Dishonor Roll: The 29 City Councilmembers Against Democracy

The Dishonor Roll - The Shame of New York

2008-11-11T12:30:00.000-08:00

Mike Nelson

2008-11-11T11:35:00.000-08:00

Councilman Mike Nelson’s Former Deputy Chief of Staff Wants Apology for Posting on Forums for Nelson, then Being Outed by Nelson.

GerritsenBeach.net, 5/9/2008

Every politician has his enemies; Councilman Mike Nelson apparently has a lot and keeps piling up more.

It recently was exposed on the SBPBCivic.org forums that Councilman Mike Nelson had his former Deputy Chief of Staff Robert Varley post to various websites including this site under the guise of City Insider. Every post that was ever written by Robert Varley, a.k.a. “City Insider”, was seen and approved by Mike Nelson. The identity was always a secret, which was important, since City Insider's opinions should never be linked back to Mike Nelson.

Varley left his position as Deputy Chief under good terms in February 2008 and the forum account has been unused by Varley since. However, since February, a Norman Chesler, who was a close friend of Mike and his wife Sheila Nelson, had began commenting on GerritsenBeach.net. He has been threatening that he would reveal things that will be detrimental to the Nelsons and others. However, it should be known that Chesler is someone who’s admitted making $56,000 in payoffs to Clarence Norman, the former chairman of the Kings County Democratic Party. Clarence was convicted of three felony counts of accepting illegal campaign contributions during his 2000 and 2002 re-election campaigns for his seat in the New York State Assembly and is currently serving a jail sentence. Chesler, although his credibility is close to nil due to his illegal dealings, still could say some damaging things.

Other than Chesler, people have been saying some nasty things about Mike and Sheila Nelson. According to Varley, the Nelsons then took action, blaming him for the nasty comments, then outing him as City Insider on the Forum as another poster because according to Varley “maybe that would make those nasty comments go away”.

Varley who attempted for days to get in contact with Mike Nelson took his story public:

Remember Mike Nelson is/was my friend. My only beef I have with the Nelsons is that how they turned their backs to me when I was being investigated. I'm sure the higher ups in the Democratic Party told them to do so.

It’s funny, all who knew me and said “we are your friends” just turned away and must have said “Norman who?” You took my money contributions when I was under investigation, maybe I should ask for them back. What do you think??

As we all know giving contributions is part of the political game. All you elected officials and public servants accepted my money, gifts and stamps. You all knew what was going on regarding me and when it was beneficial to you and accepted my financial help and got it and when I needed it YOU ALL TURNED AWAY.

Big Question Unanswered in Scandal

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Politicians' self-promotion on our dime soon may end
Daily News, BY FRANK LOMBARDI Tuesday, October 23rd 2007

The days when City Council members could use public funds to take out self-promoting ads in local newspapers could soon end, thanks to a biting report from the watchdog group Citizens Union.

The 110-year-old good-government group, through a Freedom of Information Law request, obtained Council documents showing Council members spent a collective $927,507 in taxpayer funds from July 2001 to this past June on ads they placed in community newspapers and ad journals published by various organizations for fund-raising events and the like.

Figures in chart don't add up to $927,507 because some Council members left office some time during the period covered.

Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union, said it's improper to use "taxpayer dollars for such purposes when there's no clear public benefit other than to raise their profile in front of an important constituency."

Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) has pledged to close the door on self-serving ads with new legislation.

So how did your Council member fare? You can find out from the chart.

Here are the individual spending figures - in order of who spent the most - of the Council members.
Michael Nelson, Brooklyn $113,362
Domenic Recchia, Brooklyn $54,219
James Gennaro, Queens $53,077
Leroy Comrie, Queens $44,758
Joseph Addabbo, Queens $44,373
David Weprin, Queens $41,667
Dennis Gallagher, R-Queens $40,791
Helen Sears, Queens $38,485
Eric Gioia, Queens $36,615
Joel Rivera, Bronx $34,234
Hiram Monserrate, Queens $31,354
Lewis Fidler, Brooklyn $28,720
James Oddo, R-Staten Island $22,163
Miguel Martinez, Manhattan $20,357
Peter Vallone Jr., Queens $19,604
Vincent Gentile, Brooklyn $17,673
Christine Quinn, Manhattan $15,433
Diana Reyna, Brooklyn $11,502
Annabel Palma, Bronx $9,817
Melinda Katz, Queens $9,743
Gale Brewer, Manhattan $9,737
Simcha Felder, Brooklyn $9,683
Larry Seabrook, Bronx $9,519
Robert Jackson, Manhattan $7,699
Michael McMahon, Staten Island $7,146
Erik Martin Dilan, Brooklyn $7,031
Thomas White*, Queens $6,612
Alan Gerson, Manhattan $6,211
Oliver Koppell, Bronx$4,908
Bill de Blasio, Brooklyn $4,110
James Sanders, Queens $3,768
Tony Avella, Queens$3,272
Maria del Carmen Arroyo,* Bronx $2,150
David Yassky, Brooklyn $1,583
Sara Gonzalez, Brooklyn $1,348
Letitia James,* Brooklyn $1,275
Charles Barron, Brooklyn $1,183
Kendall Stewart, Brooklyn$1,153
Maria Baez, Bronx $700
Jessica Lappin,* Manhattan $554
Inez Dickens,* Manhattan $550
John Liu, Queens $533
Daniel Garodnick,* Manhattan $468
Darlene Mealy,* Brooklyn $250
Albert Vann, Brooklyn $83
Helen Foster, Bronx $0
Melissa Mark Viverito,* Manhattan $0
Rosie Mendez,* Manhattan $0
James Vacca,* Bronx $0

Erik Dilan

2008-11-11T11:27:00.000-08:00

Brooklyn Pol Put $187G of Your Dough into Wife's Nonprofit

Daily News, BY ROBERT GEARTY, BENJAMIN LESSER AND GREG B. SMITH, April 22nd 2008

Jannitza Luna, district leader for the Brooklyn Democrats, was on husband Erik Dilan's staff before she started running North Brooklyn Community Council, whose office (above) is on Wilson Ave.

Brooklyn city councilman Erik Dilan has funneled more than $180,000 in taxpayer money into a small nonprofit run by his wife, the Daily News has learned.

Dilan (D-Brooklyn) was sole sponsor of "discretionary" city funds for the North Brooklyn Community Council, a nonprofit that started out organizing youth football and has expanded almost entirely with government money.

His wife, Jannitza Luna, has been executive director of the group since at least 2005, tax records show.

She was on Dilan's staff before she began running the nonprofit, and she is a district leader for the Brooklyn Democrats.

Each City Councilmember gets a pot of "discretionary" money to use for pet projects in their districts. Potential misuse of these funds is at the heart of an ongoing probe by the city Department of Investigation and the Manhattan U.S. attorney.

Two aides to City Councilman Kendall Stewart (D-Brooklyn) have been charged with embezzling $145,000 from a nonprofit supported with "discretionary" funds. Stewart has not been charged and denies wrongdoing.

The News also disclosed that City Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo (D-Bronx) sponsored $80,000 in member items for a Bronx nonprofit that employed her sister and a nephew.

In an interview with The News, Dilan said he disclosed the conflict to the City Council and that no one objected, although a letter sent to the Conflicts of Interest Board obscures details of the arrangement.

At least three times in the past three years, Dilan sponsored member items for the North Brooklyn Community Council totaling $187,500. The amounts grew each year, from $30,000 to $57,500 to $100,000.

He was engaged to Luna sometime in 2006 and they got married in March 2007, he said. During that time, she was listed on the group's tax forms as the only salaried employee.

On the latest tax form filed, 2006, she claims a salary of $45,000. The group also paid $34,658 to unnamed "consultants."

On Friday, at the group's small storefront office in Bushwick, a receptionist told a reporter she would give Luna his number. Luna did not return the call.

In its last filing, the group claimed it organized youth sports teams. In an interview, Dilan said the group, which first reported income in 2004, is now doing less sports and more of what he called "immigrant services."

Each year, at least 90% of its funds come from either city or state taxpayers. Brooklyn Democratic leader and Assemblyman Vito Lopez sponsored a $50,000 state "member item" for the group last year, records show.

Speaker Christine Quinn

2008-11-11T11:22:00.000-08:00

Quinn on City Council Slush Fund

Christine Quinn Defends Member Items

Council Aids Indicted for Member Item Rip-Offs
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QUINN: SLUSH FUND HELPED ME
New York Post, By TOM TOPOUSIS, May 12, 2008

Embattled City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has admitted for the first time that she understood that the multimillion-dollar slush fund gave her political advantage.

Quinn, who is likely running for mayor, says she knew that the use of the funds - which are now the subject of federal and city investigations - could be helpful to her.

"Did I think, as a speaker, having the [reserve] money to give out through the year might give me political leverage? Of course, I did," Quinn told New York magazine for its current edition.

Sources have said that Quinn doled out the funds to curry favor with certain council members and special-interest groups.

For a candidate for mayor, the support of key council members across the city could be very useful in building a citywide campaign, experts have said.

Since 1999, about $17 million in council monies have been set aside in phantom organizations that were later given out at the speaker's discretion. Quinn said she recognized that her interest in using the council's discretionary funds for political purposes contradicts her reform agenda and push for "transparency."

"I'm not going to lie to people that I didn't think that. Is that a good reform thing to have thought? No. . . . But that's the truth," Quinn said.

tom.topousis@nypost.com

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Slush Probers Eye Fraud Rap for Quinn
New York Post, April 13, 2008

Slush Probers Eye Fraud Rap for Quinn
By Brad Hamilton, Angela Montefinise and Melissa Klein
New York Post

April 13, 2008 -- Feds probing the City Council budget scandal are weighing wire- and mail-fraud charges against those who helped send millions into a secret slush fund, The Post has learned.

"If you pick up a phone and tell someone to do something illegal, that's wire fraud," said a law-enforcement source familiar with the probe. "If you send a check, that's mail fraud."

Sources said prosecutors are considering several targets, including council Speaker Christine Quinn, though it was unclear whether they had found any evidence against her.

Other council members and staff are also under scrutiny, along with staffers from the council's finance division and the city Office of Management and Budget, sources said.

Mail and wire fraud each carry a maximum $1 million fine and 30 years in prison.

The federal probe is now squarely focused on who was involved in setting up the fake groups used to hide and hold on to funds for later use in the budget cycle.

Sources said the money - more than $17 million over the past six years - was doled out as political favors to groups affiliated with lawmakers who had been loyal to the speaker's agenda. Quinn claims it helped groups that fell through the cracks.

The feds are also looking at who handled the financial transactions.

Mike Keogh, the council's former budget director who was dismissed by Quinn after the practice was uncovered, told The Post only that he was cooperating with the investigation.

Councilman Kendall Stewart (D-Brooklyn) has been subpoenaed but said he was not a target.

Quinn, a presumptive mayoral candidate next year, also denies being a target.

She has reportedly hired a defense attorney, former federal prosecutor Lee Richards III, to help her handle inquiries by agencies probing council funds.

The Manhattan US Attorney's Office began looking into council finances last fall after receiving a tip that staffers were diverting official funds for their personal use, the source said.

Quinn says she spoke to the feds and the city Department of Investigation when she discovered the bogus organizations last fall - at the same time prosecutors were probing financial records of council staffers.

On April 3, The Post broke the news of the secret slush fund and how her office diverted $4.7 million into pet projects by funding 30 phantom organizations since 2007. About a quarter of the fund recipients are headquartered in Quinn's district, which encompasses Chelsea, Greenwich Village and parts of Midtown.

The news sparked the interest of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, but after a sit-down with the feds two weeks ago, the DA agreed to step back.

Two council members told The Post that crimes had been committed - and several want an independent audit.

"What happened is at the very least fraud," one said. "It's as clear as day. And if more than two people knew about it, it's conspiracy to commit fraud."

"There are some pretty bold lies being told."

Meanwhile, Quinn announced Friday major reforms that would essentially eliminate slush funds from the system.

From now on, community organizations will need to submit detailed requests for a portion of the speaker's discretionary funds, which amount to $21 million to $25 million, Quinn said.

While some legislators criticized the move as weakening the council, others fully supported it.

"This is real reform, and while it does weaken the speaker's position, it will allow the council to focus on other, crucial budget decisions," Councilman David Yassky said. "It will have a major long-term payoff."

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Quinn Probed over Bogus Grant Groups
New York Post, April 3, 2008

This $$ is Hers for the Faking
Quinn Office Probed over Bogus Grant Groups
By Frankie Edozien
New York Post

April 3, 2008 -- City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's office hid millions of taxpayer dollars by allocating grants to phantom organizations as a way of holding the funds to dole out political favors later - bogus bookkeeping that is the subject of city and federal probes, The Post has learned.

Among the dozens of fabricated groups that were slated to receive funds were the "Immigration Improvement Project of New York" ($300,000), the "Coalition for a Strong Special Education" ($400,000) and the "American Association of Concerned Veterans" ($422,763).

The total amount set aside in 2007 and 2008 for the fake organizations - which are each listed by name in the city budget after being inserted at the council's request - was $4.7 million. In the two years, 30 phantom groups were listed, council aides confirmed.

The money, in effect, became a slush fund for the speaker and was later used at Quinn's discretion to reward groups that were loyal to her and to fund favored council members' pet projects, sources told The Post.

The scheme gave "the speaker a stash of cash with which to thank or pay off politically important allies or cooperative council members," a source said.

Quinn insisted in an interview yesterday with The Post that all of the taxpayer funds were ultimately used for legitimate purposes.

The never-before-exposed practice of hiding the funds dates to 1988, council aides said last night.

"It was used at the speaker's discretion," said an insider who worked for the council at the time it was headed by Quinn's predecessor, Gifford Miller. "People would come in and say 'We need money for this or that.' "

Sources said it may have been started to make an end run around the City Charter, which requires that all funds be allocated at the start of the fiscal year. That limits the speaker's ability to dole out monies throughout the year as needs arise.

In the interview, Quinn, who plans to run for mayor next year and has made "transparency" in budgeting one of her pet causes, admitted she knew some funds were being held in reserve, but learned only several months ago they had been allocated to sham organizations.

Quinn said she ordered that the shady practice be abolished and only recently discovered her staff had not complied.

"I was kind of sick over the fact that there were things listed in the budget that were not accurate and that my instructions to the staff were disregarded," Quinn told The Post.

When she learned several months ago that the practice had continued, Quinn said she turned over information about the bogus bookkeeping to "appropriate authorities," including the city Department of Investigation and the Manhattan US Attorney's Office.

Quinn's aides insist she blew the whistle on the practice, but authorities have been investigating some aspect of the council's finances since last year, sources have said.

Quinn recently hired an outside law firm to help comply with requests from investigators for documents and information dating back several years.

In a development that sources said was tied to the scandal, two of Quinn's top finance aides were either forced out or resigned earlier this year.

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QUINN TARGETING TERM FOE'S PLUM
New York Post, By SALLY GOLDENBERG and DAVID SEIFMAN, October 15, 2008

In a major power play, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is threatening to oust a powerful committee chairman because he is a leading opponent of extending term limits, The Post has learned.

Sources said Councilman David Weprin (D-Queens) could be stripped of his post as chairman of the Finance Committee for speaking out against legislation engineered by Mayor Bloomberg and Quinn to allow officials to serve a third term.

The speaker is dangling the prized chairmanship, worth an extra $18,000 paycheck above the regular $112,500 council salary, before legislators who have not decided how to vote on the explosive issue, sources said.

One source said Quinn indicated there will be "significant reorganizing of everything, like the Finance Committee" next year after the council elections.

Weprin, in his second term in the council, has repeatedly bashed the proposal but has not said whether he would run for a third term if it passes. He could not be reached for comment.

Another critic who could get the boot is General Welfare Committee Chairman Bill de Blasio (D-Brooklyn), one of the loudest critics of the term-limits deal. He earns a $10,000 stipend for his chairmanship.

"That would be extraordinarily inappropriate," de Blasio said of the possible ouster. " I have not heard that, but if they attempt that, I will make a very public issue out of it."

Quinn has denied that threats or promises are being used to corral votes, and on Sunday said accusations of "horse trading, arm twisting, anything of that nature, is just quite frankly false and untrue."

Quinn will soon have at least three other chairmanships to lure undecided members. John Liu, who chairs Transportation, Michael McMahon, who heads Sanitation, and Tony Avella, who oversees the influential Zoning Subcommittee, all plan to leave the council next year.

Members could vote as early as Oct. 23, and the council will hold public hearings at City Hall tomorrow and Friday.

When asked by a reporter about Quinn's arm twisting, Bloomberg defended her.
"Her job is to corral people and convince them to support legislation," he said. "This is an administration-sponsored bill . . . Do you really want us to not go out and promote [it]?"

Last night, the executive board of the teachers union voted to oppose any changes to term limits, except by voter referendum. The issue goes before the full union today.

During a rally at City Hall opposing the legislation, state Sen. Kevin Parker (D-Brooklyn) called the mayor "the worst kind of petty, grubby little politician that
anybody has ever seen in this city."

Bloomberg, who endorsed Parker's opponent in the September Democratic primary, scoffed at the comment, saying, "I didn't hear him and I wouldn't dignify anything like that with a response."

david.seifman@nypost.com

Lewis Fidler

2008-11-11T11:12:00.000-08:00

From the Room 8 blog

Pork Pig Fidler’s Media Friends Put Lipstick On Him

You would never know it from the media that Councilmember Lewis Fiddler funds one of the city’s largest non-profit patronage operations in the city. Coming in with the third highest amount of member items in the council, with just over $700,000, Lewis Fidler, assistant majority leader and Chairman of the Youth Services Committee, said he is proud to be considered the third "biggest pig" in the council. The Councilman uses the city’s budget to provide jobs for his friends, campaign workers and to continue the illusion that a once-powerful club is still going strong.

Today’s reporters do not cover politics like Jimmy Breslin, Jack Newfield, Pete Hamill, Murray Kempton and other members of their hard-working greatest generation, who understood neighborhood politics and never quoted politicians like celebrities. Reporters of Newfield’s era understood that elected officials always had motives, and that truth could only be reported by analyzing their words and investigated their actions. Fidler is one of the most quoted councilmembers in the city’s newspapers and blogs on virtually every topic and issue, except for one: what he does with the member items money in his district.

Some people claim that the way the media covers Fidler shows a racial bias in its reporting of political corruption. By reading the dailies we know how Councilmembers Erik Martin Dilan and Leroy Comrie sent member items funds to nonprofits that hired their wives. Maria del Carmen Arroyo sent money to nonprofits that employed her sister and nephew. Darlene Mealy tired to find a nonprofit to hire her sister. Hiram Monserrate, Larry Seabrook and Kendall Stewart used nonprofit money to help in their campaigns.

What is never covered is a more complicated corruption in the white community where member item funds and campaign contributions go through interlocking nonprofits, lobbyists and special interests developers. Umbrella nonprofits like Fidler’s Millennium Developers are just the tip of the iceberg of corruption; Emily Giske of Bolton-St. Johns, Parkside’s Evan Stavisky, Jeff Plaut’s Global Strategy, George Artz, Yoswein, Geto & De Milly, and Knickerbocker SKD help campaigns more than Councilman Hiram Monserrate’s nonprofit Libre get a free ride from the media’s corruption coverage.

Putting racial motives aside, it is clear that the owners of the mainstream media control how and when it reports on political corruption. Not one word has been printed about the councilmember items slush fund scandal since all the major papers’ editorial boards came out for extending term limits. Earlier this year, for a few months, there was a story almost every day about the council’s member item’s “little tin box”.

