From the Observer's Politicker blog comes this video of Mayor Bloomberg going somewhat apoplectic when Newsday reporter Michael Frazier uses the word "maintain" in a question about the Sean Bell case.
"Maintain is a word that I don't think is appropriate, sir," Bloomberg said. "The next time you have a question and you want to insinuate that I lie, just talk to the press secretary. I don't think we have a question for you."
Conservative Boris Johnson has been elected Mayor of London, and Mike Bloomberg is speeding to his assistance, planning a Friday meeting in London to give Johnson tips in Tory rule of a less-than-Tory polity.
Johnson is clearly aware that he's most likely to make the visceral impact the Conservative Party's future fortunes require by reducing crime. No doubt he'd make a bigger PR splash in this regard by meeting with Rudy Giuliani, but Johnson has promised to trim the London budget, and the hundred grand plus private jet Giuliani commands for such charity work is thereby prohibitive.
So Bloomberg will likely succeed with Johnson as he has with New York voters: by restating the old Giuliani nostrums in a whinier tone of voice, and proposing more interference in daily life.
Johnson has already pledged to ban alcohol in the Underground. ("Too many people find themselves forced to sit opposite someone swigging from a can of lager and engaging in behaviour that is intimidating or worse"). Bloomberg may be expected to see and raise Johnson by suggesting he reverse within his precincts the liberalized national alcohol Licensing Act.
The later and longer availability of British drink after the Act has fueled London's highly profitable nightlife, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown declined after review to reverse it. The extended hours are popular, and even Murdoch news outlets have little to say against them. This may be why Johnson focused on proprietors who abused the privilege rather than coming out against the Act itself.
But if there's anything our Mayor learned from Giuliani and went one better, it's the idea that an occasional show of irrelevant, unpopular, and meddlesome force demonstrates the sort of toughness that wins respect and votes. Where Giuliani contented himself with metal pedestrian barriers and enforcement of an ancient dancing ban, Bloomberg banned smoking in bars — something that seemed unimaginable, even absurd, at the time, but which has become accepted, and given the soft-spoken billionaire an electorally useful image of forcefulness.
To cut drinking hours in thirsty London may seem foolhardy, and Johnson might wonder what this has to do with reducing crime. Bloomberg might rejoin that, from the New York point of view, the showing of a firm hand via a smack in the public chops is the first step toward achieving all manner of desirable social change, including reelection. He may go further and suggest that if the Conservative Party does not benefit from Johnson's record and example, Johnson might take Bloomberg's example, and abandon it.
Council Speaker Christine Quinn is the most honest person Mayor Bloomberg knows. The mayor said so himself earlier this month when Quinn found herself in hot water thanks to a federal-city probe into a hide-the-money scheme involving council slush funds.
But Quinn shouldn't get too excited.
Mike "I'm not a politician" Bloomberg said the exact same thing about State Senate majority leader Joe Bruno earlier this year when the Albany big was facing his own investigative troubles.
And he said it about another Republican political ally, Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro, when Molinaro's dealings with a mobster surfaced in 2005.
Here's the battle of the quotes:
April 3, 2008, re Quinn: "She's the most honest person I know."
March 10, 2008, re Bruno: "The most honest and trustworthy person I've ever met."
February, 2005 re Molinaro: "Just the most honest, straightforward person you can meet."
The latest casualty in New York's ongoing political crime wave is Brooklyn assemblywoman Diane Gordon who was found guilty today in State Supreme Court of taking bribes.
Gordon, 57 and a Democrat, was convicted of having tried to steer city-owned land to a private developer who agreed to deliver her a free house in exchange for her help. Unfortunately for Gordon, the developer was working undercover for the city's Department of Investigation which had snared him in his own schemes months earlier.
A spokesman for Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes, whose office won the conviction, said that Gordon was convicted on six counts, including bribe receiving as a legislator, a crime that carries a penalty of up to a decade behind bars. She was acquitted of a conspiracy count.
Gordon, a four-term assembly member from East New York and Brownsville, was considered a political power in her neighborhood.
Her verdict comes two months after former assembly member Brian McLaughlin of Queens pled guilty in federal court to stealing more than $2 million. And it comes just a month after Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned after being linked to a prostitution ring that was under federal investigation.
During the month-long trial, Brooklyn assistant district attorney Michael Spanakos played hours of video tape showing Gordon meeting with the developer, Raj Batheja, to discuss the house he would build for her.
City investigations department commissioner Rose Gill Hearn hailed the conviction.
"As an elected official, Gordon was supposed to work for the best interests of her Brooklyn community," said Hearn. "Instead, Gordon marketed herself as a corrupt legislator ready to use her position to help a private builder unlawfully acquire City-owned land in her district if he, in exchange, would build her a half-million-dollar house in a gated community in Queens for practically no money."
Gordon's attorney, Bernard Udell, did not return calls.
Posted by Duncan Meisel at 4:28 PM, March 27, 2008
The largest landowner threatened by Columbia’s Manhattanville expansion has filed a suit against the school and city, alleging that the environmental review process for the expansion was insufficient. The process may have even ignored the risk for potential biohazard threats to the West Harlem community, the plaintiff's lawyer said.
“I think it’s selfish for Columbia, it shows a level of uncaring for the people of West Harlem” said Nick Sprayregen, the owner of Tuck-It-Away Storage, the lead petitioner in the suit, which was filed Wednesday afternoon.
At issue is the construction of a massive underground "bathtub" structure that would extend about seven stories below ground throughout the development, a planned expansion that would include a research facility that the university calls a "biosafety" center, while the plaintiff calls it a "biohazard" center . According to the plaintiffs, the placement of such a structure on a geological fault in a flood zone poses a risk to the surrounding community. But according to Columbia, the research facilities will be built above grade and pose no risk.
“The rim of the bathtub is barely above the Hudson river, we believe it poses a risk of catastrophic failure” said Norman Siegel, Sprayregen’s lawyer. He cited global warming and its connected risks as an issue of serious concern.
“There exists a likelihood of a storm surge that would come over the bulkhead and flood the bathtub” and “hazardous materials from these facilities could be washed out into the West Harlem community” he said.
The suit challenges whether the City Planning Commission took the required “hard look” at environmental hazards for the site. The suit claims that the planning commission "provided that the engineering issues raised during the environmental review process would be resolved at some later unspecified date.”
However, “Neither the engineering consultants… nor Columbia University consultants outline in any detail what those solutions are, what the impact of carrying out those approaches might be” the suit claims in a quote from Jordi Reyes-Montblanc, the chairman of Community Board 9.
Columbia declined to comment on the pending litigation, but said in a statement: “We are confident that the extended public land use and environmental review processes were rigorous and comprehensive. They underscored that thriving universities are essential for New York City to remain a leader in attracting the talent that pursues new knowledge and creating the good, middle-income jobs for people who seek to improve their lives here.”
A Columbia spokeswoman clarified the nature of the research facility, taking issue with the plaintiff's use of "biohazard. " “There are no plans to put biosafety facilities below grade,” said the spokeswoman La-Verna J. Fountain.
Sprayregen’s concerns extend beyond the bathtub to the facility itself.
“It just boggles the mind why Columbia, supposedly an altruistic institution, would but a biohazard research center in Manhattan” he said. “I question the wisdom of placing, particularly after 9/11, a biohazard facility that sticks out like a sore thumb for any potential terrorists” in the city center.
