Alan Hevesi

Alan G. Hevesi, a cerebral, suave and blunt New York politician who spent 35 years as an elected official until he suffered a dizzying fall that led to his resignation as state comptroller and 20 months in prison for corruption, died on Thursday November 9 2023. in the hamlet of East Meadow on Long Island. He was 83. Hevesi represented his Forest Hills, Queens, district in the State Assembly from 1971 until he unseated Elizabeth Holtzman in the Democratic primary for New York City comptroller in 1993. He went on to defeat Herman Badillo, who was running on the Republican-Liberal lines, in the November general election. Hevesi used his power over city pension fund investments to help force Swiss banks to indemnify heirs of Holocaust victims for their unredeemed Nazi-era bank balances. He was joined in the effort by officials from other states. Hevesi won the nomination for state comptroller in 2001 and defeated John Faso, a Republican assemblyman from upstate, in the general election. He never finished his four-year term. On Oct. 23, 2006, a state ethics commission concluded that Mr. Hevesi had knowingly violated the law by improperly assigning a public employee to handle personal chores. On Nov. 3 2006, he was ordered by Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to reimburse the state $90,000, in addition to $83,000 he had already paid. He pleaded guilty to defrauding the government and, in a plea bargain, resigned from office effective Dec. 22, 2006. He was later fined $5,000 and permanently barred from holding elective office again. Four years later, in October 2010, he pleaded guilty to corruption charges stemming from a pay-to-play scheme in which, as comptroller, he had accepted $1 million in gifts, trips and campaign contributions for steering $250 million in New York State pension fund investments to a California venture capitalist. Hevesi was sentenced to one to four years in prison. He was released on parole on Dec. 19, 2012, after serving 20 months. His paternal grandfather, Simon Hevesi, had been the chief rabbi of Hungary. His father, Eugene Hevesi, was a banker, a diplomat, an economist and the foreign affairs secretary of the American Jewish Committee. His mother, Alicia (Parness) Hevesi, was a music publisher. He is survived by his son Andrew another son, Daniel, a former State Senator; a daughter, Laura Hevesi; and three grandchildren. His brother, Dennis, a reporter for The New York Times, died in 2017. Hevesi earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from Queens College and, in 1971, a doctorate in public law and government from Columbia University. He became a political science professor at Queens College in 1967 and continued teaching for nearly three decades.