Fidler’s Member Item-Funded Nonprofit Reelection Industry is a Widespread Practice
The late former Assemblyman Tony Genovese, who made the Thomas Jefferson democratic club into a powerhouse with the late county leader Meade Esposito, invented the scheme which uses member items and other government funds to build political power for their club in their district. They set up an umbrella nonprofit called New Perspectives that received and distributed government funds to most of the local nonprofits in their community. Genovese wanted all power to emanate from his club. His clubhouse hack pal Alan Weisberg ran Perspectives. Genovese’s Assemblyman Stanley Friedman was the last elected official in the city to open up a district office outside the Jefferson Club. In the days of Tammany Hall all elected officials operated their district office out of the clubhouse. Genovese and Esposito’s genius created the umbrella nonprofit funded by the government tied to the clubhouse to keep the Thomas Jefferson Club powerful in an era in which most clubs were dying off.

Since that time, elected officials and consultants throughout the city have copied Genovese’s umbrella nonprofit model. Brooklyn Democratic Leader Vito Lopez, an early protégé of Genovese, funds the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Center as an umbrella-type nonprofit with millions of dollars in government patronage to his district. Bolton-St. Johns’ Emily Giske uses the High Line and the health care industry to build an umbrella for her team, including $50,000 to Speaker Quinn for her mayoral campaign from High Line supporters. The Parkside Group used their relationship with former Speaker Miller, former Queens Democratic leader Tom Manton and convicted felon Brian McLaughlin to pull in over $7 million in consulting fees from nonprofits receiving council funding. Former Thomas Jefferson Club leader Bruce Bender, now working for as chief lobbyist for Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner, helps fund Borough President Markowitz’s umbrella nonprofit Best of Brooklyn. Pedro Espada just defeated State Senator Efrain Gonzalez with the help of his nonprofit organization, Soundview Healthcare.

Fidler and the Jefferson Club’s Nonprofit Patronage Networks
After Genovese’s death New Perspectives got in financial trouble, so Fidler and the other new stewards of the Jefferson Club simply closed it down and transferred Perspectives’ functions to a new nonprofit, Millennium Development. Paul Curiale, the husband of Fidler’s council aide Debbie Malone, runs Millennium Development. Both are heavily involved in the operation of the Thomas Jefferson Club and regularly collect signatures for candidates endorsed by Fidler’s club.

Another way Fidler controlled government money was to appoint Georgia Hamilton, the wife of his driver Daniel MacBride, to Neighborhood Advisory Board 18. The board distributed city and federal youth money in Fidler’s district. Fidler knows a lot about how funds are distributed through the Neighborhood Advisorary Board system as chairman of the Council’s Youth Services Committee. With the Councilman’s knowledge, Hamilton illegally continued to serve on the Advisory Board after she moved out of the community. Fidler said in a recent blog post that he received the most discretionary funding last year at $985,000, and snagged a considerable amount of capital too, because he chairs the Youth Services Committee, which oversees a lot of the programs in the city that would be eligible for these types of grants. "Which is also why I am able to put together a pot of properly vetted discretionary items,” said Fidler.

What the Press Did Not Report
As Chair of the Youth Services Committee, Fidler oversaw the funding of the Donna Reid Memorial Education Fund. Two staffers of Councilman Kendall Stewart, including his chief of staff Asquith Reid, were indicted by U.S. Attorney Garcia for skimming at least $145,000 from the Donna Reid fund, a charity that had received council funds. Fidler’s committee funded the Memorial Education Fund after the Department for the Aging rejected the group's application for city money in 2004 after noticing that its office address was identical to Asquith Reid's home address. Reid, like Fidler’s staffer Georgia Hamilton on Board 18, was a member of his Neighborhood Advisorary Board – Board 17 – which funded youth groups like Donna Reid in his community. Councilman Erik Martin Dilan’s North Brooklyn Community Council and Councilman Hiram Monserrate’s Libre are other nonprofits that have been funded with council funds dispensed by Fidler’s Youth Service Committee that have been written about in the press for their practice of hiring the councilmembers’ family members and helping in their reelection bids. Not one word has been written in the press about how the questionable funding was approved for these and other nonprofits by Fidler’s Youth Committee, which, by the way, he gets paid $10,000 extra a year for chairing.

Judging by a series of recent loses by the Thomas Jefferson Club, Fidler’s funding of the nonprofit Millennium network is about the only thing keeping the councilman’s club from falling apart. Last year, the club lost its control over the Brooklyn Surrogate Court when its candidate Judge Shawndya Simpson lost to Judge Diana Johnson. Judge Johnson only lost by 200 votes in the club’s 59th district and won in the Assembly District where Fidler is District Leader (the 41st AD) two to one. The Club’s former Assemblyman and Surrogate Judge Frank Seddio was pressured into retirement, according to The Daily News, because of illegal contributions from his Assembly account to Fidler and other elected officials of the Jefferson Club when he was running for the surrogate judgeship. The club lost the other Surrogate position in 2005 when Judge Margarita Lopez Torres beat their candidate. In addition, the Jefferson Club only managed to get 11% for the candidate it backed in the 2005 Democratic Mayoral Primary, Gifford Miller. In the General Election that same year, Fernando Ferrer, the Jefferson Club’s endorsed candidate, only got 27% in its district. Moreover, in 2001, the club’s candidate in the Democratic Primary runoff, Mark Green, failed to carry the Jefferson Club’s district or Fidler’s District Leader district. Finally, in the primary that same year, the club’s City Councilman Herbert Berman lost the controller’s race to William Thompson.

Fidler’s smart enough to know his good relationship with reporters allows him to get away with almost anything

Fidler represents a boutique niche market lending company called LawCash. Fidler’s cousin was made V.P. of the company right after he graduated college. New York Supreme Court Justice Ira Warshawsky said that LawCash, which advances money to plaintiffs while their civil lawsuits are pending, charges high usurious rates. The judge blasted LawCash for making a high-interest loan to a poor African-American family. LawCash has charged 50% or more in interest for one of their loans. Fidler’s loan company operates like subprime mortgages in that they both take advantage of the uninformed poor. A representative of LawCash said his firm can charge such high rates because, unlike banks, its money is "advanced," not lent, to plaintiffs, and this is a high-risk investment. When elected officials use their position to make money and deliberately fail to protect the public by promoting weak laws and regulations, the people suffer. Wall Street called derivatives trading “barter” instead of an insurance policy to avoid government regulations. Now the federal government must bail out that $600 trillion dollar business. Many of the high level consultant firms in the city today call their services education to avoid lobbying regulations. They make secret deals between each other in a type of exclusive “Star Chamber” that runs campaigns, nonprofits, and healthcare institutions without any legal requirement to report their cooperation on city or state financial forms.

Fidler is the District Leader in the 41th Assembly District, which has a minority population of at least 65%. Not only is the Councilman not protecting his own voters from high-interest lending operations, he profits from one. Yet the press reports that Councilman Fidler is fighting predatory lending. If you Google Fidler on predatory lending you will find articles that quote him speaking out against subprime mortgage lending. Fidler supported Frank Seddio for Surrogate Judge. Right after Seddio left the Surrogate Court he advertised in local newspapers his services to get homeowners subprime mortgages in Canarsie as a mortgage lawyer. According to Crain’s, Canarsie has the highest subprime default rate in the city. Fidler was also frequently quoted in the press how he was trying to reform Brooklyn’s corrupt judicial systems with a Blue Ribbon Commission, while he and his club backed every Norman machine judge, many of who were removed from the bench. Some went to jail.

What never gets printed in the press is how Fidler uses his control of nonprofit funding to eliminate political opposition in his community. When minority Assembly candidate H. R. Clark showed up to protest overdevelopment at a City Planning Commission’s local hearing in a building owned by a nonprofit funded with government funds, he was thrown out. According to neighborhood activist Mark Fertig, Fidler was under pressure by Assembly candidate H. R. Clark and community leaders since their meeting last year with mayoral candidate Tony Avella to downsize zoning in his district. To this day the area has not been downzoned. According to Fertig, all Fidler wanted to do is show the appearance of doing something while protecting his developer friends from downzoning.

Fidler has even figured out how to rip off the Campaign Finance Board (CFB) to make money for his friends when he runs for reelection. Fidler wrote a letter to the CFB in 2003 to qualify for full campaign finance funding after the CFB ruled he would only get 25% of the matching funds because he did not have a serious primary or general election challenger. All that is needed to quality for full funding is a letter from the elected official to the CFB saying they have a competitive primary. Fidler got $82,500 in 2003 in matching funds, the full allowable amount, and went on to get 87% of the vote in his so-called “competitive race.” He wrote the same letter to the CFB in his 2005 reelection bid and received full public funding in both a primary and general election he won overwhelmingly.

Besides using the government for political gain Fidler has not show much loyalty to his supporters. Fidler supported Ferrer for mayor in 2005, going back on the endorsement commitment he gave to Gifford Miller after the Speaker passed that year’s city budget, which contained Fidler’s pork requests for his district. Two-timing is something Fidler has always been known for. He supported Anthony Weiner for City Council against his own cousin, Michael Garson. When Weiner’s council seat became vacant in 1998 after he was elected to congress, Fidler supported Michael Nelson against Irma Kramer, despite the fact that Kramer was one of Fidler’s earliest supporters.

Sometimes Fidler’s double crosses are a work of art. At the same time Fidler’s committee was funding Councilman Stewart’s indicted aide’s nonprofit, according to Wellington Sharpe, Stewart’s 2005 Council opponent, Fidler was helping Sharpe with his ballot access. Sharpe was later knocked off the ballot after Stewart’s lawyer brought him into court and produced a mortgage prepared by Fidler that was supposed to turn over a house to Sharpe’s kids, but actually showed Sharpe as the primary resident of the house, which was outside of Stewart’s district.

“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” - Thomas Jefferson

The false way Fidler is covered by the media, while he rips off government funds to accumulate power is just a warning sign of how the press is endangering the lives of New Yorkers. Our City and Republic are in jeopardy because today’s media has abandoned its role of informing the public, leaving the people powerless to defend themselves. What the press did not tell the public during the term limits debate was that the two-term restrictions were voted for by a public that was upset with the corruption in the Koch Administration in the 1980’s and the role that the City’s impossible-to-defeat incumbents played in allowing that corruption. Now even that small safeguard against incumbent protection in our society is gone. George Orwell would have to write a new chapter in 1984 to explain how 34 City Councilmembers under investigation for illegally using the member items slush fund were able to receive press coverage that basically said that extending their time in office would increase choice, democracy and improve our economy.

Without an informed public, elected officials act like organized crime mobsters, working against the voters’ needs for personal gain. They create government-funded umbrella-type nonprofit reelection organizations to stay in office. They also create a dysfunctional, unregulated government with no legal accountability to carry out their greedy friends’ scams to make money at the cost of the public good. Our city would be a lot better off if it listened to a few independent voices about the dangers of repealing the Glass-Spiegel Act, rather then constantly devoting their coverage to political celebrities and their meaningless news conferences.

Look at what Gordon Gecko’s greed has done to Wall Street. New York City is next!

--------------------------
Donna Reid Fund's Other Benefactors
Daily New Blog, April 17, 2008
As The Post details, Councilman Kendall Stewart wasn't the only Brooklyn lawmaker to direct discretionary dollars to the Donna Reid Fund headed by his now-indicted chief of staff.

All told, the Council sent $356,000 to the fund, between 2005 and 2007, with $211,000 being used for legitimate purposes and $145,000 allegedly embezzled by Asquith Reid and his co-conspirators, including two who remain unnamed and his fellow indictee - and Stewart syaffer - Joycinth "Sue" Anderson.

During that same time period, two other Councilmen allocated member items to the Donna Reid Fund - Lew Fidler ($20,000) and Bill de Blasio ($5,000). The Fund also received $24,000 from the entire Brooklyn delegation in 2006.

In an interview last night, de Blasio, an '09 Brooklyn borough president candidate, proclaimed the misuse of the Donna Reid money "totally disguting" and "obscene," and said he had never had any indication the cash was being used for anything other than its stated purpose - providing tutoring to public school kids.

De Blasio said he didn't know Asquith was involved with the group, and decided to make the member item allocation based on Stewart's "glowing" review of its work.

Fidler reiterated that he had originally allocated member item money to the Donna Reid Fund after the group made a "public, open presentation to the Brooklyn Council delegation at a hearing for a computer program for kids in public school."

He said he renewed the grant twice at the request of a school principal, adding: "They much have been doing something right."

"Unfortunately, when money is inolved, no matter how it gets there, sometimes people attempt to steal it," Fidler said. "It was not the member item process that was at fault."

In regards to the funds allocated jointly by all 16 Brooklyn members, I'm told each delegation handles this a little differently. But in the case of Brooklyn for the years in question, all groups had to make in-person presentations and submit both details of their budgets and plans on how they planned to use the money. The members voted by paper ballot to determine which groups would get funded.

Both de Blasio and Fidler said the indictments don't change their concerns about the RFP process for member item allocation proposed by Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

If anything, they noted, the failure of DFTA to alert DYCD that the Donna Reid Fund's initial request for cash had been rejected due to a conflict of interest regarding Asquith demonstrates letting agencies make the final call about who gets what wouldn't be foolproof.

Tags:
Brooklyn , City Council
By Elizabeth Benjamin on April 17, 2008

Darlene Mealy

2008-11-09T13:34:00.000-08:00

Brooklyn councilwoman Darlene Mealy's 25G for nonprofit run by sister tabled
Daily News, BY TINA MOORE and GREG B. SMITH, Sunday, May 11th 2008

City Council member Darlene Mealy insists her sister's nonprofit group hasn't received a dime from taxpayers - but it wasn't for lack of trying.

Mealy admits she tried to sponsor $25,000 in Council "discretionary funds" for the Fulton-Atlantic-Ralph-Rochester Community Association (FARR), a Brooklyn block association run by her sister, Louise, out of her apartment.

For some reason - she won't say why - the fiscal 2007 funds weren't paid. A City Hall source said the Council pulled it back. A spokeswoman for Speaker Christine Quinn refused to comment.

One reason could be that FARR has not registered as a charity with the state attorney general.

The agency that would have distributed the money - the city Department of Youth & Community Development - also wasn't talking.

Asked about the proposed payment to FARR, an agency spokesman said he was prevented from speaking because of an ongoing probe of Council funding by the city Department of Investigation.
DOI and the Manhattan U.S. attorney are probing abuses of Council funds sent to nonprofits, including some with family links to Council members.

The Daily News has revealed four other Council members with such ties, including Erik Dilan (D-Brooklyn), Maria del Carmen Arroyo (D-Bronx), Miguel Martinez (D-Manhattan), and Diana Reyna (D-Brooklyn).

Mealy said FARR is a block association she founded before she was elected to represent Bedford-Stuyvesant and East New York in 2006.

After she joined the Council, she says her sister, Louise, took over as president.

"I had the intention of giving money to FARR, including the $25,000 member item from fiscal year 2007, but FARR never received that funding," she said in a written statement.

The group is based at Louise Mealy's apartment on Hancock St. in Bed-Stuy. Mealy said her sister is an unpaid volunteer.

In October, the councilwoman made a point of mentioning FARR on a form all members must fill out if they feel a budget item could pose a conflict of interest for them.

Questioned by The News about why she did this, she responded, "The current president of the block associations, who also volunteers her time, happens to be my sister. I listed FARR on my budget item disclosure form so that the public would be aware of this connection."

In incorporation papers filed with the Department of State, FARR lists Louise Mealy's home address and labels her apartment as a "suite."

There were no signs on Mealy's apartment building in Bedford-Stuyvesant for a community association, and neighbors said they had never heard of the group.

Resident Jean New, 38, said she stayed with her mother in the building and confirmed that the councilwoman's mother lived in the unit that's listed as FARR's headquarters.

"I've never heard of that," she said.

gsmith@nydailynews.com

-------------------
REALLY SICKENING VOTE
PRESSURED TERM POL PUKED BEFORE SHE CAST LOT WITH MIKE

New York Post, By SALLY GOLDENBERG and DAVID SEIFMAN, October 25, 2008

Reported political threats against Brooklyn Councilwoman Darlene Mealy before the vote may have contributed to her queasiness.

Darlene Mealy - one of only two City Council members to switch sides in the tense term-limits vote - was under such intense pressure and threats that she vomited twice at City Hall before announcing her decision, sources said yesterday.

Mealy's "yes" vote drew gasps from the audience in the packed council chambers Thursday, since it was the first public signal that the opposition was headed to a slim defeat, 29-22.

Some council members insist Mealy, who was injured in a car crash just hours after the vote, was threatened.

"She was very upset. She kept saying she has to deliver for her district, and she was tired of being on the losing side," said Councilwoman Letitia James (D-Brooklyn), one of the bill's leading adversaries.

Opponents said Mealy was told she would face trouble for trying to sponsor a $25,000 grant for a Brooklyn block association run by her sister in Fiscal Year 2007.

Mealy attempted to allocate her council discretionary funds for her sister's group, the Fulton-Atlantic-Ralph-Rochester Community Association (FARR), but the request was mysteriously pulled.

Jamie McShane, a spokesman for council Speaker Christine Quinn, denied Mealy was threatened in any way.

Proponents of the measure said it was the other side - namely the Working Families Party - that tried to intimidate Mealy by warning they would mount a campaign against her in the next election.

When a Post reporter approached her in City Hall before the vote, Mealy called out for Bill Lipton, of the Working Families Party, and hustled away without addressing questions on term limits.

"Even while we were on the floor, Bill Lipton came over to her and tried to flip her back," said Councilman Lew Fidler (D-Brooklyn), a proponent of the bill.

He said Mealy told him "people she considered to be political allies were threatening her."

A Post reporter saw her leave Thursday's council meeting twice, and one member said she threw up before the vote.

Mealy issued a statement yesterday saying she changed from "no" to "yes" only after "strong deliberation."

Mealy's auto accident occurred Thursday night in Queens. She said in a statement that she was not seriously injured. Sources said she broke her collarbone.

sgoldenberg@nypost.com

Maria del Carmen Arroyo

2008-11-09T13:29:00.000-08:00

Council member in funding flap
Daily News, BY ROBERT GEARTY and GREG B. SMITH,April 17th 2008, 4:00 AM

Maria del Carmen Arroyo says her sister and nephew had left the nonprofit by the time the group was given the money. Bronx City Council member Maria Del Carmen Arroyo has a unique way to get taxpayer support for her family.

Last year she sponsored $82,500 in Council "discretionary funds" into a nonprofit that employed both her sister and nephew, the Daily News has learned.

Arroyo's sister, Iris, was "fiscal officer" for the South Bronx Community Corp., where a former employee accused her of incompetence that led to thousands of dollars of federal liens filed against the group.

Iris Arroyo's son, Richard Izquierdo, was also listed as an executive at the agency; he claims he's not paid.

The Arroyos' arrangement comes as the feds charged two staffers of City Council member Kendall Stewart on Wednesday with embezzling discretionary funds through their nonprofit.

No one has been charged with a crime in the funding of the nonprofit that employed Arroyo's relatives, and Stewart himself has not been charged with a crime.

Each City Council member is given a set amount to spend annually on "discretionary" items that are usually pet nonprofit causes within their districts.

Stewart's aides were charged with siphoning off $145,000 in such funds through a nonprofit he funded.

Council member Arroyo is the former director of South Bronx Community Corp., which purports to "provide various services to the elderly, disabled and low income families" in the Bronx. Her mother, Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo, was director of the nonprofit years before.

In her Council biography, the younger Arroyo claims to have been a "volunteer" at South Bronx, though records show her collecting $33,000 to $45,000 a year in 2001 and 2002.

She left the nonprofit after being elected to the Council in February 2005. Early last year, she was co-sponsor of a $75,000 "member item" and sole sponsor of a $7,500 member item for South Bronx Community Corp., records show.

Arroyo confirmed Wednesday she'd sponsored the money for the group, but insisted it was allocated only after her sister, Iris, and Iris' son, Richard, had left.

"I know that when the Council discretionary funds were allocated, I know that they were no longer there," she said.

Nevertheless, she couldn't say when her sister left. As of February 2007, Iris Arroyo was signing tax documents as the group's "fiscal officer," records show.

