T H E N E W Y O RK S U N WE E K E N D E D I T I O N, MAY 2 3 –2 5 , 2 0 0 3 PA G E 3

N E W Y O R K

M ichael Romanelli, a for-mer city firefighter whohas spent almost twiceas much time battling the Fire De-partment as he was a member ofit, knows the deck is stackedagainst him.

Living in a small apartment not farfrom the Outerbridge Crossing onStaten Island with his wife and threechildren, Mr. Romanelli knows hehas pretty much exhausted every av-enue as he tries to force the depart-ment to award him a tax-freedisability pension for in-juries suffered 14 years ago.

It was August 14, 1989,and Mr. Romanelli, assignedto Engine 247, was one ofseveral firefighters who re-sponded to a fire at an aban-doned synagogue on 59thStreet between 14th and15th avenues in Brooklyn.

“You could smell thesmoke as we left the firehouse twoblocks away,” Mr. Romanelli remem-bered yesterday. “By the time wewere able to get inside, the place hadbeen cooking for a good 15 minutes.”

Once inside, firefighters startedflooding the place with water,which caused some of the buildingto buckle.

“It was smoky and I lost my foot-ing, tripping over a hole in the floor,”he said. “I fell right on my back.”

On his back at the time was a 35-pound air tank, and landing on itsent pains shooting through his neckand back.

Later, a doctor found he had suf-fered damage to several of the disksin his spine. Despite that, he contin-ued to work.

“But the pain kept getting worse,”Mr. Romanelli said.

A couple of months later, still ingreat pain, Mr. Romanelli went tosee Fire Department doctors, whodetermined he had two herniateddisks in his neck and damaged disksin his back and neck.

The doctors ruled the injuries weredisabling and that he was not fit forfull duty. Mr. Romanelli, after eight

years on the job, retired. He appliedfor a tax-free pension that would givehim 75% of his annual salary.

“I didn’t think twice about it,” herecalled yesterday. “They told me Ihad suffered an injury severe enoughthat I was no longer fit for duty.”

But, for Mr. Romanelli, that’swhere the trouble started.

Five times he met with doctorsfrom the department’s medicalboard and five times the doctors de-clared his injuries had left him par-

tially disabled. At the sametime, though, they couldn’tdecide if the injuries ontheir own had been enough,or whether off-duty injuriescontributed to his condition.

“They started to say I hadall these other injuries,” hesaid. “But none of thesethings had ever come up be-fore.It was like they had saidthe injury from the fire had

left me disabled but then changedtheir minds. They suddenly said Iwas suffering from ‘pain syndrome.’”

Mr. Romanelli went to courtwhere a judge — agreeing with Mr.Romanelli’s claim that there was nosuch thing as “pain syndrome” —awarded him the pension.

The department appealed, sayingthe court had no jurisdiction. An ap-peals court agreed.

Since then, Mr. Romanelli, wholives on Social Security and his half-pay, taxed pension, has been tryingto get one last hearing before the de-partment.“I can’t work,” he said yes-terday. “I go to the orthopedic sur-geon every four weeks.We had to sellour house because of the medicaland legal bills.”

The department says that in theyears after Mr. Romanelli’s injurythey gave him more than a dozenchances to make his case and are notsure he deserves another.

“I know so much more now thanback then,”he said.“I just need to beable to make my case in full to thecommissioner.”

The ball is now back in the depart-ment’s court.

Watchdog Details Landlords’ Rent Regulation Battle

Gifts Galore for Giuliani, Judi as Wedding Bells Loom

By WILLIAM F. HAMMOND JR.Staff Reporter of the Sun

ALBANY — While tenants march bythe thousands in the streets, landlordsare spending millions on a behind-the-scenes campaign against rent regula-tion, a government watchdog group re-ported yesterday.

Landlords and their associations in-vested a total of $3.9 million at thestate Capitol from 1999 through early2003, including $2.7 million in cam-paign donations and $1.2 million in lob-bying expenses, according to an analy-sis of public records by CommonCause/NY.

Over the same period, the maingroups representing the beneficiariesof rent regulation spent just $58,000 onlobbying and made almost no cam-paign donations, the authors of the re-port said.The authors did not try to tal-ly donations by individual tenants, butsaid they doubted such gifts wouldcompare to those from landlords.

The findings suggest that the com-ing battle over extending rent lawsthat expire on June 15 will be a kindof asymmetrical warfare, and it re-mains to be seen which strategy is themore effective.

Tenants are waging a public cam-paign of protests and press releases,including a 2,000-person rally in Al-bany last week, and a demonstra-tion by 40 or 50 yesterday at theManhattan headquarters of theleading landlord group, the RentStabilization Association.

They are pressing not only to ex-tend rent regulation for another fiveyears, but also to repeal rules that al-low landlords to “decontrol” vacantapartments once their regulated renttops $2,000 a month.They have strongsupport from the Democratic majori-ties in the Assembly.

