Just what we need - more secrecy, cronyism, vindictiveness, and ignoring the law....
This is just the first four paragraphs that I marked when I read the article. Go read the whole thing. It's appalling, and one can only assume he would operate the same way in any office.
Not long after his second term began, Giuliani sought to make more lasting changes. This time, he went straight for the city charter. Over the past forty years, only two commissions had been held to revise New York's governing document. During his time in office, Giuliani convened three. What's more, although the previous panels had been blue-chip affairs, Giuliani's commissions weren't very prestigious. The first, launched in 1998, was chaired by Giuliani's longtime friend Peter Powers. It was dominated by members who were undoubtedly experienced in government, but who happened to have acquired that experience by working for Rudy Giuliani. It was advised by attorneys from Giuliani's Law Department and usually met in secret. One of the first things it considered was a proposal dear to the mayor: abolishing the Independent Budget Office and the Office of the Public Advocate.
In 1996, Doug Criscitello, a former federal budget analyst, started work as the first director of the Independent Budget Office. Criscitello expected to put his auditors to work immediately, but then he received a surprising communication from the mayor's office. It was a memorandum informing him that all the IBO's requests for data had to be referred to City Hall—despite plain language in the city charter stating that the IBO could get information directly from municipal agencies. Puzzled, Criscitello contacted Giuliani's lawyers, who reaffirmed the message. "They weren't nasty about it. They were very matter-of-fact," said Criscitello. " 'Here's how we've decided to interpret the charter, and if you disagree there's a legal process you can go through and we can get a judge to rule on this.'" Eventually, the IBO sued the mayor's office for the data, and in 1998 a state judge ruled that City Hall had violated the city charter and ordered it to start cooperating. Meanwhile, Giuliani had bought two years of time.
Giuliani also unashamedly flouted the First Amendment to crush dissent both inside and outside his government. He lost thirty-five First Amendment cases in court. His administration was found to have shut down or delayed legal protests, illegally prevented its own employees from making protected public statements, and illegally prevented New Yorkers from gathering on the steps of City Hall. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals took the unusual step of reprimanding the administration, noting, "e would be ostriches if we failed to take judicial notice of the heavy stream of First Amendment litigation generated by New York City in recent years."
In all of these cases, Giuliani was ultimately checked by the courts, even if his strategy had gained him valuable time. Sometimes, though, he got away with skirting the law because no one was able or inclined to restrain him. In 2000, when an off-duty security guard named Patrick Dorismond was shot and killed by undercover police officers, Giuliani released details from Dorismond's sealed juvenile record at a press conference—in plain defiance of state law. "The media would not want a picture presented of an altar boy," he said, "when in fact, maybe it isn't an altar boy, it's some other situation that may justify, more closely, what the police officer did." (Dorismond had, in fact, once been an altar boy.) In its defense, City Hall claimed—erroneously—that victims had no right to privacy after they were dead. Then it emerged that the administration had revealed details from sealed files to the media before, including the records of at least two police victims who were still alive. Although Mark Green wanted to sue the mayor's office for the leaks, the public advocate lacked the power to do so. The state attorney general didn't choose to pursue the case. Giuliani and his officials were never penalized.