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Money is so tight, Representative Gregory W. Meeks says, he does not have a savings account with more than a few thousand dollars in it. And yet Mr. Meeks, one of New York City’s most prominent Democrats, lives a life worthy of a jet-setter.
When he travels, he stays in luxury hotels like the Mondrian South Beach in Miami and the Ritz-Carlton in San Juan, P.R. He drives a Lexus, leased by the federal government, at a cost of $1,000 a month. He eats expensive meals at BLT Steak in Washington and Docks Oyster Bar in Manhattan, among other trendy spots.
And just a few years ago, he bought a $1 million house built for him in Queens by a local developer and campaign contributor.
Mr. Meeks forcefully defends his spending, saying demands on him by Democratic Party leaders to raise money have necessitated travel far outside his working-class Queens district.
“I do fund-raisers where the people with the money are,” he said, adding that he was very careful to honor all campaign finance laws. “I am not going to raise the money in my district that I need to be a player here in Washington.”
But his spending habits have drawn the scrutiny of ethics watchdogs and regulators, who have questioned whether Mr. Meeks is using campaign money to support a lifestyle that he otherwise could not afford. In 2008, he was fined for using campaign funds for personal expenses.
“It is a pattern,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, although she added that Mr. Meeks was far from alone in Congress. “If a member of Congress wants an expensive lifestyle, he should have chosen a different career.”
Mr. Meeks’s new home — built for him in 2006 in the St. Albans section of Queens by a real estate developer named Richard Dennis — is also drawing scrutiny. Mr. Meeks and his wife paid $830,000 for the imposing two-story home, which is far larger than most in the neighborhood.
“When it was getting built, I thought it was going to be four houses,” said Danny Madison, who lives nearby.
City records, and an independent real estate appraiser contacted by The New York Times, suggest the house was worth more than $1 million at the time he bought it.
“At $830,000, anyway you slice it, it was substantially below market,” said the appraiser, Kevin Donegan from Appraisal Source in Floral Park, N.Y., who examined photographs of the house, records from comparable sales in the neighborhood and city records. “He appears to have gotten a very, very good deal.”
Mr. Dennis and Mr. Meeks said in separate interviews that the developer had heard that Mr. Meeks, who had been living in Far Rockaway, had wanted a bigger house and offered to build him one on land Mr. Dennis owned in Queens.
“I have got the perfect spot for you,” Mr. Dennis recalled telling Mr. Meeks, who he has known since around 2000 and whose campaign accounts he has contributed to six times, for a total of $3,250.
Mr. Meeks, whose district includes Jamaica and Far Rockaway, sold the Far Rockaway home he inherited from his parents and combined that with a mortgage from JPMorgan Chase to buy the house.
Mr. Dennis and Mr. Meeks rejected any suggestion that Mr. Meeks had been given a special deal or that the offer was in response to any favor that Mr. Dennis had requested.
“He paid what the house was worth, not a penny more or a penny less,” Mr. Dennis said. “I don’t go to politicians for favors, whether they are Republicans or Democrats.”
Mr. Meeks earns a $174,000 salary from the House, and as recently as 2007, his wife, Simone-Marie Meeks, had reported a salary of $79,000. She now works at the New York Academy of Medicine. He would not say how much she earns.
But his most recent financial disclosure report, filed in May 2009, indicated that he had no checking or savings account worth more than $5,000, or any investment account worth more than $1,000.
Mr. Meeks confirmed that he effectively had no savings — citing the cost of his home and his commitment to send his two daughters to college without debt.
“I live like most of the people in my district, paycheck to paycheck,” Mr. Meeks said. “Whatever I had I put into this house so I could have a decent place to live.”
But Mr. Meeks, a popular figure in his district who has cruised to re-election in recent years, is a prolific fund-raiser: he raised and spent slightly over $1 million in the last election cycle, despite the fact that he had only token opposition, according to campaign finance disclosure reports.
In the current 2009-10 election cycle, he has already spent nearly all of the roughly $490,000 he had raised as of the end of December, even though no candidate in either party has emerged to run against him.
A review of the expenditures of other members of New York’s Congressional delegation shows that many do spend on dinners and travel.
But while other members of the New York delegation, like Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Joseph Crowley, also report multiple meals at high-end restaurants, with a few exceptions they do not report tabs at expensive out-of-state resort destinations as frequently as Mr. Meeks does.
Mr. Meeks’s hotel visits paid by his campaign and political action committee since 2007 include stops at Hotel Playa Bonita in Panama; the MGM Grand, Mirage, Monte Carlo and Bellagio hotels in Las Vegas; the Buccaneer Hotel in St. Croix, V.I.; and multiple hotels in South Beach and San Juan.
Mr. Meeks said all of the spending complied with campaign finance rules, an assessment that Ms. Sloan said she could not dispute.
Mr. Meeks said the attention being focused on his political affairs, including a series of articles recently in The New York Post questioning what happened to money he helped raise that was donated to a Hurricane Katrina charity, was being driven by conservative groups, like the National Legal and Policy Center in Virginia, that are trying to damage the reputation of Democrats.
Ken Boehm, chairman of the center, acknowledged that he had been investigating Mr. Meeks’s finances but disputed that his investigations were directed at only Democrats.
“If he wants to yell and point fingers, we say fine, just answer the facts,” Mr. Boehm said.
In early 2008, Mr. Meeks agreed to pay fines totaling $63,000 after the Federal Election Commission found that in 2003 and 2004, he used campaign funds for personal expenses, including $6,200 on a personal trainer and $9,800 to lease and repair a vehicle that Mr. Meeks could not demonstrate was used for any campaign work.
