b"important than others. You're driving to work and you hear on the radio: A child fell out of a Housing Authority Projectwindow, and you grip the steering wheel going goHope to God it ain't mine, and you hear it's Brooklyn, you go: Oh, great. You know what I mean? They're going to come out, they're going to look under every paper.Even if you dideverything right with that apartment and that kid, it doesn't matter. They're going to find something wrong, there's somany rules in Housing. I loved the job, but it's not that it didn't have its pressures at times.As a business agent, you used some of the same skills, but you had different responsibilities?Right and because I was a manager, I represented managers and there was nobody down here at the time that reallycould go out and represent managers effectively. There was one, but for the most part, I knew the rules and regulations.You're not going to put one over on me, you know.[Laughs]You switched from one side of the desk to the other?Exactly. Then once I got here, I started training the people here on how to do hearings.They all got better and better,to the point where another friend of mine was the administrator in the Housing Authority and he was teaching managershow to bring charges, how to represent and how to prosecute those charges in a hearing. After a while, he would trainthem how to beat me. And he says: Well you're going to do this, Kane's going to do that, you're going to say this, he'sgoing to pull out the rule and show you that's not really the rule, you misinterpreted it and then in that rule, it's going tosay the administrator will do They're charging the manager with not doing X, but somewhere in there it says the admin-istrator was supposed to do Y and he's going to prove that you didn't do Y, therefore how could he do, I mean, whatever,but he would train them, the way I trained my people. So, he says: Kane's going to do this, Kane's going to do that. So, it was kind of funny, but, and again, we're all friends.[Laughs]What year did you retire from being a housing manager to work for the Union? Well, I didn't immediately leave. There's a thing that's called being released and I was still working for the HousingAuthority. I came here in '95, but I didn't exactly give up my housing manager's title. I was on what they call release.How does that work?If you're on release with pay, you collect your salary from the Housing Authority. The unions have an agreement,going back a hundred years or so. Depending on how many people you represent or are in your union, they will allow oneperson to be released with pay to work for the union.The City continued to pay your salary, but you were actually working for the union?Yes, there were seven slots like this. There are still seven slots like that and then the union pays you a stipend on topof that for car fare and for additional money. It's not twice as much, but that's what they do.And this also entitled you tokeep your pension alive.That's important, yes.And then, there's release without pay, which I got onto also, where the Housing doesn't pay you.98 "