ASSEMBLYMAN "MAC" IS A HACK

HARD FALL: Ex-labor honcho and Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin is now a cabby and a teacher of cabdriving as he awaits sentencing for looting $2 million.

March 9, 2008 -- Disgraced lawmaker Brian McLaughlin was once riding high off the $2 mil lion he stole to fund a lavish life style.
Now the corrupt union boss - who pleaded guilty Friday to siphon ing political, union and charity funds - is put tering along in city traffic as a cabdriver.
"He's driving cabs and a limo for peo ple," his attorney, Mi chael Armstrong, told The Post yesterday.

Armstrong said the former Queens state assemblyman also teaches at a taxi school where cab drivers get their cer tification and helps "run" it.
McLaughlin re ceived his hack li cense in October, a source said. Being a cabby is one of many jobs the onetime Central Labor Council boss has taken to eke out a living since his indict ment in 2006 on a host of federal charges, includ ing racketeering and money laundering. He's also had stints as a sandhog and electrician.

In the plea deal entered Friday, McLaughlin, who also helmed the city's electricians' union, admitted to accepting kickbacks and rigging bids on electrical contracts. He also confessed to fleecing political donors and taxpayers, including lifting $95,000 from a Little League athletic association he helped found.

The ill-gotten gains were used to pay off personal credit-card bills and country club fees. Investigators also learned the stolen loot helped pay for his Flushing apartments and the mortgage on a $760,000 home in Nissequogue, LI - which he has put up for sale.
The crook-turned-cabby will be sentenced Sept. 12. Although he faces up to 50 years in prison, prosecutors have recommended he serve no more than 10 years.

"He's facing up to what he has to take responsibility for," Armstrong said. "Obviously, it's not easy."
Despite allegations of lavishing his loot on three mistresses, Armstrong said McLaughlin and his wife, Eva, are committed to each other.
"These things can happen, and it's tough and all that, but these things can happen," the lawyer said of the alleged infidelities. "His marriage is solid and is going to continue to be solid."
At her mother's Deer Park, LI, home where they now live, Eva told The Post, "I have no comment."

But Elizabeth Crowley, an ex-City Council candidate and former close ally of McLaughlin, bashed him yesterday.
"What he did turns my stomach," she said.
McLaughlin ran Crowley's failed 2001 council campaign, personally going door to door and urging residents to cast their vote for her.
"I want nothing to do with this. I have nothing to do with this," Crowley said.
jfanelli@nypost.com