“These are bio-safety rooms” Fountain said. “These are not whole buildings, just rooms.”
No matter the result of this current suit, litigation about the Columbia expansion seems bound to continue. The suit filed yesterday is the fifth which Siegel has been involved in, and he sees the potential for at least one other suit. “If eminent domain is used, transferring private property to a private university, we will litigate that issue” he said.
The activist group Coalition to Preserve Community announced a protest for Monday at Columbia. Continued community resistance to the Manhattanville plans has been a driving force for the ongoing legal battle between landowners and the school, and both Sprayregen and Siegel cited community activists as a key factor in their decision to file suit.
“You need the community behind you on this” Siegel said. “Property owners have standing, but the community members were the heart and soul of this lawsuit.”
Call New York City what you will: The Big Apple. The City that Never Sleeps. The Capital of the World.
While the city has had a number of nicknames over the years, no official second appellation exists. Now, one elected official is pushing the City Council to designate “Gotham City” as New York City’s chief nickname just in time for the summer release of "Batman: The Dark Night."
Queens Councilman Hiram Monserrate, who counts Batman as one of his childhood heroes, views his Gotham City pitch as a tourist lure. “I see that as a marketing tool, ‘Come visit the real Gotham City,’ taking advantage of this movie which will be one of those gate-breaking, record-selling movies like it always is,” he said.
Armed with this tagline and capitalizing on the flick’s buzz, Monserrate envisions theater-goers spending dollars on the streets of the living, breathing Gotham. “Come visit the real Gotham City and come visit our shops,” he said. “When we talk about Gotham we talk about tremendous, tremendous nightlife, restaurants, lounges, clubs and cafes, frappuccinos and everything else that we have in this City, the Village, Queens.”
The designation would also resonate with the art community, he added. “When we talk about Gotham we also talk about the rich architecture that our City enjoys. A lot of Gothic architecture exists in New York City. So Gotham’s also obviously related to Gothic and Gothic architecture which is a form of art, so it’s very important for our art community to strengthen its reconnection to being a Gotham City,” Monserrate said.
The dark and gritty streets of Batman fame were modeled after the landscape of Lower Manhattan. But long before the D.C. Comics depiction connected New York City and Gotham City, Washington Irving made the reference in 1807, drawing a comparison between the residents of the City and those of the town of Gotham in Nottinghamshire, England who evaded taxes by faking dementia, a condition thought to be contagious at the time.
Irving’s words, though referenced in the Council resolution, aren’t part of the marketing vision. When Monserrate plans to unleash a publicity campaign by the end of spring in an effort to energize the economy, he knows Batman is the real draw. “Batman is a childhood hero to millions of New Yorkers,” he said. “We all understand that Gotham is really about New York. So we are the Gotham City.”
The resignation of Governor Eliot Spitzer could be the best thing that ever happened to Joe Bruno.
Bruno, the Republican State Senate majority leader, is hanging on to his lead over the Democrats in that body by just one vote, having just recently seen his candidate defeated in an upstate special election. Democrats have been counting on taking over the State Senate this year, and they expected to need only one seat to do so. Any ties in the State Senate would be broken by the lieutenant governor, in this case Democrat David Paterson.
Should Spitzer resign over his involvement in the Emperor’s Club prostitution scandal Paterson would be appointed as his replacement. That would leave Bruno to serve in the capacity of lieutenant governor, and the New York State constitution offers no mechanism to appoint any replacement. In effect the tie-breaker would be gone, and Democrats would face the more daunting task of taking over two seats to achieve a State Senate majority before 2011.
“In case of vacancy in the office of lieutenant-governor alone, or if the lieutenant-governor shall be impeached, absent from the state or otherwise unable to discharge the duties of office, the temporary president of the senate shall perform all the duties of lieutenant governor during such vacancy or inability,” reads the provision in the State Constitution regarding vacancies for lieutenant governor.
There is no way to replace the lieutenant governor in New York, and Paterson’s ascension would give Bruno more breathing room to hold his fading majority, said Alan Chartock, professor emeritus at University of Albany and a noted commentator on New York State government. Chartock said that he had once asked Paterson if he would be interested in taking Senator Hillary Clinton’s seat in Washington should she be elected president, and Paterson referenced the loss of his tie-breaking vote.
“He said, ‘not if we’re ahead by one vote,’ for exactly that reason,” said Chartock.
Client 9 — identified as Gov. Eliot Spitzer by the New York Times — was a regular customer of the Emperor’s Club VIP, according to the criminal complaint in the prostitution case.
We’ll skip all the legal mumbo jumbo and get to the point: Spitzer was jonesin’ for some high-priced lovin’ the night before Valentine’s Day.
He had sent over a large deposit of money by mail, but the package was taking its time to get through the US mail. Meanwhile, Spitzer was trying to arrange for “Kristen” to take the train down from NY and meet him at a hotel in DC.
As the time for the appointment neared, the cash still hadn’t arrived. But the Emerald Club’s operators noted that the governor had some credit in his account: $400. Now, that would buy you a real good time in our neighborhood, but Eliot was looking for the royal treatment, and it was going to cost him $2,600.
Hey, why don’t you hit the ATM, Spitzer was told, and not only pull out enough to cover Kristen’s $2,600, but give her an additional $1,500 so that he’d have some cash on the books and this wouldn’t happen next time.
Sheesh, he was a governor, after all.
Eventually, Eliot’s total for the night came to $2,721.41 (Huh? Sales tax? Extras?), and he generously turned over $4,300, which put him in good stead for his next time.
Posted by Michael Clancy at 3:43 PM, March 10, 2008
Embroiled in a prostitution scandal, Gov. Eliot Spitzer said he needed time to dedicate himself to his family, but the first-term Democrat did not indicate that he would resign amids reports linking him to a high-end prostitution ring.
"I have acted in a way that violates my obligation to my family and violates mine or any sense of right and wrong. I apologize first and most importantly to my family. I apologize to the public, to whom I promised better..." Spitzer said in a hastily called press conference in Manhattan. "I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family."
Spitzer made announcement after the New York Times reported his involvement with a prostitution ring on its web site. The Times is reporting that Spitzer is one of the men named in court papers made public last week when authorities busted a international prostitution ring.
Last week, authorities charged four people for their connection to the Emperors Club VIP prostitution ring that charged wealthy men as much as $5,500 an-hour for trysts with high-end hookers. According to the Times, Spitzer is the person named in court documents as "client 9."
Ex-city labor leader and Queens assemblyman Brian McLaughlin once touted himself as a potential mayoral candidate. Instead, he'll do his public service in a federal pen.
Under a plea deal with prosecutors, McLaughlin, 55, pled guilty to racketeering in Manhattan federal court this afternoon, agreeing to serve a prison sentence of from 97 to 121 months.
In a plea allocution that took him a solid hour to recount, McLaughlin admitted to having ripped off everyone from his fellow union members to his local little league in Queens. Along the way, he also hit up five street lighting contractors for bribes, and stole from his own political club.
McLaughlin refused comment as he exited the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan, brushing aside questions from reporters. Asked if he had anything to say to the one million city union members he once led as president of the city's Central Labor Council, McLaughlin declined comment. "I've been advised by my attorney not to talk about it," he said.
The Voice told the ragged tale of McLaughlin's colossal fall in 2006 in "The Sinner Within."
