2nd hit piece from developer PAC targets Graziano

Racial strife? Paul Graziano is not the one going around telling whites to vote for him to prevent one of the Asian candidates from getting the seat (there are no Asian candidates). That would be Paul Vallone. BTW, the "inflammatory nonsense" refers to Graziano's statement during a 2001 debate vs. John Liu where he pointed out that Liu's campaign contributions were not reflective of the racial makeup of the district at the time.

All people in the district have been saying today is how cowardly and desperate Paul Vallone is to send out a mailer like this under "Jobs For New York" instead of under the name of his own campaign.

Someone is VERY afraid.

Read More

Billboard owners fail to pay City $20M

From the Daily News:

City property owners failed to report an estimated $20 million in income from billboards attached to their buildings over a two-year period.

That’s according to an audit this week from state and city controllers Thomas DiNapoli and John Liu, who say the New York City Department of Finance has been too lax about penalizing building owners.

A whopping 82% of the 871 city buildings with billboards on them didn’t report any income from the outdoor ad space in the tax years 2009 and 2010, the audit said.

Read More

Hypocrites, a bit?

Photo from The Forum

From the Queens Gazette:

More than 500 people filled outreach center Ohr Natan on Thursday, July 25 to fight for the facility to remain open. Members of the community, spiritual leaders and elected officials voiced their support for Ohr Natan, where thousands of people depend upon for their food distribution, classes, children’s programs, events, lectures, referrals, ESL classes and Judaic studies each year. Ohr Natan is being evicted and possibly taken over by a developer who plans to convert the center into an apartment building. In attendance were Congressmember Grace Meng, state Senator Toby Ann Stavisky, Assemblymember Michael Simanowitz, Councilmember Karen Koslowitz, borough president candidate Melinda Katz and Barbara Baruch representing City Comptroller John Liu. Proclamations were presented to Ohr Natan by Meng, Stavisky, Koslowitz and Liu. The theme of the event was “We are here together with Ohr Natan —No to development! No to Destruction!”

No to development, no to destruction?!?

When was the last preservation rally that this cast of characters showed up for? They usually are the ones proclaiming that a structure needs to be torn down in the name of progress.

Melinda Katz is the reason that they are being evicted in the first place because she told the LPC in 2006 that the site was not worthy of landmarking (at the congregation's urging).  The other dopey electeds have caused similar harm throughout the borough.  So why all of a sudden is preservation so important?  How deep are the pockets of this crowd?

Read More

John Liu denied matching funds

From Crains:

Comptroller John Liu will have $3.5 million less than expected to spend on television advertising, door-to-door canvassing and mailers touting his mayoral candidacy after the city's Campaign Finance Board voted Monday to deny his campaign public matching funds.

The board denied matching funds to Mr. Liu's campaign, citing evidence of pervasive violations of campaign finance laws. Mr. Liu's campaign treasurer and a prominent fundraiser were convicted earlier this year of lying to federal authorities about reimbursing contributions in a straw-donor scheme. Mr. Liu has not personally been accused of any wrongdoing, but the CFB says the responsibility to uphold campaign finance laws lies with the candidate.

"The choice to withhold payment does not require a finding that the candidate has personally engaged in misconduct," board Chairman Joseph Parkes said in a statement. "Under the [law] and board rules, the actions of a campaign's treasurer or other agents are legally indistinguishable from the campaign."

Read More

The history of Tommy Huang

From The Real Deal:

Huang left his native Taiwan in 1974 at age 20 and settled in Flushing, Queens. A few years later, he married Alice Liu, heiress to Taiwan’s Haw Di-I Foods and Bull Head Barbecue Sauce fortunes and cousin to City Comptroller John Liu, a Democrat who is running for mayor.

While studying business at Queens College, Huang saw opportunity in Flushing’s many vacant properties and decided to go into the real estate business.

“I could not believe it,’’ Huang told the New York Times in 1997 of the empty land he saw around him. “How come nobody wants to buy it?’’

With the help of his wealthy father-in-law, Huang built seven high-rises and hundreds of houses. By the late 1980s, he had been credited with helping to revive downtown Flushing with projects such as the Golden Shopping Mall and Main Street Tower, a nine-story office building. In 1986, Huang paid $3.4 million for the dilapidated RKO Keith’s movie theater on Northern Boulevard in Flushing. Huang closed the landmark and began work on the site, with plans to develop it into a major shopping center.

Soon, Huang caught the eye of the Democratic political machine, which at the time was led by then-Queens Borough President Donald Manes. Working with Manes to encourage business development, Huang solidified his ties with the Queens political establishment, which helped him evolve into one of the most powerful real estate developers in the borough.

“They were grooming Tommy to be the fair-haired boy,” said Jerry Rotondi, a member of the Committee to Save the RKO Keith’s and a long-time critic of Huang.

“He was the symbol of the revitalization,” State Senator Leonard Stavisky told the New York Times in 1997. “But it was wrong to entrust so much of it to Tommy Huang.’’

It’s been suggested that Huang’s political ties with the city comptroller and others could partially explain the city’s inaction.

Read More

Bloomberg taking Liu to court over former commissioner's contract

From the NY Times:

Fed up with what he views as a pattern of obstructionist behavior, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has taken the rare step of filing a lawsuit against the city comptroller, John C. Liu, for rejecting two municipal contracts.

The contracts would pay Aguila Inc., a company run by Robert V. Hess, Mr. Bloomberg’s former commissioner of homeless services, a total of $67.6 million to operate homeless shelters in the South Bronx and on the Upper West Side. The shelters on the Upper West Side, on West 95th Street, have long been a target of criticism from local residents and elected officials, who say, among other complaints, that the area has an excess of similar facilities.

