Photo courtesy Sal Albanese 2013

You've never heard of Sal Albanese? It's his third time running for mayor, but the 63-year-old candidate, who is no stranger to calling out politicians on their bullshit, has generally maintained a lower profile than his fellow candidates in this race. Part of it's because Albanese is one oddly principled guy--the former city councilman from Bay Ridge refuses to take contributions from "special interests," regularly stands apart from party lines, and dropped out of the 2000 race because he didn't raise enough funds. He's also a progressive's progressive, having sponsored New York City's original living wage bill, and putting LGBT rights on his agenda long before it became acceptable to "evolve" on the issue.

In 2013, it seems Albanese's re-entry to politics has cast him as the mayoral race's internal auditor. On Monday, Albanese accused Christine Quinn, John Liu, Bill de Blasio of using taxpayer funds to hire political operatives for their respective campaigns in the last 18 months--a total he says comes to $1.7 million.

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The wave of faculty dissatisfaction at New York University continues to roll on. After the School of Arts and Sciences voted in favor of a statement of no confidence in President John Sexton and his administration back in March, similar resolutions were passed by NYU's Gallatin School, its Steinhardt School, and its Tisch Asia program.

Now, today, add another big NYU division to the list: NYU's Tisch School of the Arts just finished tallying the votes on their own no-confidence resolution, and the results, while hardly overwhelming, are clear: of the 169 professors who voted, 93, or 55 percent, voted in favor of the statement of no confidence. 76 cast votes disagreeing. 16 Abstained.

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Forget self-deportation: It appears the feds have stumbled across a case of secret self-outsourcing at New York University. On Monday, Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara and the FBI announced charges against three NYU researchers who had been funded by the National Institute of Health to work on super-specialized MRI technology--then gave away that research to an institute supported by the Chinese government and another competitor, according to the complaint.

"As alleged, this is a case of inviting and paying for foxes in the henhouse," Bharara said in a statement. While the researchers were toiling away with the multi-million dollar grant, the charges allege that the defendants communicated with United Imaging, a Chinese medical imaging company, and the Shenzen Institute of Advanced Technology, a project established by the Chinese Academy of Science, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Shenzhen municipal government.

A University investigation into researchers' NYU email accounts found that the researchers had been sending NIH-funded project updates to United Imaging, while the feds discovered that an executive there paid one of the researcher's grad school tuition fees and another's rent. Guess SeekingArrangement.com just wasn't good enough this time around.

Send your story tips to sbrownstone@villagevoice.com. Follow her on Twitter here.

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A new study from the Brookings Institution shows that poverty in American suburbs increased by 64 percent over the last decade, more than twice the rate of poverty growth in cities. In the New York/tristate metro area alone, the number of suburban poor grew 28 percent since 2000, while the number of poor in the city grew 2 percent.

Alan Berube, one of the Brookings authors of the report, says that while the city becomes more expensive and popular, low wage economies are increasingly found outside them. The recession coupled with population growth in the suburbs contributed to the explosion of poverty there. "And in the end," he added, "Where poverty is--is where affordable housing is."

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Willie Davis

The 58th Annual Village Voice Obie Awards, celebrating achievement in the Off-Broadway and off-off Broadway theater, were given out at a ceremony tonight at Webster Hall. The awards ceremony was co-hosted by Jessica Hecht and Jeremy Shamos. The awards were presented by Bobby Cannavale, Tracee Chimo, Cyndi Lauper, Judith Light, Krysta Rodriguez, Duncan Sheik, Meryl Streep and Courtney B. Vance.

See Also: The Village Voice's Theater Coverage

A medley from the highly acclaimed new Off-Broadway musical, Here Lies Love, was performed by the cast. The Brazilian jazz-pop group Banda Magda also performed.

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Expressing the LGBTQ community's grief and outrage following the murder of Mark Carson in the West Village on Friday, several LGBTQ groups are co-sponsoring a rally held at the LGBT Community Center tonight. Speaker Christine Quinn jumped on the rally as well--and the Facebook page for the event lists Quinn as the only politician involved.

Still, not all of New York City's queer community feel that Quinn has her heart in a sincere place. That's why they'll be taking their vigil for Carson outside what was St. Vincent's hospital at 5:30 p.m., when activists and mourners will ask whether Carson could have been saved if the hospital hadn't been shuttered.

"A lot of people are agreeing that Christine Quinn is trying to politicize today's march," says Louis Flores, an organizer with Queers Against Quinn and a St. Vincent's activist group. Flores also wonders whether Carson, who was shot through the cheek, would have survived had he been taken two blocks away from the scene of the crime to St. Vincent's, rather than Beth Israel, which is located across town from where Carson was shot and lacks a Level 1 trauma center.

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Nick Pinto

Stephen Warner, a McDonalds employee, protesting poverty wages and unfair labor practices in Manhattan last month.

It's not like working in the fast-food industry is such a cushy proposition under the best conditions. In New York, many fast-food workers make the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour--even after years on the job. Nationwide, the average fast-food worker takes home about $11,300, well below the poverty line.