In the spirit of reform, it’s time for Sheldon Silver to fully disclose his outside income, so says a young upstart who's a big long-shot to unseat the state's most powerful Democrat.
Paul Newell, one of two declared Democratic challengers to the Assembly Speaker in his Lower East Side district, is demanding that Silver cough up the details of his financial relationship with Weitz & Luxenberg, a major personal injury law firm of which Silver has been “of counsel” since 2002.
"Nothing dispels suspicion like a bit of sunlight,” said Newell, noting that other Albany luminaries such as Governor Eliot Spitzer and Attorney General Andrew have already released full details regarding their non-legislative income. Were Silver to do the same, said Newell, it would send a “powerful, transparent demonstration that he has nothing to hide."
Newell’s demand for transparency comes on the heels of Silver’s decision to appoint Arthur Luxenberg, the name-bearing partner of the aforementioned law firm, to a seat on the 13-member committee that screens candidates for the Appellate Division, Court of Claims and State Supreme Court for the City’s judicial district before making recommendations to the governor.
Silver has defended his choice, but editorial boards have sounded the cry that Silver put forward a full accounting of just how much he makes from his relationship with Luxenberg’s firm. Silver and his firm have never disclosed the number, which some say might reach seven figures. In the spirit of fairness, Newell put forward his own tax returns, which reveal he earned the modest sum of $46,028 in 2006 as grassroots director for the non-profit Ubuntu Education Fund. Now that he’s laid everything on the line, Newell’s only asking Silver to do the same.
Does Silver have anything to hide? A response to Newell’s charges from Silver’s office has not yet been forthcoming. But others have speculated that the relationship between the speaker and the law firm might have unseemly overtones. In the past the New York Post has accused Silver of being weak on sex offenders in order to keep money in the pockets of his attorney buddies. This conflict of interest, be it real or simply imagined, is too much for the State to bear when the buzzword in Albany is “reform.”
"We will never end the culture of failure in Albany while our legislative leaders can accept payments in secret from parties with interests before the state," said Newell.
Posted by Michael Clancy at 1:03 PM, March 3, 2008
Embattled state Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno and his minions were punching back today after New York magazine published a lengthy profile in which Bruno basically says he steered union officials with business before the Legislature to a firm that hired him as a consultant. Bruno's relationship with that firm is the focus of an active probe by the FBI. Bruno also rips Gov. Spitzer and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in the quite entertaining and informative piece.
"New York magazine did a tremendous disservice to its readers and to Senator Bruno by shamefully and purposely taking out of context comments Senator Bruno made several months ago to its reporter that clearly were not intended to appear in print,” Bruno's spokesman John McArdle told the New York Times in reaction to Geoffrey Gray's Bruno profile.
The profile offers some other illuminating glimpses of Bruno, the political fighter, and Albany, the political cesspool:
Bruno on Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver: "The reason we have dysfunction in Albany is Speaker Shelly Silver. That’s why. He will not govern. His style is to do nothing, hold you hostage, make you grovel, then trade you for what he wants. He kills everything.”
And Shelly's response? “Tell him that is governing.”
Classic.
Here's a great description of how Albany's "Three Men in a Room" govern:
“Take a look around Albany. Take a look around Troy. Take a look at the airport. Do you think that airport would be there if I wasn’t the leader?” [Bruno] says. “You know how the airport got there? We’re trying to close the budget and Shelly wouldn’t close. So Pataki says, ‘What’s it take to close?’ Shelly says, ‘I need a library in Brooklyn.’ ‘How much?’ Shelly says, ‘$65 million.’ Pataki says, ‘Well, that’s all right.’ It was a $100 billion budget. So I said, ‘It’s not okay with me. I don’t have a single member in Brooklyn.’ ‘So what do you need?’ ‘I need $65 million for the airport.’ Pataki says, ‘Shelly, do you care?’ ‘No, I don’t care, as long as I get my library.’ Pataki says, ‘Good. Done.’ ”
And Bruno version of a dust-up with Gov. Spitzer (an account that a Spitzer spokeswoman disputes):
"Bruno has an arsenal of stories about what he sees as Spitzer’s looniness. His favorite is probably the one where the governor accused him of “abusing” Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith through a parliamentary maneuver. “You know,” he says he told Spitzer, “Malcolm Smith has his head so far up your ass he can’t even see straight.” Spitzer “really lost it,” Bruno recalls. “He said, ‘You have just insulted the governor of the State of New York! I’m calling the New York Times! Mr. Bruno, get out of my office!’ ”
Bruno says he just sat there for a moment, then jabbed. “I tell Malcolm every day what I just told you and he laughs like hell. Call Malcolm.”
“ ‘I’m calling the New York Times!’ ”
Bruno says he just kept hitting back. “ ‘You know what your problem is? You’re a spoiled brat, an arrogant kid that never got over the fact that when you don’t get what you want you have a tantrum.’ And you know what he does next? He runs out of his own office! I’m thinking, Jesus, where the hell is he going?” When Spitzer returned, the shouting continued. Then Spitzer left again. “Now I’m thinking, Jeez, there’s something wrong with this guy. He’s shouting, screaming until he’s purple. He’s 8 years old.” Spitzer returned for a final time. Bruno remembers his orders from Spitzer: “Get out of here!”
The profile also quotes Wayne Barrett and refers to his reporting on Bruno's spending and fundraising habits, such as the $55,000-fundraiser at Donald Trump's Mar-A-Lago estate that raised far less.
Posted by John DeSio at 1:28 PM, February 28, 2008
A controversial proposal to dramatically change the City’s Meals-on-Wheels program is in poor taste, according to those fighting the plan.
In 2004 the City implemented a pilot program in The Bronx, called Senior Options, and drastically changed the face of Meals-on-Wheels across the borough. Before the change senior meals were prepared locally by a neighborhood non-profit, and were delivered hot and fresh the same day. Senior Options replaced those fresh meals with a standard issue food from a single provider and removed the local non-profits from the mix altogether, placing deliveries in the hands of larger, centralized organizations.
But the lasting effect of Senior Options has been the introduction of frozen meals to Bronx seniors. Before the changes seniors received a hot meal everyday. Now, they can opt for a hot meal each day or to receive the same meal as part of a frozen delivery twice a week. The Department for the Aging (DFTA), in an effort to modernize senior centers across the five boroughs, is proposing to mimic the Bronx pilot program across the City.
Bronx City Councilman G. Oliver Koppell, a staunch opponent of Senior Options from its inception, is fighting DFTA’s expansion plan. Though concerns have been raised about the actual cost benefits of the frozen meal switch and the critical role that delivery persons play in checking the health and safety of citywide seniors, Koppell is urging his colleagues to reject the plan because the meals, simply put, suck.
In a letter to other City Council members Koppell cites complaints from his constituents regarding the “poor quality of the food” provided by the Long Island-based Whitsons Culinary Group, adding that they have “complained bitterly about the tasteless, salty and generally low quality frozen meals.”
Holly Von Seggern, a spokesperson for Whitson’s, disputed Koppell’s claims, noting that an audit of Senior Options by KPMG found that 87 percent of program participants were happy with their meals. Von Seggern also noted that her company’s frozen meals are more nutritious and offer seniors flexibility in delivery times, allowing them to live their lives.
