Despite an April 4 hearing at which top trash authority officials testified, lawmakers have never demanded sworn testimony or issued subpoenas to examine the transaction's details.
Since it was first established in August 2011, the Syria commission has amassed over 6,000 pieces of testimony and issued 14 blistering reports.
During its existence, the Select Committee conducted 253 active investigations, served 8,000 subpoenas for witnesses and documents, held 270 days of hearings with 1,526 witnesses (343 of whom invoked the Fifth Amendment), compiled almost 150,000 pages of testimony, and issued two interim and one final report.
On June 2nd, after seven years of sometimes excruciating testimony, the commission issued 94 recommendations.
"You mentioned in your testimony that Hakim Zamili issued orders to employ a large number of Sadrists without any care for their qualifications, and that there was lots of horror and chaos," said the chief judge, Zuhair Abdul Saha, as he prompted the witness.
After hearing two days of testimony, the judge, Barbara Walther, issued a terse statement from the bench at Tom Green County Court saying that she had also ordered maternal and paternal testing on all the children, who range in age from infants to 17-year-olds, and expedited DNA and fingerprint testing of their parents as well.
But turning the effort into a formal investigation gives the commission the power to compel testimony and to issue subpoenas to investment banks for any relevant documents.
The New York State attorney general last week issued subpoenas seeking testimony from five doctors in Queens and on Long Island who evaluated some of the railroad's workers.
The Judiciary Committee had issued subpoenas seeking testimony from Ms. Miers and documents from Mr. Bolten in an investigation into improper influence in the dismissals of several federal prosecutors.
"Without getting the property tax burden under control, Westchester's ability to attract and retain businesses is seriously threatened," he said in a statement issued before his testimony.
