City Hall - December 15, 2010

www.cityhallnews.comVol. 5, No. 7 December 13, 2010

David Yassky, below, checks the meter on his future (Page 11),

Nydia Velazquez fights for reform and her reputation (Page 6) and Errol Louis, above, is ready for his close-up (Page 23).

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICEANDREW SCHWARTZ

On fighting public and financial corruption in New York, U.S. Attorney

Preet Bharara takes the lead

www.cityhallnews.com2 DECEMBER 13, 2010 CITY HALL

BY CHRIS BRAGG

In late October, the Fiscal Policy Institute and the National Employ-ment Law Project released a report

claiming that the two researchers being paid $1 million by the city’s Economic Development Corporation to study the effects of the living wage bill are biased.

In particular, the two groups noted that one of the economists on the EDC-backed study is Dr. David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine, whom they accuse of having a long pattern of releasing reports slanted against workers for the Washington, D.C.-based Employ-ment Policies Institute. That institute is led by D.C. lobbyist Richard Berman, who has set up a myriad of front non-prof-its that lobby for business groups.

Though Neumark’s studies for the EPI were not on the living-wage issue, pro-gressives have tarred Neumark with this association.

“This is a put-up job to try and come up with arguments against the proposal,” said Council Member Oliver Koppell.

Even some veterans of these battles have been surprised with how intense the discrediting effort has gotten so far in advance of the new study’s release, ex-pected for the spring.

The living-wage bill is gearing up to be the next major clash between progres-sives and the Bloomberg administration, following the death of the paid-sick-leave bill, which Council Speaker Christine Quinn shelved following a $100,000 study funded by the Partnership for New York City that showed the legislation would

WagingWarThe maze of counter-

studies and confl icts of interest on living-wage fi ght arrives in New York

cost the city $789 million annually. Similar battles over minimum-wage

and living-wage laws played out in the late 1990s in San Francisco and Balti-more, each time with some Washington-based think tank jumping into the fray, releasing studies and counter-studies that inevitably managed to support the ideol-

ogy of the groups behind them. All the confl icts of interests have made it diffi -cult to evaluate whether a truly objective study of the effects of a living-wage bill has ever been done, or is even currently in the works.

And now the fi ght has come to New York City.

The high standards and expectations for excellence in academics can only be accomplishedif the same standards are set for the physical safety and environment of our schools.

Environmental tests have found dangerously high levels of toxic PCBs throughout the New York City publicschools - in some cases over 2000 times the level considered toxic.

PCB contaminated window caulking and PCB containing lighting ballasts are creating toxic schools that arethreatening the health of our children, teachers and parents.

As you assume your new position, Chancellor Cathleen Black, we urge you to hold the safetyof our children’s schools to same high standards you set for academic achievement.

A jointly managed trust fund, charged with supporting and promoting the interests of 1,500 signatory contractors and the15,000 members of the Mason Tenders District Council. Its four point mission: marketing and promotion; legislative andgovernmental affairs; research and business development; and prevailing wage monitoring.

Greater New York Laborers-Employers Cooperation & Education Trust

BUILD BETTER • BUILD SAFER • BUILD UNION

266 West 37th St. Suite 1100, New York, NY 10018Phone: (212) 452-9300 | Fax: (212) 452-9318

E-mail: [email protected] | www.masontenders.org

“A Partnership Committed to the Future”

“Our children should be absorbing knowledge, not hazardous wastes”Congressman Joseph Crowley, October 8, 2010 .

www.cityhallnews.comCITY HALL DECEMBER 13, 2010 3

www.cityhallnews.comStay Informed

The Fiscal Policy Institute and the National Employment Law Project, the two organizations that funded the report exposing Neumark, derive much of their own funding from union interests that support the living-wage bill. The cam-paign for the bill is being run from the of-fi ces of the Retail, Wholesale and Depart-ment Store Workers Union.

Meanwhile, in late November, the pro-gressive Center for American Progress put out its own report showing that liv-ing-wage standards would have no nega-tive effect on the city’s economy.

The Council’s Progressive Caucus praised the results as fair and unbiased, even though one of the lead researchers on the Center for American Progress re-port is a former spokesman for a living-wage campaign in San Francisco. But supporters of the study say these ties in no way compromise the objectivity of its researchers or methodology.

The Bloomberg administration, mean-while, has its own credibility problems on the issue. The mayor is already on record against the living-wage bill. Even if Neu-mark’s study is conducted objectively, he will still be accused of bias if the result is not to the unions’ liking, said Andrew White, director of the New School’s Cen-ter for New York City Affairs.

“It’s chronic in politicized areas that people create studies to back up their perspectives,” he said. “Nine out of 10 times, when something is published by an organization that has a stake in the issue, they get attacked. But the way to judge these things is looking at whether people who are experts in the fi eld think there is a valid methodology.”

But there is no study done anywhere on living wage that is universally agreed to be comprehensive—and that is part of the reason why the EDC says it commis-sioned Neumark’s study after suffering what it says were unfounded attacks dur-ing the Kingsbridge Armory battle.

David Lombino, an EDC spokesman, said the organization competitively bid a handful of different vendors for the living-wage study before awarding it to a Bos-ton fi rm, Charles River Associates, that has put six different economists on the project. (Neumark is not actually leading the study, though he is the only expert on living wage of the six.) Lombino argued that there is a fairly narrow fi eld of people

who have experience studying the living-wage issue to select from, many of whom have records that detractors can cast as biased.

“This is an area of labor economics that is highly politicized at the national level,” Lombino said.

Neumark, for his part, has termed his past work on living wage as “wishy-washy,” according to a recent New York Times article.

A 2005 study on living wage he con-ducted found that living-wage minimums did help low-wage workers, though they could have adverse effects on the least skilled workers because they were less likely to be employable after a mandated wage is increased.

Neumark defended his past work to City Hall, noting that the living-wage study he put out in 2005 was not for the business-backed EPI, but rather the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California. And in 2006, Neumark said the EPI spiked one of his studies on minimum wage because it did not like the conclusions.

Neumark said he has been taken aback by all the controversy surround-ing his past association with the EPI, and Berman, its principal, months before his study is even set to come out.

“It’s crazy to be arguing when the study isn’t done yet,” he said.

Berman, meanwhile, has a complicated relationship of his own with Bloomberg. Even as Neumark—and, by extension, the EDC—is tarred with associations to Berman, Berman frequently criticizes the mayor through one of his other business-backed lobbying front groups, the Center for Consumer Freedom.

In one Nov. 9 post, Berman accused Health Commissioner Thomas Farley of “conspiring to cover up the truth about the nutritional content of soda in order to shamelessly scaremonger about sug-ary drinks.” In an Oct. 13 post, he called Bloomberg a “colossal hypocrite.”

Berman said that he was simply being set up as a straw man by proponents of the living-wage bill here.

