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| Subject: Victor Botnick, 47, Youthful Adviser to Koch | |
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Author: New York City |
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Date Posted: October 17, 2002 5:10:00 EDT Victor E. Botnick, who at age 32 was one of Mayor Edward I. Koch's most influential aides and head of the New York City's hospital system, died yesterday in an ambulance on the way to a hospital in Yonkers. He was 47. He had a seizure at his home in Yonkers and died of gastrointestinal bleeding, George Arzt, a spokesman for the family, said. Mr. Botnick started by volunteering in Mr. Koch's campaigns. He worked on his Congressional staff and was one of four staff members selected to work in City Hall when Mr. Koch became mayor in 1978. His closeness to the mayor propelled him to head of the multimillion-dollar Health and Hospitals Corporation in January 1986. Six months later, after accusations of filing improper expense accounts and other criticism, he resigned from both the hospitals agency and his job as a mayoral adviser after admitting that he had lied when he said he was a college graduate. At the time, Mr. Koch defended him fiercely, saying that reporters had overreacted to a minor infraction. After a long delay, he accepted the resignation. "I accepted it because I could see the torment, the anguish he was suffering, and hear it in his voice," Mr. Koch said at the time. After leaving public service, Mr. Botnick had further difficulties. In 1998, he was charged with setting off stink bombs on a trans-Atlantic flight. He was acquitted in 2000. At the time of his death, he was on trial on charges of stealing $200,000 from Cathedral Healthcare System, a New Jersey hospital network where he had worked. "He was troubled after he left government," Mr. Koch said in a telephone interview yesterday, adding that the two had continued to communicate by telephone or in e-mail messages every few weeks. Mr. Koch said he met Mr. Botnick, who was born on Nov. 2, 1954, when Mr. Koch first campaigned for Congress in 1968. The teenager met him on the street at First Avenue and 14th Street and volunteered to work on the campaign; Mr. Koch immediately accepted. While still at Yeshiva University High School, he worked in Mr. Koch's Congressional office in Manhattan. Mr. Botnick attended Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., from 1972 to 1975, and he also took two summer courses at Fordham University in 1973. Bob Liff, another spokesman for the family, said that after leaving government, Mr. Botnick completed a degree in biology at Mercy College. At the hospitals corporation, Mr. Botnick was credited by Mayor Koch and Deputy Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. with pushing the Emergency Medical Service to cut response time in half. Mr. Wagner said he also played a major behind-the-scenes role in cutting the hospital agency's extensive operating deficits and decentralizing its management. But Mr. Botnick drew criticism for misusing municipal cars, filing improper expense accounts and having a scuffle with the head of a doctors' union. He put Koch campaign fund-raisers in touch with a company with which the hospitals corporation was doing business, and as a result Mr. Koch returned a $5,000 contribution to the company. In recent years, Mr. Botnick worked as a consultant in the health care field. He is survived by his wife, Lee; two sons, Mark and Seth; his mother, Eva; and his sister, Karen. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
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