Yonkers Officials Celebrate Court Ruling

All during his successful race for mayor of Yonkers last fall, Councilman Henry Spallone predicted that the Supreme Court would overturn the stiff fines imposed by a federal judge on him and three other council members for their defiance of a court-ordered public housing desegregation plan.

On Wednesday, by a 5-4 vote, the high tribunal made him a prophet. And, for Spallone and two of his City Council allies, it was a time for jubilation and toasts with pink champagne.

“The decision had to go our way,” Spallone crowed at a crowded City Hall news conference.

Yonkers, an aging industrial city on the Hudson River, captured national attention in 1988 when Spallone and three of his colleagues on the seven-member council refused to accept a court-mandated consent decree requiring the city to build integrated public housing in predominantly white neighborhoods.

In a move to force compliance, U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand in Manhattan imposed heavy contempt of court fines on the city and the four recalcitrant councilmen. Eventually, the housing plan was approved by a 4-3 vote. But, by that time, the city’s fines had exceeded $800,000, threatening it with bankruptcy, and the levies against the individual councilmen hit $3,500 each.

Spallone used his die-hard opposition as a campaign weapon to unseat former Mayor Nicholas Wasicsko, who favored compliance with the court order, in last November’s mayoral race. Voters also reelected anti-compliance Councilmen Edward J. Fagan Jr. and Peter Chema, but the fourth defiant council member, Nicholas Longo, was defeated.

Although the Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday applies only to the councilmen’s fines and does not directly affect the housing plan, the ruling provided a big psychological boost for Spallone and his council allies in their attempts to overturn the consent decree.

“It’s an emotional lift,” Fagan said.

Elizabeth Hemingway, a board member of the Yonkers chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, said that she feared Judge Sand may have to step in and reimpose fines on the city to get the new public housing built.

“They’re going to defy this as much as they can,” she said, referring to Spallone and his council allies, “because now they feel justified in doing so. The black community is going to have to demonstrate somehow to show our concern.”