“The amount we’re giving for people’s studies isn’t buying anyone’s results,” Berman said. “There are not that many good labor economists out there, and they’re inevitably going to cross over with organizations like mine.” C

[email protected]

Our PerspectivePay Cuts AmongWal-Mart’sBag of Tricks

By Stuart Appelbaum, President,Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union,RWDSU, UFCW

Wal-Mart has made headlines with itsrenewed attempts to penetrate theNew York City market, reaching into

its new bag of tricks to find a way to finallyopen stores in the five boroughs. The retailbehemoth is considering opening smaller“mini Wal-Mart” stores that aren’t subject tothe same zoning restrictions as their trade-mark superstores, and also looking at usingas-of-right sights, such as the Gateway II com-

plex in East New York, that do not require City Council approval.

Opposition to their plans to enter the city continues to grow,and New Yorkers remain firm in their belief that the city is not aWal-Mart town. In fact, a New York City Council hearing plannedfor this month has been postponed until January 12, to accom-modate larger crowds. Recent Wal-Mart-related headlines serveto remind us why.

It was one of the oldest tricks in the corporate books thatmade news — good old fashioned greed — when Wal-Martdecided that the perfect holiday gift for its new workers is to cutthe $1 per hour premium pay it gives workers for Sunday shifts.All workers hired after January 1, 2011, will have to do withoutthe Sunday pay premium, which was one of the few meagerperks doled out to Wal-Mart workers.

As Wal-Mart announced its Scrooge-like holiday plans onpremium pay, the historic class action gender discriminationlawsuit against the company was also in the news. The U.S.Supreme Court announced it would consider whether to keepalive the largest job discrimination case in U.S. history, a law-suit against Wal-Mart that grew from a half-dozen women to aclass action that could involve billions of dollars for more thana half million female workers. The news reminds all of us ofWal-Mart’s appalling record of gender bias and inequality.

The lawsuit arose from data showing that while more than two-thirds of Wal-Mart’s hourly workers were female, women held onlyone-third of salaried positions and made up less than 15 percentof store managers, despite having had on average longer senior-ity and higher merit ratings than their male counterparts. Thedata also showed women managers on average earned $14,500less than their male counterparts, and that female hourly workersearned on average $1,100 less than male counterparts.

Wal-Mart is employing new strategies and working ona new image, but it’s still the same old story whenit comes to the retailer’s treatment of workers.

Visit us on the web atwww.rwdsu.org


JER

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ILLE

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BY LAURA NAHMIAS

At the Church of the Holy Apostles on Manhattan’s West Side the Tuesday before Thanks-

giving, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Rep. Anthony Weiner (mak-ing a surprise appearance) were stand-ing awkwardly on the altar, a few steps higher than a throng of cameramen and reporters. The sound was not so good, mostly because the sanctuary was fi lled with hundreds of men and women eating, the church’s high ceilings amplifying the clatter of forks and cups.

Anyway, these people did not come to watch politicians talk about hunger. They were too hungry themselves.

But that did not stop the talking.Politicians serving soup and making

speeches with the hungry as a backdrop is as much a Thanksgiving tradition as cranberry sauce. This year, though, the backdrop was more than cut-out tur-keys or brown-and-orange bunting on the walls. The day before, Council Speaker Christine Quinn released her 59-point report outlining a comprehensive food policy strategy for local, state and fed-eral governments. And so, while Quinn captured the news cycle on the issue, the three other prospective 2013 mayoral candidates pushed themselves into the shot for hunger coverage too.

“The nice thing and the convenient thing about food is that everyone can relate to it,” said Kate Mackenzie, com-munications director at City Harvest, a non-profi t that gathers leftover food from restaurants and redistributes it.

Both Stringer and Quinn have recast the issue to draw ties between local food production and regional economics that can be plainly understood by most vot-ers. The result: a message that feels new, strong and positive.

“What better thing is there to do in times of economic crisis than to help people who may need real bottom-line help? What better thing to do than feed people?” said political consultant Hank Sheinkopf.

The only way it could backfi re for those with mayoral ambitions for the next time around, Sheinkopf said, is if nothing gets done.

“After all, talk is not a steak,” he said.Quinn’s widely-praised speech at Food

and Finance High School Nov. 22 was a dollars-and-cents-based argument against

Food FightQuinn, Stringer and other potential 2013 candidates explore food policy as a recipe for success

conventional wisdom that hunger and food justice are just social issues. The city, which is the second largest distributor of food in the country behind the U.S. Army, can be a powerful lever for change, Quinn said.

“There are some who think that food is a fringe issue, one that doesn’t matter to average New Yorkers,” she said. “There are those who say we can’t afford to talk about food when we’re still reeling from a recession. To that I say, we can’t afford not to talk about food right now.”

The audience was receptive, though some hecklers interrupted her speech with questions about protections for com-munity gardens against developemnt.

Stringer’s food policy, outlined in a re-port issued last February, focuses less on sustainability and more on the economic impact of improving food policy. He notes that while many have pointed to biotech-nology or life sciences as industries that can diversify our economy, the city must also invest in expanding its food econo-my and use it to create good jobs.

The money-and-jobs angle of both re-ports is compelling. It is meant to draw attention from the city’s data-driven may-or, who loves quantifi able problems. It has succeeded in captivating an unusual alliance of business interests, anti-pover-ty advocates and farmers. Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo has weighed in too, call-ing for increased agricultural production and better access to healthy food as a sig-nifi cant part of his policy platform.

The moment has never been riper, as well-placed New Yorkers embrace calorie counts and pictures of Michelle Obama planting kale on the White House lawn splash across lifestyle magazines.

Quinn can more easily draw a direct line to her accomplishments, because the Council can create policy, unlike the borough president’s offi ce. Quinn’s report has 59 specifi c policy initiatives, some of which could come to the Council fl oor as soon as January.

Other potential mayoral candidates de Blasio and Weiner also have back-grounds on the issue. De Blasio spear-headed a public relations campaign to increase food stamp participation while he was still in the City Council, and has made public health a platform of his of-fi ce as public advocate. Weiner’s offi ce has focused intently on revisions to the U.S. Farm Bill and drawing subsidies for New York, which is one of the nation’s ag-ricultural production leaders but lags in federal money.

For now, none of the prospective candidates are actually throwing food at each other. The only slinging has been at the mayor himself, who has drawn criti-cism from each for requiring fi ngerprint-ing of food-stamp recipients—a measure designed to prevent fraud that hunger ad-vocates say is “archaic.”

The rhetoric from Stringer and Quinn, at least, has impressed political insiders with their scope and vision. After Quinn’s introductory press conference on the policy, reporters speculated the speaker would skip a run at the mayor’s offi ce and head straight for the governor’s mansion.

Food will not be enough to circum-scribe an entire campaign, but in a Demo-cratic mayoral primary, the issue’s appeal not just to liberal sentiment, but to initia-tives that create jobs for union workers, can help, said Pat Purcell, spokesman for the Local 1500 Grocery Workers Union.

