Myerson Quits N.Y. Job; Misconduct Cited

Bess Myerson, a former Miss America and a close friend of Mayor Edward I. Koch, resigned as cultural affairs commissioner following a report that she had engaged in “serious misconduct,” the mayor announced Thursday.

Koch said an investigator reported that the misconduct involved Myerson’s hiring of Sukhreet Gabel, the daughter of state Supreme Court Justice Hortense Gabel. The judge presided over the 1983 divorce of Carl Capasso, Myerson’s companion and a major city contractor.

The Supreme Court is New York’s trial-level court.

Myerson has been romantically linked with Capasso for several years; Capasso’s ex-wife has said that Myerson is responsible for the breakup of the marriage.

“Although, in retrospect and with hindsight, Ms. Myerson believes that it was a mistake of judgment to have hired Judge Gabel’s daughter, Ms. Myerson did not intend to, and indeed did not, do any wrongful acts,” said Fred Hafetz, her attorney.

Koch said at a City Hall news conference that the report also found improprieties in Myerson’s use of city employees for personal purposes and in her failure to report gifts received from Capasso, who did millions of dollars worth of business with the city.

Receiving the gifts was not improper, but they should have been reported, he said.

Convicted of Tax Evasion

Capasso pleaded guilty in January to tax evasion and was sentenced to four years in federal prison and fined $500,000.

Koch said the investigator, former federal judge Harold R. Tyler Jr., found no “substantial evidence” that Myerson had influenced the awarding of contracts to Capasso.

He said Myerson “chose not to speak with Judge Tyler on a voluntary, non-immunized basis, a fact which Judge Tyler stated he did not hold against her in assessing the evidence.”

Koch declined to go into detail about the alleged misdeeds, saying Tyler had asked him to keep his report confidential because the federal government was investigating many of the same matters.

Myerson was Miss America in 1945. Koch met her 20 years ago, when he was a city councilman and she was commissioner of consumer affairs under then-Mayor John V. Lindsay.

“I have deep sympathy for her position,” Koch said. “Acceptance of her resignation is personally painful, but as mayor I know it is the only appropriate thing to do.”

Koch said the city’s lawyer, Peter Zimroth, told Hafetz of Tyler’s finding Wednesday night and Myerson called him at Gracie Mansion and resigned.

Myerson, 62, took a 90-day leave of absence from her $83,000-a-year job on Jan. 12 after invoking the Fifth Amendment in a grand jury investigation of Capasso.

Koch then assigned Tyler to investigate why Myerson declined to talk to the grand jury.