Albany

For the second time in as many weeks, New York state government was rocked by the corruption conviction of a politician who mere months ago was one of the state's three most powerful elected officials.

Former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and his son were found guilty Friday afternoon on all eight federal charges filed against them by U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Preet Bharara. The convictions stemmed from the Long Island lawmaker's efforts to secure income and benefits for his 33-year-old son, Adam, from politically connected businesses.

The verdict followed the Nov. 30 conviction of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and marks the end of an unprecedented year that saw both leaders of the Legislature arrested and then tossed out by their conferences.

In a brief statement, Bharara said the back-to-back convictions "beg an important question – how many prosecutions will it take before Albany gives the people of New York the honest government they deserve?"

That release joined a blizzard of calls for fundamental reform of what federal prosecutors contend is a runaway pay-to-play culture at the state Capitol, enabled by sleepy ethics enforcement and campaign finance laws seemingly designed to encourage shadowy flows of money from those seeking to influence legislation.

In a statement similar to one issued after Silver's conviction, Gov. Andrew Cuomo promised to pursue unspecified reforms, and placed the responsibility for their progress on the Legislature.

"There can be no tolerance for those who use, and seek to use, public service for private gain," Cuomo said. "The justice system worked today. However, more must be done and will be pursued as part of my legislative agenda. The convictions of former Speaker Silver and former Majority Leader Skelos should be a wake-up call for the Legislature and it must stop standing in the way of needed reforms."

The verdict against Skelos was read just after 2 p.m. on the second day of deliberations by the jury.

The lawmaker's felony conviction resulted in his immediate expulsion from the Senate. Within the hour, his official Senate website was shut down and his name was scraped from the window of his longtime office on the ninth floor of the Legislative Office Building — a swift erasure seen after Silver's conviction, as well.

Skelos' expulsion reduces the Republican conference to a bare 32-member majority. Though only 31 Republicans now serve in the Senate, Simcha Felder, a Brooklyn Democrat, has conferenced with the GOP since his election in 2012. The Republicans also have allied themselves with a band of five independent Democrats, under the leadership of Sen. Jeff Klein.

Cuomo has already called for an April special election to fill Silver's Assembly seat, and it's likely that date will also be used to find a replacement for Skelos, who was first elected to the Senate in 1984.

Sentencing is set for March 3. Both men, who remain free without bail, face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for each fraud and extortion count and 10 years for each bribery charge.

The lawmaker and his son were arrested on May 4, just over three months after Silver's arrest, to answer a federal complaint that alleged they conspired in a years-long effort to trade legislative favors for personal and political benefits.

Bharara described the scheme as an effort to "monetize" Dean Skelos' considerable power and influence as the chamber's GOP leader, a post he held for almost seven years.

More Information Another leader found guilty Some of the reactions to the conviction of Dean Skelos: "Unfortunately, Skelos will still be eligible for a taxpayer-funded pension despite his felony convictions and overtly tarnished record. This is shameful, and our constituents deserve better accountability and ethical standards from Albany. The state is currently paying out roughly $531,000 per year to corrupt state officials." - GOP Assemblyman Dan Stec of Queensbury "Keep going Preet. I hope the best is yet to come. Every New Yorker deserves better." - GOP Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin of Schaghticoke "We have two choices. Business as usual, or passage of the Moreland Committee recommendations, especially public financing of elections. There is no way to wipe off the stain of corruption with cosmetic changes. A genuine change in how elections are run must be priority number one. - Bill Lipton, New York director for the Working Families Party "Thin ethics reform measures will likely not solve the problem. Significant political and structural reforms are necessary to change this environment. That process starts with every New Yorker getting more involved in holding their elected officials accountable." - Reclaim New York, a good-government group "Personally, I am (a) strong supporter of term limits for all elective offices. ... So many of the problems in Albany stem from career politicians who became part of the business as usual crowd and who, frankly, have served for far too long. - Adele Malpass, chair of the Manhattan Republican Party. "The trials of Dean Skelos and Sheldon Silver have laid bare Albany's cauldron of corruption. This is Albany's Watergate moment and, just like Congress did in the 1970s, we must seize this opportunity to restore the public trust." - Democratic Sen. Brad Hoylman, Manhattan. See More Collapse

