Another Labor Boss Faces Corruption Charges

The New York Times (registration required) reports that Brian M. McLaughlin, the Boss of the country’s largest municipal labor council, is expected to surrender on federal corruption charges.

Mr. McLaughlin, 54, the president of the New York City Central Labor Council and a seven-term Democratic state assemblyman from Queens, has been under investigation in a possible scheme to rig bids on multimillion-dollar city contracts for streetlights, officials have said.

Investigators were also looking at whether he received improper payments from electrical contractors.

Mr. McLaughlin would probably be the only person charged today but that the investigation, by the F.B.I., the federal Labor Department, the city’s Department of Investigation and the United States Attorney’s office in Manhattan, was continuing.

Mr. McLaughlin’s group, which represents a million workers in 400 union locals, has been a prominent supporter of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, lending its weight both to Mr. Bloomberg’s re-election bid last year and to the mayor’s ill-fated plan for a football stadium on the West Side of Manhattan.

The F.B.I. raided Mr. McLaughlin’s union office in March, as well as his Assembly district office in Flushing. In August, Mr. McLaughlin went on paid leave from his union post, which he has held for 10 years. Although he had publicly entertained the notion of running for mayor himself not long ago, he announced in January that he would not run for re-election to the Assembly this year, in order to devote more time to the labor movement. Mr. McLaughlin, a former electrician, was also the longtime director of the street lamps division of the city’s main union of electrical workers.