“Most of the customers are finding that the quality of the food is better,” said Von Seggern, adding that her company is responsive to complaints. “Are we going to please 100 percent of the time? No, but we strive for that.”
Bobbie Sackman, director of public policy of the Council of Senior Center and Services, also questioned the quality of the meals. Local providers, she said, can tailor their cooking to the likes of their communities. A one-size-fits-all meal is inappropriate in The Bronx, and expansion would be a disaster.
“I think the communities have to decide for themselves what kind of food they’re serving, and that’s not what has been happening,” said Sackman.
Posted by Michael Clancy at 3:52 PM, October 2, 2007
Seventy eight percent of New York State voters say that Gov. Eliot Spitzer should testify under oath about what he knew about the Troopergate scandal, according to a poll released Tuesday by Quinnipiac University.
Also Spitzer's steamroller quotient is down. In one of the weirder poll questions, only 45 percent of 1,504 people polled say Spitzer is a steamroller. That's down from 50 percent in June.
Quinnipiac pollster Mickey Carroll also asked "How about that other investigation—into Alan Hevesi’s investments as State Comptroller and fees collected by his campaign manager? Most New Yorkers don’t know much about it but they believe there was some sort of wrongdoing.”
A total of 76 percent of voters polled said "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that Hevesi and Hank Morris, a political advisor to Hevesi, did something wrong when Morris collected more than $25 million in "referral fees" for directing companies to the state pension trough. Here's a story from the New York Times but the NY Post has been all over the story with a slew of good follows here and here.
A whopping 79 percent of those polled also said that the state Comptroller should share oversight of the investing of the state's $150 billion pension fund with a larger body.
Posted by Michael Clancy at 1:24 PM, September 20, 2007
Bad pun alert: Lots of politicos were waiting for the other Hsu to drop and today it did as federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed an indictment against Norman Hsu, the Democratic fundraiser already in federal custody on unrelated charges.
The indictment charges that Hsu, 56, orchestrated a Ponzi scheme that defrauded victims out of more than $60 million, and violated campaign finance laws in order to raise his public profile by getting others to make political contributions in their names while he re-payed them. Download the entire Hsu complaint here.
Posted by Michael Clancy at 12:24 PM, September 19, 2007
Noach Dear, from Councilman to judge.
So the results are in and former City Councilman Noach Dear has been elected the Civil Court judge for Brooklyn's Fifth Municipal Court District, receiving 3,776 votes to his opponent Karen Yellen's 2,554, according to preliminary Board of Election tallies.
As much as anyone in his political generation, Noach Dear has embraced the true spirit of his Tammany Hall forefathers, seizing the advantage wherever he sees it.
Dear, a Democrat from Brooklyn's Borough Park neighborhood, served on the City Council for 18 years until the tyranny of term limits put an end to his livelihood. When this spurious reform dumped him from office in 2001, Dear was just 47, still in his political prime. Even though his council fan club could have met in a broom closet, there was no one disputing that Dear, a short man with a goatee and a brash manner, had proven himself a tremendous political fundraiser, a tenacious favor-seeker, and one of the council's classic connivers. These are perfect attributes for a career in politics, and Dear was determined to find a way back into the business for which he had shown such a remarkable aptitude.
In the other Brooklyn judicial race chronicled by Robbins, Diana Johnson was victorious, defeating a candidate who may or may not have even lived in the borough of Brooklyn.
ShawnDya Simpson, whom some say lived in New Jersey and not just some of the time, received 16,095 votes in the race to be the next judge of Surrogate's Court in Brooklyn. Johnson won with 23,454 votes, according to preliminary results.
The previous surrogate, Michael Feinberg, was removed in 2005 after he was found to have improperly awarded $8.5 million in fees to a crony. The judge before him also left under a cloud. The current surrogate, Margarita Lopez Torres, won the job by running as a reformer (thus inspiring the Democratic machine to create a second judge's slot that Simpson and Johnson are now seeking to fill). Lopez Torres has made reforms, cutting down on appointments and fees. Lawyers on Brooklyn's Court Street now refer to her as "that incompetent."
Sporting a fresh Florida tan, scandal-scarred labor
big Brian McLaughlin was in federal court this morning to
ask for more time to sift through evidence gathered
during the government's years-long investigation of him.
McLaughlin, the former Queens assemblyman who
doubled as powerful president of the city's Central Labor
Council, faces decades in prison for allegedly
stealing more than $2.2 million. But he looked none the worse for wear when he showed up in Manhattan Federal
Court in a dark pin-striped suit and a healthy glow from a
few days in the Sunshine State.
With the court's permission,
McLaughlin, who is free on $250,000 bail, travelled to Florida in late February to sell a
seaside home he owns in Melbourne Beach on Florida's "Space
Coast" just south of Cape Canaveral.
The trip, from February 21 to 26, coincided with a
confab of unionists who were in Florida at the same time
for a meeting of the Building Construction Trades
department of the AFL-CIO.
"I didn't go to any of the labor events," a jovial-
seeming McLaughlin told reporters on his way into the
courtroom. "But I hear [presidential candidate] John
Edwards is working the international unions hard," the
defendant added.
Asked if he was an Edwards fan, McLaughlin was led
away by his attorney, Michael Armstrong, before he could answer.
In court, McLaughlin sat mum as his attorney told
Judge Kenneth Karas that he needed yet more time to comb
through 100 boxes of evidence that were collected by city,
state, and federal investigators during their probe of the
labor leader.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Braun, who is handling
the case, agreed to the delay and Karas set a date for a
new hearing. McLaughlin
didn't flinch when Karas said the next hearing would be on
April 13. "That's a Friday," the judge said. "I hope that's
okay with you."
Posted by Neil deMause at 10:58 AM, February 21, 2007
For residents of the 40th council district in central Brooklyn, yesterday was Election Day, as
10 candidates vied to take the seat vacated by Yvette Clarke, who
ascended to Congress back in November. Since none of the 10 have held
elected office before (unless being St. Vincent's ambassador to the U.N.
counts), the name of the game has been brand recognition: While some
candidates in the heavily immigrant neighborhood played ethnic cards
(Mohammad Razvi sent out letters appealing to Pakistani pride, while
Jennifer James's campaign materials pointedly were festooned with American
flags and "USA" pins), mostly the race has come down to burying
prospective constituents beneath a blizzard of mailers and autodialers, in
which it's nearly impossible to find anything approaching a policy
position.
Yesterday's phone scorecard:
11:46 a.m.: "Hi, this is Yvette Clarke..." begins an automated message
endorsing Dr. Mathieu Eugene. Caller ID shows that the call from the
former Brooklyn councilmember and current Brooklyn representative to U.S.
Congress originates, naturally enough, in Phoenix, Arizona.
1:29 p.m.: "Hi, I'm calling to remind you to vote for Jesse Hamilton in
today's special election. Uh...I'm calling from D.C. 37."
Can you tell me why I should vote for him?
"Well, he's been endorsed by Major Owens and several other organizations."
Right, but can you tell me a reason why you've endorsed him?
"Oh, I don't live in the district. I don't really know much about him."
Click.
6:47 p.m.: "Hi, my name is Julia, and I'm calling on behalf of Dr. Mathieu
Eugene. We just wanted to remind you that polls are open until 9 p.m. Thank
you for your support, and I hope you have a great night!"
