Lopez could represent Ridgewood on Council

From the NY Times:

A criminal investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed subordinates did not deter him. Nor did civil suits accusing him of groping and other unwanted intimacies. Nor censure by the State Assembly, nor the clamor of fellow Democrats that forced him to resign as the party’s chairman in Brooklyn and step down from the Legislature.

The former assemblyman, Vito J. Lopez, is running again, this time for City Council, and despite the lingering scandal, he has at least a fair chance of winning. He is campaigning in Williamsburg and Bushwick in Brooklyn, and in Ridgewood in Queens, working-class neighborhoods where many people have known him for four decades, since he arrived as an energetic young social worker, and where many are grateful for the thousands of apartments and the centers for the elderly and other social services that blossomed during his 28 years in the Assembly.

Frank Carone, a leader of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, which is supporting Mr. Lopez’s chief rival, Antonio Reynoso, admits that Mr. Lopez’s chances are “extremely strong” in an off-the-radar election in which he can, the old-fashioned way, turn out beneficiaries of his largess to cast ballots in the primary next Tuesday.

“He’s pulling out every trick in the book to hold onto some semblance of power,” said Lincoln Restler, a founder of the progressive New Kings Democrats, a group that is also focused on defeating Mr. Lopez.

As evidence, Mr. Restler points out that 6 of the district’s 34 polling places are in properties managed by Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, a nonprofit organization which Mr. Lopez founded in 1973 and which sponsored many of his housing projects. One building has a bronze bust of Mr. Lopez and another a permanent sign over the entrance: “Thank You Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez.”

Mr. Restler and Mr. Reynoso said that when campaign workers tried to knock on doors at Lindsay Park, a 2,700-unit co-op complex and beneficiary of Lopez assistance, security guards warned them that only workers for Mr. Lopez could enter.

Read More

Shelly really milking transportation allowance

From the NY Post:

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver spent $20,219 in taxpayer money over the past three years jetting from New York City to Albany — but the top-flight pol turned easy 150-mile, one-hour jaunts into epic 500-mile, five-hour odysseys in a greedy quest to rack up frequent-flier miles, according to sources and expense records.

Instead of finding cheap flights that connect directly from New York City to Albany, or taking less-costly trains or automobiles, the second-most powerful man in the state takes long, expensive detours through Philadelphia or Washington, DC.

“He brags about his ability to build up mileage,” said one Albany insider. “Taxpayers are footing the bill to allow Shelly to fly halfway around the world on a mileage program.”

This year alone, the Democratic kingmaker and bill slayer submitted 21 claims for reimbursement, with an average round trip costing $354 — while his colleagues slummed it on $82 round-trip Amtrak trains or stuffed themselves into carpools that cost $210 for gas and tolls.

Yet Silver doesn’t need to fly. The state provides him with a $15,000 Ford Taurus for the three-hour drive from his Lower East Side home to the Capitol. The 69-year-old jet-setter barely uses his taxpayer-gifted 2011 sedan, claiming just $832.78 for gas this year.

Read More

Speaker wannabe Weprin throwing a lot of money around

From DNA Info:

The race to become the next speaker of the City Council is a costly one. Queens City Councilman Mark Weprin, in particular, has recently been spreading his campaign wealth around to key players in next year’s speaker battle.

Since the mid-March filing Weprin has made three donations of $10,000 each to the Bronx and Brooklyn Democratic Parties, as well as to the influential Working Families Party, according to New York City Campaign Finance Board records.

Weprin also spread tens of thousands of dollars to other council candidates for a total payout to political allies of $53,500.

Speaking of the Working Families Party, did you know that they endorsed Austin Shafran in the CD19 race, but won't allow him to run on their line? What's up with that?

Read More

Here comes the royal screw job

From Crains:

It's match point for negotiations to expand the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, with the City Council poised to vote on the plans Wednesday. But with the local City Councilwoman and the U.S. Tennis Association sparring over funding for the park and other community benefits, the outcome remains unclear.

The USTA has proposed a $500 million expansion of the 46-acre National Tennis Center, but in order to do so, a 0.68-acre strip of park that is currently public must be taken over. Locals have long complained that the tennis center was a hulking presence within Queen's largest park, one that turns its back on Flushing Meadow until it overwhelms it each August and September during the U.S. Open. Among the complaints: thousands of cars that park on public lawns, limiting recreation space.

