Even before Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr's political battles ended in a duel, the two men in the 1700's were battling over banking and providing public water, according to Thomas Shanahan, who has lobbied for the Suffolk Water Authority for the past 18 years.
Shanahan, a former aide in the Suffoilk Legislature, presented his findings in a paper he did on the history of lobbying in the state for Research New York 2007, at an event sponsored by the Albany State University and the state Archives.
It turns out that Hamilton helped found the state's first chartered bank, the Bank of New York, in 1784, and, using a yellow fever-outbreak as a political ploy, Burr got the state legislature through extensive lobbying to authorize creation of a public water corporation to provide "wholesome water" for the city.
The fears were real as nearly 2,500 died in 1799 because of.....
Rick Brand
the disease, which physicians attributed to public consumption of stagnant water. But after the bill was introduced, Burr slipped in an amendment which permitted the use of "surplus capital" for "other monied tranactions...for the sole benefit of the the company." The amended bill, acted on just before the close of Assembly session, was approved with few understanding that the apparently innocuous bill was creating a bank, Shanahan found.
Later Hamilton, amid the presidential electoral impasse between Thomas Jefferson and Burr, denounced Burr's deception in a letter to a friend. "He has lately by trick, established a bank --a perfect monster in its principles, but a very convenient instrument of profit and influence."
Today, Burr's original bank, the Manhattan Co., is now J.P. Morgan Chase, while the successor to Hamilton's bank is now Citigroup.
"These two guys dueled over water long before they dueled for real," said Shanahan, referring to the gunfight that led to Hamilton's demise.
Shanahan, however, is wary of the state's latest lobbying limits passed last year. He said the new Commission on Public Integrity not only investigates, but files charges and prosecutes criminal charges. "It sits as the judicial body to render a verdict on the charges it brought,"* he said, calling this a "startling departure from our normal system of jurisprudence."
*Corrected from earlier.