One Small Step

Pension Reform Agreed Upon,

But Will the Promises Be Kept?

By Henry J. Stern
October 28, 2011

The city's antiquated pension system has long been in need of streamlining and updating. The agreement reached yesterday by Mayor Bloomberg, Comptroller Liu and leading labor unions provides hope that 2012 will be a year of pension reform, but such hopes have previously arisen and been dashed on the rocks of political reality.

New York City employees have different pension plans, all under the management of the City Comptroller: the Employees' Retirement System (NYCERS), the Teachers' Retirement System (TRS), the Police Pension Fund Subchapter 2, the Fire Department Pension Fund Subchapter Two, and the Board of Education Retirement System (BERS). Each pension fund is financially independent of the others and has its own board of trustees, which include city officials and relevant union leaders. In general, the city and the unions have roughly equal authority over the funds.

Sometimes the city and union leaders work jointly on pension matters, while at others they are in disagreement, a difference largely based on the relationship between the mayor and the comptroller at the time.

Historically, the city's mayors and comptrollers have been at odds more often than they have been united. The comptrollership has been used as a stepping-stone for mayoral candidates and under those circumstances it is not uncommon for the mayor and the comptroller to disagree on issues.

The last comptroller, Bill Thompson, left office in 2009 after a close but unsuccessful effort to defeat Mayor Bloomberg's bid for a third term. The subsequently disgraced and convicted Alan Hevesi sought the mayoralty in 2001, but ran a poor fourth in the Democratic primary, losing to Mark Green, Freddy Ferrer and Peter Vallone, who all lost to Bloomberg.

Liz Holtzman was defeated for reelection as comptroller in the 1993 Democratic primary by Hevesi, who raised integrity issues against her. She never ran for mayor, but was defeated as the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in 1980 by Al D'Amato and in the 1992 Democratic Primary for Senate by Robert Abrams. Her predecessor as comptroller, Harrison J. Goldin, made a bid for the office in 1989, finishing fourth in the Democratic primary behind Richard Ravitch (3rd), incumbent mayor Ed Koch (2nd) and David Dinkins, the eventual mayoral winner. Goldin had succeeded Abe Beame, the only comptroller in City history to ascend to the mayoralty since Consolidation in 1898.

It is one thing for public officials to disagree on a policy issue, a frequent occurrence, but another to be in chronic dispute on questions of investment and expenditure of public funds, in situations in which the outcomes can result in financial gaps of millions of dollars in return on investments. The hydra-headed current system leads to such results.

The relationship between third-term mayor Mike Bloomberg and first-term comptroller John Liu has been particularly chilly. Although they cannot run against each other in 2013 they clearly have different visions as to what the city should do in the interim.

Liu has been in full-fledged campaign mode for the 2013 Democratic nomination for Mayor from the day he took office 22 months ago. His initial act was to publicly decline a mayoral invitation to lunch on his first day in office, which, though not substantial, set a tone of antagonism over a non-issue. There are other issues, great and small, where the two men have differed. One chronic bone of contention deals with the comptroller's issuing reports faulting the conduct of a mayoral agency. The press asks the mayor to respond, and he generally does.

Whatever justification for a particular dispute it seems clear that the mayor and the comptroller are often on opposite tracks in their judgment of the city's financial crisis and the way for it to dig itself out of the mess. The mayor sees the solution as based on reducing expenses and increasing renevue with an economy that gets better, while the comptroller believes the city can survive the recession by continuing to spend as it has done in the past.

Of course, all this may change in the next few months, since new economic data is constantly arising and influencing the stock market, corporate earnings, and tax receipts. The financial situation may improve, or deteriorate.

The tentative agreement reached yesterday between the mayor and the comptroller will require considerable fine-tuning in addition to approval by the State Legislature in Albany. It is by no means complete and dispositive of the main issues that have arisen. It does indicate a desire to reach common ground and the recognition that the city's urgent and continuing fiscal troubles require more savings to be made without endangering the pension system.

Some watchers believe that the decisions announced yesterday are not real, but a paper gloss over a more severe situation designed to buy a few months breathing room in which city and state officials will work out a more comprehensive reform. Of course, if the financial situation improves over the next several months to the extent that these measures will not be fully required, so much the better.