Whether a candidate’s strong stance on composting and community gardens translates into new votes, though, is less clear. Like bike lanes, food politics may be one of those much-discussed, much-hyped issues that lack a clear, voting con-stituency.

But that has not stopped advocates who have spent years pushing the issue from hoping it will get the political atten-tion they think it deserves, said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger.

“A lot of strands are coming together at the same time that really make this the right time to deal with these issues,” he said. “We’ll see whether it lasts.” C

[email protected]

Jan. 2007: Speaker Quinn and Mayor Bloomberg create offi ce of Food Policy Coordinator, tying food production to health issues.

May 2007: ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer creates New York State Council on Food Policy.

Feb. 2008: Quinn advances Green Carts bill, to increase fruit and vegetable sales in low-income neighborhoods.

Feb. 2008: Scott Stringer edits the Go Green East Harlem Cookbook, a positively received compilation of local recipes intended to encourage healthy eating in the neighborhood.

April 2008: NYC Department of City Planning releases Food Policy Report.

Summer 2009: Bill de Blasio makes increasing food-stamp enrollment a priority of his term as public advocate.

Summer 2009: Stringer convenes New York City Food and Climate Summit.

Late 2009: Quinn begins work on comprehensive food policy report.

Feb. 2010: Stringer’s offi ce releases FoodNYC report, an outgrowth of the summer food summit.

Oct. 2010: Bloomberg asks for federal ban on use of food stamps for soda purchases.

Oct. 2010: Anthony Weiner announces legislation that would discount vegetables purchased with food stamps.

Nov. 2010: Quinn releases FoodWorks report.

Notable recent moments in food policy

5

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Pension Shortfall is Wall Street’s Doing

By Michael Mulgrew

New York’s professional hand-wringers are leading the public fight against union pensions and benefits, calling them major causes of the city’s fiscal distress. Tabloid edito-rialists belabor worker pen-sion “abuse” and conservative think tanks beat the drums for reducing worker benefits.

The facts about the pension system tell a different story. First, city pension benefits are generally modest; second, the reason the city’s contributions to pension funds have risen has everything to do with the global economic crisis that cost state and city pension funds more than $100 billion in lost value.

Let’s start with the myth that city workers’ pensions are un-sustainably generous. The av-erage pension for a member of the city’s Teachers Retire-ment Fund in 2009 --and this includes the pensions of many principals and upper-level ad-ministrators who started out as teachers-- was $42,235 per year. Retirees from the city’s other large civilian union, District Council 37, collect av-erage pensions of only $18,000 a year.

Like many employers, the city makes contributions to the pension funds of its em-ployees, most of whom make required contributions from their salaries. (In addition, many employees also make voluntary contributions to 401K-style supplementary plans.) The amount the city contributes varies by year, but in the past has been as low as 4.3% of payroll for the teach-ers’ system. Annual contribu-tions have climbed to 30% to make up for investment losses, but as the stock market recov-ers in future years, that level will diminish.

In order to help the city meet its obligations, the United Fed-eration of Teachers stepped forward last year and negoti-ated a change in pensions that the city said would save it $100 million a year.

The city’s pension funds could recoup millions of dol-lars more if they were permit-ted to sue the Wall Street firms whose trading mistakes and criminal actions caused the massive losses. The Legisla-ture should modify the Martin Act--the law that allows the state to pursue wrongdoing on Wall Street–to let pension funds bring such suits.

Taxpayers, particularly those in higher brackets, should also be part of the solution. Dur-ing America’s great expansion from 1950 to 1980, the wealth-iest 1% of Americans collected about 10% of total income. As of now, the nationwide per-centage is 23.5% and in New York City, the top 1% of earn-ers take in nearly half–an as-tounding 46% – of all income. Yet a large piece--$4 billion annually--of the huge deficit New York State is facing is due to the planned expiration of income tax surcharges on the highest earners.

The attack on city employee pensions is just the opening salvo in a campaign to “bal-ance” the budget by reducing the services important to the great majority of the people who live and work in this city, from schools to sanitation and health care. Working and middle class New Yorkers who make this city their home can’t afford to let this attack suc-ceed.

This article first appeared in Crain’s New

York Business

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www.cityhallnews.com6 December 13, 2010 CITY HALL

By Laura Nahmias

Over the course of nine terms, Nydia Velázquez has quietly con-solidated her power in New York

City politics, both as a significant voice in the Latino community and as a counter-weight and opponent to Brooklyn Demo-cratic Party leader Vito Lopez.

When most politicians have the kind of year that she did, between her position with Andrew Cuomo’s campaign and her role with a few key local reformer victo-ries, people start chattering about what they want, and where they might be head-ed. With Velázquez, there are still a lot of people who are not even sure who she is.

In a world where politics is often about press hits and relationships, her under-the-radar maneuvering, in Congress and back in Brooklyn, may have clipped her effectiveness.

But her supporters say her role in the Brooklyn reform movement, which seeks to undermine Lopez’s grip on the bor-ough’s political machine, cannot be un-derestimated.

“It’s important to think about the land-scape in north Brooklyn. Most of the oth-er elected officials are linked intimately to Vito Lopez,” said Lincoln Restler, an anti-Lopez state committee member whom Velázquez helped get elected this year. “She is one of a couple of indepen-dent leaders.”

But because Velazquez makes few waves, others were less certain about her efficacy as a politician. Many elected throughout Brooklyn declined comment when asked for their thoughts on the con-gresswoman, each citing a lack of a work-ing relationship with her.

Much of Velázquez’s clout in the re-form movement stems from her seniority in Washington and the respect she com-mands among the state’s political leader-

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GloryDazeThe mysteries of Nydia Velázquez and her powerless ascension

ship as the senior Latina official in New York. This year, Velázquez pushed for passage of the DREAM Act, legislation she sponsored to provide conditional legal status to undocumented students. She took quiet control of the House Com-mittee on Small Businesses, passing the Small Business Lending Act, while earn-ing a reputation for bipartisanship. And along with former city Comptroller Bill Thompson, she was a co-chair of Andrew Cuomo’s campaign, taking a more active role than expected for someone in that ceremonial job and then as co-chair of Cuomo’s transition team.

When she arrives back in Washington in January, though, her status in Congress will be much diminished, along with the rest of her Democratic colleagues. And as for building up more power in Brooklyn, Velázquez’s is never among the names floating as potential successors if and when Lopez’s troubles force him from the county leadership.

She wouldn’t want the job, said one Brooklyn Democratic operative. “It’s too much politics.”

Because while most people in local politics know her as an icon for Latinos, few seem to actually know her, even though she has represented a district that is now split between slivers of Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens, as long or longer than nearly everyone else in the city’s congressional delegation.