And the winner is . . . Dr. Eugene, a Haitian-born physician and community
board member who as of last month didn't live in the district either. Eugene won his ticket to City Hall
with a whopping 2,008 votes out of around 6,000 cast, in what papers are
generously calling "light turnout." (There are approximately 75,000
registered voters in the average council district.) Score one for mindshare.
Posted by Tom Robbins at 1:26 PM, January 19, 2007
Brian McLaughlin, the scandal-scarred ex-city labor chief charged with stealing more than $2 million, was in federal court this morning asking a judge for more time to examine a "mountain" of documentary evidence that federal prosecutors say they will use against him.
Looking leaner and grayer than he did before his arrest in October on 43 counts of racketeering, mail fraud, and other charges, McLaughlin sat in silence alongside his attorney, Michael Armstrong, who said he still needed more time to sift through the records. "The mountain is still there, we are still working on it," Armstrong told U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas who set a new March 1st court date to assess the case's status. "We'll see then if the mountain has been conquered," said Karas. Assistant U.S. attorney Daniel Braun, who is prosecuting the government's case did not object to the delay.
The mountain consists of more than 100 boxes of evidence that the government has provided to McLaughlin, former president of the city's 1.5 million-member Central Labor Council. The evidence is the result of a eight-year probe by the city's Department of Investigation, the federal Office of Labor Racketeering, the FBI, and the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office that was sparked when McLaughlin, who was also a power in Local 3 of the city's electrical workers union, allegedly took bribes from a contractor looking to violate union manning requirements on a city street lighting contract. Investigators watched and listened for years as McLaughlin, a former Queens Democratic assemblyman, allegedly took more bribes from other contractors, and conspired to steal from his assembly campaign committee, the Labor Council, and even a little league sponsored by his local union. McLaughlin has denied the charges but has spoken to few of his former colleagues in the labor movement since his arrest.
Posted by Neil deMause at 1:57 PM, January 18, 2007
Mayor Bloomberg's State of the City speech yesterday was long on tax cuts for the well-heeled ($1 billion to slash property taxes 5 percent and ditch sales taxes on high-priced clothing), but mostly mum about the "more than 30 programs" he'd promised were in the works for fighting the city's still-high poverty rates (about 20% by official measures). The one exception was yet another tax cut: Starting this week, the city will begin sending pre-filled-out tax rebate forms to 120,000 low-income New York households that were eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit in 2003 and 2004 but never applied for it. All that those who receive the forms will need to do is sign them, stick a stamp on, and wait for their cash—an average of more than $1,000 per household—to roll in.
Helping people apply for the EITC, meant as a supplement for those in
low-wage work, is a win-win for the city, noted the mayor: "For working
families with children, that money is going to make a huge difference in
helping them get ahead and it's money that will be spent in their local
communities, thereby helping local businesses, as well." And better yet,
he added, since most of the cost of the tax rebate will fall on the state
and federal treasuries, the program "will generate more in sales tax
revenue for the city than our share of the EITC expense."
It was a rare government recognition of a principle familiar to
economists: Giving money to the poor can provide a better economic boost
than giving it to the rich. That's because the former is less prone to
what's called "leakage": Poor people are less likely to spend rebate
checks on vacation homes in Bimini, and more inclined to cycle their
windfall back into the local bodega.
If EITC rebates are a good economic engine for all these reasons, though,
there's another program that's potentially even better: food stamps, which
are entirely federally funded, and which likewise are almost entirely
recirculated in the local economy. Yet the mayor has consistently shied
away from focusing on food-stamp outreach, refusing
to ask for a federal waiver allowing more single New Yorkers to
receive food stamps, even though the cost to the city would be negligible,
and the potential benefits huge: According to a Fiscal Policy Institute
study released last year, merely getting food stamps into the hands of
those eligible who don't currently receive them would pump an added $210
million a year into the city economy, and create 2,300 new jobs.
The difference, it seems, is that the EITC goes solely to the
working poor, while a food stamp waiver would aid
non-working New Yorkers—a key distinction for a mayor who has
made it clear that to be considered deserving of city aid, you need to be
punching a clock. Even for a bottom-line mayor like Bloomberg, it seems,
the aversion to helping the "undeserving" poor trumps what might be best
for the city economy.
Posted by Sarah Ferguson at 5:24 PM, October 27, 2006
After complaints that he's been exploiting his workers, Yellow Rat Bastard owner Henry Ishay was arrested Wednesday for failing to maintain proper payroll records.
The bust was part of a larger investigation by the New York State Attorney
General's office into allegations that the “streetwise” Soho-based
retail chain routinely underpaid workers and forced them to put in long
hours without overtime pay. The YRB employees are primarily young Latino, Asian, and African American New Yorkers, as well as African and West Indian immigrants, who
work as sales clerks, provide store security, and keep the stockrooms.
The AG's office is investigating complaints that they were forced to
work as much as 75 hours a week and while being paid as little as $5.25
an hour—well below the state minimum wage of $6.75 an hour.
Advocates with the Retail Action Project, which fights for the rights
of retail workers, estimate the employees are now owed more than $1.5
million in back wages.
But maybe the Department of Health should get on the case, too.
After the jump, a rat's ass. Literally.
Here's a rodent picture sent by Retail Action Project, which alleges the critter was found last week at the Yellow Rat Bastard's flagship SoHo store at 478 Broadway.
Workers there complain they've been forced to contend with a serious
rat infestation. According to them, highlights include:
Workers being forced to clean rat feces and rat nests from T-shirts before
folding them.
Rats eating through layers of clothing in order to reach their holes.
Sightings of live and dead rats in the basement, including rats
drinking from the staff toilet bowl.
Similar rat problems have been reported at YRB's sister stores: Sloppy
Joe Dirty Jane (483 Broadway), Boys and Chicks (392 Broadway), and the
Yellow Rat Bastard in Queens.
To be fair, we've been told that rats are plaguing the basements of many
stores on Broadway. The issue here, workers say, is owner Ishay's lax
response.
Ishay did not return press calls inquiring about why workers say there are so many
rats in his stores and about the charges pending against him.
Maybe it's just a rare case of truth in advertising.
Posted by Neil deMause at 12:26 PM, September 27, 2006
And another one bites the dust: Deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff's plan to buy
development rights to the MTA's West Side rail yards—the erstwhile site
of the erstwhile New York Jets stadium—died an ignominious death
yesterday, when the city gave
up on trying to get the MTA to accept its $300 million bid for a
parcel that had been appraised at $1.2 billion. And despite earlier
Bloombergian saber-rattling that City Hall would scuttle
the planned city-funded #7 train extension—west to 11th Avenue and south to 34th Street—if the land sale didn't go
through, the mayor says he'll move forward with spending $2 billion in
city cash on that project. He even agreed to kick in an extra $100
million if there are cost overruns.
Why stop there?
Remember, of course, that the MTA is the agency that brought us the
never-built Second Avenue subway and the $400,000-a-foot Queens
Connector. If the cost overruns can be kept to a mere five percent,
that'd be a new record for frugality. And if the price tag does skyrocket,
"it's anybody's guess" who'll be left holding the bag, says city transit
expert Joe Rappaport. Precedent indicates that the extra bills
would ultimately land in the lap of the MTA—and its riders.
Could a few extra blocks west on the #7 line be worth $2 billion-plus?
Posted by Sarah Ferguson at 6:18 PM, September 15, 2006
Looks like anti-war activists will get to be within shouting distance of President Bush when he delivers his "freedom agenda" before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.
