FOCUS: ESTATE COMMISSIONS
Court appointee defends juicy fees
Public administrator says high pay reflects the bad with the good
Published: May 10, 2009, 12:30 am
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In the world of politics and patronage, Acea Mosey has one of the true plums.
As Erie County’s court-appointed public administrator, Mosey oversees the settlement of estates, hundreds of them, for people who die without relatives or heirs.
And she gets paid handsomely to do it.
Exactly how much is hard to determine, but her caseload is big enough to generate more than $600,000 in potential commissions over the course of about three years.
Mosey, a former Erie County Water Authority commissioner active in Democratic Party politics, says her true compensation is closer to $180,000 a year and not all of that money goes to her.
“There’s a lot of bad with the good,” Mosey said of the estates and the profit or loss they generate.
Unlike the public administrator in Niagara County, who steered estate work to his wife and brother, Mosey, who was appointed by Surrogate Court Judge Barbara Howe, is not accused of doing anything improper.
The state court system allows and even encourages Erie County’s practice of awarding its estate work to a single, private practice lawyer working strictly on commission.
And the same is true of the one private attorney she in turn hires to do most of her legal work.
“We’ve developed a bit of a specialty,” said Thomas F. Hewner, the Buffalo estate lawyer assigned to about 60 percent of the estates Mosey doles out to other lawyers.
The “we” is Cole, Sorrentino, Hurley, Hewner and Gambino, a prominent downtown law firm with close ties to the Democratic Party. The firm includes former Erie County Democratic Chairman Vincent J. Sorrentino. Hewner has been doing this work for decades, most recently as Mosey’s counsel and before her, with Victor Farley, the former Erie County Republican chairman who once served as public administrator.
“I try to rise above it,” Hewner said of the perception that he gets work because of his firm’s political ties. “I get the bulk of the work because I’ve developed a specialty, and I’ve developed the resources to get the work done.”
Competitors tend to agree that, with Hewner, the county’s unsettled estates are in good hands.
“He’s one of the best lawyers in the city,” said Catherine T. Wettlaufer, a prominent local estate lawyer.
Even Farley, who lost his highly coveted job after Howe got elected, speaks highly of Hewner. He also defends the current system of giving most of the estate work, small and large cases, to one lawyer.
“If you’re getting the bad ones, you should also get the good ones,” Farley said of the large number of estates Hewner handles.
Farley makes the argument that, because the cost rises and falls with the amount of estates, a commission-based system is less expensive than the alternative, a staff of salaried government officials.
“It’s more ad hoc,” Farley said of the current system. “It’s also the cheapest way to do it.”
Howe, who appointed Mosey, a longtime political supporter, would not comment on the debate over whether a commission- based public administrator is better than the salaried public administrators used in other counties.
“It’s not my place to have a view about whether something other than the law should be the law,” she said in a statement.
Apparently, state officials agree.
The same state law that regulates and restricts compensation for most court appointees specifically exempts public administrators in Erie and other urban counties in New York.
One of the stated reasons is cost and efficiency.
Mosey is quick to note that, yes, she takes in about $180,000 a year in commissions, but a good chunk of that money goes to pay for her staff and expenses, which she estimates at about $75,000 a year.
She also is obligated to give part of her commissions, at least the ones dating back years, to Farley.
“It’s not as simple as it looks,” Mosey said of her job.
Mosey doesn’t like or agree with the suggestion that her office is still a patronage plum. She talks at length about improvements she has made to the office, including a major computerization of the public administrator’s records.
“I’m proud of our office,” she said. “I’ve poured a lot of money into this office, and I think it shows.”
Together, she and Hewner close dozens of unsettled estates each year. Some are easily resolved. Others take years.
What they do is intervene in estates where the deceased has no known relatives or heirs. Their job is to collect the individual’s assets — cash, insurance or real estate — and then distribute them to any eligible heirs they can find.
“The bulk of the estates are small,” said Hewner. “In many cases, we’re basically just burying people.”
While the job of public administrator is largely removed from the public eye, its role in providing lucrative commissions for private lawyers has been at the core of more than one headline-grabbing Surrogate Court scandal.
The courts, especially those downstate, have a legacy of corruption and misconduct that dates back far enough that Robert
F. Kennedy, a New York senator in the 1960s, once compared the courts to “a political toll booth exacting tribute from widows and orphans.”
Decades later, the wrongdoing still exists. Just last year, Nora Anderson, Manhattan’s newly elected Surrogate Court judge, was indicted on felony charges of trying to conceal an illegal campaign contribution.
Anderson has yet to take office.
Not all of the courts’ colorful history has its roots in the five boroughs.
In 1989, an Erie County grand jury called the local Surrogate Court “antiquated” and lambasted a patronage-rich system that doled out guardian-ships and other estate work to a small group of lawyers.
Even now, after a lot of reform, the business of settling estates in Erie County still rests in the hands of a few. And Mosey is chief among them.
“I don’t see my job as patronage,” she said last week. “I think I’m qualified, and I take my job very seriously. I also think I’m good at what I do.”
pfairbanks@buffnews.com
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