Also the group received $50,000 in discretionary funds in 2006, although at the time sponsors were not publicly listed.

The 2007 discretionary money was to go for senior programs administered by the Department of Aging. Wednesday, a contradiction emerged regarding that agency.

With Stewart, prosecutors say the Department of Aging recently rejected his request to fund a nonprofit run by his chief of staff, citing conflict of interest.

Nevertheless, the agency appears to have approved Arroyo's funding of a nonprofit employing her sister and nephew.

A spokesman did not return calls.

In a lawsuit, a former employee questioned the competence of Iris Arroyo, claiming she failed to keep up with payroll taxes and as a result, federal liens were placed on the South Bronx Community Corp. in 2000 and 2001.

The liens were settled, but reemerged in 2006 with a new lien for $48,000. That remains outstanding.

The former employee, Belinda Santos, once an Arroyo inlaw, said in court papers she urged Iris Arroyo to keep up with the payroll taxes and quit because Iris would not listen.

In response, Izquierdo blamed Santos and accused her of using South Bronx monies to pay her car insurance. Santos denied using money for personal benefit.

The case was settled with South Bronx acknowledging the lien was its responsibility.

The nonprofit has also benefitted from state taxpayers, care of Arroyo's mother, the assemblywoman. She co-sponsored state member items totalling $141,500 for the agency while it employed her kin, records show.

Assemblywoman Arroyo did not return calls.

Domenic Recchia

2008-11-09T13:23:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, October 15, 2008, Room 8, By Gary Tilzer

IT'S ALL ABOUT RECCHIA! THE VOTERS HAVE NO CHOICE

Councilman Domenic M. Recchia told the New York Times on October 7th that he favors the extension of term limits, “A lot of us Council members feel that passing it through legislation is giving ample opportunity to the voters of the city to voice their opinions.” He added: “If the voters don’t like their council member, they can vote him out of office. And if they don’t like the mayor, they can get rid of him too.”

Dominic knows that if term limits passes he will be reelected. Dominic knows that 95% of the incumbents who ran for reelection in the 2005 City Council elections were reelected. Only Allan Jennings, who was censured on sexual harassment, was defeated that year and that was by a former incumbent, Thomas White Jr. “Incumbents have a taxpayer-financed staff, which may act as a public relations operation; the ability to mail newsletters to constituents,” Ron Lauder said in a 1993 letter to the New York Times. “Thus we have noncompetitive races, members increasingly insulated from constituent pressure and ossification of municipal government.” Lauder did not even get into the unfair advantages that incumbents get from redistricting, member items and New York’s election system.

Memo to the Times: Dominic is A Special Interest

“Journalism's ultimate purpose is to inform the reader, to bring him each day a letter from home and never to permit the serving of special interests,” proclaimed Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, former New York Times publisher. Will the Times, which blindly printed Recchia’s quotes without offering analysis, mislead the public in an attempt to mold public opinion to support its goal of another term for Mayor Bloomberg? A proper attempt to inform the public of the unfair advantages incumbents have and a review of the dirty tricks that Recchia has used over the years to repress his opposition would let its readers know what the Councilman already knows: that if term limits are extended he is a lock at reelection.

The Missing Analysis

In 2003, after Dr. Oleg Gutnik, running (2001) on the Republican line, came very close to becoming the first GOP candidate to win in Recchia’s 47th Council District in a hundred years, Recchia hatched a plan to divide the Russian community. The Councilman made a backroom deal with the Redistricting Commission, controlled by former Council Speaker Gifford Miller, to cut about 33% of the Russian voters out of his district.

4 reasons for Recchia’s weakness in his district:
1. He was only elected with less than 30% of the vote
2. His opponents, all Jewish, split the Jewish vote
3. The Italian neighborhoods were becoming Russian
4. The Russian citizens were increasingly registering to vote

Recchia Hooks Up with the Corrupt Norman Machine

After redistricting, Recchia conspired with the corrupt Clarence Norman-led Brooklyn machine to throw his opponent, Russian candidate Tony Eisenberg, off the ballot. Eisenberg was thrown off the ballot after a judge picked by Norman ruled he did not live in the district. The election law says a candidate for City Council can live anywhere during a redistricting year, which 2003 was. However, the law was no obstacle to a Norman judge. Recchia appeared shortly after removing Eisenberg from the ballot at a rally backing Norman, who was indicted by Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes for selling judgeships.

In 2005 after a New York Post reporter wrote a story about community leaders making a complaint to DA Hynes Assembly was not a legal resident of his district. They charged Lopez renting a tiny room in a home of a director of a non-profit he funded to maintain a legal residence, voting several times there. The net result of the charges to the DA was the county leader moved out of his single room to a real apartment and the reporter left the paper. If I were John J. O’Hara I would run for county leader to get my illegal voting conviction overturned.

In 2003, Recchia still managed to spend $82,500 in city matching funds, despite not having had a primary opponent and receiving 75% of the General Election vote. Recchia spent $35,000 on the election lawyer to throw Eisenberg off the ballot, $3,500 to hire a private investigator against Eisenberg, and $2,500 in rent to his own wife.

Recchia Uses Government Funds and the Election Law to Wear Out Opposition

Recchia has distributed millions in member funds from the Council, Mayor’s Office and capital budget throughout his district to buy political support. He has worked with a team of political supporters who have moved Russian polling sites and threaten poll workers to make it harder for the new immigrant community to organize and vote. The Russian activists who were organizing campaigns in Brighton Beach got tired of spending money and worn out from all the dirty political tricks Recchia and his friends play against them. Several said the machine was worse than the KGB in the Soviet Union. It was not until I met with Congressman Nadler in the winter of 2006 about how the dirty tricks against the Russian community were hurting any chance of reversing the declining Jewish vote in Brooklyn that Adele Cohen was talked out of running for reelection to the Assembly and Alex Brook-Krasny, the first Russian-American Assemblyman, was allowed to succeed her.

Being Councilman Has Been Good for Recchia’s Business

Recchia, the lawyer, is the top outside money earner in the City Council. In 2006, Citizens Union reported that Recchia has an outside income of over $210,000. In addition to the near quarter of a million he takes in, he receives a salary of $100,000 as a Councilman, plus $10,000 more for chairing the Council’s Libraries & International Intergroup Relations committee. Recchia has done very well for someone who graduated from a law school that was not accredited at the time he graduated from it. If the neighborhood buzz is true, Recchia’s tenure as President of Community School Board 21 was also good for his well-being.

Dominic is Only for Dominic

Recchia’s biggest backer, at least in terms of campaign contributions, is the developer who wants to turn historical Coney Island into a co-op project. Most of last year, developer Joe Sitt of Thor Equities pushed Recchia for U.S. Congress. But Recchia decided not to run after Rep. Vito Fossella dropped out of the race - when it was discovered

Fossella has a second family - and backers of Councilman Michael McMahon applied pressure to Recchia to have McMahon replace him. Despite Sitt’s longtime support for Recchia, by voting to extend his time in office to a third term, the Councilman is now destroying Sitt’s plan to build housing in Coney Island. The biggest opponent of Sitt’s plan is Mayor Bloomberg, the City’s staunchest advocate for keeping Coney Island an amusement park district. If Bloomberg stays another term, Thor Equities is likely to lose the battle to reshape Coney Island.

Term Limits were designed to stop elected officials like Dominic Recchia, who use elected office for selfish gain. Now our dysfunctional press is giving a man, who some Russians call the “Butcher of Brighton”, the right to extend his own term without comment or question. “Just like in the Soviet Union we left,” sighed a Russian senior woman after a deep exhale.
---------

City councilman funds group that improperly made big loan
BY ROBERT GEARTY, BENJAMIN LESSER and GREG B. SMITH
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Sunday, June 22nd 2008, 12:36 AM

City Councilman Domenic Recchia sponsored thousands of taxpayer dollars for a nonprofit that gave a wealthy board member an improper interest-free loan, a Daily News probe has found.

The $60,000 in Council funds was earmarked last year for the Sephardic Angel Fund, a nonprofit that's supposed to award no-interest loans to "poor, distressed or underprivileged persons" to start or improve businesses.

But the group's treasurer, Eddie Shamah, got a $50,000 interest-free loan in 2005, tax documents show. The nonprofit later admitted the loan was a blatant conflict of interest when it applied for a federal program that bars such self-dealing.

A spokesman for the group, who did not want to be identified, confirmed the loan and admitted the Angel Fund also has awarded loans to distant relatives of board members. He insisted that none of the loan recipients were "direct" relatives of board members, stating, "Every one that they checked has been a third or fourth cousin."

Recchia (D-Brooklyn), the latest Council member linked to the growing funding investigation, either sponsored or co-sponsored a total of $690,000 in Council funds last year for the Angel Fund and five affiliated nonprofits, records show.

The most recent $60,000 for the Angel Fund supports a youth newspaper, the spokesman said.

Dozens of board members, employees, relatives and lobbyists of the nonprofits that got Recchia-sponsored funds have made campaign donations totalling more than $40,000 to Recchia since 2004, records show. Most were made in the last two years.

In an interview, Recchia defended his sponsorship of public funds for the groups, and insisted that campaign donations did not inspire him to sponsor Council funds for the groups. "One has nothing to do with the other," he said.

Asked about the Angel Fund's loan to a board member, Recchia replied, "My job is to get funds for groups that do good work in my district. I do not know how it's run. I don't know anything about this.

"All I know is that these groups do excellent work in helping our community, in treating people," he added. "If you think there's anything going on that's illegal, you should report it to the Department of Investigation."

The Department of Investigation and the Manhattan U.S. Attorney are probing Council funding of nonprofits. Two Council aides have been charged with embezzling $145,000 from one.

The News has documented at least four Council members who funneled Council funds to nonprofits that employ relatives and one who tried to.

The Council spent $41 million in discretionary funds last year. Facing a stunning drop in tax revenues, the mayor has ordered $1 billion in budget cuts to everything from parks to schools, with massive budget deficits predicted in coming years.

The insider loan to the Angel Fund board member shows up in 2005 and 2006 tax records, some of which are signed by Shamah as treasurer of the group. In one filing, Shamah's loan was listed as an "advance," but the Angel Fund spokesman described it differently.

He said the loan originated when another Angel Fund loan recipient had a nervous breakdown and couldn't go through with a plan to open a diner in Brooklyn.

The spokesman said Shamah wound up with the loan after other investors in the diner urged Shamah to step in. He would not disclose the identities of the original loan recipient or the investors, and would not reveal whether any were Angel Fund board members.

The spokesman said the conflict-of-interest question regarding Shamah's loan arose last year when the Angel Fund applied to a Small Business Administration loan program. The SBA requires that participants "prohibit employees from using their positions for a purpose that constitutes or presents the appearance of personal conflict of interest."

The Angel Fund board members "felt there was a conflict" with Shamah's loan from the fund "and they wanted it to be gone," the spokesman said.

In May 2006, the Angel Fund was approved by SBA to be an "intermediary." Since then it's been authorized to borrow $400,000.

Angel Fund officials say they "ordered" Shamah to either resign or pay off the loan in "late 2006," though documents indicate he still owed $39,000 at year's end. He has since repaid the loan, the spokesman said.

Shamah, reached on his cell phone, would only say, "I'm on the golf course and can't talk."

gsmith@nydailynews.com

------------------

Recchia: No Quid Pro Quo For Mayoral Member Items
Daily News Blog, May 14, 2008 by Elizabeth Benjamin

Councilman Domenic Recchia, one of the small handful of Council members to benefit from Mayor Bloomberg's personal pool of discretionary funds, insisted it's just a coincidence that three of them crossed party lines to endorse the mayor's 2005 re-election bid (back when he was still a Republican).

“It’s got nothing to do with anything like that,” Recchia, who got a total of $625,000 from Bloomberg in the last budget cycle, told the DN's Frank Lombardi. “There was no quid pro quo."

Recchia, who is now raising money for a potential congressional run in the 13th CD, said he has a personal connection to only one of the 11 groups to which he dispensed the mayoral funds - PS 215 - which received $85,000 through the Department of Education.

“My children go there,” he said, noting that the school had lost a lot of federal funding in recent years.

Other party-line crossers shown love by Bloomberg were Councilman Simcha Felder ($1.9 million) and Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. ($400,000).

Also on the receiving end: Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who got $900,000. He also bolted the Democratic Party to endorse hizzoner in 2005.

Another coincidence: Felder, Vallone and Markowitz were all the beneficiaries of fundraiser host by the mayor in his East Side townhouse, worth upwards of $200,000 each, according to reported accounts.

Bloomberg also doled out some member-item funds (albeit considerably less) to non-endorsers, including Democratic Councilwoman Helen Sears of Queens, who received $50,000.

Sears said she supported “the nominee of my party” in both of Bloomberg’s mayoral runs.

She directed her mayoral grant to the Doe Fund, a nonprofit group that helps the homeless find jobs. Workers for the Doe Fund are helping merchants in the business district of Jackson Heights keep their sidewalks clean and their litter baskets from overflowing, Sears said.

”We had to do something about the problem (of litter), and I went to the administration and asked for help," Sears said. "Everybody knows the mayor did it and everyone is grateful to the mayor."

Sara Gonzalez

2008-11-09T12:43:00.000-08:00

Millions shifted to unregistered charities with ties to Council members

BY BENJAMIN LESSER, ROBERT GEARTY and GREG B. SMITH
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Monday, May 5th 2008

The City Council has secretly moved millions of taxpayer dollars to unregistered charities through ghost groups that often have ties to the lawmakers themselves, a Daily News investigation has found.

This latest budgetary sleight of hand allows the Council to get around the city's requirement that nonprofits receiving public funds must be registered charities.

For years, the so-called "fiscal conduits" haven't been listed in public records even though they were paid fees with taxpayer funds to handle the distributions.

Three fiscal conduits listed on an internal 2007 Council budget document do not show up on the list of discretionary funds released to the public that year. The three - Graybeards Ltd., East New York Kidspower and Grace Gravesend - were used to move money to the smaller groups.

The Peninsula Performing Art Conservatory got $3,500 through Graybeards. Peninsula has filed federal tax returns and maintains a Web site, but the contact number listed on the site has been disconnected, and e-mail sent to the organization was not returned.

Misuse of City Council funds is the focus of a growing probe by the city Department of Investigation and Manhattan U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia.

Two Council aides have been charged with embezzling $145,000 from a nonprofit organization that got Council funds, and The News has documented four Council members giving money to nonprofits where relatives work or sit on boards.

Speaker Christine Quinn has admitted the Council would park funds in fictitious groups for distribution to real nonprofits later.

And it was only last year that, for the first time, Quinn began requiring that fiscal conduits be listed publicly. She also capped the fees they collect.

"We agree that we need to strengthen the accountability in the budget process overall, as well as with fiscal conduits," Quinn spokeswoman Maria Alvarado said. The Council is working with city lawyers to "strengthen the rules for the small groups" that get funds through fiscal conduits, she said.

A prime example of a "fiscal conduit" is a nonprofit run by the wife of Councilman Erik Dilan called the North Brooklyn Community Council.

Internal documents obtained by The News show that in fiscal 2005, the North Brooklyn Community Council handed Council funds to other groups. At the time, Jose Luna, the brother of one of Dilan's then-Council staffers, Jannitza Luna, served on North Brooklyn's board of directors. In January 2005, Jannitza Luna became its executive director.

By 2006 Luna was given the power "to sign contracts and amendments to contracts and to review claims" for North Brooklyn. Last year, she married Dilan. Starting with the year Luna began running North Brooklyn, Dilan began sponsoring Council funds for the group. In the public record, he pumped $187,000 in member items into the group.

Secretly, he added an additional $134,000 through "program enhancements," records show. One $47,000 addendum was for "operating costs, travel, awards and trophies." The program enhancements don't show up in public budget documents.

All told, Dilan personally steered $320,000 in taxpayer dollars into his wife's group from 2005 through this spring.

In fiscal 2005, instructed by the Council, the city Department of Youth and Community Development moved $2,500 through North Brooklyn into something called Brooklyn Youth Choice Organization Corp. Brooklyn Youth Choice is not a registered charity with the state, and there's no record of it filing tax forms as a nonprofit.

A spokesman for the group said the Department of Youth and Community Development set up the fiscal conduit arrangement. A department spokesman declined to comment.

North Brooklyn is hardly the only fiscal conduit.

Eileen Reilly, director at Maspeth Town Hall, a community center that serves as fiscal conduit for organizations in Queens, said the pass-through groups are usually small and without status as tax-exempt nonprofits.

"Some of them don't have the people to do the work or to understand the program requirements," Reilly said. To justify payments, she said, the groups provide her with invoices. The city does not audit the groups' books.

This fiscal year, Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez (D-Brooklyn) used the United Senior Citizens Center of Sunset Park as a fiscal conduit, funneling $269,000 through it to other groups.

The center's director, Grisel Amador, said Gonzalez "provided a list of organizations in the community" that were to receive the funds. She refused to release the list, and Gonzalez refused to answer questions.

The Mayor's Pot (UPDATE)
September 24th, 2008 from The Wonkster of The Gotham Gazette

Since the Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office he has doled out approximately $19.7 million in discretionary funding, according to a memo released today by the administration.

In the memo, Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler details who received discretionary funding from the administration, including past and present council members. After the jump, there is a list of members and how much he or she received from the administration since fiscal year 2003.

This year, the mayor did not hand out any discretionary funding.

According to the memo, the administration is working with the Department of Investigation to ensure none of the funds were misappropriated.

So far, the memo says, about 1,600 groups have applied to qualify for discretionary funds for this year’s budget, which includes a more strenuous vetting process than pre-council slush fund scandal. Of those, 1,000 have completed the process to date.

Here is who got what of the mayor’s money:

Councilmember Simcha Felder: $5.7 million
Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz: $2.6 million
Former Councilmember Madeline Provenzano: $2.17 million
Councilmember Domenic Recchia: $2.15 million
Former Councilmember Andrew Lanza: $1.68 milion
Councilmember Peter Vallone: $1.6 million
Councilmember Jimmy Oddo: $1.37 million
Former Councilmember Dennis Gallagher: $642,499
Councilmember Maria Baez: $410,000
Former Councilmember Yvette Clarke: $375,000
Councilmember Bill de Blasio: $351,000
Councilmember James Sanders: $318,000
Councilmember Helen Sears: $311,000
Councilmember Vincent Ignizio: $250,000
Former Councilmember Martin Golden: $205,000
Councilmember Erik Martin Dilan: $150,000
Councilmember Maria del Carmen Arroyo: $117,500
Councilmember Leroy Comrie: $80,000
Councilmember Letitia James: $75,000
Councilmember Sara Gonzalez: $55,000
Councilmember Bill Perkins: $35,000
Councilmember Joe Addabbo: $20,000
Councilmember Kendall Stewart: $20,000
Councilmember Diana Reyna: $20,000
Councilmember Al Vann: $20,000
Councilmember Jimmy Vacca: $20,000
Councilmember Miguel Martinez: $15,000
Councilmember Annabel Palma: $6,500

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Pork handouts offered to pressure council members to OK congestion plan

by Juan Gonzalez, Daily News, Wednesday, April 2nd 2008

No one could recall such a naked combination of arm-twisting and pork-barrel handouts to pressure City Council members to approve the huge tax increase known as congestion pricing.

"City Hall offered more in goodies this week to get this tax passed than the federal government is giving us to do it," said Brooklyn Councilman Lewis Fidler, a leading opponent of the plan that passed by a 30-to-20 vote.

Harlem Councilwoman Inez Dickens, for instance, got a last-minute promise from City Hall for major changes she'd been seeking to the huge 125th St. redevelopment plan.

Her colleague, Sara Gonzalez, got a promise of a new ferry line for her district in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Councilman Domenic Recchia of Gravesend was offered a new ferry line for his constituents from Coney Island to Manhattan.

Up in the Bronx, a major retail redevelopment project at the Kingsbridge Armory that had been stalled for a year suddenly moved forward in the past few weeks.

