Michael Marsicano

It was a story that enraptured headlines for the entire week, involving the FBI, business interests, moles and all the other classic characters in political scandal. Last month, Queens Councilman Dan Halloran was caught in cahoots with State Senator Malcolm Smith in a scheme to rig the Republican race for the party's mayoral nominee. If convicted, Halloran wil face huge fines and possible time behind bars.

Oh, he's also an avid pagan and a Tea Party brigadier. Our profile on him from a few years back can tell you all about that.

So yesterday, when he announced that he'd not seek re-election, there was not one person that said to him or herself, "What?! Why?!" No one really expected him to run for office again, right?

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Oh, Vito.

Even amid an overshadowing investigation and unprecedented creepiness, the Daily News reported yesterday that former Assemblyman Vito Lopez has submitted a campaign committee claim with the state Board of Elections. He plans to run against Brooklyn Councilwoman Diane Reyna, who's legally unable to run for another term in Bushwick. Except how the hell does he expect to run a campaign with everything that's going on?

This is the guy who's facing sexual harassment charges from four different female campaign staffers. This is the guy who's currently being investigated by the Staten Island DA for criminal behavior. And this is the guy who was recently diagnosed with cancer.

Also, his primary opponent, Antonio Reynoso, has things kinda on lockdown. The chief of staff to Reyna has the support of Speaker Christine Quinn and numerous other councilmembers. And he has the endorsement of the National Organization for Women.

What's more, besieged Democrat Lopez doesn't even live in Bushwick. If this does happen, it will definitely be a council race to remember.

[jsurico15@gmail.com/@JohnSurico]

There's a good chance this week will go down in New York City political history textbooks. And not for the best reasons.

If you've watched the news (or Twitter) over the past three days, you've come across the Dan Holleran/Malcolm Smith story that involved bribing and mayoral rigging. Then, of course, the outgrowth of blame directed at Christine Quinn. And don't forget even more drama between her rivals--all of which directly leads back to the exposure of Holleran's illegal use of city funds.

And, yesterday, yet another politico was booked for corruption. South Bronx Assemblyman and Democrat Eric Stevenson was caught by federal authorities for accepting bribes of upward of $20,000. With this money, he planned on passing a law that would solely benefit four adult day care developers. Like Holleran and Smith, somehow he expected to get away with it.

As if this story couldn't get any wilder, the mole was Stevenson's fellow assemblyman, Nelson Castro, who's currently facing perjury charges from 2008. And late afternoon yesterday, he resigned from his seat and described just exactly what has been going down over the past four years.

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How do you create more mayoral drama? Start fighting over who's better at dealing with previous mayoral drama.

Yesterday, we reported on the Halloran/Smith scandal's foray into the electoral spectrum. News swirled around the fact that Councilman Dan Holleran had planned to use Council/taxpayers' funds to get in on state Sen. Malcolm Smith's brigging scheme. And who oversees those funds? None other than City Council Speaker and mayoral candidate Christine Quinn.

So her rivals took the floor to take shots at her. Bill Thompson called the scandal an outgrowth of shitty oversight, and Bill de Blasio said this would've never happened had Quinn passed reform measures. The backlash arose from a New York Times profile of Quinn this week, in which she was reportedly caught handling member items like chess pieces in one big political game.

For clarity, member items are the cash flow amounts given to councilmembers so they can lavish their districts' organizations with funds. And this control-by-speaker is a quasi-parliamentary power given to the speaker, and in Britain it's commonplace strategy.

Out of that story, rivals Sal Albanese and Bill de Blasio have taken it upon themselves to direct the mud-slinging at each other in an attempt to distinguish to voters who's the best person to deal with council corruption.

If the past week is any indication, it seems like this mayoral race will give us a new drama to talk about on a daily basis.

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City Council

The City Council's Black, Latino and Asian Caucus.

Perhaps it is Mayor Michael Bloomberg who needs a crash-course on the dangers of earbud volume, because the City Council's Black, Latino and Asian Caucus says the mayor must not be hearing the massive outcry against stop, question and frisk.

The 27-member caucus filed an amicus brief Monday in the federal case David Floyd v. City of New York--a class-action lawsuit that seeks to put an end to the NYPD's racially biased stop-and-frisk policies.

