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Both the Transit Authority and the Port Authority, which operates more than 20 bridges, tunnels, airports and freight terminals, do multimillion-dollar business with New York banks, including Chase Manhattan, headed by David Rockefeller. Asked what, if anything, he did in return for the gift, Ronan jauntily told reporters: "I said thank you."
The Ronan gift was clearly troublesome. It is illegal in New York State for anyone to give, or for a state employee to accept, any "gratuities ... for having engaged in official conduct which he was required or authorized to perform and for which he was not entitled to any special or additional compensation." New York State Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz, a Republican in a difficult race for reelection, said he was investigating the Ronan gift.
L. JUDSON MORHOUSE, $86,313.
Long one of Rockefeller's closest political associates, Morhouse had served for eight years as the unsalaried New York Republican Party Chairman. In 1960 he borrowed $100,000 from Rockefeller to acquire commercial real estate on Long Island. Six years later, Morhouse was convicted of bribery in a liquor-license scandal. Rockefeller commuted the sentence for Morhouse, then ill of cancer, in 1970. By then the loan had been reduced to $86,313, which Rockefeller canceled. Senate Rules Committee Chairman Howard Cannon, a Democrat, said that he was bothered by such a gift to "a convicted felon."
EDWARD J. LOGUE, $176,389. A top urban planner, Logue was lured to New York in 1968 by Rockefeller to organize and direct the New York State Urban Development Corp., which oversees urban renewal and low-income housing in the state. One incentive was a $31,389 gift. In 1969 Rocky also loaned Logue $145,000 to buy a cooperative apartment. Logue has since repaid $45,000 of this loan and said he intends to pay it all. The cash apparently was given before Logue went on the New York State payroll.
At week's end, in a letter responding to a request for more information from Senator Cannon, Rockefeller named other recipients of his generosity and placed the total funds given to 18 present or former public officials and staff members since 1957 at $1,778,878. Rockefeller paid about $840,000 in taxes on those gifts. Another $326,290 was bestowed on nongovernmental associates, including $155,000 to Emmet John Hughes, an author, journalist and former adviser to President Eisenhower.
Among the state officials who benefited: Alton G. Marshall, Rockefeller's executive officer and secretary when Rocky was Governor, and later president of Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, $306,867; James W. Gaynor, whom Rockefeller attracted to New York from Colorado to become state commissioner of housing and community renewal, $107,000; Henry L. Diamond, a conservation and ecology expert, head of the Department of Environmental Conservation under Rocky and now executive director of his Commission on Critical Choices for Americans, $100,006; Victor Borella, a special assistant on labor issues in Rockefeller's administration, $100,000; Hugh Morrow, $135,000; and Mrs. Anne Whitman, onetime secretary to President Eisenhower and assistant to Rockefeller, $48,000 in gifts and loans.