Landlords are quietly buttonholinglawmakers — both in the hallways ofthe Capitol and at political fund-raisers— trying to persuade them that loosen-ing or phasing out government pricecontrols would ultimately improve thequality and affordability of housing inthe New York City area.

Specifically, they are asking for de-control of all vacant apartments andmeans testing for wealthier tenants.Most of the landlords’ donations go toRepublicans, particularly the GOP ma-jority in the Senate.

The result is a much-less-heated de-bate than the “rent wars”of 1997,whenSenate Majority Leader Joseph Brunoproposed to abolish rent regulation butbacked down in the face of raucousprotests.

“There is a sense that the overt, long,public campaign in 1997 did not help,and that consequently this year groupswho are not happy with rent stabiliza-tion are taking a lower profile than theydid six years ago,” said the director ofthe Manhattan Institute’s Center forCivic Innovation, Henry Olsen.

The executive director of CommonCause/NY, Rachel Leon, said her grouptakes no position on rent regulation,

but worries that big-spending groupshave an unfair advantage in Albany.

“The landlords have been wallpaper-ing Albany with cash for the last sever-al years,” Ms. Leon said. “Our concernis: How is this impacting the overall de-bate? …Will this debate get debated onthe merits, or will it get debated on thesize of the pocketbooks?”

A top lobbyist for the Rent StabilityAssociation, Frank Ricci, said mostbuilding owners are hard-working peo-ple of modest means who can’t afford tospend time at rallies.

He said the RSA has 25,000 mem-bers, mostly owners of 10- or 20-unitbuildings,and 90% donate $99 or less ayear. But the RSA board also includessuch real estate moguls as LeonardLitwin, who donated $218,300 to politi-cians over the past five years, andHoward Milstein, who donated$166,300.

“We support candidates who sup-port us, or who are at least reasonabletowards owners and will give owners afair hearing,”Mr.Ricci said.“That’s ourgoal. Sometimes we succeed and some-times we don’t.”

“We don’t need buses to take us upto Albany to protest out on the streets,”said the president of the Real EstateBoard of New York, Steven Spinola.“We believe we will make our argu-ments to the elected officials becauseour arguments are correct. If you wantto subsidize people, you do it in a verydifferent way than what this crazy sys-tem of regulation does.”

Firefighter’s Taxing BattleMICHAEL ROMANELLI KONRAD F IEDLER

UNION CALLS FOR STOCK TRANSFER TAXCWA Ads Seek Revival of Levy Dropped in 1981

By BENJAMIN SMITHStaff Reporter of the Sun

A city union is campaigning to revivethe bugaboo of the city’s finance indus-try, the stock transfer tax.

A roll of toilet paper stars in thetelevision advertising campaign fromCommunications Workers of AmericaLocal 1180, which represents morethan 7,000 middle managers in arange of city agencies.

“Just a penny per share, less tax thanwe pay for a roll of toilet paper, wouldclose our city’s budget gap,” says avoiceover in an advertisement. “Sup-port the stock sales tax — we alreadypay every time we flush.”

The city dropped its tax on stocktrades in 1981, for fear of driving awaythe increasingly mobile finance indus-try. With the city facing a $3.8 billionbudget gap for next year,a group repre-senting black and Latino legislators

proposed raising $2.75 billion with a re-vived tax.

Mayor Bloomberg rejected the idea,arguing that it is easier than ever tomove stock trades around the world.

“Brokerage firms would just clearthose trades in London or another city,”he said last month.

Instead, he closed a $3.8 billionbudget gap with a combination of cutsand hikes in the sales and personal in-come taxes.

But CWA Local 1180, one of thecity’s most militant unions, is castingthe budget battle in the stark termsof class: A second advertisement,which has begun to air, pictures Mr.Bloomberg with a crown and scepterand suggests that if he won’t tax his“wealthy friends,” then “maybe weshould just ask him to write thecheck himself.”

The advertisements were produced

by the AdvanceGroup, a politicalconsulting firmthat works withDemocrats.

The stock trans-fer tax “doesn’tburden the work-ing people of thiscity, doesn’t bur-den the businessof this city, and re-ally lets the entire country and worldrebuild New York,” said the presidentof Local 1180, Arthur Cheliotes.

Although some other stock ex-changes tax trades, it’s a proposalthe securities industry here hasmoved to quash.

Executives at top brokerages includ-ing Merrill Lynch and Citigroup wroteGovernor Pataki on April 15 to opposethe tax.

A professor of economics at NewYork University’s Stern School of Busi-ness,Nicholas Economides,said a stocktransfer tax could drive large tradesaway from the New York Stock Ex-change and raise less than expected asa result.

“The big mistake in this is to thinkthat if you impose it you are going to beable to collect it,and there will be no re-action,” he said.

