General
Seymour P. Lachman, Who Exposed Political Cabals in Albany, Dies at 91
In “Three Men in a Room,” Mr. Lachman, an educator and former state senator, charted how power was secretly and corruptly wielded in New York State government.
Seymour P. Lachman, a former New York State senator who was so fed up with the political shenanigans in Albany that he quit the Legislature and wrote two books that helped spur reforms, died on Jan. 2 at his home in Manhattan He was 91.
His wife, Susan Lachman, confirmed the death.
Mr. Lachman (pronounced LACK-man), a college professor who had also briefly served as president of the New York City Board of Education in the 1970s, was first elected to the State Senate in 1996 to fill a vacancy in a Brooklyn district that originally included the Bensonhurst and Borough Park sections and later also included part of Staten Island.
A Democrat, he often described himself as a traditionalist. But he would have been the first to acknowledge that the tell-some book he wrote about secretive power-brokering in Albany probably had more impact than his party-line votes as a legislator.
The title of the book — written with Robert A. Polner, a Newsday reporter — was a giveaway: “Three Men in a Room: The Inside Story of Power and Betrayal in an American Statehouse” (2006).
Its thrust was that anything of consequence that occurred in the state capital was predetermined by the governor, the Senate majority leader and the Assembly speaker and reflected “a subservience by lawmakers that has no peer in the United States Congress nor in many American statehouses.”
The book told of the corrupting power of money, the outsize influence of lobbyists, and public authorities’ lack of accountability.
