Former City Council Leader Avoids Prison for Tax Evasion

Andrew J. Stein, a former president of the City Council and a fixture in New York politics for a quarter-century, was sentenced on Tuesday to three years’ probation for tax evasion, dodging a prison sentence after delivering an emotional plea for leniency.

As part of that sentence, which was handed down in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Mr. Stein, 66, will have to perform 500 hours of community service for not paying taxes on $1 million in income in 2008, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison.

But the magistrate judge, Ronald L. Ellis, was swayed in part by 14 letters from journalists, entertainment figures and lawyers, including Geraldo Rivera, the movie director Doug Liman and the First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams.

Judge Ellis said, “I will confess that, coming in, I think I was on the verge of imposing at least a partial custodial sentence,” before being swayed by the people vouching for Mr. Stein’s long career as a public servant.

The United States attorney’s office declined to comment.

Mr. Stein catapulted to political prominence at 23, when he ran for the State Assembly and won. During his career, he exposed shortcomings in the nursing home industry, the school custodians’ union and in doctor training. He did not hide his ambitions; he talked of becoming the first Jewish president, although his one bid for Congress in 1984 was unsuccessful.

Yet for his part, Mr. Stein called his failure to pay his taxes a “terrible, terrible mistake” during his five-minute statement, which he delivered while standing and occasionally choking up.

In that statement, Mr. Stein suggested that his career over decades as a city and state official, which included a stint as the Manhattan borough president, should reduce his sentence.

Last May, Mr. Stein was arrested with Kenneth I. Starr, a financial adviser, as part of an investigation into a $30 million Ponzi scheme that Mr. Starr was accused of running. On March 2, Mr. Starr was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison for fraud and money laundering.

According to the criminal complaint then, Mr. Stein had used $1.6 million in laundered funds from Mr. Starr’s scheme to pay his bills and rent a large home in Bridgehampton, N.Y. He later lied about those funds to the Internal Revenue Service.

Mr. Stein initially faced felony charges for lying, but federal prosecutors dropped those charges in exchange for his pleading guilty in December to the single count of tax evasion. At the time, he also agreed to pay taxes for the years 2003 to 2008.