The story rocketed around New York City when streets went uncleared after the Dec. 26 blizzard: Sanitation workers, angry about job reductions, had deliberately staged a work slowdown.
It resulted in fiery denunciations of unions on cable news and four criminal investigations.
And it occurred because one man, Councilman Daniel J. Halloran, Republican of Queens, said five city workers had come to his office during the storm and told him they had been explicitly ordered to take part in a slowdown to embarrass Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
But the more that investigators look into Mr. Halloran’s story, the more mystifying it becomes.
Mr. Halloran said he had been visited by two supervisors in the Transportation Department and three workers in the Sanitation Department. But the two transportation supervisors did not back up his story in interviews with investigators, according to two people briefed on the inquiries. And Mr. Halloran has steadfastly refused to reveal the names of the sanitation workers.
Mr. Halloran expects to testify this week before a federal grand jury looking into the question of a slowdown, according to a person familiar with his intentions, and it is not clear whether prosecutors will try to compel him, under oath, to divulge the workers’ names.
Meanwhile, investigators had hoped that extensive publicity would bring out others with knowledge of the purported plot. That has not happened, according to the people briefed on the investigations, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigations are continuing. This leaves prosecutors with no proof that anything occurred.
“When you’re talking about establishing a negative, I don’t know how it’s going to get firmer,” one person briefed on the inquiries said.
Mr. Halloran declined to be interviewed for this article.
Of course, someone could still bring forward evidence. Investigators are examining videos of trucks driving with their plows up, although officials say the drivers must sometimes put the plows up to stay on their routes.
Yet in the days since Mr. Halloran first made his explosive accusations, he has revised his account.
In an article that appeared in The New York Post on Dec. 30, he said the workers had been told “to take off routes” and “not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner.”
“They were told to make the mayor pay,” Mr. Halloran said in the article, “for the layoffs, the reductions in rank of the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank and file.”
More recently, the councilman has said the workers were not explicitly told to take part in a slowdown, but were subtly informed there was no need to rush while clearing the snow.
For many New Yorkers, it was the first they had heard of Mr. Halloran, 39, a lawyer from Whitestone who has had a colorful first year in office.
During his 2009 campaign, his faith was briefly an issue. He is an adherent of Theodism, a neo-pagan faith that draws from pre-Christian tribal religions of northern Europe, and he led a branch in the New York area.
He campaigned as a conservative Republican with the support of Tea Party organizers, advocating personal responsibility and limited government. As a councilman, he has taken on the usual local causes, like pushing to keep a community pool open, but he has also pursued issues with a more personal dimension.
Last June, he followed a city traffic officer, Daniel Chu, whom, he said, he had seen speeding through streets with his siren blaring while talking on a cellphone. The chase ended at a Dunkin’ Donuts, with Mr. Halloran snapping photos of Mr. Chu leaving the restaurant and the officer issuing Mr. Halloran a ticket for parking in a crosswalk.
The episode ended in mutual recriminations, with Mr. Halloran getting his ticket dismissed and calling Mr. Chu an “infamous rogue agent,” while Mr. Chu notified the city that he intended to sue for defamation.
In 2008, Mr. Halloran sternly criticized the city’s Buildings Department after it cited him for building a bathroom in the basement of his home without obtaining the required permits. Shortly after winning election, he accused the department of issuing improper citations for illegal basement conversions that had been called in by home repair companies hoping to get work fixing the violations.
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2 Responses
I believe him. It was so obvious if you were watching these ‘workers’. He probably has since been threatened by the union. The whole sanitation department needs revamping. These alleged ‘workers’ take the city almost everyday ‘for a ride’. Just yesterday, my husband saw a truck with two workers in the same spot for more than an hour!!! Who knows how long they really sat there. Today, was alternate side – for what reason?!? I saw one of these sweepers, riding merrily down the street in the middle of the road – what could he do already between the ice and the fresh snow that was falling?!?
Until his charges I had never heard of Councilman Daniel J. Halloran, who after reading the Times story seems like a nut, not a credible source. It certainly appeared that there was an intentional slowdown, but unless there are credible statements it won’t be proven.
I never knew of Theodism, a neo-pagan faith that draws from pre-Christian tribal religions of northern Europe, until I read of this man. I assume that he’s the first Theodist elected to public office in the US.