Just yesterday the NYPD was refusing to grant United for Peace and Justice a permit to march from Herald Square to the traditional protest spot at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza opposite the U.N., telling Agence France-Presse that a march near the U.N. was "an absolute impossibility when the president's in town."
But after UFPJ declared it was prepared to risk arrests, the NYPD agreed to allow Bush opponents to march there on the sidewalk, though police say they will open a traffic lane if the crowd size warrants it.
"We're delighted they've come to their senses and realize of course we have the right to march," crowed UFPJ's Leslie Cagan, who expects many hundreds if not thousands to turn out.
The NYPD's chief spokesperson Paul J. Browne insisted the go-ahead did not amount to any sort of "reversal" by police. "That's absurd," Browne responded in an e-mail. "I said to anyone who asked me yesterday that the NYPD was still willing to try to accommodate UFPJ." Browne said the NYPD's objection had never been about limiting the group's right to protest Bush at the U.N. Rather he said there were concerns that UFPJ's requested route across 42nd Street would gum up traffic and security for the president's and the other heads of state's motorcades.
Fair enough, but these permit battles sure amount to great publicity for UFPJ.
Under the new agreement, UFPJ and fellow Bush foes will gather at 9
a.m. at Sixth Avenue and 37th Street, then march north to 47th Street
and across town to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza at 47th between Second and
First avenues, for a rally from 11 to noon.
"George W. Bush should not think he can come to an antiwar city like New York without hearing from opponents of his war," declared activist David Dubnau of Northern Manhattan Neighbors for Peace and Justice in a press statement. "For five years the Bush Administration and its allies have used 'security' as an excuse to wage illegitimate wars and curtail basic democratic rights—all the while making us less secure."
Posted by Wayne Barrett at 10:29 PM, September 7, 2006
When Mark Green wrapped up Wednesday's final debate in the attorney general race with a reference to the Voice's story about Andrew Cuomo's curious ties to accused slumlord Andrew Farkas, I was sitting in the press row gathering my umbrella and papers.
The next minute I was accosted by George McDonald, a Cuomo supporter who runs a controversial homeless program funded by HUD during Cuomo's reign. McDonald is a rather large and sweaty man with an appetite for confrontation, and he was yelling in my face. "Why don't you write about Steven Green?" he kept saying, referring to Mark Green's brother who, like Farkas, is both a developer and a substantial fundraiser and donor in this race. McDonald stood in front of me bellowing this mantra for a couple of minutes, and, to my surprise, he was soon joined by a second, albeit less inflamed, voice.
Standing next to McDonald in the mahoghany auditorium at the headquarters of the Bar Association of the City of New York, in a room filled with expensively suited lawyers, was none other than the man who expects to be the next Attorney General of the State of New York. Andrew Cuomo had that perpetual half-smile on his lips. "No, he'll never do that. He'll never write about Steven Green," said Cuomo at half the McDonald decibel level. I shook McDonald's hand and reached out for Cuomo's, but he refused to shake it, and moved on.
Cuomo had raised the supposed parallel of Steven Green in his final interview with me before the Voice piece appeared. To my knowledge, no one has ever accused Green of paying millions in kickbacks or grossly mismanaging apartment complexes housing thousands, as Cuomo's HUD accused Farkas of doing. A multimillionaire, Green has dumped tons of money in his brother's campaign coffers, and, in strangely enough, I did write a story in the 2001 mayoral race about how Mark Green's positions on development issues overlapped with his brother's real estate interests. No such questions are relevant in an A.G. contest.
An hour after the debate, Cuomo held a press conference to announce the endorsement of highly respected Connecticut A.G. Richard Blumenthal. Cuomo introduced Blumenthal as his model of what an A.G. should be. But when asked if he had a policy about accepting contributions from anyone he'd negotiated an out-of-court settlement with, Blumenthal said he took "no contributions from anyone doing business with his office," adding that he would in particular not take any donations from an "adversary" in any legal matter. Cuomo winced at the question. He'd not only collected at least $800,000 in contributions from Farkas and his companies, business associates and family members, he'd reported $1.2 million in taxable income from Farkas's Island Capital. And, as the Voice story points out, he'd approved a HUD settlement with Farkas that spared the real estate titan from punishing litigation and allowed him to sell his rental residential portfolio for nearly a billion dollars only five days later. The Farkas largesse began virtually as soon as Cuomo left HUD and set up his first campaign committee in 2001. Cuomo's breezy indifference to the appearances of this seedy relationship have suddenly become an obstacle on the road to the state's top law enforcement position.
Just as I closed this week's article last Thursday, Cuomo had his former counsel and top aide at HUD, Howard Glaser, call me. Glaser, who'd worked for years under Governor Mario Cuomo before joining Andrew at HUD, signed the settlement agreement with Farkas. He'd also funneled an amnesty proposal to the Justice Department that would've protected owners and managers involved in the sort of fee-splitting practices that Farkas had engaged in, a proposition killed by federal prosecutors and investigators. Glaser, who's contributed twice to Cuomo's campaign, was attempting to defend the actions he and the former HUD Secretary had taken in the Farkas case, apparently oblivious to the current state of the Farkas/Cuomo relationship.
"We thought they were scumbags," he said, referring to Bruce Rozet and the affiliated owners of the projects to whom Farkas's management company, Insignia, had paid $7.6 million in kickbacks, according to the court complaint filed on Cuomo's behalf.
"What about the management companies?" I asked.
"Them, too," said Glaser, unwittingly condemning the indispensable man of Cuomo's personal and political life whose management company drained projects of millions in federal fees so he could reward Rozet for awarding him the management contract.
Embattled city union big Brian McLaughlin is out as
president of the city's powerful Central Labor Council - at
least for the next six months.
McLaughlin, an electrical workers' union official and Queens state assemblyman who
has been battling a criminal probe of city contracts, has
agreed to take a paid leave of absence from his post as
president of the million-member council.
Union spokespersons insisted McLaughlin made the
decision himself, but the departure comes just days before
the city's September 9th Labor Day parade, an annual event that attracts
most of the state's top pols. Among those expected at this
year's rally and march are Democratic
gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer, senator Hillary
Clinton, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg -none of whom were
looking forward to the possibility of marching
alongside the target of an active FBI probe.
City union leaders have been expecting McLaughlin's
exit for weeks. The investigation became public in March when
FBI and other city and federal agents raided the council's
offices, lugging away scores of boxes of documents. The
Voice has reported that the probe centers on McLaughlin's actions as head of a unit of his union that supplies workers for street lighting contractors.
Pinch-hitting for McLaughlin during his absence will be state AFL-CIO president Denis Hughes, who will serve as interim leader of the council. Day-to-day affairs for the labor organization will
be handled by McLaughlin's popular aide, former hospital
workers' organizer and communications union aide Ed ott who
has served as public policy director for the council since
1996. Ott, a fiery speech-maker, has long been considered a
rising star in the city's labor movement.
Posted by Neil deMause at 7:45 PM, August 15, 2006
At 9:30 tomorrow morning, the New York Yankees will hold the official groundbreaking for their $1.3 billion project to replace Yankee Stadium with a new edifice across the street. On a giant stage hastily assembled in one corner of Macombs Dam Park, city officials and Yankee execs will gather before a thicket of cameras and microphones to declare the long-planned project to be underway. Almost certainly, someone will overturn a shovelful of ceremonial sod.
