Former city top lawyer Lawrence Porcari rejects plea offer in Mount Vernon corruption case

Mount Vernon’s former top lawyer is heading to trial in his corruption case after turning down a plea offer from state prosecutors.

Lawrence Porcari was offered no incarceration if he pleaded guilty to a felony, a conviction that would have led to his disbarment.

"Just so everyone's clear, we're rejecting that offer," defense lawyer Stephen Lewis said in court Thursday.

Porcari was indicted in May on grand larceny, corruption and false statement charges. He is accused of illegally steering $365,000 in city water funds to pay for Mayor Richard Thomas’ criminal defense lawyers and a public relations firm after Thomas’ March 2018 arrest on campaign finance charges.

Porcari stayed on as corporation counsel following his indictment. But acting Mayor Andre Wallace dismissed him after Thomas vacated the office by pleading guilty in July.

Assistant Attorney General Brian Weinberg outlined the plea offer during the brief appearance before state Supreme Court Justice Barry Warhit. He said Porcari would be required to serve five years probation and perform community service if he pleaded guilty to a single count of offering a false instrument for filing.

Once the offer was rejected, Warhit assigned the case to Westchester County Judge David Zuckerman, who last month denied Lewis’ motion to dismiss the charges.

No trial date has been set.  

Lewis said that any problems with what happened were administrative and should not have been charged as crimes.

"He never got a dime," Lewis said of Porcari. "This an intent to defraud case but he believed he was doing the right thing."

Thomas requested that Porcari and special counsel represent him following his arrest.

Porcari responded in an April 3, 2018, memo that he thought it was appropriate for the city to do so, citing city charter language that did not preclude the representation in criminal matters. 

He also wrote that the standard of "in the interest of the city" was a low bar, that the city "would almost always have an interest of some kind in any type of proceeding brought against one of its elected officials, especially the Mayor."

But state prosecutors are focusing on Porcari's efforts to pay the outside lawyers using not city finances, which he knew would have been unavailable from Comptroller Deborah Reynolds, but funds of the Board of Water Supply, which were not under Reynolds' control.

In requesting emergency payments to Thomas' initial lawyer following his indictment, Randall Jackson of the firm Boies Schiller Flexner, Porcari told Water Commissioner Ben Marable only that they were for matters "in which the City has a vital interest" without specifying what it was for.

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Those payments totaled over $136,000 over three months. 

Porcari wrote that efforts to put the matter before the Board of Estimate and Contract, which must approve rates paid to outside counsel, had not been successful because of scheduling conflicts.

But the matter had gone to the board in April 2018 with no explanation for what Boies Schiller was doing for the city. Reynolds and then-Council President Lisa Copeland refused to vote on it. 

While prosecuting Thomas, Weinberg and his colleagues were also holding the mayor to a felony. But that changed on the eve of trial in early July, when they agreed to let him plead to a misdemeanor and avoid jail time or probation. 

The deal required him to step down as mayor by Sept. 30, but the City Council deemed him to have vacated the position based on language in the city charter. That kicked off a chaotic three weeks in which both he and Wallace claimed the mayoralty before a judge ruled it was Wallace's seat.

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