Joel Rivera, the Council majority leader from the Bronx, had opposed the mayor's plan until Monday. Rivera suddenly switched his position the day of the vote. He joined six other members of the Bronx delegation to deliver near-unanimous support for the mayor's $8-a-day tax on cars coming into the central business district on weekdays.

On Staten Island, Councilman Michael McMahon, who claimed he was leaning against congestion pricing, stunned most insiders by flipping at the last moment.

"You wouldn't believe the pressure," said one supporter of congestion pricing who asked not to be identified. "Some of my colleagues in Council suddenly got religion on Monday after opposing this thing for weeks."

Others talked of the mayor suggesting in private meetings that he might hold fund-raisers for certain term-limited Council members running for new posts next year.

Everyone, of course, denies any direct relation between their vote and the specific "enhancements" for their districts, or any offers of political support.

"The 125th St. negotiations with the local members of the Council are a normal part of the ULURP [uniform land use review process] process," Bloomberg spokesman John Gallagher said.

As for the new ferry routes, Gallagher said the mayor and Council Speaker Christine Quinn are "working with the Council on a five-borough ferry plan."

Throughout all of this frenzied lobbying the past few months for congestion pricing, Quinn has acted like a slavish deputy sheriff to the mayor.

In case you think this was all part of the give-and-take of the democratic process, consider the following: A few months ago, the mayor's plan was so unpopular it looked unlikely to even be voted out of committee.

Five of the seven committee members, including Rivera and McMahon, were poised to vote against it. So what did Quinn do? She slipped two supporters of congestion pricing onto the committee.

Now the fight moves to Albany, where the Senate and the new governor just rejected Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's commendable plan to tax millionaires.

Our billionaire mayor who keeps creating congestion with huge new skyscraper condos for the affluent will now demand that Albany force the middle class to pay the freight for reducing congestion.

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City Council members get $277G for little extras, on top of $112G salary

BY BENJAMIN LESSER and KATHLEEN LUCADAMO
DAILY NEWS, Tuesday, May 27th 2008

City Council members are taking cabs, buying MetroCards, hiring photographers and paying pricey consultants on the taxpayers' dime, the Daily News has learned.

Lawmakers spent $7,364 on MetroCards last fiscal year, $11,234 on photographers, $254,480 on consultants and $17,502 on travel, which includes black cars, E-ZPasses and cabs, documents show.

The perks are allowed under funding each member receives for staffing and other office matters. They have wide latitude on how to spend the funds, and it's one of the few areas not being reduced in the upcoming year.

Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez (D-Brooklyn) topped the charts with $41,923 in consulting fees, according to records obtained under the Freedom of Information Law. Half went to her communications director, Michael Schweinsburg, and $11,000 went to Promotional Strategies, a Queens-based campaign consulting agency. Gonzalez defended her spending, noting, "I'm very careful."

Gonzalez was hardly alone in her consultant spending spree.

Councilman Alan Gerson (D-Manhattan) dished out $32,833 to consultants, including youth services director David Feiner.

Councilwoman Helen Sears (D-Queens) gave $30,997 in consulting fees to civic leaders who serve as community liaisons. "We don't have staff to work day and night," she said.

Each Council member received $277,336 for staff and office expenses last year. Committee leaders got an additional $40,000. Each earns a base of $112,500.

Councilman Larry Seabrook (D-Bronx) shelled out $1,140 on MetroCards. Councilwoman Helen Foster (D-Bronx) followed with a $1,100 tab.

Sears, however, spent the most on local travel - $4,208 - and was trailed by Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Queens), who logged $3,414 in cab fares. Councilman James Gennaro (D-Queens) dished out $1,319 to Masada II Car Limo Service for travel.

Sears defended her spending, saying the cabs are used to get to meetings throughout the day.

Few rules govern where the cash goes and how much is spent.

Councilwoman Letitia James (WFP-Brooklyn) spent $9,300 on maids and exterminators while at least three members spent nothing. Her two-level office with three bathrooms in a Brooklyn brownstone is "a lot to clean," she said.

More startling were the differences in rental payments.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn, whose district includes trendy Chelsea, spent $52,167 for the year, while Gerson, of lower Manhattan, spent nothing. He uses free government offices, his spokesman said.

Councilwoman Jessica Lappin (D-Manhattan) paid about $30,000 for her upper East Side offices, the same as Councilman James Oddo (R-S.I.) paid for his New Dorp digs. "It's a challenge," Lappin said.

The war chest for individual office spending has increased 15% in the past five years.

The revelations come as the Council is under fire for relying on phantom organizations to siphon money to pet projects in various districts.

"Because of the recent Council scandals, they have to make sure all money is being spent appropriately," said Elizabeth Lynam, research director at the Citizens Budget Commission.

"As we've seen, there are practices that have been historic that may not be appropriate."
blesser@nydailynews.com

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STORE WON'T FURNISH NUMBER OF RED HOOK STAFFERS

By RICH CALDER, The New York Post, June 23, 2008

Wanna know how many Red Hook residents work at the neighborhood's new IKEA? Fuhgeddabout!

IKEA's biggest selling point four years ago when it convinced officials to approve the controversial superstore was filling most of the 560 new jobs with Red Hook residents.

But even now that the Swedish home-furnishing giant's long-anticipated Brooklyn outlet has opened in a gala attended by CEO Anders Dahlvig, IKEA officials still refuse to divulge how many posts belong to residents from the 'hood.

Even local politicians instrumental in bringing IKEA to Red Hook - including Borough President Marty Markowitz and Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez - say they're being shut out of the data, as is the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.

"You'd think Sweden's national security hinges around the dissemination of this information," said Gonzalez spokesman Mike Schweinsburg.

Red Hook Civic Association co-chair John McGettrick ripped IKEA for not revealing the numbers.

Despite the missing data, both Gonzalez and Markowitz say they're satisfied the job pledge is being met, particularly for residents of the neighborhood's housing projects, where the unemployment rate is about 20 percent.

Ray Hall, whose community group, Red Hook Rise, was involved in recruiting workers for the store, estimated that at least 300 of the 560 jobs were filled locally.

Schweinsburg said his office, too, believes that more than half the workers live in the neighborhood.

The Post randomly polled 75 employees on the store's opening day last week, and 21 - or 28 percent - said they lived in Red Hook.

Joseph Roth, an IKEA spokesman, said the company has a policy of not revealing demographic data on employees. He said Red Hook residents had a three-week head start in the job-application process, adding that the firm invested $500,000 in a local job-training program.

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Brooklyn Councilwoman Gets COIB Warning (Updated)

by Elizabeth Benjamin, The Daily News, October 6, 2008

While the Council is deliberating on the question of extending its own terms, the Conflicts of Interest Board has issued a public warning to Brooklyn Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez for using her official stationery to seek a reconsideration of an Environmental Control Board violation issued at her home.

The letter reminds Gonzalez that the City Charter forbids public servants from engaging in any business transaction, whether public or private, that is in conflict with the "proper discharge of his or her official duties," which includes using any Council equipment or supplies for a non-city purpose.

"Here, you utilized city letterhead for the non-city purpose of handling a purely personal complaint in violation of Chapter 68," the letter continues.

"Moreover, by implicitly invoking your City Council position through your use of the letterhead, you also violated City Charter 2604(b)(3), which states that 'No public servant shall use or attempt to use his or her position as a public servant to obtain any financial gain, contract, license or privilege or any other private or personal advantage, direct or indirect , or the public servant or any person or firm associated with the public servant.'"

No enforcement action is being taken. The letter is supposed to serve as a "reminder" for Gonzalez and any other public servant who might be inclined to act in a similar fashion.

No further details about the incident were provided. I left a message at Gonzalez' office, but am not holding out great hope.

UPDATE: I stand corrected. Lois Marbach, a Gonzalez consultant, called to say the whole incident, in which the councilwoman was cited for a garbage can that was overturned by "some kids," was a "big mistake."

According to Marbach, Gonzalez wrote the letter on personal letterhead that was then "inadvertantly" printed on Council stationery.

"She didn't mention her role or her job," Marbach said, adding that the councilwoman was writing - from her house, not her office - to say she found her citation excessive and believes there are bigger issues in the district that the Sanitation Department should be addressing.

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BRING THESE JOBS BACK DOWNTOWN

Daily News Editorial, Sunday, February 12th 2006

From 1789, when the U.S. Customs Service was established, until 2001 - Sept. 11, 2001, to be specific - downtown Manhattan was home to the New York Customs House, where importers could get their voluminous paperwork processed expeditiously. On 9/11, the Customs House, 6 World Trade Center, was destroyed. The 750 federal employees who worked there did, thankfully, survive. But they have been lost to downtown anyway.

While the city was freshly bleeding, cowardly Customs, led by then-Commissioner Robert Bonner, fled to Newark - history, tradition and concern for a battered Manhattan be damned. Downtown still desperately needs reinvestment - including those 750 jobs and the economic boon they represent. It now has the chance to regain them.

Bonner resigned (good riddance) in November. Last month, President Bush nominated Secret Service Director Ralph Basham to succeed him. This page has been steadfastly arguing for return of the Customs House since it was wrenched from the city in 2001, so we took the opportunity to contact the office of Sen. Chuck Schumer, who also had waged a fruitless battle with Bonner on the question.

We reminded Schumer's aides that Basham requires Senate confirmation, which requires that he testify before the Senate Finance Committee, of which Schumer is a member. Such a proceeding seemed the perfect opportunity for Schumer to wrest a commitment from Basham to return the New York Customs House to where it belongs, downtown Manhattan.

Soon enough, the good senator fired off a strong letter to Basham, introducing him to the issue as well as to Schumer's committee membership. No undue pressure there, sir. Just a reminder of how important this issue is to New York City.

It's not just about a continuity of tradition dating to the fledgling years of the Republic, nor is it just about the symbolism of refusing to be driven out by terrorism. It's a very real, very practical matter. Bringing the Customs House, those 750 jobs and the attendant economic activity back to lower Manhattan is critical. All those workers would make very fine tenants for one of the new buildings planned for Ground Zero. (Are you paying attention, Gov. Pataki?)

In a 2002 editorial, we quoted one Marilyn Cohen, a customs broker downtown. Her words are worth repeating. "President Bush stood on the rubble with a fireman and promised to rebuild," she said. "Yet the first thing the federal government does is pull its agency out from downtown. How can the center of commerce for the whole world not have a Customs House?"

How, indeed?

Seddio's money trail

The evidence mounts that former Assemblyman Frank Seddio committed wholesale violations of judicial ethics rules when he began throwing money around as the Brooklyn Democratic Party was deciding whether to tap him for a surrogate's judgeship.

Campaign filings indicate he doled out far more money to the machine in his quest for elevation to the bench than previously reported.

The party bosses shoehorned Seddio into a judgeship created in a back-room deal in June by the Legislature and Gov. Pataki. According to judicial ethics rules, Seddio was barred from political activity, including campaign donations, once he was a candidate for the bench. Exactly when that happened is unclear, but on Aug. 10 Crain's New York Business magazine reported "word is spreading" that Seddio "would happily become the nominee." Shortly thereafter, he was generously using his money to win the support of fellow Dems.

Records show Seddio gave $250 to Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez on Aug. 17; $250 to Councilman James Gennaro on Aug. 19; $5,000 and $7,500 to the Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club on Aug. 22 and Sept. 1; $5,000 to the judicial campaign of Larry Knipel on Sept. 1; $2,000 to the judicial campaign of Richard Velasquez on Sept. 2 and $2,000 to Councilman Lew Fidler, also a district leader, on Sept. 6.

Fidler and the other district leaders designated Seddio the party's candidate on Sept. 15. Thereafter, as disclosed here last week, Seddio gave a total of $10,000 more to the Jefferson Club, the Assembly campaign of longtime aide Alan Maisel and state Sen. Carl Kruger.

All told, from what's been discoverable, Seddio doled out $32,000 in well-placed donations, not that far off from the perhaps mythical $50,000 that judgeships are commonly believed to cost in Brooklyn. More than ever, this is a case for District Attorney Charles Hynes and the state Commission on Judicial Conduct.
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Don't Believe the Hypa

From Brooklyn Politics by Erik Engquist, May 30, 2005, printed in the Courier-Life newspapers

DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPA: On October 14,2004, at a Borough Hall ceremony marking Hispanic Heritage Month, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitzand Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez honored the Hispanic Young People’s Alternative (HYPA), a Sunset Park non-profit of which Gonzalez was executive director immediately prior to joining the City Council.

It made for a nice show, but in reality HYPA was in disarray, a shell of its former self. Its roster of programs and funding sources had withered to just one—an after-school “beacon” program—and only a few dozen kids were showing up for that each day. The city Department of Youth and Community Development, which wanted it to serve at least 100 kids daily, gave the flagging program a “needs improvement” rating.

We’re told the agency also investigated HYPA board members for their ties to Gonzalez, who allocated public funding to the organization. DYCD contended the board members had a conflict of interest that they needed to resolve.

Well, they resolved it—by abandoning the two-decade-old organization and leaving it to die.

And die it will: DYCD declined to renew HYPA’s contract to run the beacon program, which expires June 30. Since that’s HYPA’s only remaining cash source, as of July 1 the organization will cease to exist. Another non-profit, the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park, sponsored by St. Christopher-Ottile Children’s Services, will take over thebeacon program and try to revive it.
When we asked Gonzalez if she accepts any responsibility for HYPA’s demise, she replied emphatically, “Absolutely not”—despite her close ties to the organization and its boardmembers. We’re told no HYPA executive director got hired without the councilwoman’s say-so, which she denies.

Whatever the case, HYPA’s boardmembers couldn’t find or keep a competent person in charge. After Gonzalez left,a close acquaintance of hers got the job, but he quit two summers ago. A woman was hired to replace him, but the board was unsatisfied with her performance and pushed her out in May 2004. A third executive director was hired in September but he quit in December when the board wouldn’t let him fire an employee.

The board had a grant writer who didn’t write any grant applications, sources said. The board also failed to do any fundraising, leaving HYPA totally dependent on the government.

Yet Gonzalez told us, “I know the board did the best it could.”

But the only board member who’s done anything in recent months is Osman David, who spends lonely hours in HYPA’s office (an apartment it rents at 48th Street and 4th Avenue) trying to make sure HYPA’s debts are retired and its 15 or so employees get paid through June.

David told us HYPA used to get funding from the United Way and other sources, but “within a span of about five years, it was all lost and there was no real effort to look for other funding. For the last three years HYPA has been dependent on the beacon program and funding from the councilwoman’s office. You can’t run an organization like that.”

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COUNCIL RACE IN HOME STRETCH

by Erik Enquist, as printed in the Courier Life Newspapers, October 28, 2002

It was no surprise that City Council candidate Sara Gonzalez bolted the Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats endorsement meeting after her presentation, rather than waiting with competitors Eddie Rodriguez and George Martinez for the result. The real puzzler is why she showed up at all.

Gonzalez, the chairwoman of Community Board 7 in Sunset Park, had no chance to win CBID's endorsement, which went to Rodriguez, as expected. (Rodriguez got 26 votes, Martinez 10, and Gonzalez one.) Gonzalez's earlier appearance at the Independent Neighborhood Democrats endorsement meeting only hurt her, as former CB 7 district manager Gene Moore showed up and revealed that disgraced ex-councilman Angel Rodriguez and Gonzalez colluded to get rid of him. Perhaps she hoped to undo the damage at CBID, where she passed out copies of Moore's letter of resignation, which said he was leaving on his own accord.

But CBID members are far too sophisticated to believe a letter of resignation. No doubt Moore had to write it to get his severance pay. The fact is Councilman Rodriguez, who appointed many CB 7 members and had them install Gonzalez as chairwoman, was preparing to have them vote against renewing Moore's contract. Moore saw the writing on the wall, and quit. Gonzalez's question-and-answer session at CBID was rocky. She said she was pro-choice but opposed Medicaid funding of abortions, which she said "goes a step further." Club members grumbled.

She was asked if she had endorsed a candidate in last year's 39th Council District race. She didn't know which district that was, even though it borders the 38th District in which she's running. Answering a third question, Gonzalez hedged before acknowledging that Assemblyman Vito Lopez-not a favorite of the reform club-was supporting her candidacy. During the club's discussion of whom to endorse, one member commented, "She had no connection to any issue." It was Gonzalez, by the way, whose challenge of former Assemblyman Javier Nieves's petitions led to his removal from the November 5 ballot.

Eddie Rodriguez had a much smoother evening at CBID, making a fairly solid presentation and receiving warm praise from club members, including Assemblyman Jim Brennan and Councilman David Yassky. But there was one bump, so of course we'll focus on that. He was immediately asked about former School District 15 Superintendent Frank DeStefano, who was supported by Rodriguez and other school board members even after the New York Post revealed he'd used district money for lavish lunches, retreats at expensive resorts, and car service to take him to and from work. "This was a man who used school funds as his own cookie jar," a club member told Rodriguez. "We looked into the issue very strenuously," Rodriguez replied. "I'm not happy those things happened…But frankly, we found no wrongdoing."

Because "instructionally, Frank DeStefano did some good work" and principals supported him, Rodriguez felt he should stay. What Rodriguez failed to realize was that a man who so carelessly wasted school money and used it for personal expenses was not morally fit to lead the district. A dark cloud hung over District 15 for a year before Rodriguez and other board members realized DeStefano had to go.

Rodriguez's residency-he recently moved to Sunset Park from his home in Park Slope, which was half a block outside of the council district-did not come up at CBID, though his opponents labeled him a carpetbagger during a televised debate. Rodriguez was instead asked about his acknowledgement in The New York Times that he'd spent an afternoon collecting signatures for Angel Rodriguez (no relation) last year, but he downplayed the matter and the club didn't seem to care. Martinez, though, seemed to think it big news. "That was a new revelation in The New York Times," he declared giddily. "I didn't know that."

But the Times also revealed that Martinez has a new explanation for his decision not to participate in the Campaign Finance Program, which has already given Gonzalez's campaign $35,914 in public funds. Martinez told the newspaper it would be wrong for his campaign to take public money during such a budget crunch. He repeated that to CBID, only to be reminded of his previous explanation-that his lawyer promised him a five-figure legal bill to comply with the program's paperwork. CBID President Susan Loeb, who ran for the same council seat in 1997, told Martinez, "I didn't pay a dime to comply. It's really easy." Martinez said joining the program shouldn't be a litmus test, given that Angel Rodriguez participated and turned out to be a criminal.

A club member later suggested-without any evidence-that Martinez ducked the program to help hide controversial Red Hook developer Greg O'Connell's financial support of Martinez's campaign. Apparently not everyone believed Martinez's assertion that he'd raised $20,000 without a single $1,000 donation. But on the whole, Martinez's youthful enthusiasm and eloquence was positively received, portending future political success for Sunset Park's new Democratic district leader. Whether that success comes as soon as November 5 remains to be seen.

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First-Term Members Uneasy About Term-Limits Extension

by Sal Gentile for City Hall

No decisions reached at rare freshman caucus; deal said to be in the works
Sal Gentile Two years ago, Sara Gonzalez, a City Council Member from Brooklyn with a relatively low profile, walked into the Council speaker’s office and made a pronouncement.

“I want you all to understand,” she told the staff, “in 2010, I am going to be a senior member of the Council.”

The statement was tongue-in-cheek, but to those in the room, the subtext was clear: Gonzalez, who won a special election in 2002, was waiting for the day her more senior colleagues would be term-limited out of office, so that she would finally gain the clout she had lacked for so long.

But if Mayor Michael Bloomberg is successful in his attempt to revise the city’s term limits law, that day may never come.

In order to gain support for his proposal, the mayor has promised billionaire cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder a seat on a Charter Revision Commission in 2010, which Lauder has said he would use to reverse any legislative change in term limits.

That agreement has first-term members like Gonzalez anxious about their political plans, since it would mean that nearly every council member would be out of office in 2014, and first termers would have spent their entire council careers without seniority.