The working agreement announced yesterday will require the relinquishment of some authority by the comptroller, who now possesses almost plenary authority in making investment decisions for the $120 billion that remains in the city's pension accounts. It is a rare for public officials to spontaneously limit their authority in any way, unless they are required to do by law enforcement or other external authorities.

Liu has been under fire in the press in recent weeks for alleged fundraising irregularities, including taking campaign contributions from certain donors under the name of others in order to increase the amount of matching funds he would receive from the city's Campaign Finance Board. If he made concessions as the result of current political weakness, it remains to be seen whether he will adhere to them when his own situation improves.

It should always be remembered that every high political office is but a few steps from the grand juries' chambers in the county court houses. The higher one rises in the system, the more vulnerable one is to accusations of various types of misconduct.

The trouble is, as we say in Rule 32, that some of the charges are likely to be true.

They're Off!

2013 Mayoral Sweepstakes:

Field of Five Is Hot to Trot

Politics is usually more about the next election than the last one. So it is not surprising that the Republican candidates for the presidency in 2012 are off and running. The candidates for the New York City mayoralty in 2013 are close behind.

Considering political campaigns as conducted on a four-year cycle, we are now in the second lap of the race to succeed Mayor Bloomberg. The winner will become our 109th mayor (the first, listed in the Green Book, was Thomas Willett, in 1665). To go to more recent history, Fiorello Henrico LaGuardia, regarded by some as the city's greatest mayor, was the 99th. The interjacent eight mayors, and the number of years they served, are O'Dwyer-5, Impellitteri-3, Wagner-12, Lindsay-8, Beame-4, Koch-12, Dinkins-4 and Giuliani-8.

The most notable aspect of this list is that, in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, where Democratic candidates for comptroller, public advocate, borough president (except Staten Island), and the great majority of state legislators and city councilmembers (currently 46 out of 51) are Democrats, it is the candidate running on the Republican Party line who has won the last FIVE mayoral elections. The five Democratic losers, in chronological order, were David Dinkins, Ruth Messinger, Mark Green, Fernando Ferrer and Bill Thompson. As you can see, they represented varied ethnicities and both genders.

The race will be determined either by the Democratic primary in September 2013 or in the election that follows in November. Fund raising is well under way, because in the absence of actual results, who is the front runner is determined by standing in the polls and the amount of money that has been raised. These are the intermediate statistics of political contests, and as reports of current preferences and achievements, their publication influences future events, like contributions and declarations of allegiance.

It is human nature to want to identify with future winners, both for financial advantage for individuals and their businesses, many of which involve decisions to be made by city officials (on the merits, of course), or for their personal satisfaction in identifying themselves with public officials and believing themselves to be instrumental in the success of those they have favored. Invitations to Gracie Mansion don't hurt, either.

DIGRESSION: The best known aphorism making this point was recalled by President John F. Kennedy on April 21, l96l, at a press conference just after the Bay of Pigs debacle, when he said: "There is an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan." Another JFK quote, on April 10, 1962, followed a US Steel decision to raise the price of steel by $6 a ton after Kennedy had pressured the United Steel Workers to accept modest increases in an effort to keep inflation down. Kennedy said: "My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it until now." In his book, "A Thousand Days" (1965), historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. says the remark was made privately, but soon reached the newspapers. People do talk. END

Back to the mayoral contest. To find prospective candidates, the logical place to begin is with other citywide elected officials and former officials. A brief rundown of the current field:

1. Comptroller John Liu holds the office most often used as a springboard for a mayoral race. Six out of the last seven comptrollers were defeated when they ran for mayor (Gerosa, Beame, Procaccino, Goldin, Hevesi and Thompson). Beame won on his second try, eight years later. Hevesi was subsequently elected State Comptroller, but was unable to complete his term because of legal issues.

2. Public Advocate (formerly City Council President, and before that President of the Board of Aldermen) Bill de Blasio will surely be a candidate. Five of his predecessors lost bids for the mayoralty: Newbold Morris, Paul Screvane, Paul O'Dwyer, Carol Bellamy and Andrew Stein (who ran for a year but withdrew before petitioning). One won, Vincent Impellitteri in 1950, who became Acting Mayor after William O'Dwyer's sudden departure for Mexico, a country beyond the reach of subpoenas, to which President Truman had suddenly appointed him as U.S. Ambassador. His younger brother, Paul O'Dwyer, was elected Council President eight years after he lost for mayor in 1965.