That's the TV show. (The event is set to air live on the team's YES Network.) In reality, the demolition of Macombs Dam Park and the southern reach of neighboring Mullaly Park began last Friday, when cement mixers moved in to pour a driveway that would convert the handball courts on 164th Street and River Avenue into temporary parking for the adjacent tennis courts; the existing lot, and half the courts, were about to become a construction zone. On Sunday night, as the Bronx community group Save Our Parks awaited word on a requested court injunction to stop construction—it was ultimately rejected this afternoon—workers moved in and fenced off all the park entrances, sealing it off from the public.
Under today's soggy skies, few locals were looking to enter the park, whose track was puddled with rainwater and traversed by a miniature bulldozer that busily scraped at the dirt to no obvious end. Yellow-shirted Burns security guards patrolled every shuttered park entrance, and laconically eyeballed the passersby who stopped to gape through the fence at the construction crews.
The overriding sentiment on the street matched the gloomy weather. "For the Bronx economy, it will be good," said local resident Ramirez Narciso. "But baseball is a profitable business. When the state takes money for the people, for health, education, it's better, no?"
"I live on Jerome Avenue, and we're all wondering what's going to happen to the building," worried a woman who gave her name only as "Davis." She had been unable to attend meetings about the coming stadium thanks to her husband's illness; now, they were looking at having a multi-level parking garage outside their window.
"I can't come here to run no more," remarked Alyson Patrick sadly as she waited for the bus. "I don't know what I'm going to do now. It don't make no sense."
Scott Daly, who runs the New York Junior Tennis League's program in the soon-to-be-obliterated Mullaly Park courts, insisted he was resigned to the march of progress and not bitter at the Yankees or the city. "Sometimes things look real good on paper, and then when you implement it, it doesn't quite work out," he mused, watching his charges practice volleys. "There's a Joni Mitchell song, you take paradise and put up a parking lot. That's what it is. This is going to be a parking lot."
Once tomorrow's festivities are complete, the first trees to meet the chainsaws, it is rumored, will be in the park's southwest corner, near the large rock that has overlooked the ballfield there for nearly a century. Nearby on 161st Street, a Burns guard was detailing her long day ahead—after guarding the new stadium site throughout the day, she would cross the street and work tonight's Yanks-Orioles game—when she was interrupted by a confused onlooker.
Posted by Jarrett Murphy at 4:50 PM, August 15, 2006
A state judge on Tuesday refused to stop the Yankees from going ahead with their plan to build a new stadium in Macombs Dam Park, clearing the way for tomorrow's groundbreaking—and a protest by local residents who've fought to stop the taking of their green space.
The Bloomberg administration hailed the decision by State Supreme Court Justice Herman Cahn, with Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo disparaging the last ditch effort of "Save Our Parks" as "designed to prevent the City and the New York Yankees from moving forward with a well-considered plan to build a new Yankee Stadium."
The city says the project will "replace 22.42 acres of unencumbered parkland with 24.56 acres of replacement parkland, consisting of the existing Yankee Stadium site, adjacent land now used for parking, and waterfront property along the Harlem River." But opponents say the trade leaves the community on the losing side. That's why at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, Save Our Parks will gather at the corner of 161st and River Avenue to sound a discordant note to the ceremonial start of the stadium project.
Posted by Sarah Ferguson at 11:50 AM, July 25, 2006
We almost mistook him for an extra on the set of Fred Durst's new movie, The Education of Charlie Banks, which was filming in front of the old P.S. 64 on East 9th Street in the East Village on Monday. In fact, developer Gregg Singer was on the block to check on the demo crew he hired to begin hacking off the former school's now landmarked facade.
"We're going to start chopping it today," Singer told the Voice, as workers began rehanging the scaffolding on the 10th Street side of the building.
Of course, Singer made the same threat a month ago. But on Tuesday morning, workers could be seen drilling into P.S. 64's ornate dormer windows and terra cotta trim.
Destruction in progress (Photos: Brian Fenwick)
"It's a shame. The city forced me to do it," Singer told the Voice. Singer continues to insist he has "no choice" but to strip the facade so he can go to court and try to overturn last month's landmarks designation and then proceed with his plan to put up a 19-story dorm at the site. Legally he can still demo the facade because of an alteration permit approved by the buildings department three years ago.
That permit expires in October, and Singer says he needs to get started now in order to have the century-old former elementary school denuded of its historic trimmings by then.
"My investors wanted me to start a month ago, but I put them off thinking we could work something out with the city," Singer told the Voice. "I thought there was a chance the city was acting in good faith, but they're full of shit."
Owner Gregg Singer, at right, shows his handiwork to the press. (Photo: Brian Fenwick)
No matter that last week, a New York Supreme Court judge ruled the city was well within its rights when it denied Singer a permit to put up his dorm because he does not have any colleges on board to lease the place. Singer says he'll appeal that ruling, too.
"It's all politics. Eventually a school is going to step up and get on board," Singer told the Voice. "Maybe we'll have to wait until this mayor gets out of office, but somebody is going to approve this. I don't care if it takes 10 years."
Singer also blasted the mayor's office and City Council rep Rosie Mendez for not working with him to come up with an alternative plan to develop the building, which is zoned for community facility use.
Since P.S. 64 was landmarked on June 20, Singer says he's only had one sit-down with Mendez and Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez. "We discussed some ideas, but they never got back to us," said Singer, who complained that Mendez blew off a second meeting scheduled for last week. "If they cared, they would say, Gregg, let's work something out. But they won't say what they want it to be. Why aren't they making a deal with me?"
Mendez confirmed that Singer presented her and Velazquez with at least one alternative to the dorm, which she declined to discuss because of a confidentiality agreement Singer signed with the city. (Singer is currently suing Mayor Bloomberg and various city agencies for $100 million over his stymied dorm plan, which has made negotiations touchy. )
Mendez blamed her recent knee surgery and the congresswoman's busy schedule in Washington for delaying further talks with Singer, but said they'd been working "as expeditiously as possible."
"We told him we needed time to discuss his proposal between ourselves and also with the community," said Mendez, who's been on pain meds for the last two weeks.
"They've had eight years to come up with a plan," counters Singer, who bought the former school at auction in 1998, when it was still home to the CHARAS/El Bohio community center. "How long am I supposed to wait? It can't remain a vacant eyesore forever."
Singer further accused the Mayor and Mendez of trying to run out the clock on his alteration permit. "They think they can string this along until my permit expires so they can force me to give up the building. But I'm not giving it back unless they pay market value for it. This is not Russia."
So is there anything that might get him to call off the wrecking crew now? While Singer wouldn't get specific about what he offered Mendez, on Monday he laid out two options (other than a dorm) that he'd consider to save P.S. 64's face:
"Either we make it a homeless and drug treatment center with government funding to do it long-term, or they let me add a few floors and turn it into condos, and I'll give the community some space at below-market rent."
"I don't really want residential because it pays the least money," Singer added, noting that he could make more running the building as a shelter than he could selling it off as high-end condosâif the city would even consider forgoing the community facility use restriction to allow such a scheme.
City Hall officials won't say what, if anything, is on the table now, citing that confidentiality agreement. "It all comes down to the mayor," Singer insisted. "If the mayor really cared about this community, we would have worked something out a long time ago. They have to put something in writing and get real.