In an attempt to resolve those concerns, Bloomberg has promised first-term members a built-in provision that would grandfather them into any legislative extension of term limits, allowing them to serve three terms even if the law is changed back to two in 2010.

The proviso was crafted after deliberations between the Council and the mayor began to reveal a rift between second-term members and their freshman colleagues, who felt the truce brokered between Lauder and the mayor would undercut the legislation and be inherently unfair to them.

Those members aired their concerns today at a closed-door forum billed as a “freshman caucus” at City Hall, where they debated the legislative and political implications of the bill and asked questions of Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s staff. Eleven of the 17 freshman Council members were present for the discussion.

The members emerged without a consensus on how to move forward, according to those who were there, and none of the undecided freshmen were swayed one way or the other.

The freshmen are important for the political cover they could provide their second-term colleagues. If the bill were to pass entirely on the votes of council members who would otherwise be term-limited out of office, some fear the deal could be seen as self-serving.

Council Member Bill de Blasio, a vocal opponent of the mayor’s proposal, has said he would be “very interested” in what the freshman decide. Other outspoken critics of the bill, such as Council Members Vincent Gentile and Letitia James, also in their first term, believe it lacks protections for council freshman and hope the caucus will consolidate against it.

One of those first-term members, Darlene Mealy, is the latest to stake out a public position on the proposal, which she has said she will vote against.

Mealy said that several first-term members remained uneasy about taking a position after today’s caucus, and were waiting for either side to appeal to them more directly.

“We got no real concrete information, only that the wording will change,” she said of the grandfather provision offered by the mayor and speaker. “There’s just a few that still are undecided. And, we’re talking about deals—the mayor, Lauder, they made deals—and other people, some are waiting for deals.”

The fact that the speaker’s aides are actively working with the mayor, and working to resolve the unease of first-term members, has stirred speculation that Quinn privately supports the bill. The speaker has not publicly taken a position.

“Conversations about this legislation are ongoing,” said Maria Alverado, a spokeswoman for Quinn. “How those concerns are dealt with will be a part of ongoing conversations.”

James, who is skeptical of the mayor’s proposed grandfather provision, said Quinn’s position on the bill was clear.

“The speaker has been silent, but her actions speak otherwise,” James said. “The fact that this bill is being fast-tracked speaks volumes.”

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Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Brooklyn Councilmembers 9-7 Against Congestion Pricing

Thanks Brownstoner for the Brooklyn breakdown of who did and who didn't vote for congestion pricing in Brooklyn:

For Congestion Pricing:

Simcha Felder, Sara M. Gonzalez, Letitia James, Domenic M. Recchia, Kendall Stewart, Albert Vann, and David Yassky—voted for the plan.

Against Congestion Pricing:

Diana Reyna, Charles Barron, Bill de Blasio, Erik Martin Dilan, Mathieu Eugene, Lewis A. Fidler, Vincent J. Gentile, Darlene Mealy, and Michael C. Nelson

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Ikea wrecking ball smashes historic Beard St. buildings

By Jess Wisloski for The Brooklyn Paper, January 8, 2005

Building on Beard Street between Otsego and Dwight streets shown mid-demolition Tuesday. It will make way for an Ikea parking lot.

Red Hook preservationists were shocked this week when cranes on the site of a soon-to-be Ikea furniture store gouged into a complex of Civil War-era buildings on Beard Street, despite ongoing state and federal review of its historic significance.

Holding an impromptu press conference on Dec. 30 to address the demolition, officials with the Municipal Art Society along with area residents were joined by similarly upset representatives from the office of Rep. Nydia Velazquez in front of the five buildings between Dwight and Otsego streets. They blamed Swedish home-furnishings giant Ikea for the ruination.

The demolition equipment, which was poised mid crunch before news crews showed up, rolled away as a crowd gathered, but were back again on Tuesday to complete what had begun.

Meanwhile, the Municipal Art Society, a non-profit organization aimed at preserving cultural and neighborhood character, is speedily gathering their resources trying to figure out how to save what is left of the structures.

“Any federal agency that is going to do work has to engage in a well-defined procedure in determining whether historical buildings will be affected,” said Brian Connelly, who has taken charge of resisting the demolition at the Erie Basin site. He referred to Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act.

“This is not some arcane piece of legislation,” Connelly said. “We’re very disappointed that Ikea has tried to evade this process.”

The preservation group is considering legal action against Ikea.

Ikea spokesmen said the property did not yet belong to the company, which gained city approval last year to build a $70 million, 346,000-square-foot store on the 22-acre former New York Shipyard, between Dwight and Columbia streets along the Erie Basin. The company would also build 1,400 parking spaces, a public esplanade and additional retail space.

Ikea plans to open in 2007.

Hearing Ikea’s claim of not technically owning the property yet, Kent Barwicke, director of the Municipal Art Society, was quick to point out, “You can’t pretend on one hand to be the owner for environmental review, and for federal applications, and not, on the other hand, for demolition.”

The current owners, U.S. Dredging Corporation, which is in contract to sell the property to Ikea, applied for the demolition permits in early December.

Asked to comment on the demolition of the potentially historic buildings, U.S. Dredging executive Michael Gallagher said, “I have nothing to say.”

According to the city departments of Buildings and City Planning, neither agency has jurisdiction in preventing the demolition.

“There is nothing the Department of Buildings can do,” said Kenneth Lazar, a Brooklyn liaison for the Buildings Department. He said the agency “had no reason to reject the [demolition] permit,” which was issued Dec. 7.

Ilyse Fink, a Buildings Department spokeswoman, added, “State and national review is not meaningful,” and explained that for the city to take action the property has to be a city landmark or under consideration by the city Landmarks Preservation Commission.

“Even a [state or federal] landmark can be demolished,” said Fink, adding that it happens quite often.

The Department of City Planning, which signed on as lead governmental agency on Ikea’s city land use application, said through a spokeswoman that although a draft Memorandum of Agreement between the state’s Historic Preservation Officer and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — which oversees all port development and waterway activity and must issue permits for Ikea to build on the site — was in the works, it had not yet been finalized.

“Structures were determined in our environmental review to be eligible for the National Historical Registry, and the state’s,” said City Planning spokeswoman Jen Parsons. She said it was her agency’s understanding that historic mitigation was being looked into.

That mitigation, said Cathy Jimenez, a spokeswoman for the state Historic Preservation Officer, never materialized.

“It was determined that, yes, the property was historically significant. We’ve been working with Ikea over the past two or three years to basically preserve the historical characteristics of the buildings,” Jimenez said.

Her department signed on to a Memorandum of Understanding, which then went to the Army Corps of Engineers, but, she added, “it’s up to [the Army Corps] to authorize the permit.”

But Richard Tomer, chief of the Regulatory Branch of the New York District of the Army Corps of Engineers, told The Brooklyn Papers that Ikea never received permission to start work.

“Their application is incomplete, meaning they did not get a ‘go ahead’ to work on the project,” Tomer said. He said he was concerned that if the buildings were demolished, “we wouldn’t be able to complete the process.”

Ikea told the Army Corps that the Beard Street building was “an immediate hazard,” said Army Corps spokesman Peter Shugert. In response, the Army Corps requested, in a letter both faxed and sent to Ikea, a cease of work until they could determine whose jurisdiction the issue fell under, as well as evidence of what made the building hazardous.

Shugert added, “It’s about due process; they need to follow due process, and that’s what we’re trying to protect here.”

“That letter [from the Corps] was a product of our efforts to basically enforce Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act,” said Dan Wiley, a spokesman for Congresswoman Velazquez.

“Now the question is enforcement,” he said. “The [Buildings Department] gave the owners the permit, but the permit is for alterations, not an emergency demolition.”

Asked about forging ahead despite the historic concerns, Ikea officials repeated their claim that the building was hazardous, and provided to The Papers a copy of an engineer’s statement, dated Dec. 15, 2004, by a structural engineer named Victor A. Gordon. Though the letter bore a State of New York stamp proving his license, and was typed on letterhead, the phone number for Gordon was disconnected, and a fax number went to a private answering machine. A message left on the answering machine seeking comment was not returned.

Ikea spokesman Jamie Van Bramer told The Papers the engineer conducted the review for Ikea, as an evaluation. He would not respond to charges that Ikea was evading the state and national historical review processes.

Connelly pointed out that the Municipal Art Society had no strong feelings about Ikea itself.

“We are not dogmatically opposed to the Ikea project; the two can coexist,” he said.

But Red Hookers who have opposed Ikea from the get-go used this week’s demolition as an opportunity to reiterate their position.

“An awful lot of people in Red Hook have been deceived by this project,” said John McGettrick, president of the Red Hook Civic Association. “This basically constitutes an end-run around the regulatory process. An illegal end-run.”

Red Hook Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez, on the other hand, who championed the Ikea project, appears to support the demolition.

“She is not going to renege on a commitment she made to the whole of a community,” said her spokesman, Felix Palacios.

“She’s completely convinced that what she did, that whatever needs to be done to bring about this project, needs to be done,” he added. “She’s in complete agreement with bringing Ikea to Brooklyn.”

That did not sit well with McGettrick.

“I am hoping, as more information becomes available, that [Gonzalez] will reconsider,” he said.

---------------

Sunset Park Snapshot, New Condo Edition

From The Brownstoner, October 10, 2007

On a stroll down 7th Avenue recently we counted three new, medium-sized condos between 50th and 58th streets that appear to be nearing the home stretch. Banners on each indicate they're being marketed to Chinese buyers, but attempts to dig up more info have been pretty fruitless. We got in touch with the agent at Courtesy Realty who's handling sales for 5008 7th Avenue, the 28-unit development on 58th Street, and he told us the building's about one-third sold out, and the remaining one- and two-bedrooms are starting at $430,000. (A language barrier prevented us from sussing out how big those units are.) Similarly, we weren't able to unearth prices for the 10-unit 5423 7th Avenue, at 55th Street, or the 36-unit 5008 7th Avenue, at 50th Street. Anyone looked into buying at one of these buildings or have more concrete pricing info?

New Development: 5423 Seventh Avenue [Brownstoner]
5805 7th Avenue/58th St. GMAP P*Shark DOB
5423 7th Avenue/55th St. GMAP P*Shark DOB
5008 7th Avenue/50th St. GMAP P*Shark DOB

Comments

Surprised there are not more sales at the pre-finish state considering the high demand for housing in that area of Sunset Park. I would find it hard to believe they won't sell out all 3, even in the currently evolving marketplace.

This may be a clue to higher density projects (like these and larger) that may come with the edicts from City Planning during the rezoning plan review stages.

Posted by: Action Jackson at October 10, 2007 6:12 PM

I wish I wasn't such a fiscal conservative...but i've done the math several times over and it seems that the developers of these projects must get their asking prices or they will default on their mortgages/loans. It would only take one or two "buildings" defaulting on loans to undo the entire market. It isn't just a couple of developers taking a bath, it is "in progress" developers walking away mid-project and skipping out on bills to a variety of suppliers and sub-contractors to send more than a trickle through the market - it will be a wave (I would say tsunami, but I can't spell that).

The Asians that are in need of housing cannot support big loans. The previous generation of Asian home buyers did so through extended families - several family households all under one roof sharing the costs. The present generation consists largely of couples emancipated from their families with their own child or two (both infants). Even with both parents working, they will have child care expenses (not just daycare - child rearing costs).

Unless we see a "new" family cooperative movement where non-related families buy a coop/condo together, i think the near future is bleak in sunset park.

Posted by: guest at October 10, 2007 9:19 PM

$430k for a one bedroom in this area?

lolz!

Posted by: guest at October 11, 2007 9:31 AM

$430,000. That does seem to be the going rate for these kinds of apartments. Other than the too-high price, problem is I don't think they're actually "going." There's a smaller building on 8th between 40th and 41st with sold signs in many windows but the signs have been there for a few months now. Is anyone really buying these? I thinkst not. Moreover, with a one-bedroom Finnish coop (disclosure: I live in one) apartment in good shape going for $200K (cash) or $275K or so (mortgage) I don't get these prices. Even Corcoran for god's sake has the sense to offer renovated 1 bedrooms at a more realistic $350K.

Posted by: guest at October 11, 2007 10:38 AM

That horrific building on 50th Street is literally right around the corner from the residence of local Council Member Sara Gonzalez. If they can do it on her own block without so much as a sigh from her, can we really expect her to do anything to protect the neighborhood from further attack by these developers? God only knows how much money she's received from builders and developers?

Posted by: guest at October 11, 2007 12:08 PM

Sunset Park is getting plagued by horrible chinese construction. What a shame. Plus the R6 zoning is allowing huge buildings where they don't belong. Is there anyway I could get higher resolution photos?

Posted by: guest at October 11, 2007 2:16 PM

These are some real dogs. I'm going to start calling those side-by-side center mullion windows "cheap NYC condo windows" because they seem to have become ubiquitous with crappy condo developments. Something so simple as choosing a better looking window would help these developments immensely.

Posted by: guest at October 11, 2007 11:16 PM

Two things: If the Chinese developers are only selling to Chinese isn't that a human rights violation...what is know as redlining?I think our elected officials need to be aware that there may be a bad situation growing.

Second, it was Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez who got the rezoning study fast tracked by City Planning and has hired the Pratt Institute to educate and inform the community about the rezoning. In addition Ms. Gonzalez got the developer on 42nd street to downsize the building from 10 storeys to 51/2 storeys The comment re: moneys she may have gotten from developers and builders is disgraceful!

Posted by: guest at October 17, 2007 2:11 PM

-------------------

WHAT IS SARA GONZALEZ HIDING?

New York Real Estate Lawyers' Blog, posted by El Grito, 05/08/2008

A reader sent us a link to a published attack on City Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez -- who is allegedly one of a number of local politicians embroiled in that whole City Council scandal involving millions of dollars in "misdirected" funds.

For some reason, Councilwoman Gonzalez is refusing to account for some $269,000 that were allocated to one of her local "nonprofit" groups.

Calls to the City Council (requesting the information) have been rebuffed.

So much for transparency and good government!

Of course, if the allegations prove true, Councilwoman Gonzalez is in deep sh*t.

Earlier this week, while Council Member Sara Gonzalez was out on a Sunset Park pier with Council Speaker Christine “Oink, Oink” Quinn announcing new ferry service that most Sunset Park residents will never use, (Sara’s gift for voting in favor of congestion pricing) the Daily News was reporting about her refusal to name the recipients of some $269,000 of our hard earned tax dollars that she’s funneled through a local nonprofit.

If she can’t name these groups and offer why they received this money, she should resign immediately.

These last few weeks, Gonzalez, Speaker Quinn and many of their colleagues in the pig pen that is the New York City Council, have fully demonstrated their contempt for their constituents by stashing precious funds with phantom groups and then using these funds to reward friends and cronies who do their bidding.

At a time when there are so many good, legitimate, effective and innovative groups, schools and programs in our neighborhoods that could really put this money to good use, Gonzalez and many of her colleagues are doling this money out as if it were coming out of their own purses or wallets.
It’s shameful, outrageous and despicable. I applaud Civil Rights lawyer, and hopefully our next Public Advocate, Norman Siegel for filing a lawsuit against the New York City Council on behalf of the residents of this city who are outraged by this scandal.

If Sara Gonzalez won’t show us the list (the same way she’s refused to answer a recent Freedom of Information Act request), she needs to leave office now!

More on Sara

"This fiscal year, Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez (D-Brooklyn) used the United Senior Citizens Center of Sunset Park as a fiscal conduit, funneling $269,000 through it to other groups.

The center's director, Grisel Amador, said Gonzalez "provided a list of organizations in the community" that were to receive the funds. She refused to release the list, and Gonzalez refused to answer questions." Daily News, 5/5/08

Diana Reyna

2008-11-08T13:44:00.000-08:00

Just what are Diana Reyna's reasons for supporting the term limits extension? WATCH VIDEO

-----------------

Slush pols look after their own

by Robert Gearty, Benjamin Lesser, Kirsten Danis, and Greg B. Smith
The Daily News, April 30, 2008

Council member Diana Reyna of Brooklyn was generous with her in-laws, starting with $75,000 for the Striking Viking Story Pirates, an acting troupe featuring her sister-in-law, Laura Hernandez.

Reyna said her in-law approached her for funding. The money pays for the group to perform plays in three schools in her district.

She insists her sister-in-law gets no compensation from city money, but acknowledges her relative gets paid from birthday parties the group performs.

Reyna also sole-sponsored $6,000 in "discretionary funds" for Los Sures Senior Center, which is run by her mother-in-law, also named Laura Hernandez.

Reyna also sponsored another $25,000 in taxpayer funds to be split by Los Sures and three other nonprofits.

-------------------
City pulls lid off pols' pig trough
BY FRANK LOMBARDI
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, June 16th 2007

For the first time, the City Council squealed yesterday on how its 51 members doled out $36.4 million in so-called "pork" funds.

The Council divulged the sponsors for each of more than 1,500 budget allocations. Previously, only the recipients and how much each got were made public.

The disclosure was made as Council members unanimously approved the city's new $59 billion budget, which kicks in July 1. The spending plan includes a 7% cut in the property-tax rate - part of a package of $1.3 billion in tax cuts.

Budget officials reported yesterday that the record surplus of $4.4 billion has grown by another $638 million since Mayor Bloomberg proposed the new budget April 26. The surplus is being used to help offset future spending gaps.

Each Council member controlled a minimum of $340,000 for member items, totaling at least $17.4 million of the $36.4 million in Council discretionary funds.

"I don't call it pork," said Councilman David Weprin (D-Queens), chairman of the Finance Committee. "I call it funding services provided by community groups."

A big beneficiary was the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, part of the social services and housing empire of Assemblyman Vito Lopez (D-Brooklyn), the Brooklyn Democratic boss.

Last year, Lopez's organizations got at least $572,000, without any sponsors being disclosed.

This time, Lopez-related groups got $609,750. Sponsors included Council members Diana Reyna and Erik Martin Dilan, both Brooklyn Democrats, and Dennis Gallagher (R-Queens), who all represent districts in and around Lopez's turf.

Kendall Stewart

2008-11-07T13:59:00.000-08:00

Two Council Aides Face Federal Charges
New York Times, By William K. Rashbaum, 4/16/08

A former top aide to City Councilman Kendall Stewart of Brooklyn and another former Council staff member were indicted today on federal fraud and money-laundering charges that accused the aide of stealing more than $145,000 from a nonprofit program that was supposed to tutor public school children.

The indictment, unsealed this morning, charged that Mr. Stewart’s former chief of staff, Asquith Reid, used much of the money for personal expenses, including sending $31,000 in the nonprofit’s money to family members and friends in Jamaica via Western Union.

Mr. Reid, according to the indictment, was Mr. Stewart’s contact person for his requests for discretionary Council monies, a fund of millions of taxpayer dollars allocated annually by the Council to nonprofit organizations “purportedly for the public benefit.” Council members have broad discretion to choose how to spend the money.

The charges were announced today by Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan, and Rose Gill Hearn, commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigation.

“Without transparency and accountability in a budget process, discretionary items are ripe for abuse,” Mr. Garcia said. “Taxpayer money allocated to fake non-profit entities–organizations that do not even exist–is even more difficult to trace and more easily diverted for personal gain. This investigation will continue to take a hard look at this process, scrutinizing those allocations most vulnerable to abuse by those in position of public trust.”

Ms. Gill Hearn said a new unit set up by her office to examine nonprofits receiving city funds now has over thirty active cases.

She said the cases, “demonstrated corruption vulnerabilities that were thriving because of obscure processes and lax and non existent oversight.” She added, “Along with our colleagues at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, last year we decided to do a proactive comprehensive look at the award, allocation and tracking of council discretionary funding. In short order we discovered that our concerns were well founded. We found the council’s use of fictitious organization as a place to park millions of dollars worth of discretionary funding creating obscurity with respect to the origin, destination, purpose and benefactors of that funding.”

