Percoco Verdict No Laughing Matter For Harckham

TARRYTOWN, NY - The campaign of Senate candidate Peter Harckham is still reeling a week after the Journal News exposed how as a top staffer at the 'New NY Bridge Project', Harckham openly mocked the fact that he had no knowledge of when the much delayed opening of the over-budget bridge would occur. The email was released following a lawsuit filed by the Journal News to force the Thruway Authority to turn over documents related to the bridge's opening. Now Harckham's political opponents are calling for a full accounting of his role as aide to the Governor.

Martha Ruiz Jiménez, the spokesperson for Senator Terrence Murphy's campaign said, "The last time anyone had heard from Peter Harckham was when his name appeared on the list of potential witnesses in the Joe Percoco corruption trial, until he was suddenly plucked from obscurity as the Governor's hand-picked Senate candidate in this race. Taxpayers deserve to know exactly when and for how long Peter Harckham was on the government dole, and what, if any work he actually did. As his cynical e-mail showed, this is no laughing matter.

Percoco was convicted on several felony counts of corruption earlier this year.

The Harckham e-mail was found amongst a trove of correspondence relating to lane closures, which the Governor's administration had stonewalled releasing under the Freedom of Information Law. When queried as to the bridge's opening date by the office of Assemblyman Kenneth Zebrowski of Rockland County in one e-mail, Harckham wrote "we still do not know when the shift (will) occur."

"Once we know, lol, we hope to be able to give you detailed information to answer constituent questions," Harckham added, using a colloquialism for "laughing out loud" to describe his own lack of knowledge about a project where he served as a Director. The bridge opened less than two weeks later, eight months late and almost $1 billion over budget, according to a report issued by Politico.

Ruiz Jiménez noted that federal prosecutors in the Percoco trial had asked prospective jurors whether they had any knowledge of Peter Harckham, who resigned from his seat on the Westchester County Board of Legislators in 2015, in the middle of his term, to become an aide in the executive chamber at the Office of Homes & Community Renewal. Harckham served as a Cuomo ally during his 2014 re-election bid, which Percoco managed.

Sometime later, Harckham was appointed as the so-called "Director of Intergovernmental Affairs" for the new Tappan Zee Bridge project. There was no announcement of, or public justification for Harckham's reassignment.

"Peter Harckham knew his fellow South Salem resident Joe Percoco, the Governor's closest confidant, well enough to have his name appear on the cast of characters for Percoco's corruption trial," Ruiz Jiménez said. "In addition, Percoco, who should not have been working in a government office while running a campaign, illegally used a taxpayer-funded phone line to make 837 calls related to the campaign to fundraisers, election consultants and campaign staff."

Harckham's connection to Percoco is sure to become an issue in the upcoming election. "Harckham's campaign work seems to have paid off with a series of low-show political positions culminating with the bridge fiasco," she said.

Local activists are already incensed at the Governor's meddling in the race. Harckham's opponent, Robert Kesten, told Westchester Rising that Governor "Cuomo has inserted his 'owned' man into the Senate race to primary." The New York Post observed that "no one has pinned anything on Cuomo directly yet, though an investigation is still underway. But even if the best he can say is he was ignorant of the sleaze going on right under his nose, it's still pretty damning."

Additional Freedom of Information requests to obtain all of Harckham's phone, e-mail and payroll records during his service with the New NY Bridge Project are forthcoming. Ruiz Jiménez concluded by asking, "How was Mr. Harckham hired? Was the position advertised? Was there a civil service test? Did Joe Percoco have anything to do with it? And did Mr. Harckham's position with the administration end before, or after the Governor recruited him into the Senate race? Taxpayers deserve answers from the man who was laughing out loud at the $900 million overbudget bridge that opened eight months after it was supposed to."