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5 Key Takeaways: How Yonkers Mayor’s Family Profited from His Administration

Nick Spano went from prison sentence to multimillion-dollar lobbying comeback.

Chris Bragg · May 5, 2025

The Manhattan skyline and George Washington Bridge are visible through foliage near the proposed Park Studio site at 501 Hawthorne Avenue on the Yonkers waterfront. | Olga Fedorova / New York Focus

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In New York’s third-largest city, a political dynasty holds sway in nearly every corner of government.

Now in his 14th year, Mike Spano is Yonkers’s longest-serving mayor. According to his 2023 financial disclosure form, 22 of his relatives held city jobs, including three brothers, a sister, 11 nephews, four nieces, and a cousin.

Yonkers political insiders have long whispered about how the Spano government interacts with a lobbying firm run by two other Spano brothers, which has made a killing since the advent of this Spano-run city government.

Last week, New York Focus published an investigation that for the first time shed light on concrete details of their interactions. Nick Spano denies wrongdoing, and no government entity has officially accused the brothers of anything nefarious.

Here are five key takeaways from our investigation:

Nick’s fall and rise

Mike Spano, a Republican turned Democrat, was elected Yonkers mayor in 2011. Nick Spano, a once-powerful Republican state senator, was in the midst of a successful second career as an Albany-based lobbyist.

Shortly after Mike’s election, the FBI knocked on Nick’s door. Federal prosecutors claimed that Nick was concealing income from the IRS. He pleaded guilty to a single count of tax obstruction and spent 10 months in prison.

For a Yonkers Political Dynasty, a Succession of Blurred Lines

Chris Bragg

Old clients fled Nick’s scandal-scarred lobbying firm, Empire Strategic Planning. But new clients — with business before the City of Yonkers — began enlisting. By 2017, the Spano lobbying firm had more clients than when Nick’s record was clean, according to annual state lobbying reports.

These fraternal overlaps faced scrutiny two years ago, when the New York Post reported that 23 of the lobbying clients had business before Yonkers during Mike Spano’s tenure. In response, a Yonkers spokesperson told the Post that Empire Strategic Planning did not lobby the City of Yonkers, “per the request of Mayor Spano at the start of his administration.”

The mayor has repeatedly sworn, in financial disclosure forms, that he does not believe Nick lobbies his city.

Yet emails obtained by New York Focus found that the lobbying firm has interacted with Spano’s administration, including on behalf of clients.

Lobbying contacts

Records show that Empire Strategic Planning did report lobbying the City of Yonkers a dozen times for four clients in 2012, during Mike Spano’s first year in office. Empire Strategic Planning has not reported lobbying the city since 2012.

Emails suggest that the firm should have reported lobbying Mike Spano’s administration in October 2013.

The exterior of the Lionsgate film and television studio complex is seen beneath the historic Otis Elevator Company smokestack, Tuesday, April 29, 2025, in Yonkers, N.Y. | Olga Fedorova / New York Focus

That’s when another lobbyist at the small firm, Jim Cavanaugh, emailed his wife — Yonkers’ Planning Commissioner, Wilson Kimball — about a nonprofit provider for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, Ferncliff Manor, an Empire Strategic Planning lobbying client. The email was also addressed to the president and CEO of the Yonkers Industrial Development Agency.

Cavanaugh set up a joint meeting between Ferncliff Manor, the Yonkers Planning Department (led by his wife), and the Yonkers IDA, which was chaired by Mike Spano.

Ferncliff was pitching a $23.4 million plan to renovate a school campus and wanted to “explore potential tax-exempt financing, as well as get an idea of what land use issues, if any, may arise,” Cavanaugh wrote to his wife and the IDA leader, calling it “an opportunity to retain 250 jobs in Yonkers.”

Kimball’s office scheduled a meeting, including Kimball herself, for the following month. Two months later, the Yonkers IDA passed a resolution granting initial approval of a $707,000 sales-tax exemption for Ferncliff Manor.

At the time, state law defined lobbying as “any attempt to influence” state or local public officials on certain policy matters, including a paid lobbyist seeking passage of a resolution before an industrial development agency.

There were other interactions, too

In 2013, a lobbyist at Nick’s firm got in touch with Kimball about a tour of potential Yonkers development sites for a developer, John Fareri.

After the tour, Nick requested — and received — a memo from the Yonkers planning commissioner concerning two of the development sites. About five months later, Spano’s firm began lobbying state government officials for a limited liability company, Gateway Kensington LLC, that is owned by Fareri.

People wait at a bus stop on Riverdale Avenue beneath a banner promoting Yonkers as “Hollywood on Hudson,” Monday, April 29, 2025. The city has positioned itself as a hub for film and television production, spurring interest from developers and investors. | Olga Fedorova / New York Focus

In 2014, the director of government relations at SUNY Purchase pitched placing a satellite education program in downtown Yonkers. Kimball responded to the proposal, then forwarded a copy of her response to the registered lobbyist for SUNY Purchase’s foundation — Nick.

