: December 21, 2006Federal investigators have issued subpoenas to at least two firms linked to the State Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, as part of their investigation into his business dealings, one of Mr. Bruno’s former business partners and a legislative aide said yesterday.
One of the companies was a partnership involving Mr. Bruno and an influential Albany lobbyist that bought and sold lakeside property in Rensselaer County, including a parcel that was purchased by the wife of Jared E. Abbruzzese. Mr. Abbruzzese is an investor in a group seeking control of the state’s thoroughbred racing franchise — a decision in which Mr. Bruno will play a key role.
The other company is a consulting firm that Mr. Bruno operated out of his home that he said had “a client relationship with lawyers and businesspeople.” The senator has not identified the clients, but said his work involved providing advice on marketing and business development.
It was unclear whether any of Mr. Bruno’s other business dealings have been drawn into the investigation, which Mr. Bruno has said is examining his “relationships and business interests” over the last six years. The two companies that received subpoenas are just a small part of Mr. Bruno’s broad array of personal financial interests, several of which have intersected with his activities as the most powerful Republican in the State Legislature.
Mr. Bruno has purchased stock in about a half-dozen companies whose principals obtained state aid or contracts, sometimes with his help, according to a review of his financial-disclosure reports and other public records. He also once co-owned a small apartment building with an Albany-area businessman, who said that Mr. Bruno asked him to step in and replace the senator’s son as an investment partner.
Mr. Bruno, who said he learned of the investigation into his business dealings several months ago, disclosed the inquiry at a news conference he called suddenly on Tuesday.
Yesterday, John McArdle, a spokesman for Mr. Bruno, confirmed the impression Mr. Bruno gave on Tuesday that his firm, Capital Business Consultants, was subpoenaed.
The disclosure has rattled the marble-halled State Capitol and prompted speculation about his political viability. As recently as October, Mr. Bruno was calling on the embattled state comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi, a Democrat, to resign in the face of claims that he used state employees to chauffer his wife.
The United States Attorney’s office in Syracuse, which is directing the investigation, declined to comment yesterday.
William Dreyer, a lawyer for Mr. Bruno, also declined to comment.
The inquiry, according to a law enforcement official who has knowledge of the investigation and would speak only on the condition of anonymity, is focusing on how Mr. Bruno’s personal affairs may relate to his activities as Senate majority leader.
While Mr. Bruno’s revelation threw a broad spotlight on his personal financial affairs, much attention has focused on his relationship with Mr. Abbruzzese, a friend who is a founding investor in Empire Racing Associates, one of several groups vying for the horse racing franchise. Mr. Bruno will have a major role in awarding the franchise, along with the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, and Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer.
One of the federal subpoenas was issued to the First Grafton Corporation, a real estate partnership involving Mr. Bruno that sold 17 housing lots — including one to Mr. Abbruzzese’s wife, Sherrie, for $90,000 in November 2004.
Mr. Bruno had a 25 percent interest in the partnership, whose other major investors included James D. Featherstonhaugh, a prominent Albany lawyer and lobbyist. Yesterday, Mr. Featherstonhaugh (pronounced feather-stun-HAW), who kept the records for the partnership, said federal investigators had recently issued a subpoena for them.
Over the last four years, Mr. Bruno directed $500,000 in state funds to Evident Technologies, a company financed by Mr. Abbruzzese, and was instrumental in obtaining $2.5 million in state aid for a joint- development project involving Evident and Russell Sage College in Troy, N.Y., near Mr. Bruno’s home.
Mr. Abbruzzese invited Mr. Bruno to fly on his private jet, contributed through his companies more than $118,000 to a campaign committee controlled by Mr. Bruno, and was involved in the senator’s purchase of stock in Tejas Inc., a small securities brokerage in Texas that was closely connected to Mr. Abbruzzese. Mr. Bruno ultimately lost money on the stock purchase.
Mr. Bruno’s investment in Tejas was one of several that he has made over the years in companies whose principals have interests before the state.
In July 2001, Mr. Bruno took credit for securing $500,000 in state money for a joint research project involving Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy and Plug Power Inc., a maker of fuel cells, near Albany, that has had contracts with the state and received other government assistance. At the time, Mr. Bruno was a shareholder in both Plug Power and a sister company, Mechanical Technology. He bought stock in both firms in 2000, according to his financial disclosure reports.
Mr. McArdle said the senator sold his shares in both companies in 2005 at a loss. Mr. Bruno is not alone in having been a Plug Power shareholder. Other lawmakers who have owned its stock include Mr. Silver, the Assembly speaker.
Mr. Bruno also has owned shares of at least two companies, Vytek and Interliant, run by Leonard Fassler, an information-technology entrepreneur from Westchester County. Vytek had part of a state contract to sell computer-networking equipment.
Last year, Mr. Bruno appeared with Mr. Hevesi to announce an investment of $1.7 million from the state pension fund in another of Mr. Fassler’s companies. Mr. McArdle said Mr. Bruno was not involved in securing the investment, and only joined in the announcement because the company was located in his district.
In addition to stock investments, Mr. Bruno also owned an apartment house in Troy, initially taking his son, Joseph M. Bruno, as an investment partner in June 1999, according to county property records. But after a few months, the senator asked a close friend and local technology executive, Joseph Magno, to step in and replace his son as an owner and co-guarantor on a $235,000 bank loan related to the investment, Mr. Magno said yesterday. Mr. Magno agreed.
The following year, Mr. Bruno secured $150,000 in state money to help start up the New York State Software Network, a trade association of technology firms that was headed by Mr. Magno.
Mr. Magno, who became a lobbyist in 2004, said he was not involved in Mr. Bruno’s decision to award money to his trade group. He added that he and the senator sold the apartment house in 2002 at a loss.
“Joe is a good man who’s always asking if he can be helpful, but I always prefer to not accept his help,” Mr. Magno said in a telephone interview. “I try to stay away of him only because I understand the sensitivity of dealing with him because of his position and because we’re friends.”