The charges come just days after disclosures that the office of the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, had appropriated millions of dollars to nonexistent organizations, instead of routing the money to organizations favored by individual council members. The accounting sleight-of-hand allowed Council members to later tap the funds for projects without getting approval from the mayor, but no allegations have yet been brought forward that it was used to misappropriate funds. Mr. Garcia would not answer questions about whether allocation the money to fictitious organizations was a crime. Neither would he say whether Ms. Quinn was a target of the ongoing inquiry.

No accusations have been leveled against Ms. Quinn, and has said she is not a target of the investigation by Manhattan federal prosecutors and the city Department of Investigation, which were expected to announce the indictment this afternoon.

Ms. Gill Hearn praised the speaker’s proposed reforms, announced on Friday. “I think the fact that the Speaker is taking a look at the fictional organizations is the right thing and is commendable, though reforms that she laid out last Friday are, I gather, being analyzed and debated over at the Council,” she said at her agency will also have recommendations coming out of the investigations.

Mr. Reid faces a maximum of 80 years in prison, Mr. Garcia said, and Ms. Anderson faces a maximum of 40 years.

Mr. Reid and the other former staffer charged, Joycinth Anderson, were expected to be arraigned later this afternoon. Neither they nor their lawyers could be reached for comment.

Mr. Stewart, a licensed podiatrist who represents Flatbush, East Flatbush, Midwood and Flatlands, said in a brief telephone interview that he had known that the Donna Reid Memorial Education Fund was operated by Mr. Reid and was in fact named after his daughter, who died from an illness at a young age. Mr. Stewart said he had not yet seen the indictment and could not comment on it.

His lawyer, Howard H. Weiswasser, said he had no reason to believe that the councilman had done anything improper or illegal. “To my knowledge he is not a target of the investigation,” Mr. Weiswasser said.

The Donna Reid Memorial Educational Fund initially applied for discretionary Council funds through the city Department for the Aging, the indictment said. But the agency rejected the application because the address reported for the fund was Mr. Reid’s home.

The group later sought discretionary funds though the city Department for Youth and Community Development, which approved the application and since November 2004, provided approximately $356,000, more than three quarters of the group’s total income during that time period, the indictment said.

Among those monies were approximately $14,000 of funds allocated to the fictitious nonprofits, the indictment said.

The charges also accused Mr. Reid of spending $18,000 of the Donna Reid group‘s money on a campaign function for a political club controlled by Mr. Stewart and $3,000 on campaign literature for him.

The indictment charges Mr. Reid and Ms. Anderson with conspiracy to commit mail fraud, money-laundering conspiracy and two counts of witness tampering.

According to a statement that Representative Major R. Owens made in the House of Representatives in 1997, Mr. Reid was born in Hanover, Jamaica. He graduated from Kingston Technical High School and served in the Air Force from 1963 to 1967. He graduated from Kingston Technical College with a degree in electrical engineering. He and his wife, Dean, had two daughters, Michelle and Sharon.

Among the politicians Mr. Reid has aided over the years are Assemblyman N. Nick Perry, State Senator John L. Sampson, former Councilwoman Una S. T. Clarke, and Mr. Owens, who retired from Congress at the end of 2006.

Helen Foster

2008-11-07T13:52:00.000-08:00

From the article "Slush pols look after their own"

BY ROBERT GEARTY, BENJAMIN LESSER, KIRSTEN DANIS and GREG B. SMITH
The Daily News, Wednesday, April 30th 2008

Council member Helen Foster disclosed that her mother has been a trustee at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx. The hospital got $127,000 in Council funds last year.

"I wanted to let people know that my mother serves on the board; she gets no compensation, and anything that flows to St. Barnabas doesn't come from me," Foster said.

Leroy Comrie

2008-11-07T13:48:00.000-08:00

From the article "Slush pols look after their own"

BY ROBERT GEARTY, BENJAMIN LESSER, KIRSTEN DANIS and GREG B. SMITH
The Daily News, Wednesday, April 30th 2008

Leroy Comrie, who represents southeast Queens, has co-sponsored $115,000 in member items for a nonprofit that lists his wife, Marcia Moxam Comrie, as an unpaid vice president.

King Manor Association of Long Island maintains a museum in Jamaica, Queens, commemorating Rufus King, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Comrie said he sponsored funds for the group before his wife became a board member in 2005 and that the money pays for overhead and presentations in city schools.

"King Manor was a group that was sponsored by my predecessor [on the Council]," he said. "It's been doing services for children and adults for many years."

----------------

Advertising ban for council
Monday, October 15, 2007, from the blog Queens Crap

The City Council is expected to end its long-standing practice of allowing members to pay for advertisements with taxpayer dollars following the release of a report on Monday listing the top 10 biggest advertising spenders among the membership.

City Council Said To End Long-Standing Practice of Member Ad Buys

Other members said to be in the top 10 include Council Members Leroy Comrie and Eric Gioia, both Democrats of Queens. Speaker Christine Quinn is planning to call for an end to the advertisements after the report comes out, a council source said.

Council Member Tony Avella of Queens, who is running for mayor, said he introduced a bill years ago to bar members from using taxpayer dollars to pay for advertisements, but it never won support.

Larry Seabrook

2008-11-06T14:22:00.001-08:00

Pig at the trough

Daily News Editorial, Monday, October 15th 2007

Hey, boys and girls! Want a new computer? Robocaller? Custom-made office chair? Run for election. With no real opponent. Your role model can be Bronx Councilman Larry Seabrook, who has managed to soak the taxpayers thanks to New York City's overly generous public campaign finance system.

Seabrook ran essentially unopposed for reelection in 2005. He should have qualified for not cent-one in public matching dollars, but he got $71,000 after swearing he had a foe requiring a fight. He did not. He was a shoo-in.

No matter. The campaign finance system handsomely filled Seabrook's bank account. And he trounced his opponent, who spent nothing, 7 to 1.

But not wanting to end up with an account surplus and having to return any unspent matching funds, Seabrook went on a buying spree.

An audit of Seabrook's accounts by the Campaign Finance Board found $18,809 in noncampaign-related purchases, including a robocaller automated telephone calling machine, computer, monitors, camcorder, telephones, Xerox, fax, supplies and custom-made furniture.

Seabrook ran his race out of his Democratic clubhouse, and he bought some of the gear just a day before the election - more evidence that he was socking the taxpayer with costs that were in no way vital to his victory.

But Seabrook defended his spree and the board, astonishingly, reduced its finding to $9,782 in noncampaign-related expenditures. For his blatant abuse of campaign funds, the board issued Seabrook a $500 fine. Five-hundred paltry dollars.

Plus, Seabrook gets to keep the robocaller, computer, monitors, camcorder, telephones, Xerox, fax, supplies and custom-made furniture. That'll teach him. Don't you think?

The board sent a terrible message to the city's political class by barely slapping Seabrook's wrist. The message is that pols can stiff the taxpayer without fear of consequences.

The board needs a spine and a new rule that campaign equipment remains the property of the campaign and cannot be used for other purposes or campaigns. Should a campaign sell the equipment, the money should go toward refunding the matching funds. Call it the Seabrook rule.

David Yassky

2008-11-05T15:15:00.000-08:00

Yassky ‘betrayed’ voters
By Gersh Kuntzman, The Brooklyn Paper, 10, 30, 08

Voters are angry about the City Council’s 29–22 vote last week to set aside term limits and allow Mayor Bloomberg to run for a third term — and lots of them are taking it out on David Yassky.

The Brooklyn Heights councilman has become the main whipping boy for Brownstone Brooklyn outrage about the Council’s Oct. 23 vote to set aside two prior public term-limit votes — mostly because this self-proclaimed reformer has been shown to be just another self-serving, double-talking pol, critics said.

“Yassky’s real intention was always to serve another four years in office,” said Ken Diamondstone, who had planned to run for Yassky’s seat, but is now undecided because Yassky is now widely expected to abandon his quest to succeed no-longer-term-limited City Comptroller Bill Thompson and run for re-election instead.

“By doing an end run around the people’s strong stance on [term limits], Yassky clearly demonstrated that he believes his own interests trump the voice of the voters,” Diamondstone said.

Hours after the historic vote last Thursday, Yassky argued before the Independent Neighborhood Democrats, a reform-minded Carroll Gardens political club, that he did just the opposite.

He explained that after long soul-searching, he decided that he could support a 12-year term limit if it went before the public again. Yet when his amendment to do just that was defeated, he voted with the mayor.

And that’s not kosher in so-called progressive circles.

“David’s vote was more painful than the other 28 ‘yes’ votes because he represents a district that leads the city when it comes to politicial reform,” said Alan Fleishman, a Democratic district leader and Yassky constituent. “David’s ‘yes’ vote was politically motivated based on his aspirations to run for higher office. The voters of Brownstone Brooklyn deserved better.”

Yassky’s Council colleague, Bill DeBlasio, who opposed the term-limit change, blasted Yassky’s lack of integrity.

“He was not sincere,” said DeBlasio (D–Park Slope), who now says he’s running for Public Advocate, though he could run for his own seat. Yassky “did not act with integrity” because his amendment “was not offered in an honest spirit.”

“It was an artifice and a maneuver on his part to give him cover,” added DeBlasio. “How could you call for a referendum and then vote for the mayor’s bill?”

Assemblywoman Joan Millman (D–Carroll Gardens) also attacked Yassky’s integrity.

“What he did was not the progressive thing,” said Millman. “It outraged people. And his explanation was convoluted and torturous. If you put forth an amendment, you need to gather support for it. And if it fails, you should vote against the bill.”

Reached on Tuesday after hearing a week’s worth of criticism, Yassky rejected the notion that he opposed overturning the public will on term limits even though his ultimate vote did just that.
“I believe I still have the moral high ground because in the end, I voted for what is in the best interest of the city,” he said. “I did want to change term limits. I said that all along. I did not want to do it by overturning the will of the voters, but when that failed, I voted for 12 years instead of eight.”

Yassky claimed that personal motivation had nothing to do with his vote; he said he is still running for Comptroller, just as he was before he voted to allow himself to run again for his seat.

But most political insiders believe that Thompson will eventually choose a safe re-election as comptroller over running against the billionaire mayor.

“And when that happens,” said one local elected official who sought anonymity because he is still raising money for his own run against a no-longer term-limited councilmember, “Yassky will get to appear like a good Democrat by announcing that he won’t take on Thompson.”

And when THAT happens, the insider continued, the five people who were already running for Yassky’s seat — Ken Baer, Diamonstone, Jo Anne Simon, Evan Thies and Steve Levin — will opt out rather than face an incumbent with a comptroller-sized war chest.

UPDATE: On Friday, former New York State Sierra Club chapter chairman Ken Baer told The Brooklyn Paper that he is in the race whether Yassky runs again or not. A story on the subject is here.

Simcha Felder

2008-11-05T15:03:00.000-08:00

I gave $20M to pals on Council, Mayor Bloomberg sez

BY FRANK LOMBARDI and ERIN EINHORN
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU
Thursday, September 25th 2008, 12:09 AM

Mayor Bloomberg used a secret fund to reward City Council allies with $20 million for their districts - some of it going to questionable organizations, he revealed Wednesday.

The mayor first acknowledged his slush fund last spring in the wake of a Council scandal over taxpayer dollars flowing to fictitious groups and nonprofits controlled by Council members' relatives.

Bloomberg released new details yesterday showing what he doled out to Council members and pols to distribute among their favorite nonprofits and pet projects since 2002.

"People have taken tough stands and helped us make politically unpopular decisions, sometimes at their own peril," mayoral spokesman Stu Loeser said.

The two members who got the most were Simcha Felder, raking in $5.7 million, and Domenic Recchia, who got $2.2 million.

Both are Brooklyn Democrats who crossed party lines to endorse Bloomberg when he ran for reelection as a Republican in 2005.

Felder did not return calls for comment. Recchia denied the money was a payback.

"The mayor expressed support for things happening in my district," he said. "These projects were worthwhile."

Others, like Councilman Bill DeBlasio (D-Brooklyn), who got $351,000, earned the wrath of then-Council Speaker Gifford Miller in 2005 by siding with Bloomberg on a plan to put a garbage transfer station in Miller's Manhattan district.

"I didn't need a weatherman to tell me that there would not be a lot of support [from Miller] for my community," DeBlasio said. "I appealed to the mayor to help on these items."

Also getting money from the mayor's fund was Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who began collecting in 2005 after crossing party lines to endorse Bloomberg. He sent much of the $2.6 million to a nonprofit called Best of Brooklyn, Inc. which he controls.

Some of the mayor's cash ended up with nonprofits later linked to the scandal.

Among them were the North Brooklyn Community Council, run by the wife of Councilman Erik Martin Dilan. Dilan gave $30,000 from the mayor to that group in 2005.

Melinda Katz

2008-11-05T14:35:00.000-08:00

Feedback Loop: Melinda Katz's Effective Fund-Raising Using Story of Her Effective Fund-Raising

by Azi Paybarah for The New York Observer February 8, 2008

Here's a fund-raising email from a 2009 candidate for comptroller which may partly explain why that industry is so generous to some city candidates.

The message, forwarded to me by an interested reader, is from City Councilwoman Melinda Katz, and it includes a profile of herself that was published in the Real Deal. The profile describes how Katz leverages her position on the powerful Land Use committee to raise money.

Here's the Katz fund-raising email.

From: melinda@melindakatz.org [mailto:melinda@melindakatz.org ]
Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2008 8:06 PM
To: #####
Subject: Update re NYC Comptroller

#####,
Thank you again for your consideration and support of my campaign to become the 43rd Comptroller of New York City. As you probably know by now, our campaign continues to thrive. We raised more money than all of the other candidates with a total approaching $2 million in the January filing! Not only have we raised the most money, we are the only candidate with union endorsements, elected official endorsements and a Finance Committee with over 120 distinguished New Yorkers on it.

Below is a recent profile I thought you might be interested in reading. Let me know if you have any thoughts or ideas on continuing to grow the economy of New York City.

Sincerely,
Melinda

P.S. If there is someone you think might be interested in joining my Finance Committee, please send me their contact information and ask them to visit my website www.MelindaKatz.org to familiarize themselves with my background and experience.

--------

Katz gets help from industry heavy hitters

by Judith Zimbalist for The Real Deal, January, 2008

Melinda Katz may not be a household name, but she's in charge of the most powerful committee in the City Council and has helped shepherd through legislation that has changed the landscape of development in New York City.

As the chair of the council's Land Use Committee, Katz makes hundreds of high-voltage zoning decisions and hears requests from developers and property owners that often require her to balance preservation with the omnipresent construction that has defined her tenure in the council.

Now, the Queens Democrat is looking for a promotion and is considered one of the frontrunners in the race to become the city's next comptroller.

With the exception of Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión - who many predicted would run for mayor, but just announced his intention to run for comptroller instead - Katz has raised more money than any of her competitors.

As of the last campaign filing disclosure, she had banked $1.33 million, while Carrión had $1.36 million, City Council Member David Weprin had $1.25 million, and Council Member Simcha Felder had $1.06 million. Several others, including Council Member David Yassky, who has yet to file his first disclosure, also plan on running.

Katz's position as head of the Land Use Committee gives her a unique perch to raise money from. And, she has been effectively leveraging it.

Several major developers are helping her raise cash, and her finance committee is filled with some of the biggest real estate heavyweights in city. They include the CEO of the Extell Development Company, Gary Barnett; the head of the Durst Organization, Douglas Durst; the father-and-son team at Two Trees Management, David and Jed Walentas; the president of the Related Companies, Jeff Blau; the president of Muss Development, Joshua Muss; and a number of others.

Developer Howard Milstein is scheduled to host a fundraiser for her on January 10, just before the next campaign fundraising period ends. The invitation, which invites guests to "Max Out for Melinda," was posted on the New York Observer's Web site.

"Katz has capitalized on the people she has come into contact with. There's nothing untoward, but this is the underbelly of political fundraising," the executive director of the Citizens Union, Dick Dadey, said. "Clearly her position as chair of Land Use helps her raise money in her run for comptroller. People want to be seen supporting those who have a role in effecting their interest."

Her fundraising strategies are not unique. Many candidates turn to development and real estate contacts for cash. But her position gives her added clout and raises questions about how appropriate those contributions are.

This year those donations may be even more closely examined because of new legislation passed by the Bloomberg administration and the council to cap contributions from entities doing business with the city, from lobbyists, and from those who have land use items under review. The legislation, which has not yet gone into effect, is intended to crack down on even the appearance of pay-to-play.

The Daily News recently reported that Katz received roughly $30,000 in donations from people tied to four companies that are fighting Mayor Bloomberg's proposal to redevelop Willets Point in Queens. The donation raised eyebrows because the project needs to go through her committee.

Katz is not shy about her fundraising. She says it is a show of confidence in her abilities. "There's always going to be stories about contributions," she told The Real Deal. "The fact of the matter is I am fortunate that people have faith in what I want to do."

She has also been quoted saying that her donations do not influence the policy positions she takes.

Katz has a reputation for being smart, ambitious, and personable. She works tirelessly and, between hearings and fundraisers, often makes the rounds singing at events in the city.

She worked at the elite law firm Weil, Gotshal, & Manges before being elected to the state Assembly in 1994. In 1998 she narrowly lost in a Congressional race to Rep. Anthony Weiner, and in 2001 she was elected to her current seat.

While she has played a part in mega rezonings, like Greenpoint/Williamsburg and the far West Side, which Bloomberg pushed for, she has even more influence over hundreds of other lower-profile land use requests that get less public scrutiny.

Her committee votes on everything from zoning variances to landmark issues. The decisions her committee makes not only have the power to change what gets the green light, but are also often worth a lot of money to whomever is seeking the change.

While nobody is suggesting she makes those decisions in a vacuum - both Council Speaker Christine Quinn and her other council colleagues also wield a lot of say - she is the land use clearinghouse.

Balancing the development proposals that the mayor has made a hallmark of his administration with the opposition is a significant part of her job. Opponents often argue that the administration's development proposals are out of sync with the characteristics of the surrounding neighborhoods.

Ken Fisher - Chair of the Bar Association's Land Use Committee, former City Council member and partner in the law firm Wolf Block - said she balances it well.

"There's a very strong antidevelopment crowd in the council," he said. "I've had council members say to me they're happy if nothing gets built in their districts."

He said many view Katz as levelheaded because she hears parties out and knows when to be aggressive.

For her part, Katz can rattle off neighborhoods that have been up-zoned, down-zoned, slated for more affordable housing, or earmarked for mixed-used purposes.

"People can be yawning, and I find land use and the economy of the city to be one of the most exciting topics that exists," she said. "It's the future of the city."

Comments

Anonymous (not verified) says:
She is really pushing the ethical envelope. I hope she doesn't get burned.

February 08, 2008 12:45 PM

Anonymous (not verified) says:
Absolutely unethical. The sick thing is shes not half as bad as another shameless hack thats using unethical "committee leverage" to raise money for Comptroller.

February 08, 2008 1:29 PM

politiquer (not verified) says:
Term limits turned Councilmembers into mad fundraising dogs.

What is truly sad however is our pathetic Mayor. The press gives him a free pass on building collapses and the hard ball politics his allegedly non political city hall plays and the incompetence of his commissioners and managers who cant get things right.

But even worse is when he shrouds himself in campaign finance reformer mode. This is the same gyu who raised $2 million for Joe Bruno's corrupt State Senate preservation in return (yes, quid pro quo) for a congestion pricing endorsement. Bloomberg's own company plays hedge games with all candidates at the Federal level.

Who is he trying to kid?

February 08, 2008 2:22 PM

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--------------------------

BUILDING 'BLOCK$'

By CHUCK BENNETT, The New York Post

November 29, 2007 -- Queens businesses in the way of the mayor's massive redevelopment plan for Willets Point gave nearly $30,000 to a city councilwoman with the authority to block the project, campaign-finance records show.