“I honestly have no idea about her style as a politician,” said Lew Fidler, a one-time Lopez loyalist who has since broken off from the county chair. “You couldn’t get farther away from my world.”

Luis Garden Acosta, founder of El Puente, a community group within

Velazquez’s district, said she is not a self-promoting legislator like Anthony Weiner or Peter King.

“There aren’t a lot of press releases from Nydia Velázquez,” said Garden Acosta, who has known Velázquez since before her time on the City Council, when she worked for Rep. Edolphus Towns. “Frankly, [she’s] too busy, too focused on the campaign at hand, to be putting much time into even publicizing the fact that she’s doing it.”

Acosta described her passion about is-sues relating to reform and social justice, but not necessarily harboring any desire to be in charge.

“She’s got one speed: intense,” he said. “She’s absolutely rare, an activist that just happens to be a politician.”

That passion comes across the day af-ter the passage of the DREAM Act, as she takes a moment before boarding a plane back to New York to discuss her career.

“I am physically and emotionally drained,” she says, drawing out each syl-lable of the words. “You don’t know what

it took… Oh my god, you don’t know what it took.”

Her genuine sense of relief, of exhaus-tion, of dire feeling, allows her to create relationships in Washington, she said. But in a few weeks, she will see much of her leverage disappear: her chairmanship of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, as her two-year term expires, and her chairman-ship of the Small Business Committee. Her new responsibilities are within the state—as an advisor to Cuomo’s transi-tion team, and mentor to a new slate of reform candidates in Brooklyn politics. Her ideas for Cuomo’s administration are not small-bore.

“He has to open the doors, and make government an institution that not only serves the different communities, but also that is willing to recognize that among other ethnic groups like Asian and Latino groups, that there is so much talent, and new blood, that can help him and serve him well,” she said. “He needs to put to-gether a government and administration that reflects New York.”

Velázquez worked with Cuomo when she was on the housing subcommittee in Congress and he was the head of HUD. Her push against Lopez could benefit from a strong relationship with Cuomo, who has his own complicated relation-ship with the Brooklyn boss.

Meanwhile, Velázquez has also be-come the highest-ranking mentor of the anti-Lopez reform candidates trying to slowly seep into Brooklyn county poli-tics. Velazquez took Lincoln Restler as her guest to a state dinner, and provides vocal support to Council Member Diana Reyna, another Lopez opponent.

“I think the burden for me is to know that a lot of people who didn’t feel they have a voice, that they look up to me,” she said. “That I have a role to play in people connecting the dots, that it is important to be engaged, important to believe that we cannot allow for cynicism and disillu-sion in the political process to take hold.”

This is an important mission for her. She was reportedly offered Hillary Clin-ton’s Senate seat in 2008, but declined largely in order to prevent Lopez from installing a loyalist in her Congressional seat and to continue acting as a foil to Lo-pez’s political machine.

When asked whether that was the case, the congresswoman laughed.

“I do not want to spend my time dis-cussing Vito Lopez,” she said. “I do want to use my time and my energy to address the dire needs of my community.” C

[email protected]

“I am physically and emotionally drained,” she says, drawing out each syllable of the words. “You don’t know what it took… Oh my god, you don’t know what it took.”

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www.cityhallnews.com8 November 17, 2010 CITY HALL

By Laura Nahmias

Three lawsuits have been filed against Cathie Black’s ap-pointment, two of which have

been consolidated, and a third expected to be rolled in with the others. Those suits, which allege State Education Com-missioner David Steiner erred in granting Black the waiver to serve as chancellor, are expected to be heard by a judge in Al-bany Supreme Court on Dec. 23.

There is not much hope for the law-suits, nor for persistence on the wider pushback against the new schools chan-cellor.

Education advocates assumed Mayor Bloomberg was paying little attention to the lawsuits, or parent outrage.

“I assume that the mayor thinks [ad-vocates] will eventually get over it, and if they don’t, they can’t do anything any-way,” Diane Ravitch wrote in an e-mail. “I have no idea what they plan to do or if they will eventually accept their power-lessness.”

Others were more blunt in their ap-praisal of the current fight.

“How do you fight a dictator?” said Class Size Matters executive director Leonie Haimson, a note of exasperation threading her voice.

Black’s appointment, a clear statement of the mayor’s preference for corporate managers over edu-cators, is also widely seen as a cold rebuff to education advo-cates, parents and leg-islators who have op-posed mayoral control of the schools since it was instituted in 2002.

Black still has not met with UFT direc-tor Michael Mulgrew, a tea leaf being read as indication that the stand-off between the administration and incensed advo-cates could continue into the new year.

But even some of the most incensed say there is a limit to how long the fight can continue.

“For me personally, I really think the

lawsuit is the end of the line,” said Coun-cil Member Jumaane Williams. “I’m 100 percent in favor of the lawsuit, but Jan. 3, we should at that point rethink how much we actually want to fight. After that point, it’s going to affect our kids.”

Attorneys announcing the lawsuit also said they had not thought of a suitable re-

placement for Black, should her appoint-ment be nullified.

One parent suggested the chancellor could be Shael Polakow-Suransky, the deputy chancellor whose appointment as chief academic officer was part of the deal to win the waiver for Black. Some even suggested that Joel Klein himself could hang around a little longer until a

replacement could be found, a notion that would have seemed ridiculous two months ago given the extreme dislike many anti-mayoral-control activists have for the chancellor. None of the parents or educators seemed to have considered just who would take Black’s place.

Defiance, though, is almost second nature to some of those who oppose Bloom-berg’s management. And administration aides have long said that no matter how many im-provements are made to the school system, there are those that will

always disagree with the mayor. Always.Until then, the fight goes on. “Just because the mayor acts like it’s

a done deal, don’t buy that,” said Norman Siegel, the lawyer and three-time public advocate candidate who has taken up the cause. “The state has the power and the authority to nullify it.” C

[email protected]

Learning To Live With ItEnergy for Cathie Black opposition fades as advocates come to terms with being ignored

“How do you fight a dictator?” said Class Size Matters executive director Leonie Haimson, a note of exasperation threading her voice.

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The Way to Reach Elected Officials

P O L I T I C S • P O L I C Y • P E R S O N A L I T I E S


www.cityhallnews.comCITY HALL December 13, 2010 11

By Chris Bragg

For weeks, anyone who hailed a cab in New York City was assailed by a 40-second infomer-

cial featuring Taxi and Limousine Com-missioner David Yassky declaring, “Hi, it’s me again,” before launching into a pitch about a survey on the new taxi design. Cast your vote, and you could win free taxi rides for a year, he promised.

To the endless frustration of so many New Yorkers who mashed their fingers on the screen, Yassky could not be switched off.

Sitting in his office a day after the much-complained-about campaign was discontinued, the real-life David Yassky, a former City Council member who also ran for Congress and comptroller (and almost for Brooklyn DA), seemed a little put off by the accusation that the survey promotion had been more about self-pro-motion.

