BY JOSH ROGERS | Sheldon Silver’s conviction this week on federal corruption charges may have ended his 20-term Assembly career, but it won’t erase his Downtown legacy, or the place it has earned him in the hearts of his constituents.
Throughout Silver’s trial, Community Board 1 member Tom Goodkind kept a photo of Silver throwing out the first ball of a Downtown Little League game as the screen saver on his phone, even though co-workers suggested he remove it.
“It’s hard for Downtown to think of him as anything but our local hero,” Goodkind, a C.P.A. and Battery Park City resident, said Monday shortly after Silver’s conviction on all counts. “It’s almost like someone hit me in the gut.”
Silver, described by the gossip site Gawker last week as the “despised New York Assemblyman,” nevertheless remained popular in Lower Manhattan even after his arrest in January.
As speaker of the Assembly for two decades, Silver used his power to get things like new schools built in Lower Manhattan, and to protect the homes of people living across from the World Trade Center in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
“He saved my block after Sept. 11 when the [Port Authority] wanted to do a land grab,” a supporter posted on Facebook after the verdict.
It was actually the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation that suggested razing the block after 9/11, but backed off after pressure from Silver and others.
At the end of 2001, it was Silver who pressed Governor George Pataki to name then-C.B. 1 Chairperson Madelyn Wils to the L.M.D.C. board, thus ensuring a community leader was behind closed doors when decisions on the $2.8 billion fund were made.
Silver also convinced the L.M.D.C. to expand its residential grant program to include Chinatown and the Lower East Side, which were hurt by post-9/11 security measures — particularly the closure of Park Row.
In 2005 he brokered a deal between the city and developer Bruce Ratner to build the Spruce St. School to help reduce the area’s chronic classroom overcrowding.
He used the vote he controlled on the Public Authorities Control Board to press for the extension in 2006 of rent protections at Gateway Plaza, the largest housing complex in Battery Park City.
Goodkind, a Gateway resident, said he’s not sure what he would reply to someone who says Silver was corrupt and got his just deserts, but he’s confident “the person doesn’t live in our area.”
Downtowners were standing with their long-serving assemblyman against criticism even before his arrest on corruption charges earlier this year.
Silver was honored by Gateway tenants two years ago at a time when he was coming under heavy fire for improperly protecting former Assemblymember Vito Lopez, who was forced to resign amid sexual harassment accusations. Silver’s critics saw a connection with his decision to allow an accused rapist, Michael Boxley, to remain on his staff for years until a second sexual assault accusation surfaced.
But Downtown leaders, women and men alike, continued to appreciate what he delivered for his district.
“Since Speaker Silver has represented us, he has created four K-to-8 schools in Community Board 1 and we’re hoping we’ll get another one soon,” Catherine McVay Hughes, C.B. 1 chairperson, said at the 2013 Gateway Plaza event feting Silver.
Before 9/11, there were often grumblings from Downtown activists upset with Silver, but those dwindled as his Albany clout produced real benefits for a community that was struggling to rebuild.
When he faced his first primary challenge in 22 years, amid the 2008 Boxley scandal, Silver won 68 percent of the vote.
And even Silver’s main primary opponent, Paul Newell, now a Democratic district leader and a likely candidate to succeed him, was careful not to criticize Silver directly in a prepared statement issued immediately after the verdict.
He called it “a sad day for Lower Manhattan,” but added, “no court will end Albany’s culture of corruption and cronyism.”
The jury this week found that Silver collected nearly $4 million in legal fees in exchange for steering state money toward a particular doctor’s cancer research and helping two real estate firms with legislation.
But prosecutors did not charge Silver with any crimes connected to his local work, which included highly praised task forces, notably one focused on school overcrowding in the fast-growing district.
Silver was forced to give up the powerful speaker’s post after his arrest in January, but city Department of Education officials continued to attend the schools task force meetings. Whether they will now, after his banishment from the Assembly remains to be seen.
Goodkind said may never happen again that a Downtowner will equal Silver’s influence.
After the current Gateway Plaza rent deal was negotiated, Silver said he expected to be speaker in 2020 at age 76, when the agreement would need an extension.
“There’s no question about that,” he said then.
