READER TAKES LOOK AT THE SPARACO FINANCIAL FILING

Mr. Skriloff,

Knowing your reputation for hard-hitting investigative journalism, and having seen your initial reporting on Legislator Sparaco’s recent fundraiser, I thought you might appreciate and find some substantially newsworthy items from his recent filing.

1) Someone was blowing smoke up your paper’s proverbial rear with the “$25,000 fundraiser” line. His campaign filings reveal that for the entire filing period, he only took in $13,400, with a net of $9,000.

2) This is a county legislator account. By law, the maximum contribution over a four-year cycle (1/1/2011 to 12/31/2014) is $1,000. However, Peter Brega (the bus company owner) gave nearly three times the limit ($2,913.23) on April 15 alone (that’s nearly a third of his net for the period).
*** Update – this entry has been corrected on the financial report. Brega and Sparaco both said it was a filing error.

3) Republican Frank Sparaco received $250 from Democrat county executive candidate Ilan Schoenberger (who just happened to get the endorsement of the Frank-influenced Independence Party), and $500 from Democrat Town Supervisor Alex Gromack, who also received that line and is Frank’s boss due to his $75,000 a year job in Clarkstown.

4) Over $3,000 of Legislator Sparaco’s contributions are “unitemized,” another third of his net for the period.

I hope you find some of this useful.

Sincerely,

The West Nyack Whistler