Still, when asked if he felt famous now, he smirked.

“Very temporarily,” he said.Yassky, a wonk who has been in gov-

ernment ever since he took a job at the New York City Office of Management and Budget out of college, has always seemed better at making policy than at campaign-ing. No one would have blinked if the mayor had made him the new Finance commissioner or put him in charge of the Department of Environmental Protec-tion to give him a soft landing after last year’s loss. Running the TLC was more of a surprise—though his appointment was certainly less controversial than Cathie Black’s, it followed a similar line: Yassky’s experience with taxis was limited to tak-ing them and taking the lead on the green taxi legislation while in the Council.

Though he is still relatively new, Yas-sky says the main way he has tried to put his own stamp on the agency is bring-ing a collaborative approach, which he says characterized his work on the City Council, especially as chair of the Small Business Committee. (Of course, a ten-dency to overanalyze infuriated Yassky’s critics, especially his vote to extend term-limits hours after introducing a late-game amendment to put the matter before a public vote.)

And though they have not always agreed, those who work with Yassky say a collaborative approach has character-ized his work, regulating an industry that acutely feels the effects of every govern-ment regulation.

“There has definitely been a new level

of openness to the needs and concerns of the industry, and everyone gets to have a say,” said Steven Bulatowicz, operations manager for the League of Mutual Taxi Owners Incorporated, a group that rep-resents taxi drivers who own their own vehicles.

Yassky has assumed leadership of an agency that he says was already in good shape, with taxi usage increasing even as the rest of the economy faltered, in large part because of a modernization ef-fort that installed credit card machines and GPS in many cabs. He rarely misses a chance to credit his predecessor, Mat-thew Daus, or the mayor, who nominated him to the position. He kept Daus’ senior staff almost entirely in place. A copy of Bloomberg by Bloomberg sits prominent-ly on his office coffee table.

With the final details of the city’s con-tract to extend those new technologies all but finished, Yassky is now turning

his focus to the city’s “Taxi of Tomorrow” project, which will introduce an entirely new fleet of taxis for the city as early as 2013. The commission is currently weigh-ing three different final proposals. A de-cision, which is expected soon, will be based on five criteria, he says: comfort, performance, handicapped accessibility, sustainability and aesthetics. Just as the checkered cab defined the look of the city in the 1970s, and the Crown Victoria for the decades after, so too will the new fleet remake the look of the city, he believes.

Yassky stressed the importance of hav-ing a single vehicle rather than a hodge-podge of different cabs prowling the streets.

“Consumers can’t hold this cab or that cab accountable,” he said. “It’s not like a restaurant, where if the service isn’t good, you don’t just go back. If someone has a bad experience in a car, they’re going to hold that against the whole industry.”

With more than just an annoying in-ride commercial, David Yassky tries to remake himself and the TLC

Taxi StandsBut his plan has raised red flags among

taxi industry groups, who say that signing an exclusive decade-long contract with a single vendor could be disastrous if the model cannot handle the rigors of New York City driving, or if that company runs into financial trouble and cannot make good on its commitments.

Michael Woloz, a lobbyist for the Met-ropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, said the highly regarded Crown Victoria fleet (which is being discontinued this year by Ford) became predominant primar-ily because market forces propelled taxi owners to buy them, rather than the TLC mandating that they be bought. He sug-gested the same process should occur in purchasing the new fleet.

“What incentive does the winner of this bid have once they have an exclusive 10-year contract with the city?” he said. “How can we compel the winner to do anything?”

Yassky said he is attuned to such con-cerns, but said he believes the rigorous process the city is going through now to select a winning vendor will mitigate such risks. He also believes that rather than 13,000-plus taxi drivers negotiating over 16 different models, the city can do a better job on their behalf negotiating for just one.

“We’re having competition—the com-petition is at an earlier stage,” he said. “What we’re having here is the city ag-gregating the buying power of the entire industry, so the industry can get a better deal than it has in the past. To me, it’s a no-brainer.”

Given Yassky’s history, the idea that he would again run for office someday seems reasonable, though Yassky dis-missed most questions about his political future for now, saying only that he will al-most certainly serve out his term at least through the end of the Bloomberg admin-istration.

If John Liu runs for mayor in 2013, as many expect, that would open up the of-fice for which Yassky faced him in the run-off a year ago. Still, it remains unclear how helpful a perch at the Taxi and Lim-ousine Commission could be politically.

“This has traditionally been a patron-age position, and I’m not sure it’s nec-essarily the best place to park,” said political consultant Joe Mercurio. “The association that most people have with taxis really is not that positive. It’s one step up from the Board of Elections, but it’s not like being the head of the Red Cross or something.”

Yassky does not seem to have given much consideration to whether he will serve until his term expires in 2017. He was unsure of the fact that his term was indeed seven years long, until informed of that fact by a reporter.

“I think it is a seven-year term, is that correct?” Yassky asked his press aide, before pivoting. “I know it’s a seven-year term. I guess maybe I thought it was the middle of the term. But yes, it’s a seven-year term.” C

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ON FIGHTING PUBLIC AND FINANCIAL CORRUPTION IN

NEW YORK,U.S. ATTORNEY

PREET BHARARA TAKES THE LEAD

Department of

JUSTICE

By EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE

In the U.S. Attorney’s press room at the feder-al courthouse in White Plains on Dec. 3, Preet Bharara kept saying “no.”

Yes, Vinnie Leibell, the longtime state sena-tor and Putnam County executive-elect, had just pled guilty to obstruction of justice and tax evasion charges. Leibell had sensed he might be under investigation in the spring, and his cloak-and-dagger conversation on the street with the

lawyer who was supposed to have been giving him kickbacks—from the legal fees for a senior housing non-profi t he founded with his member items—had been captured; Bharara pointed to a few choice Lei-bell remarks, blown up in big blue and red bubbles. (Among them: “Since you and I are in agreement, it didn’t happen.”) He only reluctantly admitted that there was video of the exchange in addition to au-dio, and only when another lawyer pointed out that this fact had just come out in court. He would not say how they had managed that feat, or on which street in Carmel they had managed it. Would not say the name of the non-profi t. Would not say how they started looking in the fi rst place. Would not say who else might be charged.


“I hate to disappoint so many of you,” Bharara joked. What he did say was this: “There is no prosecutor’s

offi ce in the state that takes more seriously the respon-sibility to root out public corruption in Albany and any-where else that we might fi nd it, and I think our record speaks for itself.”

Bharara ticked off some of the better-known names: Assembly Member Brian McLaughlin, Assembly Member Anthony Semenerio, State Sen. Efrain Gonzalez. A fuller list was provided on a helpful hand-out of the biggest public corruption cases his offi ce has made since he took over the top job last spring. In roughly chronological or-der: Council Member Miguel Martinez, Council Member Kendall Stewart’s chief of staff, four city Department of Education employees, a former police sergeant and two separate police offi cers, Bernie Kerik, a group of Admin-istration of Children’s Services employees, the COO of NYC-TV and Assembly Member Carmen Arroyo’s chief of staff—and that does not even include Larry Seabrook or Hiram Monserrate, two men long suspected of crimi-nal activity who have recently been the subjects of their own press conferences with Bharara’s tight-lipped run-downs of the charges and presentations of facts, also handily sketched out in blue-and-red blow-ups.

