filed in court as part of a widespread probe into school bus corruption. 

Sources tell Gang Land that the current federal probe turned up new evidence that bus company owners began giving cash payoffs to the union’s former Secretary-Treasurer, the late Julius (Spike) Bernstein [left] back in the 1980s. That mirrors what investigators learned during the 1990 probe that resulted in no indictments. 

“Spike was the go-to guy, the collector of the tolls that the owners paid to avoid labor problems,” said one knowledgeable Gang Land source.  

“Spike was the main picker-upper of the cash,” said another source familiar with Bernstein’s role as the longtime partner-in-crime of Matthew (Matty the Horse) Ianniello, [right] the legendary 87-year-old Genovese capo who recently began an 18-month plea-bargain sentence for labor racketeering and is slated to be released next year. 

Bernstein received $1000 a year for each school bus route over

five that any one company received, according to a 2006 arrest complaint. 

Bernstein died in October at age 86, a year after he started singing to the FBI following his own indictment. In addition to Ianniello and Bernstein, five other mob associates, including Spike’s longtime paramour, Ann Chiarovano, [left] a former trustee of Local 1181’s benefit funds, have pleaded guilty to labor racketeering or related obstruction of justice charges in the case. 

The owner with the next largest number of school bus routes who will take the stand against Battaglia, is Ray Fouche, whose companies have 369 routes and have earned $78.2 million in this fiscal year, according to the DOE. Her companies, All-American School Bus Corp., Citywide Transit, and Rainbow Transit, all of Long Island City, Queens, are successors to Rays School Bus Company, a firm she founded with her late husband Luc in 1975, according to the company’s website. 

Like Atlantic Express, bus drivers and matrons who work for Fouche's companies belong to Local 1181, which represents about 15,000 city school bus drivers. 

Joseph A. Fazzia, who owns three Red Hook, Brooklyn companies with relatives – Jofaz Transportation, Third Avenue Transit, and Boro Wide Buses – is also slated to testify. His

companies have 290 school bus routes and have earned $55.6 million this year, said the DOE spokeswoman. 

Last and least of the cooperating owners group is Robert Dimino, whose school bus company, Safe Coach, of Brooklyn, has 32 routes and has earned $5.7 million this fiscal year, according to the spokeswoman. 

School bus drivers at companies owned by Fazzia and Dimino do not belong to Local 1181, but the union does represent the matrons employed by their companies. 

Fouche and Fazzia did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Said Dimono’s attorney, George Farkas: “My client has been subpoenaed. If called, he will testify truthfully.” 

DOE Chancellor Joel Klein, a former federal prosecutor, declined to comment about the bribery allegations involving the four school bus company owners, or any impact they might have on their city contracts. Each company has a 10-year-long contract that ends in 2010, according to DOE documents filed with the city comptroller's office.

Manhattan Federal Judge Kimba Wood shot down a request by Battaglia’s lawyers last week for a lengthy postponement of his trial, but ultimately adjourned it for a week. Trial WILL begin, she stressed, on January 22. 

During a brief proceeding, Wood agreed with prosecutors Benjamin Gruenstein and Elie Honig that recent changes in the wording of the indictment were technical and did not significantly alter the extortion, bribery, and other racketeering allegations against Hot Dogs. 

The new indictment shortened the time frame of allegedly corrupt activities from more than 15 years to the period between 2002 and 2005, when Battaglia was union president. It also states that the allegedly corrupt enterprise that he belonged to during those years was Local 1181, not the Genovese family, as the earlier indictment charged. 

The current indictment lists Battaglia as a mob associate, a big step down from the earlier indictment, which described him as an inducted member of the Genovese family.  

That development, along with a courtroom assertion by Gruenstein that the feds “broke out specific bus companies” to change the Battaglia prosecution into “really a school bus-union case,” triggered a motion by defense lawyer Joseph Benfante to remove his client’s mob nickname of “Hot Dogs” from the indictment. 

No way, retorted the prosecutors. They state that Battaglia told FBI agents that “Hot Dogs” was his nickname. Besides, they wrote, the words “Hot Dogs” are on a type-written, purported list of proposed Genovese family members the feds had. Turncoat Bonanno underboss Salvatore Vitale turned the list over to the feds and was slated to testify about it at trial.

“The government is making a terrible mistake,” said Benfante. “They are going after an honest and good union president who worked for the membership and against all the corruption that he found when he took office in 2002. The government has been grossly misinformed, to the detriment of the union, and my client.” 

Memo to photo editors of the New York Post. As several readers have noted, the Alphonse Persico who was pictured along with former paramour Mari Bari [left]in the December 29 editions of The Post is not the Alphonse Persico who was convicted of the Wild Bill Cutolo murder. 

Like his comare Bari, who was whacked in a Brooklyn social club in 1984, that Alphonse Persico, whose nickname was Allie Boy, is dead. He died in prison at age 60, in 1989. 

His nephew, onetime acting Colombo family boss Alphonse (Allie) Persico, 53, is the Alphonse Persico who was found guilty of Cutolo’s murder and now faces the unenviable prospect, like his uncle, of dying in federal prison. 

To be fair, the FBI and federal prosecutors aided and abetted The Post make this error by continuing to refer to Allie Persico [right] in court papers and news releases as Allie Boy, which is not, and has never been, the nickname that insiders use to refer to him. 

Allie’s jailed-for life father, Carmine (Junior) Persico, has also had a problem with a  nickname that law enforcement officials and the media have bestowed on him – The Snake. You wouldn’t want it either, but that’s another story.