SINGING ANOTHER TUNE

By Viveca Novak/Washington

Republicans used to love Ron Fino. "Gutsy" and "knowledgeable" was how they described him in July when Fino, an informant for the FBI, testified at hearings of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime about links between organized crime and labor unions, including one headed by a major supporter of Bill Clinton's. They may have different words for him now that Fino has linked another name to the mob--Jack Kemp's.

Fino has told FBI investigators and Democratic committee staff members about a Buffalo, New York, hotel developer, James Cosentino, who was a Kemp friend and contributor. (Documents from the Federal Election Commission show that Cosentino and his family gave $6,300 to Kemp's campaign in the mid-'80s.) According to Fino, Cosentino was tied to the mob--a charge he denies. In the 1980s, when Kemp was a Buffalo Congressman, Cosentino allegedly got at least $5 million in loans for a hotel construction project from a pension fund of the Buffalo local of the Laborers' International Union of North America, a union that recently signed a consent decree acknowledging mob influence. Fino, business manager of the local, has told investigators that the reputed head of the Buffalo Mob ordered the loans. Fino has said Cosentino and a former Kemp aide both told him that Kemp helped Cosentino get millions in federal money for the project.

According to Fino, Kemp once asked him point blank whether Cosentino was connected to the mob (Fino says he told him yes), but Fino is hazy about when this exchange took place. Alixe Glen, Kemp's spokeswoman, calls the allegations "unfounded" and "politically motivated." Representative John Conyers of Michigan, the Judiciary Committee's ranking Democrat, has formally requested that the committee bring Fino back to Washington for questioning.

--Reported by Viveca Novak/Washington