As things stand in New York, the attorney general has very little power to prosecute public corruption. Though Eric Schneiderman was among the candidates who cam-paigned on getting the governor to sign over more via executive order, he appears to have deferred for now to Andrew Cuomo, who has been cool to the idea. Instead, the governor-elect wants to weave new prosecutorial powers into an ethics reform package, but he acknowl-edges the inherent diffi culties of getting the Legislature on board. The district attorneys around the state can make some cases, but not as many as they would like, and the bill Schneiderman sponsored with the heavy support of Manhattan DA Cy Vance disappeared into oblivion almost as soon as it was announced in May. Per-haps not coincidentally for a city and state with such a rich history of graft, local laws provide very little room for a prosecutor to move.

The U.S. Attorney does not have any of those prob-lems. Locally focused, but nominated by the president and empowered by federal law, Bharara, who is now just past the one-year anniversary of his installation in the job, has a lot of options and a lot of laws. Even some-thing in the arsenal so basic as the special penalty for lying to a federal employee can change the game.

An hour after Bharara walked out of the room in White Plains, his offi ce sent out a release announcing charges against a Brooklyn man who had been selling counterfeit glasses on the Web. That evening, the offi ce announced a 97-month sentence for a New Jersey man who had capped off a 20-year fraud career with a work-at-home scheme that ripped a million dollars off from people around the country.

Just another day for the man who is probably the most powerful, almost entirely unknown government of-fi cial in New York.

“I never say I have too much work,” Bharara said, “I say I never have enough time.”

The Southern District runs from Manhattan up through the Bronx, into Westchester, and then Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland and Sul-livan counties. Most of the world’s money fl ows through it at some point, in some form. Outside of Tel Aviv or London, there is no collection

of square miles as full of terrorist targets and terrorist fears. And outside of Trenton or Cook County, there is no place that can compete for corruption.

Bharara’s main offi ce is at the Southern District’s southern edge, at 1 Saint Andrew’s Plaza, a short build-ing distinct only for being non-descript government-A

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ugly. It is the only building on that street, tucked between the Municipal Building and One Police Plaza. Wall Street and the Financial District are close. Ground Zero is even closer—from the right angle, the tops of the Twin Towers would have poked into view. And right across the street is City Hall, home of slush funds and politicians who have been investi-gated for how they ran their campaigns and are now investigated for how they are running their offi ces.

In other words, it is a neighborhood watch.

Bharara spent a good chunk of his fi rst year in the car, reemphasizing the of-fi ce’s relationships with various agencies and district attorneys by visiting them in person. Organizationally, he has been overseeing a shift in offi ce management, consolidating the international narcot-ics and terrorism units, while launching new units to address complex criminal and civil frauds. The Times Square bomb-er, who struck just short of a year after President Obama formally nominated Bharara for the job, occupied much of his summer. And there has been no shortage of other intricacies for him to delve into, from overseeing the fi rst RICO prosecu-tion of a vor (and learning what a vor, or the Armenian equivalent of a mafi a boss, was) to deciding not to pursue charges in the Working Families Party investigation.

Bharara met one of his best friends, Viet Dinh, through a freshman dorm argu-ment at Harvard over whether the people who wrote the Federalist Papers believed that men were inherently good or inher-ently evil. Dinh, who went on to be an assistant attorney general under George W. Bush and helped write the Pa-triot Act, thought evil. Bharara said no.

Twenty-fi ve years later, Bhar-ara is still honing his philosophy. Now he is focused on institutions that betray people, going wrong and shaking their beliefs. The word “corruption,” he believes, is not just for government and politics, but for stockbrokers and traders and others in the fi -nancial world, too. The games and the size of the scores might be different, but the betrayal is fundamentally the same.

“While the elected politician who trades on his power to en-rich himself undermines the integrity of our democracy and diminishes faith in our political system, the business profession-al who relies on his special skill to defraud others undermines the integrity of our economy and diminishes faith in our fi nancial system,” Bharara said, laying out his philosophy in a speech in February.

The threads have begun to come together in recent weeks. Politicos in Westchester and Putnam are convinced that Leibell is the beginning, not the end, of a string of prosecutions and plea deals

for local power players. Frenzied rumors are whipping around Wall Street of a com-ing insider-trading case, unlike anything seen before, that will portray traders, bankers, analysts and consultants feed-ing off each other and passing informa-tion around a nationwide network of re-verberating returns. Speaking to the Bar Association in late October, Bharara laid out an argument that the line between street crime and white collar crime was getting blurry, that insider trading and other fi nancial crimes were on the rise,

while the volume of information mush-rooming on the Internet was making the crimes increasingly diffi cult to track. But his speech came with a warning as well:

the investigators and prosecutors were changing along with the criminals. Wire-taps were probably going to be used, as were undercovers, sources, stings and anything else they could justify—“every legitimate tool should be at our disposal,” Bharara said.

Leibell picked a random sidewalk in Carmel for his private conversation with the lawyer and ended up on videotape. The rest of the crooked politicians, staff-ers, bankers and traders—take note.

Cy Vance, whose jurisdiction overlaps with the prime areas in Bharara’s neighborhood watch, says he has had a productive working relation-ship with the U.S. Attorney’s offi ce over the past year. The feelings are similarly warm from Cuomo’s offi ce. But while Vance has been building up the bureaus in his offi ce since taking over in January, and Cuomo has, as attorney general, been going as far as his mostly civil jurisdiction has allowed him in pur-suing public and corporate corrup-tion, Bharara has been racking up indictments, pleas and convictions.

During a slow moment just be-fore Thanksgiving and the Decem-ber rush of prosecutions began, Bharara sat down in his offi ce to describe an approach that is ani-mated by a sense of the public’s betrayal.

“People’s faith in various Ameri-can institutions has been chal-lenged, and I think that’s an unfor-tunate thing,” Bharara said.

Chasing inadvertent errors holds little appeal. He wants the principals, “not people who have come close to the line, but people

who have galloped across it.” “We are not about trying to fi gure out

ways to criminalize things that are in a gray area. We are about creatively using

the tools that we have and the resourc-es we have to go after people who have clearly broken the law,” Bharara said. “We are, as a group, people who think outside the box, but within the constraints of the law. And I think that’s not a paradox.”

The Southern District offi ce is older than the Department of Justice, home base for perhaps the longest-running collection of top legal talent in the country. Bob Morgenthau and Rudy Gi-

uliani are the best known recent names to have run the place, but even the former assistants range from Felix Frankfurter to Charlie Rangel, Tom Dewey to Louis Freeh.