"When I get something in writing, I'll stop chopping," he added.
Community advocates suggested a different equation. "If he chops it, then nobody's going to talk to him," countered Michael Rosen of the East Village Community Coalition, which fought to landmark P.S. 64. "Who in the city is going to give him a license to run it as a shelter now? I cannot imagine any college or university that is going to want to touch something that's poxed. The community is never going to forget this. He's only hurting himself."
Fred Durst, filming outside P.S. 64 as workers began stripping the facade (Photo: Sarah Ferguson)
Jason Ritter, starring in Durst's movie, outside the school (Photo: Sarah Ferguson)
It all seemed like a bad movie to actor Jason Ritter (son of the late John Ritter), who plays a schoolyard bully in Durst's indie flick. Glancing up at P.S. 64's dilapidated but still elegant French Renaissance facade, Ritter seemed shocked its new owner would consider trashing it. "No way, really?" he asked, when told of the real life battle underway on East 9th Street. "Why would anyone do that?"
The other shoe has dropped: The city's Industrial Development Agency announced at 4 p.m. today that the Internal Revenue Service has approved the convoluted tax-exempt bond scheme that would raise $1.56 billion to build new stadiums for the Mets and Yankees. Following the Yankees' successful National Park Service ruling last Friday, this means that, barring legal challenges, the way is clear for both teams to start construction as soon as the steam shovels can get in gear.
The issue in question involved an arcane section of the 1986 Tax Reform Act, which boiled down to this: Cities aren't supposed to use tax-exempt bonds, which bear federally subsidized lower-than-normal interest rates, for private projects. But while the New York stadium bonds would be repaid by the teams, city lawyers insisted that since these payments were "in lieu of" paying property taxes—both stadiums would sit on public land, and so be exempt from taxation—in tax terms they really represented public dollars, not private ones.
At an April council hearing, Independent Budget Office director Ronnie Lowenstein called this strategy "a very, very aggressive interpretation of the IRS code," given that the bond payments would be significantly greater than the expected property-tax rate. (Indeed, an internal IRS document specifically notes "agreements to raise the assessed market value of the property" as a reason to reject tax-exempt financing.) Lowenstein declined to comment on today's IDA announcement, beyond noting that as it didn't provide a dollar figure for the amount of allowable tax-exempt bonds, "we still have to wait to see whether the Mets and Yankees will be able to do as much tax-exempt borrowing as they had planned."
Neither Mets nor Yankees officials would comment on the ruling, or speculate on when ground might be broken on the new stadiums. A spokesperson for the Bronx litigants expected to file suit against the Yankees plan said she did not know when a legal challenge would be filed.
Posted by Jarrett Murphy at 12:06 PM, July 18, 2006
It's likely that New York City might someday have a mayor who can't afford to turn down the $195,000 annual salary that municipal law awards for the job, which Mayor Bloomberg performs for only a dollar a year. Mayor Mike is clearly under-compensated. The question is: Would his full-salaried successor also be underpaid?
Right now a city commission is quietly looking at that question and others related to the paychecks that city pols earn. Word is that the Advisory Commission for the Review of Compensation Levels of Elected Officials—which has held one public meeting, according to watchdog groups—will report its recommendations in early August, for the mayor and then the City Council to act upon if they choose. (Voice calls to two of the commission's three members, Chelsea Piers co-founder Tom Bernstein and New York City Mission Society Executive Director Stephanie Palmer, were not returned, so we've no specifics on what will come or when.)
For most of us, $195,000 would be a very pretty paycheck. For the Yankees backup catcher Kelly Stinnett, it'd be a third of what he's making this season. Of course, the mayor doesn't have to try to tell Randy Johnson what to throw, but Stinnett doesn't run a $54 billion budget providing services to 8 million people spread over 307 square miles. It's been seven years since elected officials in the city (including the mayor; comptroller [$160,000]; public advocate [$150,000]; borough presidents [$135,000]; and district attorneys [$150,000]) got a raise, and in that time, their purchasing power has slipped about 18 percent.
But the question of a raise gets a little more complicated when it comes to City Council members, who make a base salary of $90,000. For one thing, very few members (only five out of 51) make only the base salary; the rest receive stipends for their work as council leaders or committee chairpersons, ranging from $4,000 for lesser committees to $28,500 for the speaker. For another, city council members are part-time employees and therefore can hold outside jobs, and in the most recent reporting year 11 did. That raises the concerns about conflicts of interest or competing demands on councilmembers' time.
Of course, 40 councilmembers do not work outside City Hall. And most who do don't make very much. Robert Jackson and Larry Seabrook, report only a few thousand dollars in income from teaching. Kendall Stewart billed as a podiatrist, took income from a café and had some real estate interests. Brooklyn's Bill de Blasio picked up between $5,000 and $35,000 (the members report their income in ranges) in 2004 as a consultant for presidential candidate John Edwards. Lewis Fidler's legal work placed him in the six-figures neighborhood. David Yassky made a token amount from a real estate partnership, and Peter Vallone, Jr., has reported small earnings from his family law firm and a real estate entity.
But others had more significant income streams from outside the council. Dominic Recchia has reported rental and sales income from real estate, along with between $100,000 and $250,000 from his law practice. Michael McMahon reports a similar amount from his law firm on Staten Island. David Weprin in 2004 made up to $320,000 in 2004 from legal work and his position as vice president of an investment bank, Sterne, Agee & Leach. And Oliver Koppell, in 2004 reported up to $290,000 from his own firm, his wife's, and the partnership of Leavitt, Koppell & Duane.
In his filing, Koppell states that his firm had "no cases before city or state agencies" and that the partnership "excludes me from participating in or gaining income from any matter the firm had involving the city of New York." Other council members have also erected barriers to work that might cause a conflict; McMahon's 2005 opponent said his legal work wasn't an issue in the race because his attendance was very good. However, the council members themselves are the ones who define the barriers, and there's no outside monitoring. And in the case of lawyers—each with a list of clients whom they don't identify—there's the possibility that payment for "legal work" could be a loophole in the city's campaign finance law.
"We are troubled by the several members of the Council who earn other employment-related income, but provide less than whole time attention to fulfilling their responsibilities because of the distraction that results from being allowed to work outside of the Council," was how Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union, put it in testimony to the commission last month. But Dadey didn't call for a ban on outside income, because until the City Council job is redefined as "full-time" that doesn't seem fair. With term limits restricting council members to eight or ten years at City Hall, it's reasonable for people to want to keep a hand in the job they will return to when their public service is done. Otherwise, City Council membership might be restricted to people who can afford to give up their careers for years, or who are intent on shopping for another elected post when their council time is done.
That's why NYPIRG's Gene Russianoff suggestion was interesting: "Why not follow the pattern i
Conservative Boris Johnson has been elected Mayor of London, and Mike Bloomberg is speeding to his assistance, planning a 
Johnson has already pledged to 
Council Speaker Christine Quinn is the most honest person Mayor Bloomberg knows. The mayor said so himself earlier this month when Quinn found herself in hot water thanks to a federal-city probe into a hide-the-money scheme involving council slush funds. 
The latest casualty in 
Ex-city labor leader and Queens assemblyman Brian McLaughlin once touted himself as a potential mayoral candidate. Instead, he'll do his public service in a federal pen. 