3. One Council President ran second to Nelson Rockefeller for governor, Frank O'Connor, who had been district attorney of Queens County. We recall Rule 26-S: "Second place is the first loser." But there is a bright spot - the man who was handily defeated by O'Connor in the 1965 Democratic primary ended up as a four-term United States Senator from New York: Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

4. Borough Presidents: Two recent mayors have been Manhattan BPs : Wagner and Dinkins. Three MBPs have lost mayoral races: Stein, Ruth Messinger and Virginia Fields. Crossing the bridges, Bronx BPs Herman Badillo and Fernando Ferrer were both defeated in numerous races for mayor, but Seth Low, former mayor of Brooklyn and president of Columbia University, was elected mayor in 1901. He served one two-year term.

5. Council Speaker: 0 for 2 - Peter Vallone lost a mayoral challenge in 2001, and his successor as speaker, Gifford Miller, lost in 2005. Both were impelled to run by term limits, which prohibited their re-election. Vallone refused to over-ride term limits without a referendum. When the vote was taken in 1996, term limits were upheld.

6. Other elected mayoral springboards: William O'Dwyer was district attorney of Kings County when he was elected mayor in 1945. Ed Koch was a Congressman from Manhattan, and had previously been a City Council member, when he was elected mayor in 1977. John Lindsay was a Congressman from Manhattan, from the same district that Koch was later to represent, when he was elected mayor in 1965. Lindsay subsequently came in third (behind Liz Holtzman and Bess Myerson) in a Democratic primary for the United States Senate seat in 1980 that was won by Al D'Amato.

Five potential, probably presumptive, candidates who as of today have filed with the campaign finance board for the 2013 election cycle are Public Advocate Bill de Blasio ($346,541), NYC Comptroller John Liu ($513,471), Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer ($1,018,081), Council Speaker Christine Quinn ($3,134,698), and Congressman Anthony Weiner ($4,871,539).

This article deals with the fortunes and misfortunes of previous mayoral candidates, and provides a brief look at their current campaign treasuries. It does not discuss the merits of the candidates. The point we make is that, whether you know it or not, the race is well under way. And there are only two years and seven months before the primary.

Annus Horribilis

Bloomberg Beleaguered

By Medley of Mishaps.

Third Term Troubles?

The flood of personal criticism leveled at Mayor Bloomberg because of the city's poor response to the December 26 blizzard is somewhat over the top.

Many factors contributed to the city's failure to clean the streets, and there is likely to be at least one investigation to explore the sequence of events and offer proposals to prevent or mitigate a recurrence. Actually, the last two major snowfalls had been well handled, which led to the public's expectation that this storm would be dealt with promptly and professionally. That turned out not to be the case.

Of course, the Mayor had the responsibility of command. You take credit for the good things that happen on your watch, and get blamed for the bad things that happen. People know at some level that the chief executive does not usually make immediate decisions which affect the outcome of these crises, but, nonetheless, success or failure are attributed to the king, chieftain, or the leader of the tribe.

The Mayor attracted criticism because of his initial attitude toward the storm, treating it as a nuisance rather than as a serious blow to others, whose homes could not be reached by ambulances or were unable to get to work. As of today, we have not had reports of fatal heart attacks caused by people shoveling the snow that blocks their automobiles that are parked in the street. That is fortunate, but the situation is still risky.

As the crisis continued, the Mayor changed his stance and took the situation much more seriously. He did not repeat his suggestion that they attend a Broadway theater, which had a Marie Antoinette quality when addressed to people trapped in their homes by snowdrifts, or unable to travel owing to blocked streets or subway and elevated lines which were not running.

Actually, the MTA response to the storm appears to have been far worse than the Department of Sanitation’s, judging from the length of time that lines were out of service, but chief Jay Walder maintained a low profile. We have not previously associated the unpopular MTA with failure to respond to snowstorms which blocked the tracks, but they sure messed up this time.

The MTA’s low point came when they held a trainload of passengers during a very chilly night at Howard Beach, the station closest to JFK airport. When one thinks about it, the failure to retrieve their own passengers from a frozen stalled train for seven hours is a remarkable example of incompetence, and the investigations that will follow should not ignore that episode. We assume that the passengers who had cell phones used them, otherwise the situation would have been far worse as citizens searched for relatives missing in the tundra.