Bharara had his eye on the offi ce for almost as long as he was interested in be-ing a lawyer, tracing it to the class he took with Michael Mukasey—former AUSA, then a federal judge, and future Bush at-torney general. Bharara’s is one of those stories that seems ripped from some kind of American dream promotional pack-et: his father, a Sikh, and his mother, a Hindu, were forced from what was then Pakistan to India after the countries were partitioned in 1947. They brought him to New Jersey as an infant, where he grew up a Bruce Springsteen fan (the only Boss he recognizes, Bharara says, to prove his independent prosecutor credentials), and then went to Harvard and then Columbia Law School. After graduating, he land-ed fi rst in private practice at one of the city’s top fi rms before starting his public-service career by being accepted to the U.S. Attorney’s offi ce on his fi rst try, was recruited to go work for Schumer on the Judiciary Committee and then nominated by Schumer to one of the most prestigious legal jobs in America, at just 40 years old. Along the way, he married a woman who is the daughter of an Indian Muslim fa-

“THERE IS NO PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE IN THE STATE THAT TAKES MORE SERIOUSLY THE RESPONSIBILITY TO ROOT OUT PUBLIC CORRUPTION IN ALBANY AND ANYWHERE ELSE THAT WE MIGHT FIND IT,” BHARARA SAID, “AND I THINK OUR RECORD SPEAKS FOR ITSELF.”

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Preet Bharara has forged strong working relationships with many others in his jurisdiction, including Manhattan DA Cy Vance, whose offi ce was a key partner in landing the biggest Medicaid fraud case in history.


ther and a Jewish mother whose family landed in Palestine after fleeing the Nazis ahead of the Holocaust.

They have three children, who helped form what Bharara often describes as the Norman Rockwell-type scene from his installation ceremony: his father, never a crier, had tears streaming down his face, while his mother, always a crier, sat stoic. Meanwhile, his oldest son looked bored, his middle daughter was being tended to by his wife, and, without fail, the punch line: his youngest having his finger “so far up his nose I started to worry about brain damage.”

Bharara has a few choice lines like this—memorable, legitimately funny, conscientiously calibrated in wording and timing. He has one about stuffing his face with samosas while his wife fasts on Yom Kippur and his father-in-law fasts on Ramadan. He has one to describe the complex, technology-enabled financial fraud that his office investigates, about how the modern bank robber, the “cyber Willie Sutton,” needs only a mouse and a keyboard. And he even occasionally improvises, as when a reporter flipping through the materials at his announce-ment of a Medicaid fraud case that looped in 42 people and 118 clinics in 25 states, pocketing upwards of $100 million. The people had been hauled away to court, the evidence collected and fake medica-tions locked in storage.

“In the indictment, there’s a mention of counterfeit Viagra,” the reporter said. “Does counterfeit Viagra work?”

Bharara focused his surprisingly blue eyes, his mind working.

“No comment,” he said. His temple throbbed through the dead-

pan stare until a smile finally cracked.“Want to come to our vault?” he said.Bharara, who sometimes gets talked

about by fans as a potential U.S. attorney general prospect, is good at the public-performance part of his job when he wants to be. At press conferences, there are always the prepared lines, the pre-pared blow-ups, the prepared wireless microphone clipped to his tie so he can step away from the podium to walk re-porters through the bullet points of the prosecution. He wants to put the cases in a context to let people know what he and the other people getting paid out of tax money are doing with their days. Putting cases in context is important, he said, especially when that context has his staff pulling in about $570 million annu-ally from its prosecutions, on a budget of $50 million.

“We’re doing better than most of cor-porate America in terms of return on in-vestment,” he said.

Though Bharara is in constant con-versation with other agencies and his AUSAs, and he is a boss who takes the time to put together a hand-written letter to every member of his staff who has a child, he is closely guarded, sometimes to the point of coming off stiff.

As the financial world waits anxiously for Bharara to move forward with the ru-

mored insider-trading investigation, quiet advance criticism has been seeping out from people who worry that he might be on the verge of overreaching. To date, though there are a few scattered com-plaints of occasional grandstanding, even the people who might have reason to crit-icize steer clear of calling him out—either because they do not have any complaints, or because they know how extensive his office’s reach can be.

Murray Richman, a defense lawyer from the Bronx now representing Larry Seabrook against the $177 bagel charges, has gone up against quite a few Southern District U.S. Attorneys in the last 50 years and seen his fair share of blind crusades. Bharara’s approach is one of the better ones, he said.

“I can’t argue with him,” Richman said. “It’s rational. It’s reasonable.”

What makes Bharara bristle is any suggestion that the few weeks he spent volunteering as a driver for Mark Green’s 1993 public advocate campaign while studying for the bar tags him as politi-cal, or any suggestion that working as the chief counsel to Schumer, the uber poli-tician, on the Senate Judiciary Commit-tee when he was investigating the Bush administration’s U.S. Attorney scandal, might have led to someone accusing him of bias.

“Can you name one of those people?” he responded in a clipped tone, cutting off the idea. “You can’t.”

Bharara owes much of the respect and notoriety that positioned him for his current job to his work in Washington on that scandal. Over two years, he helped run an unprecedented inquiry into the un-precedented politicization of the Justice Department under George W. Bush with no shortage of potential pitfalls for Bhar-ara. But he earned rave reviews from just about everyone involved, even though Schumer was already publicly calling for Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez to re-sign.

By the end of the investigation, Gon-zalez was gone, and seven U.S. attorneys from around the country had been dis-missed.

He rarely makes a speech without mentioning the scandal, and though he often alludes to how much the experience shaped his thinking, he always notes that he has yet to publicly explain how it did. Even when pressed, he wiggles around without saying anything too specific.

“It doesn’t inform my way of thinking in the sense that it’s making me do any-

thing different,” Bharara said. “It was a searing experience for a lot of people, and it called into question a lot of things and assumptions that people had which I thought at that time was unfortunate.”

Just as important, he believes, is lis-tening to, but not being defined by, the public. More cases than most people would expect start with news reports or tips to their hotline (a lot of the calls are about who killed John F. Kennedy or where Jimmy Hoffa is buried, but some of them focus on a contractor or an agency the office was not aware of before), but prosecutors who try their cases with a media jury endanger the process as well, he said.

“If justice is going to be done, and is going to be seen to be done, you can’t worry about what other people who are not aware of the facts want to have hap-pen,” Bharara said. “Independence does not only mean independence from the political branch, which it means first and foremost, but it means independence from the political winds, and it means in-dependence from public pressure.”

This can be especially difficult when tackling public corruption. For exam-ple, by the time charges were brought against Hiram Monserrate in October for funneling cash to his 2006 State Senate campaign from a member item-funded non-profit, he had already dodged con-viction for slashing his girlfriend in an incident he maintains was an accident, bolted the Democrats in the Senate coup, been kicked out of the Senate by his col-leagues, and then lost the special election for his old seat in the spring and his local Assembly seat in November.