A year later, SUNY Purchase did open a satellite space in downtown Yonkers. As part of the deal, Yonkers reportedly gave SUNY Purchase $300,000 in federal block grant funds.

In June of 2021, two police unions were locked in contentious negotiations with Mayor Spano over a new collective bargaining agreement. A meeting was scheduled where two top officials at the Captains, Lieutenants and Sergeants Association were to meet with the mayor. Also slated to be in attendance: two of the mayor’s brothers.

One, John Spano, had long represented both police unions as an Empire lobbyist. Another brother, Leonard G. Spano, was the one-time president of the Westchester County PBA. Emails indicated that Mike Spano’s governmental chief of staff had also been invited, as had another lobbyist at the Spano firm.

Although the meeting was organized by Mayor Spano, using his government email, the event was “social or non-governmental in nature,” according to the mayor’s spokesperson.

Records confirm that following the dinner, Leonard was involved in contract negotiations between the other police union, the Yonkers Police Benevolent Association, and his brother’s administration. Both unions soon struck deals with Mayor Spano’s administration.

That same month, another dinner was to be held in the Village of Fishkill, about an hour’s drive from Yonkers.

A sculpture above the entrance to Yonkers City Hall is partially covered by protective netting. | Olga Fedorova / New York Focus

This one was to include Mayor Spano, Nick Spano, and Nick’s longtime lobbying client, developer Joe Cotter. An Empire lobbyist arranged the meeting through Mayor Spano’s government email, but his spokesperson said this meeting, too, was “social or non-governmental in nature.”

One week later, the Yonkers IDA approved a tax benefit for a $500 million Cotter project: Lionsgate Studios Yonkers. Mayor Spano as IDA chair voted in favor of the tax break.

Nick’s side job

Cotter’s company, employing Nick Spano as a lobbyist, has twice bought land long before Mike Spano’s government moved to approve projects on those same sites.

And at least one of these purchases dovetailed with Nick’s side job: As a real estate salesman.

In 2021, Cotter purchased a property on North Broadway in Yonkers for $10.5 million. One of the two real estate brokers representing Cotter in the deal was Nick, records show, which meant his real estate brokerage reaped a fee for facilitating a land purchase for Nick’s lobbying client.

Less than a year later, Mayor Spano said the city was reviewing Cotter’s plans to build a third film project in the city, at the North Broadway site, which was then approved.

Yonkers government is now moving to approve yet another major I.Park film studio project in the city’s Ludlow Park neighborhood. I.Park purchased the land for $53 million in 2022, well before Yonkers government moved to grant the necessary approvals.

Even as Nick (as well as his son) worked as salespeople for the commercial real estate brokerage, Rand Commercial, Mike Spano’s government took actions directly benefiting that business.

Records show that in at least two instances, Rand’s chief strategy officer, Paul Adler, has worked as a broker for the City of Yonkers.

A pedestrian walks across a footbridge toward Yonkers City Hall on a clear spring morning, Monday, April 29, 2025, in Yonkers, N.Y. The Beaux-Arts style building, completed in 1908, remains a prominent fixture in the city's architectural landscape. | Olga Fedorova / New York Focus

In addition, in 2023, Adler emailed Mayor Spano, asking the mayor to attend a lunch event seeking to attract tenants to unused office space in Yonkers. Not only was Adler the broker, but the building was owned by a Nick Spano lobbying client.

At the lunch, the mayor would “meet with potential tenants, brokers and local business leaders on the importance of a vibrant downtown.” Adler later sent the mayor a proposed agenda for the meeting, where he suggested the mayor highlight 86 Main Street as “the crown jewel of the downtown office market.”

In Yonkers, the Spanos face little resistance

The Yonkers ethics board has not publicly addressed concerns about the Spano family.

Liam McLaughlin, Yonkers’ inspector general nominated by Spano, has dismissed allegations about the family’s city payroll positions as “political silly-season accusations.” The Yonkers City Council is stacked with Spano allies.

Meanwhile, the rare local officials that have crossed the clan have faced consequences.

In 2021, then-Yonkers City Council President Mike Khader voted against a Spano-backed rezoning plan. Khader claimed that the mayor had failed to disclose that a Spano family property might increase in value due to a curiously redrawn boundary.

Khader alleged in a lawsuit that immediately after the vote, Mike Spano and his allies targeted him with a “malicious and intentional campaign to sully his reputation and to oust him from office.” Khader lost his reelection bid.

Spano’s opponent in the 2023 mayoral race, a Yonkers City Council member, charged that Mike Spano used his position “to enrich his friends and family” — and is now running for reelection without the support of the Spano-controlled Yonkers Democratic Party.

A government watchdog group is urging an outside investigation.

John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany, told New York Focus that the publication’s findings suggest “a high level of conflict of interest and corruption risk,” and “should be investigated by the State Attorney General’s office of public integrity as soon as possible.”