But that's not the end of it: adding insult to injury, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office announced last week that it is investigating at least one fast-food chain over allegations that its franchisees practice widespread wage-theft, illegally cheating their workers of their meager earnings. The Attorney General's office wouldn't identify the company it's investigating, but said it has issued subpoenas and is looking into several New York franchisees.

The Attorney General's investigation comes on the heels of a new report that surveyed 500 New York City fast food workers and found that 84 percent of respondents reported some form of wage theft in the past year. Among the violations reported were forced work without pay, unpaid overtime, not allowing required breaks, late or bounced paychecks, and forcing delivery workers to pay for their own gas or bike repairs.

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On Friday night, Mark Carson was walking with a male friend in the West Village when three men started following them. "Look at these faggots," one said, before taking out a revolver and shooting Carson in the face, according to charges filed Sunday. The 32-year-old was pronounced dead shortly thereafter at Beth Israel Hospital.

A march is being held for Carson at the LGBT Community Center in the West Village tonight, starting at 5:30. But those rallying aren't just protesting Friday night's despicable violence--Carson's death was one of five anti-gay assaults in Manhattan this month.

On May 5, Nick Porto and Kevin Atkins were attacked near Madison Square Garden by four men shouting anti-gay slurs. On May 8, a victim leaving Pieces, a Christopher street gay bar, was attacked by two men. On May 7, yet another person was assaulted by someone spewing anti-gay garbage in Union Square, according to the Anti-Violence Project. Just two days later, two gay men were beaten at 5 a.m. in Midtown. They survived.

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The results came in on Friday. After announcing his candidacy the day the Cooper Union administration stated it would begin charging tuition starting with the class of 2014, Kevin Slavin, tech entrepreneur and assistant professor at MIT's MediaLab, won as a write-in candidate for alumni trustee to the Cooper Union board.

Slavin, who had been critical of the previous trustees' lack of transparency in decision-making, had been running on a platform of renewed trust. At a Free Cooper Union Community Summit presentation in December of 2011, Slavin brought a $10,000 check to the podium, and asked Cooper Union leadership to use it to find "sustainable resources-- transparency, communication, trust, and integrity.

"If anything, the acquisition of money these days doesn't provide trust--it demands trust," Slavin said.

At that time, Slavin also shared that he had a team of forensic accountants take a look at Cooper Union's 990s, who told him that "they haven't seen anything this fucked up from anyone who wasn't being deliberately obstructive."

The announcement arrived in the heat of criticism directed at the Board of Trustees for--among other things--making large, questionable investments in hedge funds right up until the fiscal crash, and then directing the blame for money woes at lack of alumni giving.

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As the Benghazi prosecution appears to fizzle, rightbloggers have sought to replace it with a pair of new scandalettes involving the IRS and the Associated Press.

We think this shows a disappointing lack of imagination. In the far-flung meth labs of the right, fresher outrages are cooking that Americans can better understand: Outrages that involve the humiliation of American servicemen by a racial minority, and the President's admission of what rightbloggers have been saying all along: That he's a Socialist. Hunt where the ducks are, fellas!

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Thank god for Marty Markowitz, possibly the only lovable politician left in New York. Today, the Brooklyn borough president released a soundtrack to rebuilding a Sandy-shattered Coney Island on Spotify. It's got Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive," Brooklynite synth-addicts Matt and Kim, and the Beastie Boys. Markowitz's playlist even includes a shout-out to Jay-Z, though last month he told the Post that he went to a Jay-Z concert and "did not understand most of it."

Send story ideas to sbrownstone@villagevoice.com. Follow her on Twitter here.

Once-powerful Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez has agreed to step down from his longtime post as his support collapsed this week on the heels of the Staten Island District Attorney's damning report which disclosed the unethical lengths that the legislature's leadership went in trying to hush-up his sexual harassment of staffers.

It is yet another embarrassing turn-of-events in a year that has seen a half-dozen state legislators indicted on a range of corruption charges.

Insisting on his innocence, Lopez said today he would step down at the end of the legislative session, June 20. Lopez claimed he was just pursing a plan to step down at the end of his most recent term in office to run for City Council.

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"This has now truly become a regional, if not national, effort."

Thus spoke City Council Speaker Christine Quinn at a press conference yesterday. Former-governor-turned-state-senator Richard Codey and New Jersey Assemblyman Ruben Ramos came to City Hall to join her in previewing their own version of a bill announced in New York City less than a month ago: a measure to boost the age at which you can buy cigarettes to 21. Quinn is a forerunner of the bill that has placed her directly in front of an issue Bloomberg has championed--a position that could injure her campaign more than help it.

"Less than a month after our initial announcement, our great neighboring state of New Jersey is planning to introduce legislation to do exactly the same thing: raise the age to purchase tobacco to 21," Quinn said. The provision has also been introduced in Albany to apply on a statewide level.

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Everyone's worst public pool fears are true, and just in time for summer. On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study showing that 58 percent of public pool samples taken from around Atlanta yielded E. coli (not the bad kind), which live in the gut. The frequency of E. coli shows that swimmers "frequently contaminate pool water when they have a fecal incident" or forget to scrub their tuchuses in the shower.

