On December 9, 1907, Governor Hughes removed Mr. Ahearn from office. In his notice of ejection, Governor Hughes said that justice to Mr. Ahearn required that attention should be called to the fact that “it is not shown, and it has not been claimed, that he has converted public money or property to his own use, or has personally profited in an unlawful manner by his official conduct.” But Governor Hughes said that he did find that the charges of maladministration, remissness and grave abuses existing under Ahearn’s administration had been proved. Mr. Ahearn was, in reality, a victim of the Tammany system. A few days later, the Manhattan Aldermen reelected him—a move that was contested by taking the case to the Court of Appeals, which in November, 1909, sustained his removal and disapproved of his reelection. Meanwhile, he had continued in office.
Another conspicuous Tammany leader removed from office was Louis F. Haffen, president of the Borough of the Bronx. He had held that office since January 1, 1898, and had been last reelected in 1905. Mr. Haffen was, as we have seen, one of the regency of three controlling Tammany Hall immediately previous to Charles F. Murphy’s assumption of sole leadership. He was a Sachem of the Tammany Society.
In November, 1908, twenty-two charges were presented to Governor Hughes by John Purroy Mitchel and Ernest Gallagher, Commissioners of Accounts of New York City, at the instance of Mayor McClellan.[3] The City Club and the Citizens’ Union jointly filed charges against Mr. Haffen and prosecuted them. Governor Hughes, basing his findings and action on the report of Wallace Macfarlane, his Commissioner who heard the evidence, found that the following charges had been established:
That Mr. Haffen had greatly abused his discretionary power in failing to enforce more stringently the time clauses of contracts for public improvements, and that the time statements in his certificates to the Finance Department were in many cases untrue; that the public funds were wasted by loading the payrolls of his department with a large number of superfluous employees; that there was political jobbery in the building of the Bronx Borough Court House; the appointed architect was essentially a politician without professional qualifications who had hired others to do the architectural work. The granite contract for this building was awarded to the Buck’s Harbor Granite Company, represented in New York by a Bronx Tammany district leader.
Among an array of further charges against Mr. Haffen that were found true was the charge that he was financially interested in the Sound View Land and Improvement Company, “and that his official action in connection with the Clason’s Point Road was induced by his desire to increase the value of his own and his associates’ holdings in this company, which had acquired a tract of forty-one acres with a frontage of 2,500 feet on the proposed road, with a view to that improvement.”
Another charge established against Mr. Haffen was that as borough president and chairman of the local board of Morrisania, Mr. Haffen had recommended the acquisition by New York City of certain property at Hunt’s Point on the East River Shore, for use as a public bathing place. This property, Governor Hughes declared, was utterly unsuitable for the purpose because of its proximity to a trunk sewer.
Governor Hughes set forth that the Hunt’s Point transaction was “a highly discreditable affair. This shore property was about five acres in extent, and the assessed valuation was about $4,300. During the condemnation proceedings the attorney for the company which owned it purchased it from his client for about $86,000.[4] It was then transferred to another company, and was acquired by the city at a cost of about $247,000, the value fixed by the condemnation commissioners.” Thus the award for the Hunt’s Point property was fifty-eight times the assessed value, and many times the actual value.
Other charges against Mr. Haffen were sustained. Overtime charges on contracts had been liquidated arbitrarily; on one occasion $70,000 was improperly remitted to “Bart” Dunn who previously had contributed $1,000 to the Haffen campaign fund.[5] Payments were made to contractors on absolutely false statements certified from Mr. Haffen’s office. Extravagance in the Bureau of Public Buildings and Offices resulted in an estimated waste of $175,000 of an available $292,000 in six years of Mr. Haffen’s administration.[6] Contract juggling was common. Worn-out Belgian blocks were sold by the borough to contractors and then repurchased by the city as new. In cases where contractors were friends of Mr. Haffen, contract specifications were so drawn as to exclude competitors. Streets were laid in irregular routes so as to aid land development schemes in which Tammany men held control. Highway contract specifications were deliberately violated by the contractors. The labors of the maintenance force in the Bureau of Highways were wasted to such an extent that the investigators estimated a loss of 50 per cent. in efficiency, or $1,600,000 in money, within six years.[7] A similar waste of $300,000 was attributed to the Bureau of Sewers in the same period.
Borough President Haffen was ousted by Governor Hughes on August 29, 1909. When removed from office, Haffen complained, “This is a fine reward for twenty-six and a half years of honest, faithful and efficient service to the people.…”
Another high city official who went out of office during this time was Joseph Bermel, president of the Borough of Queens. He hastily resigned while under charges.