Russo received a $10,000 grant via DeFrancisco about nine months later to start a teen jazz band.
View full sizeAndrew Russo kisses his wife, Natalia, after claiming victory in the Republican Party primary for the 49th Senate District. Russo, who held his victory party at the Embassy Suites in DeWitt, will run against incumbent state Sen. David Valesky, D-Oneida, in the Nov. 2 general election.Syracuse, NY -- When the invitations to a reception honoring Sen. John DeFrancisco arrived in mailboxes in late 2005, leaders of some local arts groups dutifully wrote checks for the $250-per-person fund-raiser.
One of those was Andrew Russo, who is now running for state Senate in the 49th District, which borders DeFrancisco’s. Russo wrote a $250 check from the account of his music education nonprofit, Music Journeys Inc. Nonprofits are prohibited from giving money to political campaigns.
Russo received a $10,000 grant via DeFrancisco about nine months later to start a teen jazz band. Russo blames the drawing of the check from the nonprofit’s account in December 2005 on his own “naivete.”
“I sent a check back from Music Journeys because we had received an invitation,” Russo said. “I understood later that if I did that in the future, it had to come from my own personal account.”
In fact, Russo said, he got a call last December from the state attorney general’s office asking about the donation. He said he was cautioned that nonprofits can’t donate to political campaigns.
The Citizens for DeFrancisco campaign filings show that the money was not returned. The campaign committee did refund $500 to the Syracuse Children’s Theater received the same day as the Music Journeys check.
DeFrancisco said he doesn’t know why the money wasn’t sent back. He said he doesn’t even recall the reception held nearly five years ago.
Another nonprofit, Syracuse Winterfest Inc., is also listed on DeFrancisco’s campaign documents as donating $250 just a few days after Music Journeys did. Bill Cooper, the director of Winterfest, said he wrote the check from his own account and doesn’t know why it appears as Winterfest on the disclosure statements. Cooper also said he didn’t know at the time that the $250 would go to DeFrancisco’s campaign fund.
“I thought it was just a reception, just food and drinks,” Cooper said. “I personally went to the thing because he had given some money to Winterfest.”
Russo, making his first run for public office, is challenging incumbent Democrat David Valesky on a platform of fiscal reform, and has been critical of the so-called member items like the one his group received. In his campaign literature, he says he would “not seek nor accept” member items “until New York is once again on sound fiscal footing.”
He said in an interview that he is not against member items, but said the process of distributing such grants needs to be more fair and more transparent. “It’s the community’s money, and they should decide where it goes each year,” Russo said.
State Senator John DeFranciscoDeFrancisco, whose efforts to bring taxpayer money to support music in Central New York earned him a lifetime achievement award in the New Times Syracuse Area Music Awards, said the donation from Russo’s nonprofit and the awarding of a member item were unrelated.
“For anyone to suggest that a $250 donation is the reason for getting a grant is absolutely absurd,” DeFrancisco said.
Russo, a concert pianist, founded Music Journeys in 2001. In addition to the state grant, Music Journeys also received at least three $10,000 grants in the past five years from the federal National Endowment for the Arts. The grants paid for concerts and weeklong residencies in Syracuse-area schools and for Russo to make a compact disc with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 2005, Manlius Pebble Hill student Noah Kellman went to Russo, his piano teacher, with the idea of reviving a youth jazz band in Onondaga County. The two then met with DeFrancisco, who in September 2006 signed off on the grant.
Russo assembled the 18-student Young Lions of Central New York, hired local music teacher Joe Colombo to be the conductor and coordinated an overnight trip to Manhattan, where the band played at a Latin American cultural center.
Colombo received a total of $6,650. Russo’s wife, Natalia Chepurnova, was paid $470 from the grant for shooting photographs and designing a brochure. “What I was trying to do was get the best price possible,” Russo said, “and my wife was willing to do more than I could get out of anybody else.”
Kellman, now a jazz studies major at State University College at Purchase, said the year of playing in the Young Lions was an experience he won’t forget. “We got to play in the city,” Kellman said. “It was really, really amazing.”
Contact Glenn Coin at gcoin@syracuse.com or 470-3251.