As part of the agreement with the commission, Mr. Meeks acknowledged that the expenditures were “personal expenses.”
Karen Zraick contributed reporting from New York.
When he travels, he stays in luxury hotels like the Mondrian South Beach in Miami and the Ritz-Carlton in San Juan, P.R. He drives a Lexus, leased by the federal government, at a cost of $1,000 a month. He eats expensive meals at BLT Steak in Washington and Docks Oyster Bar in Manhattan, among other trendy spots.
And just a few years ago, he bought a $1 million house built for him in Queens by a local developer and campaign contributor.
Mr. Meeks forcefully defends his spending, saying demands on him by Democratic Party leaders to raise money have necessitated travel far outside his working-class Queens district.
“I do fund-raisers where the people with the money are,” he said, adding that he was very careful to honor all campaign finance laws. “I am not going to raise the money in my district that I need to be a player here in Washington.”
But his spending habits have drawn the scrutiny of ethics watchdogs and regulators, who have questioned whether Mr. Meeks is using campaign money to support a lifestyle that he otherwise could not afford. In 2008, he was fined for using campaign funds for personal expenses.
“It is a pattern,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, although she added that Mr. Meeks was far from alone in Congress. “If a member of Congress wants an expensive lifestyle, he should have chosen a different career.”
Mr. Meeks’s new home — built for him in 2006 in the St. Albans section of Queens by a real estate developer named Richard Dennis — is also drawing scrutiny. Mr. Meeks and his wife paid $830,000 for the imposing two-story home, which is far larger than most in the neighborhood.
“When it was getting built, I thought it was going to be four houses,” said Danny Madison, who lives nearby.
City records, and an independent real estate appraiser contacted by The New York Times, suggest the house was worth more than $1 million at the time he bought it.
“At $830,000, anyway you slice it, it was substantially below market,” said the appraiser, Kevin Donegan from Appraisal Source in Floral Park, N.Y., who examined photographs of the house, records from comparable sales in the neighborhood and city records. “He appears to have gotten a very, very good deal.”
Mr. Dennis and Mr. Meeks said in separate interviews that the developer had heard that Mr. Meeks, who had been living in Far Rockaway, had wanted a bigger house and offered to build him one on land Mr. Dennis owned in Queens.
“I have got the perfect spot for you,” Mr. Dennis recalled telling Mr. Meeks, who he has known since around 2000 and whose campaign accounts he has contributed to six times, for a total of $3,250.
Mr. Meeks, whose district includes Jamaica and Far Rockaway, sold the Far Rockaway home he inherited from his parents and combined that with a mortgage from JPMorgan Chase to buy the house.
Mr. Dennis and Mr. Meeks rejected any suggestion that Mr. Meeks had been given a special deal or that the offer was in response to any favor that Mr. Dennis had requested.
“He paid what the house was worth, not a penny more or a penny less,” Mr. Dennis said. “I don’t go to politicians for favors, whether they are Republicans or Democrats.”
Mr. Meeks earns a $174,000 salary from the House, and as recently as 2007, his wife, Simone-Marie Meeks, had reported a salary of $79,000. She now works at the New York Academy of Medicine. He would not say how much she earns.
But his most recent financial disclosure report, filed in May 2009, indicated that he had no checking or savings account worth more than $5,000, or any investment account worth more than $1,000.
Mr. Meeks confirmed that he effectively had no savings — citing the cost of his home and his commitment to send his two daughters to college without debt.
“I live like most of the people in my district, paycheck to paycheck,” Mr. Meeks said. “Whatever I had I put into this house so I could have a decent place to live.”
But Mr. Meeks, a popular figure in his district who has cruised to re-election in recent years, is a prolific fund-raiser: he raised and spent slightly over $1 million in the last election cycle, despite the fact that he had only token opposition, according to campaign finance disclosure reports.
In the current 2009-10 election cycle, he has already spent nearly all of the roughly $490,000 he had raised as of the end of December, even though no candidate in either party has emerged to run against him.
A review of the expenditures of other members of New York’s Congressional delegation shows that many do spend on dinners and travel.
But while other members of the New York delegation, like Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Joseph Crowley, also report multiple meals at high-end restaurants, with a few exceptions they do not report tabs at expensive out-of-state resort destinations as frequently as Mr. Meeks does.
Mr. Meeks’s hotel visits paid by his campaign and political action committee since 2007 include stops at Hotel Playa Bonita in Panama; the MGM Grand, Mirage, Monte Carlo and Bellagio hotels in Las Vegas; the Buccaneer Hotel in St. Croix, V.I.; and multiple hotels in South Beach and San Juan.
Mr. Meeks said all of the spending complied with campaign finance rules, an assessment that Ms. Sloan said she could not dispute.
Mr. Meeks said the attention being focused on his political affairs, including a series of articles recently in The New York Post questioning what happened to money he helped raise that was donated to a Hurricane Katrina charity, was being driven by conservative groups, like the National Legal and Policy Center in Virginia, that are trying to damage the reputation of Democrats.
Ken Boehm, chairman of the center, acknowledged that he had been investigating Mr. Meeks’s finances but disputed that his investigations were directed at only Democrats.
“If he wants to yell and point fingers, we say fine, just answer the facts,” Mr. Boehm said.
In early 2008, Mr. Meeks agreed to pay fines totaling $63,000 after the Federal Election Commission found that in 2003 and 2004, he used campaign funds for personal expenses, including $6,200 on a personal trainer and $9,800 to lease and repair a vehicle that Mr. Meeks could not demonstrate was used for any campaign work.
As part of the agreement with the commission, Mr. Meeks acknowledged that the expenditures were “personal expenses.”
Karen Zraick contributed reporting from New York.