Councilwoman Melinda Katz, chair of the powerful Land Use Committee and a 2009 candidate for city comptroller, raked in $29,500 over the summer from people tied to four companies fighting the redevelopment.

Katz solicited the bulk of the donations at a June 18 fund-raiser, according to her spokeswoman. That event occurred just five days after she held an oversight hearing on the plan where she voiced serious concerns.

Mayor Bloomberg's plan cannot move forward without approval by Katz's committee. She is holding a second hearing today.

Bloomberg's $3 billion Willets Point plan would convert the area - now a collection
of salvage yards, metalworking shops, and garages called the "Iron Triangle" - into a convention center with hotels, housing and stores.

The 62-acre area, which is home to 200 businesses, is right in front of the new Mets stadium site.

The city's Economic Development Corp. wants to force existing businesses to sell their land at the current market rate, not the more valuable price it would fetch after rezoning. If the businesses don't go along, the city has threatened taking the land through eminent domain.

"This is one way to have our voices heard," Dan Scully, an executive with Tully Environmental, a recycling company that is opposing the city, said of the donations.

"The city is . . . trying to hang the blight label on Willets Point when they are the ones who cause the conditions that exist here."

Alan Gerson

2008-11-04T17:21:00.000-08:00

POLS PUNK'D IN 'UZBEK' PRANK

NY Post, By JEREMY OLSHAN, October 18, 2008

A handful of city and state officials jumped at the chance to meet with Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov, a dictator so brutal that he reportedly boils his detractors to death.

Fortunately for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and a host of others who neglected to do their homework, the invitation was a prank.

Unfortunately for them, the Cityfile blog, which perpetrated the prank, posted the voicemails of staffers itching to set up the one-on-ones.

"The president has personally requested an opportunity to meet," read the invitation set on phony letterhead from the nation's New York consulate. The missive said that Karimov has $1 billion to invest in the United States.

According to Cityfile, of the 15 letters sent out, seven officials wanted a meeting, including City Council members John Liu, Alan Gerson, Daniel Garodnick, David Yassky, Assemblyman Dov Hikind and Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum.

A spokesman for Silver said he declined the invite, but the blog claims the lawmaker initially expressed interest

Joel Rivera

2008-11-03T17:58:00.000-08:00

Pork handouts offered to pressure council members to OK congestion plan
Daily News, Wednesday, April 2nd 2008

Up in the Bronx, a major retail redevelopment project at the Kingsbridge Armory that had been stalled for a year suddenly moved forward in the past few weeks.

Joel Rivera, the Council majority leader from the Bronx, had opposed the mayor's congestion pricing plan until Monday. Rivera suddenly switched his position the day of the vote. He joined six other members of the Bronx delegation to deliver near-unanimous support for the mayor's $8-a-day tax on cars coming into the central business district on weekdays.
----------------------

Getting to the bottom of City Hall pork barrel

Daily News, BY BOB KAPPSTATTER

Friday, July 6th 2007, 8:48 PM

With some sunshine now cast on the new city budget's $35 million in member-item funding - sometimes called "pork" - we now have at least an oinkling of how much each City Council member gave to various groups, activities and causes.

It's not a full picture yet, since many of the larger items were sponsored by more than one member or by delegations, and the list still needs a CIA-level codebreaker to pull out some of the goodies.

But courtesy of the online Gotham Gazette, published by the good-government group Citizens Union, here's how much each member of the Bronx delegation sponsored individually:

Joel Rivera, $321,337;
Annabel Palma, $285,000;
Maria del Carmen Arroyo, $239,187;
Larry Seabrook, $238,431;
G. Oliver Koppell, $172,187;
James Vacca, $165.187;
Maria Baez, $127,187

Al Vann

2008-11-02T19:09:00.000-08:00

SLACKER COUNCIL MEMBERS LACK PRESENCE

The New York Post, By SALLY GOLDENBERG and DAVID SEIFMAN, August 13, 2008

Two City Council members in office since 2002 have missed 34 percent of their hearings and meetings, according to figures released yesterday.

Maria Baez (D-Bronx) and James Sanders (D-Queens) topped the list of the 51 council members with the worst attendance records - each scoring a dismal 66 percent.

Not far behind were Al Vann (D-Brooklyn) at 67 percent, Larry Seabrook (D-Bronx) at 68 percent and Tom White (D-Queens) at 69 percent. Baez was absent for 269 of 873 hearings and meetings between Jan. 1, 2002 and June 16, 2008.

She also was marked "excused" on 26 other occasions.

Remarkably, Baez missed every single one of 24 council sessions between this past May 16 and June 16, the period when the $60 billion city budget was hashed out.

She couldn't be reached for comment yesterday.

On the flip side, maverick Tony Avella (D-Queens) got the highest attendance grade: 98 percent.
Councilman Simcha Felder (D-Brooklyn), who achieved a 95 percent attendance score, said the figures don't necessarily reflect the reality because legislators are marked present even if they just drop into a meeting briefly.

"So what if you get marked here?" asked Felder.

"We are elected by the people. At a minimum, we should have the decency to get here on time and stay for most of the hearing."

James Vacca

2008-11-02T18:58:00.000-08:00

'3RD TERM' IS $LUSH HOUR
MIKE'S FUND GAVE BIG BOOSTS TO COUNCIL POLS MULLING LIMITS LAW
Daily News, By ANGELA MONTEFINISE and JAMES FANELLI, October 19, 2008

Only three other council members received funds from the mayor in the last year. Two are Republicans, and the third, Councilman James Vacca, received a considerably smaller amount, $20,000, than the other beneficiaries.

Miguel Martinez

2008-11-02T18:40:00.000-08:00

Councilman sent $406G to nonprofit with sister on board
BY BENJAMIN LESSER, FRANK LOMBARDI and GREG B. SMITH
DAILY NEWS, Friday, April 25th 2008

Manhattan City Councilman Miguel Martinez has shipped hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to a nonprofit group where his sister sits on the board of directors, a Daily News probe has found.

This fiscal year, the Council awarded the Upper Manhattan Council Assisting Neighbors $669,000 in so-called discretionary funds, of which $406,000 was sponsored by Martinez alone, records show.

Martinez's sister Maria has been a member of the nonprofit's board since 2005. She is listed in city records as the group's secretary. Councilman Martinez's photo is posted on the group's Web site under the title "Major Sponsor."

Martinez did not return calls seeking comment, but the group's director, Hector Santana, said the councilman's sister was an unpaid volunteer board member at the nonprofit.

Santana said board members decide how to spend the group's money. He said there were no other relatives of Martinez working at Upper Manhattan.

Miguel Martinez revealed this conflict in new disclosure forms required of all Council members for the first time this year.

The form, which has no date, reads, "My sister sits on board of the organization," and attaches a list of nonprofits with a check mark next to Upper Manhattan Council Assisting Neighbors.

Santana acknowledged that Upper Manhattan got little city money in the years before Maria Martinez joined the board.

After that, records show, the Council awarded Upper Manhattan $75,000 in fiscal 2006 and $124,111 in fiscal 2007. This year, it topped $600,000.

"The money is definitely being spent where it's supposed to be," Santana added.

It's impossible to independently confirm whether Maria Martinez has received any compensation from the nonprofit because the group has not filed tax forms.

Santana said the group did not take in enough money to require tax filings before 2005 and was preparing to file its 2006 form in the coming weeks. He said Miguel Martinez is "a supporter of many organizations and this is one of them."

Martinez's funding for Upper Manhattan came out of several programs, including an immigration initiative and an anti-gang initiative.

The News reported Wednesday the city controller has frozen the $11.2 million immigration initiative pending review. On Thursday, The News learned the $1 million anti-gang initiative has also been frozen.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn has acknowledged that some of the Council's "discretionary" funds were assigned to fictional nonprofits to hold the funds for later distribution to real groups.

That unusual procedure and specific allocations are the subject of a probe by the city Department of Investigation.

Two aides of Councilman Kendall Stewart (D-Brooklyn) have been charged with embezzling $145,000 from a nonprofit funded with Council money.

The News has revealed that Councilman Erik Dilan (D-Brooklyn) funneled $187,000 into a nonprofit run by his wife, and Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo put $82,000 into a nonprofit that employed her sister and nephew.

-------------------

Martinez Fined for Campaign Violations
From the Inwoodite, 18 January 2008

Inwood City Council Member Miguel Martinez has been fined by the city's Campaign Finance Board for violating campaign finance laws.

According to the New York Times, the board claims the Martinez camp received reimbursements for expenses that it could not account for during the 2001 campaign, when the District 10 councilman was first elected. The CFB says receipts submitted by Martinez as proof of the expenses appeared to be fabricated, including some that contained an identical typo and others that were written using the same Microsoft Office template.

“If these were genuine expenditures, the campaign was unable to produce documents that showed it,” said Eric Friedman, a spokesman for the board. “Nor were the vendors. And they didn’t come back to us with records that were convincing to the board.”

The penalties were issued jointly against Mr. Martinez, his campaign committee and its treasurer, Placido Rodriguez.

Dick Dadey, executive director of the government watchdog group Citizens Union, called it one of the worst abuses in the history of the city’s campaign finance program, which began in 1989. “He wrongly took taxpayer dollars for his 2001 campaign and spent them on very questionable and unknown expenses,” Mr. Dadey said.

Martinez and Rodriguez were fined $44,780 and ordered to repay $127,786 in matching funds. The CFB says it is one of the most severe penalties it has ever levied.

Martinez, who sued the board over the allegations in 2004, continues to deny wrongdoing. He may appeal the decision.

According to the CFB, Martinez was fined over $31,000 in 2006 "for misrepresenting the source of contributions" in his 2003 campaign.

Council District 10 includes parts of Inwood, Washington Heights and Marble Hill.

Related on Inwoodite:
• Tuesday Showdown Between Old Friends
• Locals Tire of Espaillat, Martinez Feud

Posted by Brad on 18 January 2008 in CITY COUNCIL, POLITICS Permalink
Comments
I hope it's not true, but if it is, this is perhaps among the most shaming part of the story in the Times:

------------
The board got the injunction lifted on appeal, and in June reissued a detailed list of 11 violations totaling $84,000, which would have been the largest ever assessed for a City Council race.
------------

Because, again if the charges are true, it isn't run-of-the-mill New York political abuse, it's Tammany Hall level corruption.

But if that's the case, then why would this just be a fine assessed by the Campaign Finance Board and not an actual criminal indictment? Is something fishy about that, or is this just the way the city handles campaign finance violations?

Inez Dickens

2008-11-01T19:48:00.000-07:00

Inez Dickens Has Left the Building
Shielded by her minions, City Council Whip Inez Dickens is ushered to a waiting car to escape the community's opposition of her vote for the 125th Street Rezoning Plan.

125th rezone 2006-2008

-----------------------
Inez Dickens is feeling the heat from tenants' rights advocates

Black Star News, June 16, 2008
On Saturday, June 21st in Marcus Garvey Park starting at 10 AM hundreds of Harlemites will take to the streets to voice their opposition to ethnic displacement and corporate centered development sweeping throughout Harlem.

The rapid transformation of Harlem through zoning and rezoning encompassing East, Central and West Harlem without a doubt has and will continue to displace thousands of local residents and small businesses.

After decades of public policy neglect, redlining and disinvestment Harlem now stands at the brink of losing its historic status as Black America's cultural Mecca for more than a century. Although development is a welcome relief from abandoned buildings, garbage-strewn empty lots, few service amenities such as supermarkets, rampant drugs and crime, the “revitalization” of Harlem is displacing tenants, driving out local businesses and will impact Harlem's ethnic, political and socio-economic makeup for decades to come if not permanently.

For decades progressive grassroots activists bemoaned the deliberate policy of redlining by banks that today occupies nearly every corner in the "new" Harlem although Blacks are still less likely to receive loans and mortgages than their white counterparts.

Local Community Boards are deluged with complaints from Blacks unable to secure bank loans that will prove even more difficult since the sub-prime mortgage melt down. The economic racism continues virtually unabated as does other forms of institutional racism manifested in high unemployment, the growing class of those permanently jobless, police brutality, poor education, homelessness and youth violence.

Virtually everyone is experiencing some form of economic difficulty including those who thought they were secure in their middle class abodes. Here in Harlem, unofficial reports indicate hundreds of tenants from Lenox Terrace, Delano Village/Savoy Parks, and the Riverton are seeking one shot deals at the Human Resource Administration to avoid eviction only to be denied. Unable to pay rents of over $2,000 hundreds of Black and Latino tenants have been forced out of the former state subsidized affordable Mitchell Lama building of 1,192 units at 3333 Broadway situated at the northern tip of Columbia University's 18 acres expansion.

The same is true of tenants unable to pay escalating rents in Schomburg Plaza and Lake View Apartments in addition to other Mitchell-Lama buildings in Harlem. According to the Community Service Society, a city public policy anti-poverty organization, New York City has an estimated 39,392 units left after losing about 26,254 units from the Mitchell-Lama program over the past 16 years. With accelerated gentrification throughout the city more units are set to leave with some 4,000 apartments in 12 developments on notice to quit the program.

Public Housing has fared no better. Faced with a looming deficit of $195 million for 2008 alone the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) announced a new round of rent increases of 5 to 15% for its "highest income households"; the second increase for the same households since 2006. NYCHA, the largest public housing administration in the nation, administers 2,600 buildings, made up of 406,000 residents. New cuts to close the deficit includes the elimination of hundreds of community centers including all of NYCHA's 94 community centers and 147 senior citizen centers operated by the City's Department for the Aging in public housing.

In addition, hundreds of programs serving youth at risk, tenants with job training, arts and athletic activities are scheduled to be closed. Ironically, while tenants in public housing are facing rent increase but cuts in services, maintenance and social programs NYCHA continues to warehouse thousands of vacant units. A 2005 study found 81% of units remain vacant up to 13 years while over 137,000 families remain on the waiting list. The loss of revenue is estimated in the millions of dollars.

It is against this background that we need to weigh the supposed "community benefits" out of Harlem’s much touted “second renaissance.” The recent approval of Mayor Bloomberg's transit development initiatives in Central Harlem- the 125th Street rezoning from River to River, is on a scale staggering in scope, cost, ultimate displacement and political betrayal.

In April of 2008 Councilwoman Inez Dickens, representing Central Harlem that encompasses Community Board 10, entered into a quid pro quo agreement with the Bloomberg administration in exchange for Dickens to push through the land use proposal in the New York City Council.

Approximately 3,858 luxury units are projected for development in the 24 blocks footprint that expands from 2nd Avenue to Broadway between 124th and 127th Streets. Despite Dickens’ false assertion that 46% of these units are being "income targeted" only 5%, or 200 units are for families earning below $30,000. Even the gentrification-pushing New York Times weighed in to verify this travesty.

But it doesn't get better; only worse. While Dickens negotiated not a penny for anti-eviction services, including emergency rental assistance, youth jobs/programs and support services for Harlem's most vulnerable population --senior citizens on fixed income -- she saw fit to allocate over $5.5 million to upgrade Marcus Garvey Park, funds to cover broker fees and $100,000 plus cost for benefits for an "economic development consultant" whom she will hire.

Columbia University no less got Bloomberg to allocate $150 million for an affordable housing program in its expansion deal; no such luck with Dickens! Central Harlem is poised for office towers, luxury condos, hotels, major retail stores, and luxury condos developed by private landlords who will ultimately score billions in profits, even while receiving public dollars such as the $15 million dollars to Vornado, the fourth biggest American real estate investment trust, for its 21 story glass office tower on 125th Street at Park Avenue.

The handwriting is on the wall.

We, the people of African descent. in Harlem and around the city alone with our allies and supporters must take to the street to voice our opposition, to organize, to agitate, and to raise the consciousness of our people that it is never too late to fight for what is ours.

For the nay-sayers who are quick to point out, "Oh, it's a waste of time, Harlem is gone!" Just remember this is the kind of apathetic attitude those who want a new de-Africanized Harlem are counting on.

Join us on Saturday, June 21st in Marcus Garvey Park for a march across 125th Street to Broadway up to 145th Street across to Frederick Douglass and down to Morningside Park for a 2 PM Rally. Bring water, noise makers, signs, your family, friends and neighbors. Let's stand together on June 21st for a new Harlem that includes all of us.

Tom White

2008-11-01T19:36:00.000-07:00

PUBLIC $ERVICE PAYS TOP COUNCIL EARNER
By David Seifman, New York Post, October 21, 2007

THE top earner on the City Council pulled in more than $350,000 last year, with the help of pension checks from his previous stint on the council.

Recent reports on the outside income of council members have focused on the few lawyers who rang up low six-figure incomes in private practice to supplement base salaries of $112,500.

It looks like non-lawyer Tom White has them all beat.

The 68-year-old Queens legislator's financial disclosure form shows he added to his council salary with $5,000 to $35,000 from Social Security; another $5,000 to $35,000 from a pension earned when he served in the council between 1992-2001; and $5,000 to $35,000 from a property rental.

IRS filings indicate White, a Democrat, was also paid $215,930 in 2006 as executive director of J-Cap, a drug treatment program he founded decades ago in Laurelton.

And then there's the $10,000 he collects to chair the council's Economic Development Committee.

Since the disclosure forms delineate income only in broad categories, White's total take last year could have been as low as $353,430 or as high as $443,430.

Only one other council member was in the same league - Brooklyn's Lew Fidler, whose law practice generated $140,000 to $350,000.

The council is considered a part-time job and critics have long argued it should be made full-time. But some of the top earners, including Fidler and Staten Island's Mike McMahon, are also among the most productive legislators.

When he was first elected, White garnered unwanted publicity for being absent more often than any other legislator.

By most accounts, he's matured.

"He's much more serious," said one insider.

White was recruited to return in 2005 by the Queens Democratic organization, which was anxious to oust Alan Jennings, a maverick who became embroiled in a harassment scandal.

"You learn as you go along," he told The Post.

"I'm fortunate in that the district that I represent is also where my other job is. So it's not a matter of me having a job in Queens and then having to come to Manhattan or go to Brooklyn. It's right there."

*
The city's Off-Track Betting Corp. has entered a $110 million liability on its books to account for the cost of future health benefits for its 1,500 employees.

For now, it's merely a paper entry made to meet accounting rules.

But the city won't be on the hook if OTB shuts down, a possibility raised for the first time last week by Mayor Bloomberg to spur Albany to change an onerous revenue-sharing formula.

"Of course we would like to do the right thing for all OTB employees, but we do not have any legal responsibility to cover OTB liabilities," said mayoral spokesman John Gallagher.

Maria Baez

2008-11-01T19:28:00.000-07:00

Baez Silent Amid Sea of Controversy

by GRAHAM KATES
NORWOOD NEWS, July 10, 2008

In her penultimate year as a member of the New York City Council, Maria Baez has found herself the subject of media scrutiny. News stories regarding poor attendance at Council meetings, enormous cell phone bills and a check to a non-existent organization, have left Baez with a tarnished public image.

With over a dozen phone calls throughout May and June, and even a list of questions both faxed and hand-delivered to her office, the Norwood News sought Baez’s side of the story. But the councilwoman and her press secretary, Chris Riley, refused interview requests. Baez, 50, who has been a fixture of the Bronx Democratic Party for nearly three decades, serving as chief of staff for then-Council Member Jose Rivera before her election to City Council, would only state through a spokesman that her “constituents know what she has done for the community.”

Baez who represents District 14, which includes parts of Kingsbridge Heights, Fordham, Morris Heights, and Mount Hope, began getting negative press earlier this year with a New York Times report on the attendance records of City Council members. She was highlighted as the member with the single worst record. The leader of the Council’s Bronx delegation and chair of the State and Federal Legislation Committee, Baez was marked present at only 66.1 percent of all Council meetings from 2004 through 2007.

