On Tuesday, December 8, Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita sent a letter to his staff detailing some new personnel assignments. Here’s the letter:

Last month Sedita, a Democrat, was elected as a justice on the New York State Supreme Court, Eighth District. He was a shoo-in; he and a counterbalancing Republican—attorney Emilio Colaiacovo, a reliable GOP bag man and operative—were cross-endorsed by the local leaders of both major parties and were the only two candidates to appear on the ballot in an election to fill two vacancies on the court. 

Here’s what’s notable in Sedita’s personnel decisions, apart from the fact that he is making any at all just three weeks before he leaves the office and cedes the DA’s position to someone else. Promoted to homicide—the premier bureau, where reputiations are made and political careers founded—is assistant district attorney John Feroleto. By all accounts John Feroleto is a good attorney and a standup guy. Nothing we write here is intended to or could impugn that reputation. Feroleto also happens to be the son of New York State Supreme Court Justice Paula Feroleto, who runs the Eighth District to which Sedita has just been elected. (Or appointed by GOP and Democratic leaders, if you prefer; or anointed, if that seems better yet.) Paula Feroleto determines staffing for justices; she assigns caseloads. She is about to be Sedita’s boss. She will influence the quality of his professional life for a good portion, if not all, of his 14-year term. We hear Sedita is being assigned to hear cases in Chautauqua County, which makes sense considering potential conflicts given his recent role as Erie County’s lead prosecutor, but he can’t be happy about the drive.

Perhaps the promotion and the future relationship between Sedita and Justice Feroleto is coincidental. Maybe he is making amends for a run-in with his future boss a few years ago, in which he withdrew DA office resources from cases related to domestic violence victims. Perhaps it indicates merely that public service in Western New York is a family business. (Sedita is the grandson of a Buffalo mayor and his father, now deceased, was a New York State Supreme Court judge; Feroleto’s brother, Joel, was just handed a seat on Buffalo’s Common Council; a survey of last names of attorneys and staff in the DA’s office, or at the Erie County Water Authority, or on any number of municipal payrolls, offers evidence that family matters in the assignment of patronage jobs and elected positions.) It certainly does not prove that John Feroleto is unprepared for an important and sensitive job, even if he is just seven years into his legal career. A proven quantity is Sedita’s attention to politics: He has said publicly that he is reluctant to pursue election fraud and political corruption cases, and he fired an ADA who called him out for that reluctance in the case of Democratic operative Steve Pigeon, an ally of the Sedita family who is now under investigation by state and federal agencies; Sedita reportedly nearly blew his cross-endorsement for the judgeship he’ll assume in January by insisting on controlling who would succeed him as DA and what would become of his closest deputies in the office after he left.

And now, three weeks before he leaves the DA’s office, he is making important staff assignments, one of which elevates the son of his soon-to-be boss to a potentially career-making position. Good for John Feroleto. May he live up to his widely held reputation as a solid performer. But let’s not imagine Sedita’s letter is not illustrative of how politics and government work around here, and of Sedita’s fealty to that system.