Ralph J. Lamberti Jr., who as Staten Island’s borough president fought vigorously but vainly to preserve a powerful city board that gave him and the other borough presidents a strong hand in shaping key municipal decisions, died on Saturday on Staten Island. He was 90.
The death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his son Mark, who said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s.
In 1989, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the voting structure of New York City’s Board of Estimate — a panel Mr. Lamberti staunchly defended — was unconstitutional. The board — comprising the mayor, the City Council president, the city comptroller and the five borough presidents — gave each borough president an equal number of votes despite vast population differences among the boroughs. That, the court said, violated the Constitution’s one-person, one-vote principle.
At the time, the boroughs varied widely in number of residents, from under 400,000 on Staten Island to more than two million in Brooklyn. Giving each borough president the same voting power, the court said, meant that smaller boroughs had disproportionately greater influence in city decisions about budgets and land use.
The court left it to the city to devise a remedy, fueling intense debate. Mr. Lamberti argued that dismantling the board would lead to what he called “an imperial mayor.” But the Board of Estimates was abolished, holding its last meeting in August 1990.
Mr. Lamberti, who served as borough president from 1984 to 1989, remained wary of powerful mayors. Still, he supported Edward I. Koch, one of the city’s most highhanded city leaders in decades, on issues important to many Staten Islanders.
One such issue was Mr. Koch’s hugely controversial plan to build trash incinerators across the five boroughs. His administration said that with the city’s landfills at or nearing capacity — including its largest, at Fresh Kills on Staten Island — large waste burners were needed, and he scheduled the first to be built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Many residents of the proposed incinerator sites, along with environmental advocates, fiercely opposed the program, saying it would worsen the city’s pollution problems.
Others foresaw net gains from the plants. Staten Islanders were divided. Mr. Lamberti supported the incinerator plan. “If we don’t solve this problem, you won’t have anyplace to put your garbage,” he said. “You will have to eat it.”
But the plan petered out after it failed to secure a state operating permit for the Navy Yard. By the early 2000s, Fresh Kills and the other municipal landfills were closed and city officials shifted focus to recycling programs and sending trash to other states for disposal.
Mr. Lamberti also weighed in on the recurring issue of whether Staten Island should secede from the city. During the debate over the Board of Estimate’s future, he warned that eliminating the board — and the borough’s resulting loss of clout on citywide issues — would only heighten residents’ desire to break away. He added that he did not want to see this happen, even as he acknowledged the sentiment behind it: Many Staten Islanders, he said, “believe they are the stepchildren of New York, that we don’t get services we’re entitled to, that we’re always playing catch-up.”
In his previous role as deputy borough president, from 1974 to 1984, Mr. Lamberti worked on generating economic development projects for his domain. One such effort would later cast a cloud of suspicion over his reputation.
In 1985, a Staten Island grand jury probed accusations by city investigators that Mr. Lamberti had criminally violated conflict-of interest laws by partnering with a friend to build a shopping center on city-owned land.
Investigators found that Mr. Lamberti had met with Koch administration officials to seek information and push for the plan, but failed to disclose those meetings to the city’s Board of Ethics when it questioned him about his involvement.
The grand jury declined to indict Mr. Lamberti; it said the situation stemmed from “ambiguities and loopholes” in city laws that did not give adequate guidance on ethnical conduct. Mr. Lamberti maintained he had done nothing wrong.
Ralph J. Lamberti Jr. was born on Nov. 14, 1934, on Staten Island. His father, James Lamberti, worked for the water department; his mother was Agnes (Anarumo) Lamberti.
After graduating from Curtis High School and the College of Staten Island, Mr. Lamberti served in the Army and worked in supervisory and administrative posts at state agencies before being appointed in the 1970s to the staff of Robert T. Connor, the borough president at the time.
In 1977, Mr. Lamberti became the interim borough president after his predecessor, Anthony R. Gaeta, resigned to pursue other work. The “interim” was dropped after Mr. Lamberti won by election.
In 1989, he lost in a re-election bid to the Republican congressman Guy V. Molinari. He then worked as executive vice president of Staten Island University Hospital for 15 years.
In addition to his son Mark, Mr. Lamberti is survived by his wife, Susan; his other children, Ralph Jr., James and Kristin Lloyd; and five grandchildren.
Mr. Lamberti often expressed pride in his family’s tradition of civil service and its ties to Staten Island. “My grandfather dug ditches and corked pipes for the water department,” he said in 1984. “Now, a century later, his grandson became president of the borough he so cherished.”
Ash Wu contributed reporting.
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