With all the city’s faults, we believe that the concentration of blame on Mayor Bloomberg is unjustified in this instance. It seems to us as if the media and the people finally have found a plausible reason to express their dissatisfaction at a number of unpopular decisions made by the Mayor over the last few years.

First, and most important, was the 2008 reversal of his long-held public position on his own tenure, when he decided to seek re-election by using his puppets on the City Council to rush through a law extending eligibility from two to three terms. The public, when polled, objected to this change by a margin of 89 per cent to 7 per cent. The unfairness of changing the rules in the middle of a conflict was widely perceived; it basically runs up against people’s ideas of fair play.

What the Mayor did, however, was clever and wise. He personally sought, and received the support of, his fellow billionaires who owned newspapers. His alliance with Rupert Murdoch of the Post, Mort Zuckerman of the News, and Arthur Sulzberger of the Times (who may no longer be a billionaire) secured the success of his scheme.

Actually, there is nothing wrong with seeking support from one’s peers, especially when one has so few peers. The reporters hated the switch to three terms, and expressed that view in their columns and articles to the extent that they could, but the owners control the editorial pages, and they lose enough money on their papers that they have all paid for the privilege of expressing their opinions. It is also an underlying fact that Mayor Bloomberg has so far been a generally good mayor, and, having seen seven relatively closely and three at a distance, I know that some were much better than others, and some were far worse.

A number of other matters have chewed at the Mayor’s reputation. The repeated indications of pre-Presidential activities, travels and speeches and the formation of nation-wide organizations and coalitions for various good causes, coupled with the same denials Bloomberg made repeatedly when he was asked whether he would run for a third term, tug a bit at the credibility of the non-candidate. Of course he is not running today, but if circumstances a year or two from now warrant a change of heart, there is no reason why he should not run.

It was once seen as possible that he would be a more moderate and effective President than either Mr. Obama or Ms. Palin, assuming they were to be the major parties’ nominees. Recent events have taken the bloom off that rose, just as Mayor Giuliani’s support for Bernie Kerik as Secretary of Homeland Security doomed his hopes in 2012, although it was not immediately realized that that was the case.

The Kerik situation illustrated one of the parables of politics: how many years of relatively good work can be canceled out by a single error in judgment. The public can be forgiving, but it usually takes time for outrage to dissipate, and in this country, unlike England, elections come on a fixed schedule.

On November 9, Mayor Bloomberg suddenly announced the appointment of Cathie Black, recently kicked upstairs to be chair of Hearst magazines, as Schools Chancellor, and Joel Klein was tossed to Rupert Murdoch to do something or other. Ms. Black had absolutely no experience in education, but is an engaging and attractive member of the mayor’s circle of acquaintances. She required a waiver of State legal requirements, which was obligingly granted by the State Education Commissioner, a decision so far upheld in court.

The justification for approval here is that the Education Mayor is responsible for the school system, and should be allowed to appoint his own choice as long as she can read and write.

Basically, no one who was not in on the plot takes Ms. Black seriously. What can she contribute to a professional field so difficult to manage that experts are sharply divided and statistics are notoriously suspect? The Black episode took its toll on the Mayor’s earned reputation for excellent, well-vetted appointments.

Then, on December 12, the Mayor’s confessed on NBC’s Meet the Press that “I want to go out being, having a reputation as a very good, maybe the greatest mayor ever.” Although the context of the statement may have been a denial of Presidential ambitions, the words were criticized as overly self-referential.

As luck would have it, on December 15, the first (and hopefully the last) major scandal of the administration broke, with $80 million reported stolen and uncounted millions wasted in a computer fraud. Juan Gonzalez of the News had written a year of stories about City Time, naming the bad guy who ran the agency (Bondy) while completely under the thumb of a his buddy (Mazer), a worse guy who, with the aid of his relatives, stole all he could gets his hands on, which came to eight or nine figures.

The case became public when six people were indicted by the United States Attorney for the Southern District (an office previously held by Mayor Giuliani), who worked with the NYC Department of Investigation. This was the largest depredation of public funds in a century, comparable to Boss Tweed’s profits from the construction of the New York County Courthouse in the 1860’s and 1870’s.

