Witness says rent voucher forms falsified
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
By STEPHANIE BARRY
sbarry@repub.com
SPRINGFIELD - While thousands of low-income applicants languished for years on local waiting lists for Section 8 vouchers, a lucky few waited hardly at all, according to testimony yesterday in an ongoing corruption trial.
A retired manager with the Springfield Housing Authority told jurors that officials there routinely falsified dates on applications for the federal rent vouchers. Section 8 vouchers are supposed to be distributed on a first-come first-serve basis with a few emergency exceptions for homeless and victims of violence. Predating the form allowed the applicant to avoid the long wait.
"I actually handed them out to people at different times," retired rental assistance manager Betty Watkins told jurors yesterday, under questioning from Assistant U.S. Attorney William M. Welch II. "When I was told to do it."
Though brief, Watkins' testimony marked a merger of two separate public corruption probes: the case of four ex-employees of the Massachusetts Career Development Institute on trial in connection with an alleged no-show job scheme at the taxpayer-funded trade school, and the separate indictment of former housing authority executives accused of fleecing that agency for millions.
On trial in federal court are former trade school executive director Gerald A. Phillips, 50; retired president Giuseppe Polimeni, 53; former payroll clerk Jamie Dwyer, 53; and alleged no-show worker Luisa Polimeni, 49. They face conspiracy, fraud and other charges.
Watkins' testimony came after an FBI document expert testified earlier that some curious scribblings appeared on the back of the May 2000 voucher application of Gretchen Ortiz, a former trade school student and sexual partner of Phillips.
The imprints on the back, according to testimony: Please ... A.S.A.P. Gerry Phillips MCDI," denoting the shorthand name for the city-run school.
The document expert also told jurors the date on Ortiz' application - May 24, 2000 - had been covered with Wite-Out; the document bore a July 1999 date stamp.
Ortiz, 30, who told jurors Phillips in 2000 got an apartment for her, helped care for her children and gave her a no-show job, also testified Phillips drove her to a housing authority office. There, she met a tall man, under 30, who had her fill out paperwork. Within weeks she had a new apartment on Forest Street, Ortiz said.
Yohanna Maldanado, 22, another former trade school student who had a sexual relationship with Phillips, testified Phillips also told her he could help get her a voucher quickly. He later reported he could not do it because the FBI was investigating the housing authority, she testified Monday.
Former housing authority executive director Raymond B. Asselin was indicted in July along with eight family members, another executive and three former contractors for allegedly stealing over $1 million through scams big and small, including bid-rigging and quarter-swiping from authority laundry machines. A subsequent federal indictment also accused Asselin and others of bumping applicants up the waiting list as favors to local politicians.
The prosecution is expected to rest today; the trial began Jan. 18.
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