I guess the mayor had other things on his mind
Quote of note:
The September decision to let Mr. Velella out of jail was an embarrassment for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who said he had never before heard of the panel, the Local Conditional Release Commission, even though his office appointed two of its four members.
Freeing Ex-Senator Violated the Law, City Panel Is Told
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
The New York City Law Department has determined that an obscure mayoral panel acted illegally when it released former State Senator Guy J. Velella from jail three months into his yearlong sentence, paving the way for Mr. Velella and four other Rikers Island prisoners who were released by the commission this year to be sent back to jail, the commission announced yesterday.
Mr. Velella and the others have been informed that they must reapply for early release by next Tuesday, and that three days later the board will decide whether to grant the requests. If it does not, the five are likely to be ordered back to jail.
The September decision to let Mr. Velella out of jail was an embarrassment for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who said he had never before heard of the panel, the Local Conditional Release Commission, even though his office appointed two of its four members. Mr. Bloomberg quickly ordered an investigation and forced all the commission members to resign, replacing them with the five members who would consider Mr. Velella's new application.
The commission had worked in relative obscurity for years in the depths of the City Department of Probation, considering whether to grant early release to first-time offenders serving short sentences in city jail.
Its release of Mr. Velella, who was sentenced to Rikers Island for conspiracy to commit bribery, ignited outrage among elected officials and others who thought it smacked of favoritism for a politically connected former lawmaker and his associates.
Mr. Velella, a Republican, and two other inmates connected to his case, Manual Gonzales and Hector Del Toro, were 3 of only 13 people released by the panel in the last six years; thousands of inmates have been denied such release.
The City Department of Investigation determined last week that the commission had violated numerous procedures when it released Mr. Velella and most of the others whose applications it had considered. The department found that the commission often did not have the necessary quorum of three members present when it granted an early release, and that the panel allowed Mr. Velella to make a second application for release too soon after it rejected his first application; state rules require a 60-day period to reapply.