Although the Mayor was obviously unaware of the thievery going on, and expressed “zero tolerance” for such behavior, the question at once arises as to who, under him, was in charge of the CityTime project. There must be a chain of command and responsibility here. Who oversaw the thoroughly corrupt Office of Payroll Management?

Note that former Comptroller William Thompson shared control of this agency with the Mayor, and reported nothing. The new Comptroller, John Liu, sounded the alarm in 2010, but the horse was long gone from the stable. The series of frauds, which continued for six years, was not helpful to the Mayor’s reputation as a professional manager with particular expertise in computers.

The timing of this descending series of incidents created an unfortunate karma before the December 26 blizzard. The latest report, posted on the Daily News website today, is about Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith’s tweet at 11:06 p.m. Sunday night: “Good snow work by Sanitation.” Needless to say, and fair or unfair, this tweet will be remembered as the local equivalent of former President Bush’s memorable words on September 2, 2005: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

The good news is that all this is happening toward the end of 2010, which may be comparable to the year 1992, which Queen Elizabeth II described in a speech to Guildhall on November 24, as an “annus horribilis”. For a list of the misfortunes that Her Majesty endured eighteen years ago, click here. You see, it can happen to anyone.

We hope that the curse of the third term worked itself out this year, and that the remaining three years will be happy and peaceful ones for the city and for its Mayor. The problem is that substantial budget cuts lie ahead, which will lead to reduced services and increased unemployment.

These are hard times for anyone who governs. Mayor Bloomberg knew that. In fact, he said on October 2, 2008 at the press conference announcing his intention to seek a third term that “handling this financial crisis while strengthening the essential services such as education and public safety is a challenge I want to take on for the people of New York.” He has that responsibility and that obligation.

As the year 2010 comes to a merciful end, we hope that 2011 will be as good as it can be under the circumstances. Rough times lie ahead for all governments, but out of the three sovereignties: federal, state and local, it is the City of New York that has been most financially responsible for the last decade.

We have a decent, honorable and intelligent mayor. His personality appeals to some, and not to others.

A problem he will face in his tenth year in office is that after a while the people get tired of you. It happened to LaGuardia, Wagner and Koch, all now highly regarded mayors.

The Mayor should try to do as much good as he can in a climate of reduced sustenance for the city and lowering clouds for himself. We particularly recommend that he follow Rule 19: "Be kind to man and beast."

We wish all of you good health and good will in the new year.

Whose Oversight?

The Six-Year Swindle:

How Did a Rogue Agency

Escape Detection So Long?

Swift action followed yesterday's report of the indictment of six people accused of an $80 million fraud against the City of New York. You can read the U.S. Attorney's office and Department of Investigation's joint press release on the federal indictment here. To get the full indictment, call either telephone number at the top of the release.

The Daily News, which has been reporting for over a year on CityTime and its derelictions, ran a story on p5 today, written by Greg B. Smith, Juan Gonzalez and Adam Lisberg, City Hall bureau chief. The headline: CITY EXEC IN CHARGE OF OVERSEEING PROJECT IS SUSPENDED. The lede:

"Investigators probing the massive CityTime payroll scandal seized $850,000 in cash yesterday from safe deposit boxes linked to consultants accused of stealing $80 million.

"One of the six defendants even showed up at a Long Island bank with a large duffel bag but was turned away, a source told the Daily News."

The Times reported on City Hall's response to the indictments in a story today by David W. Chen and John Eligon, spread across the top of A30, the first page of metropolitan news. Their lede:

"The official in charge of the New York City agency at the heart of the $80 million information technology fraud scheme was suspended on Thursday without pay by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Comptroller John C. Liu.

"The official, Joel Bondy, was chosen by Mr. Bloomberg to be the executive director of the Office of Payroll Administration in April 2004. But the payroll agency has been repeatedly criticized for its handling of the CityTime project, an automated system designed to streamline employee timekeeping, which has been dogged by delays and enormous cost overruns.

