{"id":1293,"date":"2009-11-12T10:42:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-12T14:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/11\/12\/sen-little-tangled-in-bruno-case\/"},"modified":"2009-11-12T10:42:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-12T14:42:00","slug":"sen-little-tangled-in-bruno-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/11\/12\/sen-little-tangled-in-bruno-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Sen. Little tangled in Bruno case?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times’ coverage of Joe Bruno’s corruption trial includes a fascinating account of North Country state Senator Betty Little’s testimony this week.<\/p>\n

\n

In testimony on Tuesday, prosecutors asked Elizabeth O\u2019C. Little, a Republican state senator whose upstate district abuts the one Mr. Bruno represented, how she became the named sponsor of two job-training grants to Local 773 of the Plumbers & Steamfitters Union<\/a>, one of the many unions that invested pension money with Wright after being approached by Mr. Bruno.<\/p>\n

Looking sheepish, Ms. Little confessed that she had no idea.<\/p>\n

In fact, she conceded, no one at the union had ever asked her for the two grants, which were for $100,000 in 2006 and $150,000 in 2007. Instead, aides to Mr. Bruno told her that the senator was interested in dispensing the grant and offered to bring her on as a co-sponsor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Bruno trial has been widely viewed as a rare window into the tangled workings of the Republican-controlled state Senate, which was dominated by Bruno for years.<\/p>\n

Sen. Little’s testimony continued with this exchange:<\/p>\n

Though a public disclosure form for the first grant is dated Ap<\/span>ril 2006, the grant does not appear to have actually been executed until December \u2014 some months after Local 773 invested $4 million of pension money with Wright.<\/p>\n

And though Mr. Bruno and Ms. Little were both listed as sponsors of the grant, only Ms. Little signed the disclosure form.<\/p>\n

Ms. Little was asked when, exactly, she signed it. \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Do you know if it was backdated? \u201cNo, I don\u2019t,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n

And why didn\u2019t Mr. Bruno sign it? \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d she repeated.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times’ coverage of Joe Bruno’s corruption trial includes a fascinating account of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}