The takeaway? Chlorine alone can't protect you, so don't swallow the water when you submerge yourself in Hamilton Fish Pool. Also, from now on, no one is ever allowed to poop again, only deliver "fecal incidents."

Send story ideas to sbrownstone@villagevoice.com. Follow her on Twitter here.

CS Muncy

ICYMI: After Cooper Union president Jamshed Bharucha met students for a surprise discussion in his office earlier this week, on Wednesday morning Democracy Now! hosted a rare, moderated forum with Victoria Sobel, a Cooper Union student organizer, Mark Epstein, the chair of trustees, and Felix Salmon, a Reuters blogger.

Much of the discussion dealt with Cooper's decision to charge tuition after what appears to be a series of bad financial decisions--by 2008, the school had invested $103 million in hedge funds, which demanded $2 million in annual management fees, and in 2006, the school took out a $175 million loan from MetLife, on which it has to pay roughly $10 million in annual interest. Meanwhile, the administration is scrambling to find a way to make it to 2018, when rent on the Chrysler building, the land under which Cooper owns, will jump.

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The race for Brooklyn District Attorney is becoming a bit of a slugfest. First, there was word that longtime Democratic incumbent Charles Hynes' office was getting a reality show right in the middle of the race. Then, Democratic opponent Abe George filed a lawsuit to block the show from airing. Then Hynes' office disclosed a review of 50 old Brooklyn homicide convictions tied to a particular NYPD detective, since retired.

And now, another Democratic candidate, Ken Thompson, wants Governor Andrew Cuomo to name a special prosecutor to do that review instead. "It has become clear that, considering this troubling pattern of prosecutorial misconduct and wrongful convictions, District Attorney Hynes is not capable of overseeing a truly independent review of his own cases," Thompson said in a statement.

Hynes' campaign blasted back with this rejoinder from spokesman George Arzt: "Mr. Thompson's bombast is irresponsible and clearly politically motivated devoid of any knowledge of the facts."

The cases in question involve the work of Detective Louis Scarcella, who has been retired for many years. Previous news reports alleged that the cases included fabricated confessions, improper interrogations, and the use of a prostitute as a key witness in six cases. The conviction in one of those cases, involving a man named David Ranta, has already been set aside, and Ranta has been freed after 20 years in prison. He has alleged that he raised repeated question about the facts of the case and the conduct of prosecutors, but Hynes office ignored him.

Not a huge case, just kind of amusing: Drug dealers went back to the future with a scheme revealed yesterday to deliver cocaine through a pizza delivery service, special narcotics prosecutor Bridget Brennan says. Let's hear it for synergy!

Just kidding. Brennan says there were two dealers arrested, one of whom worked as a delivery man for a Papa John's outlet in Brooklyn. That guy, dressed in his delivery uniform, sold coke to undercover cops some 19 times, including Wednesday night, when he handed over a kilo worth $27,500 to authorities, along with a pizza and chicken nuggets.

Between 2009 and 2011, approximately 450 people died crossing the street in New York City. Whether to reckless driving, not looking both ways, or sheer confusion, the city lost 450 residents. And that's not counting bicycle fatalities. Needless to say, like subway deaths, it's become a problem that demands fixing ASAP, especially with the advent of CitiBike next weekend.

Enter Christine Quinn.

In a statement released yesterday, the City Council speaker and mayoral frontrunner laid out her platform on the issue of ground-level urban planning. Her goal is straightforward: By 2021, Quinn wants to cut New York City's street fatalities in half.

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Over the past month, a group of people who lost everything in Hurricane Sandy have been waging a battle with the city. They came from the most traumatized areas, and from the poorest economic backgrounds. The city had given 3,132 evacuees temporary housing in hotels in the aftermath of the storm, but then suddenly delivered April, then May deadlines to make them leave--isolating 156 Sandy victims who had nowhere to go, and no housing program to help them get there.

Read more: Homeless Hurricane Sandy Victims to Be Kicked Out of Hotels, Nowhere to Go

On Wednesday, a state supreme court judge granted members of this group's request for injunctive relief, allowing them time to stay in the hotels until the city helps them find permanent housing.

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With the primaries in four months, this is probably a good idea.

By now, the controversy over John Liu's run for comptroller in 2010 is an old wives' tale in recent New York City scandal history. His campaign's treasurer and one of its fundraisers set up straw donors--which is when a person illegally taps into another person's cash funds and makes donations in their name. By doing so, they paid themselves thousands in fraudulent kickbacks. But don't worry: Kustice was served earlier this month when the two were found guilty of campaign fraud in federal court.

As damage control, Liu has been trying to distance himself from that story since it happened, stating time and time again that he had no part in the scheme and could not have known about it. Naturally, the mayoral race has kicked that PR effort into high gear. According to his most recent campaign filings, it's been discovered that Liu refunded every cent in his fundraising treasure chest left over from the scandal.

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