To appease local opponents the USTA has promised to open to the public a 1.5-acre set of tennis courts on the eastern edge of its campus. The association, however, would retain use of the courts during events such as the Open.

The bigger sticking point is demands from local Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras and parks advocates that the USTA pay into an annual maintenance budget for the park.

The hope is that with seed money from the USTA, Flushing Meadows could establish its own conservancy.

Here's where Julissa thinks we're all stupid. Flushing Meadows already has its own conservancy. And the place still looks like crap.

USTA will get their expansion and Queens will get the shit end of the stick, once more.

Read More

How do you get to Tammany Hall? Tweeding, tweeding, tweeding.

From Capital:

Few buildings can claim to serve as global metaphors, but New York’s Tammany Hall surely is one of them. Mention Tammany Hall to reasonably educated Americans—or even British journalists—and the image that comes to mind is not of an old colonial revival building just off Manhattan’s Union Square, but a certain method of ethically slippery, brass-knuckle politics far removed from the ideals of the nation’s founders.

That image, desperately in need of revision, might explain why Tammany Hall—the building, not the metaphor—is one of the city’s best-known landmarks that is not, in fact, a landmark, at least not in the formal sense. But a decades-long campaign to recognize the Tammany building’s history may be on the verge of victory. On June 25, the city Landmarks Preservation Commission heard from a handful of speakers united in support of designating Tammany Hall as a city landmark. The proposed designation has the backing of the local community board as well as other preservation organizations.

If the commission approves, Tammany Hall, the onetime home of the New York County Democratic Party, will achieve a level of respectability it was denied even in its prime, when political legends like Alfred E. Smith, Robert F. Wagner, and Herbert Lehman were members of the Tammany political organization. Many of those who support the landmark designation have cited the Tammany building’s impressive architecture as well as its role as the onetime home of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, a historically significant trade union. They have tip-toed around Tammany Hall’s role in American political history, perhaps fearful of the organization’s much-chronicled scandals.

Read More

Another head connected to Huntley rolls

From the Daily News:

The president of a Queens, N.Y., nonprofit with ties to former state Sen. Shirley Huntley was charged Tuesday with stealing more than $85,000 in taxpayer money.

Van Holmes, head of the Young Leaders Institute in Laurelton, pocketed the cash between March 2007 and September 2012 after creating dozens of bogus records claiming reimbursements for overnight youth trips that never happened and job mentor programs that didn't exist, authorities said. He allegedly used the money to buy clothes and theater tickets and to get work done on his car.

The stolen cash was allegedly directed to Holmes' charity by Huntley and other City Council members.

Huntley is headed to prison this month after pleading guilty to charges that she looted nonprofits she controlled.

Holmes, who surrendered Tuesday morning, was arraigned on charges of grand larceny and falsifying business records. He pleaded not guilty and was released on his own recognizance.

If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.

Read More

Queen of tweeding

From the Daily News:

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds from the just-passed city budget to nonprofit groups whose board members and executives have given money to her mayoral campaign.

The Daily News examined the two dozen organizations that received the biggest grants from Quinn and found that 14 had ties to contributors who gave or raised a total of more than $210,000 in support of Quinn’s candidacy.

The contributions came from directors and staffers of those nonprofits and their immediate families, according to campaign finance records.

The groups received more than $3.1 million in grants in the city budget passed last week from the so-called “speaker’s list” of more than $15 million for nonprofits that Quinn controls, plus member items for her own district. Each of the 24 groups got at least $175,000.

The Council’s member item system has been attacked by watchdogs who say it fuels the perception that pols are using taxpayer cash to curry political favor.

Read More

Quinn funds private park with discretionary funds

From Sunnyside Post:

Friends of Sunnyside Gardens Park, the fundraising arm of the membership-based park, received $25,000 through Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Those funds were for items such as “installing playground equipment and other recreational equipment.” Since 2010, Friends of Sunnyside Gardens Park has received $142,600 in city funds, most of it through Quinn. Park membership is not always open to all those who can afford the modest fees, such as with a YMCA or other non-profit. Members have to live in a geographical location to join.

Read More