"On Wednesday, Federal prosecutors accused several CityTime consultants - at least one of them a longtime associate of Mr. Bondy - of being involved in a scheme that manipulated the city into steering expensive contracts to businesses that they controlled and of redirecting some of that money for their own enrichment. But the scandal has become one of the most serious that the Bloomberg administration has faced. And by casting a pall over an initiative that the mayor had championed as a hallmark of efficient, computerized management, the case also shines a harsh light on the administration’s outsourcing practices."

The Post covered the bank incident in an article on p10: 'TIME BANDIT' BEAT TO BANK: Payroll-Scam Probers get to $850G First, by David Seifman and Chuck Bennett. The Post's lede:

"Now that's timing.

"A defendant in the $80 million CityTime payroll office scandal arrived at a bank with a large duffel bag yesterday to clear out money allegedly stolen from city taxpayers - but investigators got to it first, officials said.

"Department of Investigation officers seized $850,000 in cash stored in secret safety-deposit boxes just before one of the defendants in the criminal-fraud case sought to cash out, said DOI spokeswoman Diane Struzzi. ...

"Joel Bondy, the hapless bureaucrat in charge of the CityTime fiasco, was suspended yesterday while the city abruptly halted payments to embattled contractor Spherion - Bondy's old employer.

"His suspension without pay is a first step to termination, sources said.

"Bondy, the $205,180-a-year executive director of the Office of Payroll Administration, was seemingly asleep as allegedly corrupt 'quality assurance' contractors brazenly looted taxpayer coffers with sham corporations.

"'Any violation of the public's trust is categorically unacceptable, and we are implementing a series of changes to reform oversight of the CityTime project,' said Mayor Bloomberg."

The Post ran a harsh editorial on p32, IT'S MIKE'S MESS. The Post is generally supportive of the mayor, but this editorial alludes to grievances that may have accumulated over time.

One thing overlooked on Day One was the significant role of the City's Department of Investigation in exposing the fraud. US Attorney Preet Bharara said: "I want to praise Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn and her DOI team for their exceptionally quick and diligent work in this matter. Working with our partners, we will continue to ferret out public corruption and prosecute those responsible to the full extent of the law."

Commissioner Hearn said: "The shame is that a project to save time and money on the City payroll fell prey in part to the accused swindlers who cost the taxpayers a stunning $80 million and counting. The supposed experts hired and paid well to protect the city's interests were exposed as the fox guarding the hen house, secretly pocketing millions and purchasing expensive homes and cars, it is charged. Ironically, when CityTime's hand scanners got in their way, they even resorted to fudging paper timesheets, according to the Complaint.

"DOI investigators methodically followed the money to reveal the deception and end the shell game. DOI and the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York continue to investigate this brazen scheme and are committed to pursuing this case to its just conclusion."

One person who deserves great credit for his work on this case is Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News. A sad aspect of this case is how long his repeated warnings, published in the News, were not acted upon. Councilmember Letitia James of Brooklyn held hearings on the subject, but her complaints may or may not have reached Speaker Christine Quinn, the public official to whom the administration is most likely to be responsive.

There should be an inquiry into the city's handling of this fraud during the six-year period over which the conspiracy is said to have operated. Also, why did not other employees of OPA complain about what was happening around them? No inquiry, however, should disrupt or delay the vigorous prosecution of the alleged perpetrators.

We should also remember that this not the first time that honest people have been duped by unprincipled swindlers. What is unusual here is the period of years over which the fraud occurred, its magnitude, and the apparent complete lack of oversight over Joel Bondy and the OPA. Similar events have occurred in prior administrations, where honest mayors are betrayed by corrupt subordinates, of whose very existence they were barely aware.

Part of the problem here may be that since OPA was a two-headed agency, responsible to both the Mayor and the Comptroller, neither provided the close supervision that now appears to have been badly needed. Another aspect of the case is that since the project itself was opposed by the unions who had no interest in accurate timekeeping, critics of the contract may have been dismissed as naysayers, even though they were right about the contract.

We also learn the lesson again that it doesn't matter how many oversight agencies exist, the system often relies on individuals being honest and doing their jobs responsibly. When people lack integrity, the cost can exceed even the $80 million which is reportedly missing. As an individual and a taxpayer, I would want those convicted to remain in prison until all the money is returned. They stole from all of us.

The perpetrators should receive plenty of time to make the acquaintance of Mr. Madoff, with whom they could trade notes. Their enablers should consider less demanding employment.