As her tenure as council member draws closer to its end — all members who were elected in 2001 are barred by term limits from running again in 2009 — Baez has become less likely to attend Council meetings. For the first quarter of the current calendar year, Baez’s attendance dropped to about 50 percent, according to records obtained by the Norwood News through a Freedom of Information Law request from the City Council.

Through April 15, Baez was absent from 26 out of 53 Council meetings, with just one absence listed as officially “excused.”

In another recent news report, the Daily News found Baez atop the Council’s list of big spenders.

For the 2007 fiscal year, Baez’s office racked up cell phone expenses of $17,765. Meanwhile, Bronx Council Member Joel Rivera, who is the Council’s majority leader and has a larger staff, had a cell phone tab of $10,501 for the same period.

The New York Post reported in late April that Baez withdrew $668.35 from “Baez for the Future,” her reelection campaign, to pay for gasoline during the second half of 2007 even though she hasn’t needed to campaign since 2005, when she was elected for her second, and final, term as a Council member.

The Post’s David Seifman also reported that, in 2005, when Baez had no Democratic primary opponent (winning the primary is tantamount to winning the election in Baez’s overwhelmingly Democratic district), her campaign managed to chug through 1,100 gallons of gas. Baez’s office didn’t comment for the News and Times articles.

Member item controversy

Since the City Council’s “slush fund” scandal erupted earlier this year when it was discovered that some Council money was going to nonexistent organizations, discretionary funding — better known as member items — is drawing intense scrutiny.

The same New York Post article that detailed Baez’s gas expenses, revealed that she had allocated $7,500 of her budget for this year for a group called the 2401 Davidson Ave. Tenants Association, which was disbanded four years ago, a year before Baez moved out of the building. Her old apartment currently belongs to Nilda Velazquez, treasurer of “Friends of Maria Baez,” and current Baez staff member. “Friends of Maria Baez” lists its address as Apt. 1 of 2401 Davidson Ave., although there is no such address.

When questioned by the Post about the allocation, Baez responded, but did not offer an explanation, saying only that she earmarks money for “good organizations,” and that she “will not allow anyone to assassinate [her] character as a Latina woman.”

The payment to 2401 Davidson Ave. Tenants Association was halted as part of the City Council’s new and improved vetting process, during which Council auditors verify the authenticity of organizations that money is earmarked for.

Baez’s publicity issues date back to before this year, in July, 2007, when allegations surfaced that Baez’s daughter, Carmen, who oversees the Bronx Marriage Bureau’s office, was closing up shop 45 minutes early every day. A New York Times report on the flap included allegations that the elder Baez regularly picked up her daughter early from work, while dejected couples met an unexpectedly shuttered altar.

In December of last year, a City Council bill sponsored by Baez and co-sponsored by Joel Rivera, prompted protests outside Baez’s Mount Hope office. The bill, an alternative to the Tenant Protection Act, which had majority support in the Council, drew accusations that Baez and Rivera were capitulating to New York’s powerful landlord lobby. Both Baez and Rivera eventually withdrew support for the legislation and supported the Tenant Protection Act.

Helen Sears

2008-11-01T07:20:00.000-07:00

Grief for Council pols over car perks
BY LISA L. COLANGELO, DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU, August 13th 2008

It's tough to get a parking spot in Jackson Heights, Queens - unless you are City Councilwoman Helen Sears.

Sears (D-Queens) has a reserved parking spot directly in front of her district office. There's even a Department of Transportation sign warning drivers the spot is for "Council Vehicles" only during peak hours.

While all Council members receive parking placards from the DOT that allow them to park in many restricted areas and even avoid paying the meter, four have their own private parking spots on city streets.

Sears, Councilmen Al Vann and David Yassky (both D-Brooklyn) and Councilwoman Helen Foster (D-Bronx) have spots outside their district offices reserved for their own use from 7a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays.

"The way to solve the problem of scarce parking isn't by doling out perks that just benefit the privileged few," said Wiley Norvell of Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group that has issued numerous studies on parking in the city. "We need smart policies that benefit everyone.You don't solve the problem by giving three people free parking and exacerbating the problem for everybody else."

Foster and Yassky's parking spots were requested by their predecessors,but both Vann and Sears asked the DOT for their specially designated spots, city officials said.

"It's very useful for doing the job," said Yassky. "Our district stretches from Williamsburg to Park Slope. We are out in the field a lot."

Sears, Vann and Foster did not return calls from the Daily News.

Parking is at a premium in many city neighborhoods. Last month The News reported that more parking tickets were given out in the 115th Precinct - which includes Jackson Heights - than any other precinct in the city.

"We should be setting an example and not getting special privileges," said City Councilman Tony Avella (D-Queens). "Other New Yorkers, including those with special needs, are routinely denied special consideration to get such a parking spot."

Avella is pushing for a bill that would create a registry of all parking placards issued to elected officials and city workers. And he pledged to cut up his own placard at a press conference Wednesday.

"I should have to endure what everybody else does in the city in terms of parking," said Avella. "I'd rather have the permit go to a police officer than me."

DOT officials wouldn't comment on individual Council members but said they review and award requests for specially designated parking spots on a case-by-case basis.

-------------------------------
Bloomberg's Member Items

Daily News Blog, by Elizabeth Benjamin, May 13, 2008

On the heels of Mayor Bloomberg's little-publicized announcement last week that he had requested a review of discretionary fund allocation on his end of City Hall comes a memo from Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler outlining a host of reforms.

The memo reveals that the mayor himself controls a pot of cash - the amount of which fluctuates from year to year, I'm told - for which Council members and borough presidents can apply during budget negotiations to direct to the nonprofit of their choice.

This creates the "mistaken impression that the Mayor's Office is funding its own 'Member Items,'" Skyler writes, adding: "This should be rectified."

The non-member items awarded by Bloomberg last year totaled $4.52 million. This is on top of what the members got through their own Council discretionary funds and also on top of capital funding.

The list of who got what reveals the top beneficiary was Councilman Simcha Felder - long known to be a close ally of the mayor - with $1.925 million.

No. 2 on the list was another Bloomberg favorite: Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who got $900,000 for two concert series (recall that he's a big concert promoter).

Bloomberg also went out of his way to assist two of the Council's Republican members, providing $250,000 each to Minority Leader James Oddo and Councilman Vincent Ignizio. (Note: Nothing for ex-Councilman Dennis Gallagher).

The rest are as follows:

- Councilman Domenic Recchia, $625,000.

- Councilwoman Helen Sears, $50,000.

- Councilman James Vacca, $20,000.

- Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., $400,000. (One of first Democrats to endorse Bloomberg in 2005).

- Councilman Erik Martin Dilan, $100,000

James Sanders

2008-11-01T07:02:00.000-07:00

Missing Sanders Campaign Filings Trigger Review
Times Ledger, August 18, 2005

The campaign committee for City Council candidate David Hooks filed complaints this week with the New York City Campaign Finance Board and the Queens district attorney's office after City Councilman James Sanders Jr. (D-Laurelton) missed Friday's deadline to file campaign finance disclosure documents. Sanders has not filed the mandatory periodic campaign finance reports with the Board of Elections since being elected in 2001. According to the Campaign Finance Board Web site, Sanders is the only sitting council member not to have submitted his campaign's receipts and expenditures. The Board of Elections met with Sanders' re-election committee - known as Sanders '05 - earlier this year to discuss the missed filings and determine how the committee could comply. The Hooks campaign, however, has focused steady criticism on the questions surrounding Sanders' failure to file the campaign disclosure reports. Hooks' spokesman, John Lance, said the issue was a matter of fairness.
--------------------

City Councilman Under Fire
Newsday, June 3, 2005

City Councilman James Sanders of Laurelton has failed to file legally mandated reports on his campaign fund-raising and spending for the past three years, the Board of Elections said yesterday. Sanders' failure was first raised publicly yesterday by David Hooks, his opponent in the Democratic primary in the fall. Hooks, a career planner who ran against Sanders in 2001, released copies of letters from the Board of Elections to Sanders during the past three years. Each of the seven form letters advised Sanders that he had missed the deadlines for filing the latest report. However, each letter failed to note his lack of response to earlier letters.

Peter Vallone Jr.

2008-11-01T06:28:00.000-07:00

COUNCILMEMBERS TOTAL AMOUNT OF FUNDING FOR ITEMS SPONSORED BY ONE MEMBER NUMBER OF INDIVIDUAL ITEMS
David I. Weprin $736,500 31
Leroy G. Comrie, Jr. $710,857 80
Lewis A. Fidler $702,625 41
Peter F. Vallone, Jr. $682,857 48
Michael E. McMahon $661,000 72
Inez E. Dickens $588,200 69
Christine C. Quinn $423,500 60
Robert Jackson $337,250 44
Joel Rivera $321,337 33
Domenic M. Recchia, Jr. $312,500 27

----------------------

Vallone family tries to come to terms with term limits

BY FRANK LOMBARDI
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU
Saturday, September 13th 2008

Former Council Speaker Peter Vallone (l.) and his two sons, Peter (standing) and Paul.
If anyone is biting his nails over term limits, it's the Vallone clan of Queens.

There's the father, Peter Vallone Sr., who was City Council speaker until 2001, when municipal officeholders were first limited to two consecutive four-year terms.

And there are his two sons: Peter Vallone Jr., who took over his father's Astoria seat and faces term limits next year, and Paul Vallone, now running for a different Council seat in Queens.

"It makes for some very interesting family conversations," said Peter Vallone Jr., 47.

Mayor Bloomberg triggered the storm in June when he raised the specter of reversing his once-staunch opposition to changing term limits. He has yet to rule out supporting a Council-imposed third-term option.

The elder Vallone, 73, has been pushing behind the scenes for an extension - not to help his sons, he insisted, but because "it's what's good for the city."

"I've always said it's an abomination," he said of term limits. "It prevents long-term planning for the city."

Now an influential lawyer and lobbyist, the father said he has been recruiting "a group of people who care about the city" to support a third-term extension. He wouldn't name names.

He was in the Council for 27 years and was succeeded by his son in the 22nd District in Astoria.

For 15 of those years, he led the Council, starting in 1986 as majority leader and then as speaker after the title was changed in 1990.

The elder Vallone said he would prefer extending term limits by another referendum but that "there's not enough time."

Like several others, Peter Vallone Jr.'s political strategy is up in the air. He opposes term limits but won't say how he would vote on an extension bill.

"I will deal with whatever comes," he said. "But I'm looking forward to my next stage in public service."

Paul Vallone, 41, is less tossed. His first bid for elected office is being waged in the 19th District of Bayside/Whitestone, where incumbent Tony Avella has announced plans for a mayoral run.

Paul Vallone faces several rivals for Avella's seat, including civic leader Jerry Iannece of Bayside Hills, who considers the son an Astoria carpetbagger trading on his family name.

"You don't inherit a seat, you earn it," Iannece said.

Paul Vallone retorted that he's "very proud to be a Vallone" and is looking forward to the campaign.

A lawyer, like his father and two brothers - a third Vallone son, Perry, 45, lives out of the fray in New Jersey - Paul Vallone is also listed as a lobbyist at his father's lobbying firm of Constantinople & Vallone.

Oliver Koppell

2008-11-01T05:47:00.000-07:00

CITY HAUL POLS WANT YOU TO PAY LAW BILLS

New York Post, By DAVID SEIFMAN City Hall Bureau Chief, April 19, 2008

The City Council is examining whether it can provide taxpayer-funded lawyers to individual legislators who might be questioned in the phantom funds mess, The Post has learned.

Councilman Oliver Koppell (D-Bronx) said he suggested that Speaker Christine Quinn develop a policy on legal representation because so many council members aren't sure what to do if they're summoned.

"It's very intimidating to think you might be called by the US attorney or DOI," Koppell said, referring to the city Department of Investigation.

"It's my understanding, if in fact someone is called in to testify and wants to be represented, the council would be providing a separate lawyer."

Quinn's office is studying the issue and drafting a memo that will be distributed to the 50 other council members next week.

An aide said he didn't know what the memo would say or whether the city would actually end up picking up the tab for private attorneys.

Quinn has already hired two taxpayer-funded sets of lawyers, Sullivan & Cromwell, to represent the entire council and Lee Richards III to represent her in dealings with the US attorney and the Department of Investigation.

Sullivan & Cromwell signed a one-year contract last October for about $95,000. Richards will be paid $600 an hour, less than his usual rate, sources said.

Law-enforcement agencies are scrutinizing millions of dollars distributed each year by council members to local community groups, including $17 million that was reserved in fictitious accounts since 2002 so it could be handed out to genuine organizations after the budget was adopted each June.

On Wednesday, Asquith Reid, chief of staff to Councilman Kendall Stewart (D-Brooklyn), and another Stewart aide were indicted for allegedly stealing $145,000 from a nonprofit that Reid led, the Donna Reid Memorial Education Fund.

In another development, The Post has learned that some nonprofit and community groups have received council grants that were then passed through to second groups.

Officials said the longstanding practice was designed to help tiny nonprofit groups that don't have the capacity to file the paperwork needed to get city funding.

But one council member said that also opens the door to potential conflicts of interest.

"If my uncle runs Group B and I don't want to give them money directly, I give it to Group A which gives it Group B," explained the council member.

Under current city rules, no subcontract can exceed $100,000.

Sources said Quinn, for the sake of transparency, might end the entire practice.

"That's an area of reform the speaker is looking at," a source said.

Council staff also have been reminded of a previous directive not to destroy any records related to discretionary funds.

The city and federal investigation of the council is sending jitters through city nonprofit organizations, which receive more than $60 million a year in so-called "member items."

Sources said one some nonprofits have already been notified by the Department of Youth and Community Development to expect delays in this year's funding allotments because of the continuing probes.

"People are on pins and needles," said one council staffer.

Gifford Miller: Slush-Fund Refugee

2005-02-08T15:19:00.000-08:00

While the council roils in scandal, the former Speaker stays mum, hangs with developer chum
By Tom Robbins
Tuesday, May 6th 2008 at 1:11pm

Good luck trying to get Gifford Miller, the former City Council Speaker, to talk about the budget scandal now ravaging the organization he headed for four years.
This hide-the-money scheme, in which millions of dollars were stashed in the name of bogus nonprofit groups, rapidly expanded soon after Miller took over the council in 2002, records show. By 2005, when term limits forced Miller from office, his team had concocted 21 phony-baloney organizations over four years, directing $9.8 million their way. This was the best kind of money to have, since it was available for creative redistribution at the Speaker's unfettered discretion.
This may have been one of the innovations that Miller had in mind when he campaigned for mayor in 2005 as an upstart who got things done. He spent the most of the four Democratic candidates, including $800,000 for a TV ad in which he looked into the camera and said: "People may think I look young, but as head of the City Council I got results."
Unfortunately, he finished dead last in the primary with just 10 percent of the vote. He promptly dropped out of sight, which is apparently the way he likes it.
These days, Miller works hardest at not answering the telephone when reporters call. This is less-than-gallant behavior, since his successor, Christine Quinn, has been forced to take all of the incoming fire on the scandal. Quinn has ducked many tough questions about the budget scheme, saying she can't comment given the ongoing criminal probe, which has already resulted in the indictment of two council staff members. But at least Quinn has stood up and been present. Miller simply hides.
He doesn't answer the phone at the desk he holds down at the Liberty Title Agency, the big real-estate insurance firm that donated $39,000 to his 2005 mayoral campaign. And he doesn't answer it at the office he keeps on East 42nd Street in the old Daily News building, where he works as some kind of consultant alongside his friend, real-estate tycoon Steven Witkoff, another big campaign giver.
Here, Miller has made a lucky marriage every bit as useful as his hide-the-money scheme at the council. In recent years, developer Witkoff has made a name for himself by buying major city properties, including the Woolworth Building, the old News building, and the sleekly refashioned condo tower at 55 Wall Street that he developed with his friends at the Cipriani restaurant company. The condo sales slogan is: "Own the good life."
Witkoff is also renowned for his great generosity in spreading the good life around. For instance, when former police commissioner Bernie Kerik was indicted in November for federal tax fraud and conspiracy, one of the charges against him was that he had failed to disclose two years of rent payments for a luxury Upper East Side apartment that were made by a mysterious benefactor referred to as "John Doe #5."
The rent wasn't cheap: The apartment went for $9,650 per month. This meant that someone shelled out $236,000 on Kerik's behalf. News accounts of the indictment revealed that John Doe #5 was none other than Witkoff, who happens to have extensive property holdings on the Upper East Side. Witkoff wasn't charged with any wrongdoing, but he declined to discuss the matter then as well as now.
The developer is equally silent on another bit of generosity that also attracted attention from prosecutors, this time at the office of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. Investigators there were examining activities of the Cipriani group, which, together with Witkoff, had submitted a winning proposal to turn Pier 57 on the Hudson River into a gala catering and banquet hall.
The investigation led to guilty pleas on tax-evasion charges last year by Arrigo and Giuseppe Cipriani, the father-son team that runs the fabulously expensive restaurant chain. The probe also led to a separate tax-evasion plea by James Ortenzio, a wealthy businessman and Republican Party leader who formerly served as chairman of the Hudson River Park Trust—the city-state entity that later approved the Cipriani/Witkoff proposal.
Investigators learned that, two years after Ortenzio left the trust—but while still a vocal advocate of Witkoff and Cipriani's proposal—he received a $150,000 loan from Witkoff. Ortenzio is one of the area's biggest meat marketers and didn't appear to need the money. Investigators determined that there were no loan documents, no repayment schedule, and no interest charged. Moreover, the loan had been made within weeks of the board's vote approving the Witkoff/Cipriani proposal.
And there was more: Around the same time, Witkoff also gave Ortenzio a $63,000 Mercedes.
According to Witkoff, both the car and the loan were simply his way of being generous to someone he liked. Again, no charges were leveled and Witkoff declined to discuss the matter, as did Ortenzio's attorney.
But unquestionably, this is a good man to know. It's not clear when Miller wisely hitched his wagon to Witkoff, but campaign records show that the developer's company was good for $22,400 in donations to Miller's ill-fated 2005 campaign. At the time, Miller ran the council with an iron hand and Witkoff had several real-estate matters before the city that required council approvals.
This happy coincidence of giving and getting caught the attention of the city's Campaign Finance Board, which examined Witkoff's 2005 contributions as part of a study on how to regulate donations from those doing business with city government.
The board pointed out that, after the Witkoff contributions, the council in September 2005 approved a zoning change to let Witkoff build a 26-story tower and a 100-space parking garage on York Avenue.
A couple of weeks later, the council gave another green light to Witkoff, this one to let him build a 200-foot-tall tower at the corner of Charles Street and West 10th Street, in the heart of Greenwich Village. In doing so, the council approved a special "carve-out" for Witkoff's site that exempted it from a new rezoning plan won by Village residents trying to limit new high-rises in the neighborhood.
There wasn't any evidence that Witkoff had pushed for the carve-out, the board noted in its report. It was just another of those muddy mysteries that permeate the intersection of politics and property.
Miller, now sitting on the real-estate side of that divide, declined to discuss his relationship to the generous developer. After days of ducking phone calls from the Voice, he gave a response via e-mail to The New York Sun, which has also reported on his profound silence on the council's troubles. "The issue has received extensive coverage in the media and I have nothing to add," Miller wrote. When I complained—this time via e-mail—that he was being discriminatory in his no-comments, Miller promptly responded: "Fair enough," he wrote back. "This issue has received extensive coverage in the media and I have nothing to add."
Pressing my luck a little, I asked about his dealings with Witkoff and the title-insurance firm. The response took a little longer, but back it came, complete with plugs for two of his current ventures: "I am chairman of the Liberty Art Title Agency. Liberty Art Title offers cutting-edge title insurance to the art world to eliminate the risk of title and provenance for art collectors. Miller Strategies provides strategic consulting to a number of private-sector firms. Miller Strategies does not engage in lobbying activities. Beyond that, I have no further comment."
At least the guy's still got a sense of humor. For those seeking his services, e-mail address: Giffordmiller@yahoo.com.