June 21–27, 2019 Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 AWP 3
Hammerman innocent
Former CB6 district manager is cleared in raise fl ap
Material girl!
Top dollar for BAM tickets
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By Aidan Graham and
Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
A former longtime Brooklyn
civic leader was found not
guilty in Brooklyn Supreme
Court on June 14 of using bogus
documents to give himself
multiple pay-raises from
the city, which totaling more
than $16,000 annually.
Craig Hammerman, the
former longtime District Manager
of Community Board 6
— which stretches from Park
Slope to Red Hook — was facing
seven years behind bars
for using two colleagues’ signatures
to grant himself four
salary bumps over a threeyear
stretch.
The jury accepted Hammerman’s
defense that, because
he had been authorized
to use the signature for community
board business, he was
allowed to use them in four
raise-requests to the city, between
May 2015 and October
2017, to increase his salary
from $105,180 to $121,931.
“I believed I had the authority
to act on my own,”
Hammerman told the jury
on June 11. “I didn’t think I
had to ask.”
Brooklyn’s top prosecutor
disagreed , slapping Hammerman
with 17 charges — including
forgery — in May
2018, arguing that the raises
were illegal.
“This defendant allegedly
sought to enrich himself with
taxpayer money to which he
was not entitled,” District Attorney
Eric Gonzalez said at
the time. “This was a betrayal
of the public trust that cannot
be tolerated.”
The board’s former chairman
told the jury on June 7
that he had given Hammerman
a scan of his signature
— which Hammerman used
to request a raise in a 2015
letter to the Office of Management
and Budget — but
he never meant it to be used
for pay raises.
“I thought it was implicit
that it was for the sake of convenience,”
said Gary Reilly.
“I didn’t know that I had anything
to do with raises at the
time.”
Hammerman, along with
defense attorney Joyce David,
argued that there were no established
formal limits on his
use of the signatures, and he
was under no obligation to inform
Reilly — or Sayar Lonial,
whose John Handcock
appeared on the three other
documents in question — of
Craig Hammerman
File photo by Tom Callan
the letters.
“It was tradition, custom,
and practice of the board to
pass along raises without explicit
approval of the board,”
he said.
The raises represented
a $16,751 annual increase,
and also increased Hammerman’s
city pension by
almost $10,000 per year —
from $60,499 to $70,134 —
which he is set to receive annually
from age 62 until his
death, according Bruce Farbstein
of the city’s Employee
Retirement System.
After the trial, Hammerman
lamented the idea that
money played into his decision,
arguing that it was his
27 years of public service that
motivated him.
“I was never in it for the
money,” he said. “My record
bores that out.”
Hammeram — who
watched in court as Lonial
suggested that he would not
have granted the raises if he
was asked — suggested that
Lonial’s testimony was more
politically motivated than he
had let on.
“I don’t think it was about
the work performance,” he
said. “That was simply used
as a mask or a cover.”
Hammerman attributed the
ordeal up the toxic working relationship
that he saw develop
during the tail-end of his community
board tenure.
“I think there was a breakdown
in communication. We
ceased to talk to each other
as a human being with kindness
and respect,” he said. “I
think if people learned how
to interact in a more collegial
way would, that would have
created a different working
relationship.”
The jury found Hammerman
not guilty on all
17 counts, allowing him to
avoid a possible seven year
sentence.
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
The Brooklyn Academy
of Music is selling $5,000
prime seat tickets for Madonna’s
17-day tour of her
new album this fall.
The “Material Girl” will
grace the Fort Greene opera
house with the launch of her
new album “Madame X” for
17 nights. Performances will
be held on Sept. 12, 14-15,
17, 19, 21, 22, 24-26, 28, and
Oct. 1-3 and 5-7.
The academy will offer
house seats with special
pre- and post-show receptions
in exchange for the
massive ticket price.
Proceeds will benefit
BAM and are tax deductible,
according to academy
spokesman Bill Kramer.
If you would like to access
the house seats, contact
the academy’s patron
services by calling (718)
636-4182.
Madonna kicks off her tour for her new album “Madame
X” this fall at the Brooklym Academy of Music,
which offers $5,000 tickets for prime house seats.
Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press
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