COLIN MINER

CWA

KING BLOOMBERG One of CWA Local 1180’s ads.

ROB BENNETT

PREPARATIONS A view of Gracie Mansion, where Saturday’s nuptials will take place. Heavy rains are expected.

By ANNA SCHNEIDER-MAYERSONStaff Reporter of the Sun

Joe Torre won’t be able to make it.One oversight in the planning of his

highly choreographed wedding wasthat Mayor Rudy Giuliani scheduledhis procession to begin around thesame time as the Yankees’ seventh-in-ning stretch Saturday.

The team has a home game startingat 4 p.m.

But if he arrives in time for the recep-tion, Mr. Torre will enjoy the sounds ofIrish crooner Ronan Tynan, and thecompany of actor Ron Silver, tenorPlacido Domingo, and Mr. Giuliani’sgolden retriever, Goalie. Andrew Giu-liani will be his dad’s best man. MayorBloomberg is officiating.

As far as gifts are concerned, there’sbarely anything left to buy the soon-to-be Mr. and Mrs. Giuliani. Guests havegotten on the ball and gobbled up the

stemware, dinnerware, and flatwarepunctually. All that’s left is the silver,which at Tiffany & Co. can run between$175 and $285 for a tablespoon.

For Tiffany and Scully & Scully,whereJudith Nathan and Mr. Giuliani havealso registered, the drill was the same.Would-be-givers had to offer their nameto be checked against a guest list beforethey could buy an offering for the for-mer mayor and his third wife.

Friends of the former mayor saidthey were surprised that Mr. Giulianihad registered at all.When he was may-or and received a personal gift over$50,he always asked the giver to returnit. But when invitees called to RSVPthey were also told that Ms.Nathan hadwanted them to register so she did notreceive duplicates of gifts.

Dan Klores Communications, thepublic relations firm that representsGiuliani Partners,will be managing the

press outside of Gracie Mansion.Yesterday, four Parks Department

employees were tidying up neighboringCarl Shurz Park, sweeping, raking, andblowing leaves.About a dozen men wereerecting the tents,whose protective sideflaps will come in handy during tomor-row’s glum weather.Rain and fog are ex-pected, with a high of 63 degrees.

The Gracie Mansion police detail de-clined to provide any informationabout what kinds of preparations wereunder way at the Upper East Side man-sion. They claimed not to know toomuch themselves, saying the organiz-ers had kept everything hush-hush.

To neighborhood residents, the “NoParking Saturday” police signs alongeast 88th Street gave them enough in-formation to ruin their Saturday.

“Just take a look at every tree,every lamppost,” lamented one fe-male resident.

P O L I C EB L O T T E R

Police Mum After Shooting

By WILLIAM MAULDINStaff Reporter of the Sun

A New York City police officer shot aman yesterday inside a storage ware-house in Manhattan under unclear cir-cumstances, police said.

The Police Department was extraor-dinarily tight-lipped about the shooting,and a police spokesman did not say ifthe man shot by the officer was armed.

The shooting took place after policeraided the Chelsea Mini-Storage ware-house on West 27th Street near 11th Av-enue at about 4:19 p.m.

A police officer watching over someof the confiscated property — report-edly counterfeit merchandise — en-countered a man on the third-floor hall-way and shot him at least once, policesaid. The shooting victim was taken toSt.Vincent’s Hospital in serious condi-tion. Police did not identify the manyesterday.

The cobblestone street in front of thewarehouse was cordoned off with yel-low tape yesterday as police officialsswarmed in and out of the building.

Ward Parker said he was retrievingvideo materials from his storage lockeron the third floor at the time of theshooting.

“I heard arguing, yelling, screamingin the hallway, and the next thing I saw,the cops were there,” Mr. Parker said.

Mr. Parker said a police officer latertold him, “We had to shoot a perp,” aphrase that others reported hearing onpolice radio frequencies.

Meghan Hamilton, a student at theFashion Institute Technology, said sheand her girlfriend were busy storingtheir belongings for the summer vaca-tion when they observed the beginningof the police raid.

“We saw two men being arrested be-fore [the police] came in,” Ms. Hamil-ton said. “Then there was a gunshot.”

Ms. Hamilton’s companion, LizAluise, said one police officer was dis-guised as a U.S. postal worker, com-plete with a mailbag.

Speaking from the tail of a cartto a crowd of 2,000 New Yorkers,members of the Devery Associa-tion nominated their chieftain forMayor last night. “Devery himselfmade a reservation and saved a

means of escape for himself if heshould succeed in making termswith Tammany.” If Tammany didn’tnominate ‘a man of the people,’Mr. Devery said, he would run. Acrowd gathered at Twenty-Third

Street and music and calciumlights attracted a crowd, so thatthe throng soon reached fromTwenty-seventh to Twenty-eightstreet and from the docks to thewarehouses.

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