During his tenure, Manes transformed his position from a mid-level policymaking role (although the borough presidents held influential seats on the now-defunct New York City Board of Estimate, incumbents generally served as proxies for county party leaders) into a more proactive political job, capitalizing on Queens's historic lack of a robust Democratic political machine in the mold of Manhattan's Tammany Hall or the storied clubhouse scenes in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
Troy had angered Manes when he supported Howard J. Samuels against eventual incumbent Hugh Carey in the 1974 Democratic gubernatorial primary.
Also that year, Manes worked to build a domed football-baseball stadium in the park, but it was opposed by local businessmen in the Flushing area.
Shortly after his inauguration for a fifth term, Manes attended a dinner party for the new Israeli consul at Borough Hall in Kew Gardens on January 9, 1986.
[7] In the following weeks, it was alleged that Manes had used political appointments and favors as the source of large kickback schemes involving personal bureaucratic fiefdoms, most notably the New York City Parking Violations Bureau.
In 1978, Manes installed a friend, Geoffrey Lindenauer, who later cooperated with prosecutors, as the deputy head of the Parking Violations Bureau.
Later in 1982, Manes, Lindenauer and Bronx Democratic Party leader Stanley M. Friedman each received shares in a company called Citisource, which won a city contract to develop a handheld parking ticket computer.
Manes also accepted bribes from SRS, a company also involved in parking ticket collections, whose owner also cooperated with authorities.
Columnist Jimmy Breslin published a story on January 23, 1986 in which the head of a third parking collections company confessed to paying $36,000 in bribes to Manes.