Yonkers Held in Contempt Over Defiance on Housing
An angry federal judge, declaring that the “moment of truth” was at hand, ruled Tuesday that the city of Yonkers was in contempt of court for resisting housing desegregation.
“There does have to come a moment of truth, a moment of reckoning when the city of Yonkers seeks not to become a national symbol of defiance of civil rights, heaping shame upon shame upon itself,” Judge Leonard B. Sand lectured officials of New York state’s fourth largest city.
With furious Yonkers residents waiting outside the door of his sixth-floor Manhattan courtroom, the judge imposed a $100 fine on Yonkers and decreed that it will double daily, which means the penalty easily would wipe out the city’s $337-million operating budget after 22 days.
“The city of Yonkers is in contempt because it chooses to be in contempt,” Sand said. “It does not find itself inadvertently in that position.”
Councilmen Cited
In a bitter milestone in a 7-year federal battle to integrate Yonkers’ housing, Sand found that three of four city councilmen who voted against the plan at a tumultuous meeting Monday night were in contempt. A separate hearing for the other councilman was scheduled for today because the judge ruled he was not adequately represented by legal counsel.
“I think this is an extraordinary circumstance,” the judge told the city officials and their lawyers. “I know of no parallel for a court to say to an elected official you are in contempt of court and subject to a penal fine or prison by the way you can vote.”
” . . . The people of Yonkers are entitled to have these matters end,” the judge added. “You have to have a community where people can live together. You have other circumstances.”
Lawyers for the city and the councilmen said they would immediately file an appeal.
Under the judge’s ruling, the councilmen will pay $500 a day to the federal court until Aug. 10. After that date, if the officials remain defiant, they face sentencing to prison.
In 1985, Sand ruled that Yonkers officials had illegally segregated the city’s housing and schools for four decades. It was the first time racial discrimination in housing was tied to segregated education. Yonkers complied with school integration. But three years after the judge ordered 200 units of low-income housing and 800 units of middle-income housing be erected in white neighborhoods, the city was still ignoring his order.
And on Monday night, the City Council voted 4 to 3 to continue ignoring the desegregation order. That meeting was so heated that Michael Sussman, a lawyer for the NAACP, complained about it to Sand in court. He said he and other lawyers were directed to appear at a door to gain entrance, but were confronted by a crowd of 125 jeering people, and after 25 minutes were told by city officials that “there was no room for us at the meeting.”
‘Get a New Mayor!’
The bitter feelings carried over to Tuesday’s court session. Outside the federal courthouse in Manhattan’s Foley Square, Nicholas C. Wasicsko, the city’s 29-year-old mayor, who voted in favor of the desegregation plan Monday night, spoke with reporters as about 100 Yonkers residents chanted: “Don’t get mad. Get a new mayor!”
“Most of Yonkers is home at work today and they’ll come home tonight and see this on TV and be disgusted,” Wasicsko said.
“These elected officials are flirting with anarchy,” the mayor charged. “We are sworn to uphold the Constitution when we are elected to office, and I will expect nothing less from the council.”
Wasicsko won office by promising to resist Sand’s order to the end, but was sobered when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the city’s appeal of Sand’s integration order.
The mayor said he expected one or more city council members to change their votes by the end of the week, purging Yonkers of its contempt of court citation.
But after Sand’s ruling, Councilman Nicholas Longo, remained defiant. “I think he (the judge) is wrong in what he’s trying to do.”
‘Remedy Is Poor’
” . . . I think his motivation, his remedy is poor. He has destroyed the school system, which has gone from 40% minority to 70% minority,” Longo, one of those ordered to start paying a $500-a-day fine, charged. “His dictates have ruined that system and now he’s trying to ruin neighborhoods.”
But Councilman Edward Fagan, who also was held in contempt along with Councilman Peter Chema, was less strident. “I am a poker player. I won’t show my cards,” he said.
The fourth member of the council, Vice Mayor Henry Spallone was given a day’s adjournment to hire a lawyer.
There was little doubt that Sand was going to hold the council members in contempt as the hearing proceeded.
“The issues before the city councilman yesterday were very clear issues,” the judge observed. “The alternative was complying with the court order or not complying and be in contempt. It was crystal clear.”
He called the council’s defiance “the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
At one point, a lawyer asked for a two-week adjournment because he had just been retained.
Request Rejected
“You don’t wait for two weeks while the house is burning,” Sand countered, rejecting the request. “You don’t wait while the bond rating company is going to act in a way that will have extraordinary bad circumstances.”
On Tuesday, Moody’s Investors Service placed Yonkers’ bond rating, the worst in New York state, under review.
Outside the courtroom, angry Yonkers residents congregated.
“The judge lives in Pound Ridge (a wealthy section of Westchester County). All his neighbors ride horses,” fumed John D’Agnillo, who said he had lived in Yonkers all of his 50 years. “I can’t remember the last time I rode a horse--though I lost a lot betting on them.”
