Back on the Job

"Hulan Jack is not cleared," proclaimed the New York Times, and with rare editorial unanimity New York's newspapers last week agreed in lambasting the return of Tammany Hall's Hulan Jack to his job as Manhattan Borough president—from which he had suspended himself two months before. Of Manhattan Borough's 1,800,000 resident citizens, the only people who seemed happy were Jack himself and a clutch of political underlings who greeted him in his office with spring blossoms, cheers and a big sign: WELCOME BACK, MR. PRESIDENT. Said Hulan Jack: "I'm just bubbling over with happiness."

Last December Jack denied that Sidney J. Ungar, a well-heeled real-estate operator, had paid a $4,400 bill for lavish remodeling of his Harlem apartment—at a time when Ungar was actively seeking a city contract for a $30 million slum-clearance project. Jack at first claimed that his wife had paid the bill out of her housekeeping allowance. Later he told District Attorney Frank Hogan that he had lied, confessed that Ungar had "loaned" him the money without collateral. Charged by a grand jury with violations of the city charter and with conspiracy to conceal the violations, Jack prudently suspended himself from office, the highest elective position in the U.S. held by a Negro, until "such time as a final determination of my case is made" (TIME, Jan. 25).

But what brought Jack back was a far cry from a final determination. The indictment against him was dismissed on technical grounds by Judge Gerald Patrick Culkin, a second-generation Tammany wheelhorse. The indictment, ruled Judge Culkin, was defective because, under New York law, the conspiracy charge should have been separated from the charter violation charges; moreover, the indictment did not specifically state that Jack was aware of Ungar's business with the city when he accepted the "loan."

Visibly angered, District Attorney Hogan immediately asked the Appellate Court to reverse the decision. Jack's lawyer, Carson Baker, hinted darkly that Ho gan was pursuing the case "because Mr. Jack ... is black." The suggestion was too much for even the professionally liberal, race-sensitive New York Post. "We venture to guess," said a bleak Post editorial, "that a white Tammany borough president would almost surely have been the subject of a state removal hearing by now if he had admitted as much as Jack. The unhappy fact is that there is an undercurrent of racism in reverse . . ." In the midst of a rising demand that he suspend Jack and start permanent removal proceedings, Governor Nelson Rockefeller decided to wait until after Hulan Jack has his day in the Appellate Court on April 14. Until then, the most valuable hunk of real estate in the world will remain under the presidency of a man who, in the words of the New York Times, has demonstrat ed a strange "insensitivity to public opinion and the proprieties."