"New York City communities have vociferously made their opposition to NYPD's stop and frisk policy heard," the brief states. "Despite being confronted consistently with community complaints, judicial findings and concerned legislators, the NYPD has refused to acknowledge the policies adverse effects."

The council held numerous public hearings throughout the city in October where hundreds of New Yorkers expressed outrage over the practice.

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Representatives from the city's Transport Workers Union say that the solutions to reducing subway deaths are simple, but the MTA doesn't want to spend the money.

At yesterday's emergency hearing on subway deaths called by city councilman James Vacca, the MTA unveiled a large-scale public education campaign to combat platform-edge related deaths at subway stations. The heinous December platform murders of Sunando Sen at a station in Sunnyside, Queens and Ki-Suk Han in Times Square brought increased awareness to an even larger issue.

The campaign is aimed at reducing the number of deaths, 54, which occurred last year as a result of riders being killed by trains.

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Facebook

As City Council contenders gear up for the race to City Hall, they want to make sure we know that they have lots and lots of friends. Because only popular kids are allowed to eat at the City Council table, right?

Ari Kagan, currently the district leader of Brooklyn, recited names from his Facebook friends list to Politicker, stating, "I'm very happy to have the support of so many of my friends like Hakeen Jeffries, you know like Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, he calls me 'bro.' We ran together and we're close, close, close friends and I believe he is rising star in Brooklyn politics. ... I'm very close to Senator Diane Savino, Assemblywoman Helene Weinstein, Councilman David Greenfield and Assemblyman Alec Brook-Krasny."

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As if the unemployed needed another political showdown in their honor after the fiscal cliff debacle.

Yesterday, City Council approved a bill that would bar an employer from not considering you simply because you're unemployed (ironic, given that the unemployed are at the interview for a reason: because they're unemployed). In effect, it would give potential hires the right to take an employer to court if he or she believes that someone didn't hire them because of their job past.

However, that doesn't mean all judicial hell breaks loose: the employer has every right to deny you employment if you lost your last job because you showed up late to work everyday with a burrito from Chipotle in hand.

As of now, only New Jersey and Oregon prohibit employers from using anti-unemployed language in their job listings. If approved, New York will become the first City in America to have such a bill in its ledger - and it's a provision that remains a cornerstone of President Obama's hopeful jobs package.

Except the piece of legislation, spearheaded by Speaker Christine Quinn, faces one major obstacle: the Mayor's approval.

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Jason Lewis/Village Voice

UPDATE: Some minority business-owners still upset over low participation goals for Hispanic construction firms.

The amended Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprise bill is headed to the Mayor's Office after the city council voted 45 to 2 yesterday in favor of the measure.

Among several improvements, the amended Intro-911-A bill lifts the $1 million cap on M/WBE contracts and implements additional accountability measures in an attempt to better ensure M/WBE goals are being met.

"If we have faith in MWBE's, then we should say 'bid on every contract, the sky's the limit,' most of the city contracts are over $1 million.This bill raises that cap," Council Speaker Christine Quinn said at yesterday's vote. "We don't want to just pass a bill today saying we've raised the goals for MWBE participation, we've opened it up to all of the contracts...We need it to happen."

Councilman Charles Barron, who voted against the bill, raised concerns similar to those that other critics have raised about the lowered goals for minority construction firms.

"Any bill that reduces the goal for black companies from 12 to 8 percent, reduces the goal for Latino companies from 9 percent to 4 percent, is not a bill that I would want to support," Barron said.

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Jason Lewis/Village Voice

Some minority business-owners still upset over low particpation goals for Hispanic construction firms.

The City Council's Committee on Contracts voted unanimously yesterday to revise a law passed in 2005 aimed at helping minority and women-owned businesses secure contracts with city agencies.

The committee voted in favor of the proposed Intro-911-A bill -- which is a revised version of the Local Law 129 legislation passed in 2005. Local Law 129 established the Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise program.

The revised bill includes adjustments to procurement goals for the various minority groups involved in the program. The procurement goals were calculated for each demographic based on the number of firms eligible to do work in a given sector for the city versus the number of firms the city actually chooses to contract with.

As we previously reported, members of the Hispanic business community expressed outrage that the revised bill would lower procurement goals for Hispanic-owned construction firms -- from about 9 percent of city contracts to 4 percent.

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