The NY Daily News reports:

Officials at a lower East Side nonprofit did political work for powerful elected Dems – the same pols who fill the charity’s coffers with millions of dollars of publicly funded pork.

The campaign work for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, city Comptroller William Thompson and City Councilman Alan Gerson is a no-no that endangers the organization’s tax-exempt status and raises questions about whether the nonprofit broke the law.

The actions by United Jewish Council of the East Side officials came to light during a ballot-access battle between Gerson and a Democratic primary challenger, Pete Gleason.

Ray Dowd, Gleason’s lawyer, called UJC’s efforts on Gerson’s behalf a “clear quid pro quo.”

“I’m horrified,” Dowd said.

“This is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, and it’s being perverted for political purposes.”

At an Aug. 6 court hearing on Gerson’s petitions, one UJC employee, Renee Abramowitz, said she collected voter signatures on behalf of the councilman, Silver, Thompson and other candidates.

Abramowitz, nurse director of patient services and head nurse at the UJC’s Home Attendants Service Corp., testified that she discovered the collection sheets – required for candidates to get on the ballot – on her desk at work.

“I have done this many years,” Abramowitz said in sworn testimony.

“So I know when the sheets on my desk [sic], I just go out and I volunteer to do signatures.”

Abramowitz said she didn’t discuss her signature-gathering efforts with anyone and later put the signatures she had collected on the desk of her boss, UJC Home Care Director Howard Fried.

Reached yesterday at home, Abramowitz said, “I did it on my own time, and I volunteered.”

UJC, which provides a range of services for seniors and youth, is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit – strictly barred from participating in campaign activity for or against candidates.

Gerson has funneled $16,000 in Council discretionary funds to UJC – $8,000 this year and $8,000 last year. UJC also got nearly $150,000 in Council grants for seniors and $8,000 directed by Councilwoman Rosie Mendez.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty – with which the UJC is affiliated – said it will work “to ensure a mistake of this kind does not happen again.”

Gerson is fighting to get back on the ballot after the city Board of Elections ruled petition misprints of Gerson’s home address and subsequent efforts to correct that error were sufficient grounds to remove him.

Gerson used so-called “omnibus” petitions printed for the Harry S. Truman Democratic Club. The petitions featured numerous candidates, including Thompson, who is running for mayor, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and District Leader David Weinberger.

Silver, who is running to be a delegate to next month’s Democratic judicial nominating convention to select state Supreme Court justice candidates, was also on the petition.

Silver – who represents the lower East Side and has directed more than $2.3 million in member items to UJC since 2006 – said he had “never heard” of Fried and doesn’t know Abramowitz. She and Silver both live on the 500 block of Grand St.

The tie between nonprofits and elected officials has received heightened scrutiny with the ongoing Council slush-fund scandal and member-item corruption cases in Albany. Ex-Councilman Miguel Martinez recently admitted he stole money he directed to nonprofits. State Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada Jr. has drawn state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s scrutiny for allegedly using his Soundview HealthCare Network, which gets public funds, for political purposes.

(LINK to NY Daily News article)