Mr. Liu rejected the contracts on July 3, saying they were too vague as to how many people would be offered services. And in a criticism of Mr. Bloomberg’s record on homelessness, Mr. Liu argued that “it would be unconscionable to compound past errors with these faulty contracts.”

But Mr. Bloomberg, in a lawsuit filed on Thursday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, said the courts had long held that registration of contracts was “not a vehicle for the comptroller to usurp the mayor’s authority to enter into contracts.”

So what do you think is really going on here? Bloomie trying to get his buddy a contract before he leaves. So loyal to this particular individual that he will waste taxpayer money on a lawsuit to make sure he gets paid. Sounds like honest graft to me.

Read More

When will Johnny drop the charade?

From the Daily News:

After taking fire for stretching the truth in his 2009 campaign, City Controller John Liu is again claiming that he toiled in a sweatshop beside his mother as a young child in Queens.

“After working in a sweatshop, John Liu — a son of immigrants — used education to get ahead,” Liu boasts in a campaign flyer distributed by his mayoral campaign this week.

The Daily News investigated the sweatshop claim four years ago, when Liu was campaigning for controller, and found his hard-knock child labor tale to be an extreme exaggeration.

Liu had come to the United States from Taiwan as a young boy but largely lived a middle-class life in Queens. His parents bought a large home in Bayside five years after arriving in the country and his banker father, who was studying for an MBA, went on to become president of a bank.

In a 2009 interview with The News, Liu’s mother debunked her son’s wild campaign story.

Jamy Liu said she worked on a knitting machine at home to help pay household bills, and that she sometimes asked her young son to help spin balls of yarn or thread. She would pay him 25 cents for each spool as part of his allowance.

Read More

Liu rejects Central Park Conservancy contract as unfair to rest of City

From A Walk in the Park:

June 19, 2013

Honorable Michael R. Bloomberg
Mayor
City Hall
New York, NY 10007

Dear Mayor Bloomberg:

My office has returned the ten-year, $90 million Central Park Conservancy contract submitted by the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation and is currently reviewing an additional $60 million capital contract with the Conservancy.

I write to ask you to reflect on the wide disparities that exist among parks in the five boroughs. For example, St. Nicholas Park, located just a few blocks north of Central Park in Harlem, recently received a score of 77 out of a possible 100 points from New Yorkers for Parks because of trip hazards, litter, and out-of-service drinking fountains.

The Parks Department can and should amend both Conservancy contracts so that they help provide more equity among parks. These modifications should also take into account the exceptionally strong financial condition of the Conservancy.

We recommend that the following changes be made:

· Eliminate or reduce the Conservancy’s revenue-sharing agreement. Currently 50 percent of the estimated approximately $12 million Central Park net concession and special event revenue is distributed to the Conservancy. In contrast, very few if any other City parks have such a beneficial arrangement.

· Reallocate capital funds toward higher-needs parks. If we are serious about equitably distributing scarce resources, we need to reallocate a portion of the City’s capital contributions for Central Park to parks with higher needs that are over-reliant on discretionary funds.

· Increase financial transparency. The Conservancy’s 2011-2012 tax filings show revenues of $47 million. Other public sources indicate that the Conservancy has a workforce of approximately 300 employees, ranging from seasonal grounds technicians paid $18,228 to the President and CEO, who received total compensation of $456,319. Like the Parks Department and every other City agency, the Conservancy should publish spending and payroll data on Checkbook NYC, the City’s financial transparency website. Mandatory federal tax filings do not provide adequate transparency.

· Encourage expanded support of area parks. The Conservancy should work with the Parks Department to identify struggling parks throughout the five boroughs that would benefit from the Conservancy’s operational and development expertise. Such a collaboration could help mitigate some of the widespread concerns that public-private partnerships favor only a handful of elite parks.

According to its most recent tax return, the Conservancy has more than $215 million in assets. This staggering number does not take into account the recently announced $100 million private donation.

The City should ensure that parks across the five boroughs—and not just Central Park—are being funded adequately and equitably. When the City is unable to provide funding for basic maintenance and much-needed capital projects, one must question whether it is appropriate to provide our wealthiest park with $150 million of new resources.

Let’s work together to maintain Central Park and provide equity among all of our parks.

Sincerely,


John C. Liu

Read More

Whoever we vote for, the city is screwed

From City Journal:

Listening to some of the candidates to succeed Mayor Michael Bloomberg, you’d think that New York City’s biggest challenge was how to spend billions of dollars in spare revenue. Bill Thompson wants to put 2,000 extra cops on the street at a cost of $200 million a year. One of his rivals, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, pledges to introduce universal pre-K in the city’s schools, a project with a $530 million annual price tag. Thompson, de Blasio, and another candidate, New York City comptroller John Liu, want to build at least 60,000 units of new subsidized housing over the next four years. The bill for that could dwarf the cost of the police and school proposals.

But no matter how big the spending dreams of the city’s would-be mayors, one of them is going to wake up to a fiscal nightmare in November. New York’s budget has grown hugely over Mayor Bloomberg’s 12 years in office, and it may finally have outstripped the Wall Street–generated tax revenues that have made such profligacy possible. The next mayor won’t have the luxury of expanding the government; instead, he’ll have to figure out how to pay for one that’s already dangerously bloated.

If Bloomberg’s goal was soaking up revenue and leaving his successor as little to spend as possible, he seems to have pulled it off. Spending from city revenues rose from $28.9 billion when Bloomberg took office to $47.5 billion in fiscal year 2012 and will be an estimated $50.2 billion in 2013—a staggering 70 percent increase per resident. Inflation rose only 29 percent over the same period. Had Bloomberg held Gotham’s budget increase to the growth rates of inflation and population, the city would currently be spending $12 billion less a year.

Read More