Hevesi Rips Official's 'Will' Power

By Larry Cohler-esses
New York Daily News
April 22, 2004

It's practically a crime if you die without a will in Brooklyn.

A new report found gross mismanagement at the office of the Kings County public administrator, which handles the roughly $57 million left behind by Brooklynites who make no provision for their estate.

State Controller Alan Hevesi released an audit this week that found Public Administrator Marietta Small withheld money from rightful heirs, miscalculated estate taxes and commissions, made inappropriate disbursements and violated regulations governing fees for lawyers and vendors.

Hevesi's auditors, who examined 10 estates, found that in six, assets had not been collected or credited to the estates "even though [Small] had knowledge of such property."

In one case, Small withheld almost $90,000 in stocks and bonds when she distributed an estate's assets, Hevesi reports.

In another, Small took $4,500 from estate funds to buy memorial plaques at local synagogues for several deceased people though "there was no evidence that the decedent requested such a plaque."

Some of those individuals had been dead for years.

"The public administrator is entrusted with the responsibility to handle the affairs of deceased New Yorkers, and must be held to the highest standards of operations and accountability," said Hevesi. Hevesi's report echoes findings in separate investigations by the Daily News and state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

Those probes found Small's legal counsel, Louis Rosenthal, had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in exorbitant fees without documenting the work he had done.

The state Commission on Judicial Conduct has charged Kings County Surrogate Michael Feinberg with misconduct for approving these fees.

Small responded it was "not reasonable to conclude that estate assets are not being distributed to rightful beneficiaries" based on Hevesi's limited sampling of cases.

The public administrator's office is an arm of Surrogate Court. Feinberg named Small to her $75,000 job in 1997.