The complaint alleged that Skelos doled out political favors and influence in an effort to benefit the environmental technology company AbTech, which secured a $12 million contract for a stormwater-remediation system in Skelos' power base, Nassau County, and Glenwood Management, a powerful real estate development company that has financial and personnel ties to AbTech. In return, Adam Skelos received payments of more than $200,000, and Dean Skelos and his conference received considerable political donations from Glenwood, whose centenarian owner Leonard Litwin is the state's most generous political contributor.

Executives and lobbyists for Glenwood and AbTech were given non-prosecution agreements by Bharara's office in exchange for their cooperation.

Two additional charges of extortion and solicitation of bribes related to Adam Skelos' no-show employment by a Long Island medical malpractice insurance company, a job secured at the request of his father, were added in a superseding indictment handed down in July.

Some of the most damning evidence against the father and son were drawn from wiretaps, in which father and son chatted with each other and a long list of lobbyists, business executives and lawmakers. In one conversation between the two, Adam Skelos complained that his father couldn't give him "real advice" on the AbTech deal because "you can't talk normal because it's like (expletive) Preet Bharara is listening to every (expletive) phone call. It's just (expletive) frustrating."

"It is," Dean Skelos replied on the recording.

The Senate's Republican majority conference tossed him from power a week after his arrest. Sen. John Flanagan, also from the conference's powerful Long Island caucus, rose to take the top job in the chamber. In his own statement Friday, Flanagan said he was "deeply saddened" by the verdict.

"... I take this situation very seriously and am determined to work with my fellow legislators to swiftly and completely restore the public trust," he said.

Flanagan will have his work cut out for him: Skelos was the fourth leader of a Senate majority conference to face a federal corruption indictment in the past decade — though he was the first leader to face charges while still in power.

His predecessor as leader, Joseph L. Bruno of Brunswick, was convicted of honest services fraud almost exactly six years ago, only to have the verdict erased by a U.S. Supreme Court decision that pruned back the statute used by prosecutors; he was acquitted in 2014 at the end of his second trial. Bruno resigned in 2008, six months before his arrest.

Former Sen. Malcolm Smith, a Democrat who led the chamber for the first half of 2009, was convicted in February of trying to bribe his way to the 2013 Republican nomination for New York City mayor.

Another Democrat, Pedro Espada Jr., was convicted of raiding a health care nonprofit he ran. His claim to the title of "majority leader" was largely cosmetic, and was conferred on him by the bare Democratic majority in an effort to end the five-week Senate coup crisis in July 2009 — a Republican scheme carried out in part by Skelos.

Sen. John Sampson of Brooklyn took the title of "conference leader," but functioned as majority leader from July 2009 until the Democrats lost their narrow majority in 2010; he remained the leader of the minority conference through 2012. Sampson was convicted in July of obstructing justice and lying to federal investigators.

Skelos' onetime deputy conference leader, Sen. Thomas Libous of the Southern Tier, was convicted of lying to the FBI in June in another case that turned on a powerful father's effort to boost the career of his son. Libous, who is battling terminal cancer, was sentenced to house arrest in late November.

The Empire Center, which keeps a database of salary and pension information on public employees, estimated that Skelos' state pension was likely to total an annual payout of almost $96,000.

Efforts to change the state constitution to strip public pensions from those convicted of corruption related to their duties was demanded by Cuomo in the wake of Silver's arrest. That initiative was ultimately stymied by disagreements between the Senate and the Democrat-dominated Assembly, though negotiations are likely to continue when the Legislature returns to Albany in January.

mhamilton@timesunion.com • 518-454-5449 • @matt_hamilton10