“There’s always a tension between wanting to make sure you have identified every bad act, every bad bit of behavior, every bad actor in a criminal scheme, so that you are holding accountable to the fullest extent possible the people who are responsible for some criminal behavior,” Bharara said. “There’s no magic to that, other than thinking when the appropriate time is to strike.”

But especially with his history in Wash-ington, the political corruption cases are the ones that resonate with Bharara most personally. At Saint Andrew’s Plaza, his office is at the far end of the eighth floor, next to his top deputy and close friend from the days when they worked at Gib-son Dunn together, Boyd Johnson, who stayed at the office while Bharara went to D.C. and led the public corruption unit that took down Eliot Spitzer and the Em-

peror’s Club. That unit is the only one located with

them on the eighth floor, and both Bhara-ra and Johnson spend a lot of time walk-ing by, checking in, sitting down to get briefed on progress and suggest ideas.

“Preet gets very animated by these cases,” Johnson said. “There is little that he finds more galling than public corrup-tion.”

Being a former Southern District AUSA makes Bharara a member of an informal fraternity that gave him the contacts in the Justice Department to move the fir-ing scandal investigation forward, and it gives him an automatic relationship with other alumni now scattered across other agencies and defense firms. Then there are the personal relationships from work-ing alongside others while an assistant in the office—Johnson, but also among them Richard Zabel who heads up the criminal division now overseeing the fi-nancial prosecutions; or Cuomo’s special assistant in the attorney general’s office, and soon to be the governor’s chief-of-staff, Benjamin Lawsky; or City Commis-sioner of Investigations Rose Gill Hearn.

Gill Hearn has worked with five U.S. At-torneys since Mayor Michael Bloomberg hired her to run the city’s internal investi-gations department in 2002. Bharara’s ap-petite for moving cases that start with her office has been intense from the outset, and has actually been increasing over time.

Or, as she put it sitting in her office on the Friday after Thanksgiving, “I saw him twice this week, and it’s been a short week.”

There is not, after all, a shortage of opportunities to work together in try-ing to flush out government employees’ schemes and scams.

“We’re not the Maytag repairman,” Gill Hearn said. “There’s more than enough to do.”

Though he will not, of course, name names, nor drop hints, Bharara agrees. His message to people who think that, like Monserrate, enough time has passed since then that no one seems to have no-ticed, is simple: they might very well be wrong. Though he says he remains com-mitted to walking away from cases that do not work, Bharara said the year ahead was going to be full of cases that will. That is true for all the things his office can touch, but especially for corruption.

“At the moment, business is not slow,” Bharara said. “And you can infer from that what you will.” C

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ISSUE SPOTLIGHT: CONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT

Point/CounterpointThe building and construction industry took a serious hit during the economic crisis. Projects stalled, money was hard to come by and thousands of jobs were lost. There is some optimism to have for the coming year. City Hall asked Erik Dilan, chair of the City Council’s Housing Committee, and Robert LiMandri, commissioner of the city Department of Buildings, to talk about their upcoming priorities to see how their interests stacked up against each other.

Robert LiMandri Eric Dilan

Robert LiMandri: Enforcement is really important to make sure that New York is protected, and we have done a very good job doing that. A lot of the things people don’t always see are the other things we are doing. One, we’re working with quality-of-life issues. We have taken some new directions in several areas. And the quality-of-life area, making sure that we have a positive impact on New Yorkers’ en-vironment, is one of the major things we are doing. Second, I would say one of the major things we are doing is making it easier to build in this town. People see the department only as an enforcer, but we’ve done and we’ve continued to work on making it easier to build.

Erik Dilan: I think that one of the main things is that I’m right now interested in taking a look at all the current laws on the books that

maybe are not as effective as maybe they could be and cost the city a lot of money. So I think the one thing is, I intend to be cost-conscious. I certainly don’t intend to pass any legislation that’s going to cost the city a lot of money, and we’ll look at some ordinances that are on the books right now that could potentially save the city some money. I got no specifi cs on that right now, but I’ll have them in a matter of two weeks.

LiMandri: One of the things people have complained about and we are exploring is how to branch out online to allow people basically not have to come down to the department to interface with the depart-ment. So, one, allow people to get permits completely online without ever stepping foot here. It allows them, in the business model, to be much more effi cient, and it allows us to react much more quickly, so that getting the permit more quickly is really important. The other piece is that we are exploring the idea of working with them online with reviewing plans, the idea being that you are going to be doing some

sort of extension or some work. There’s a plan that’s appropriate that you need to do, so instead of coming here with a roll of documents and rolling it out on the table with someone here, we’d like you to be able to upload those documents virtually.

Dilan: The biggest hurdle they are going to have to challenge, and I think the biggest hurdle before the Buildings Department, is the ef-fective use of technology. I think in the past four years, we have done a good job of looking at construction and passing laws, whether it be around crane safety, contractor registration, or scaffolding safety, I think we’ve done a good job in making construction overall safe in New York City, and obviously accidents have gone down, but I think accidents have gone down because the amount of work has gone down. What’ll be the true test of how effective these laws were is when the economy recovers and more building starts to occur.

LiMandri: Certainly the Council has thought about withhold-ing permits to make sure that New Yorkers who are owing the city

funds get to pay those funds. And that’s something that’s a very in-teresting concept that we expect to see evolve over the next couple of months. If you basically owe the city a certain amount of money and you haven’t paid or if you haven’t come into a payment program, we might withhold those permits. And that is something we’ve never done before and something the City Council is interested in doing. So that’s something that will be at the top of real estate and construc-tion companies’ minds.

Dilan: We’ve passed a few initial bills, and the next set that will be coming to us for consideration will be setting forth regulations on using solar panels and regulations, or more guidelines, on how to use more water-effi cient plumbing fi xtures as it relates to toilets and other items in the buildings. And the one thing I do like that’s good about the recommendations from the U.S. Green Buildings Council is that they affect only new construction, so it’s not costly to the existing housing stock. So they won’t retroactively have to go and fi x anything. If they make major alterations on the new bill, then they do have to come into compliance. So that’s one item that we will, you know, be dealing with. Another item that I think we’ll be dealing with in the coming years, and I currently don’t have an opinion on it yet but I’m inter-ested in the topic because it’s a good one, is discrimination ordinance for ap-plicants who apply for co-ops and con-dos. I’ve been meeting with a group of realtors and along with some of my other colleagues—Council Member Fidler is a sponsor of the bill—and I think they made an interesting case.

LiMandri: When you go online, you re-quire people to participate. Papers don’t get lost. People take responsibility for certain things. There’s a trail and a track record. When you said you were going to do something, you submit-ted documents to us, we scanned those documents. We have those signatures. All of the sudden, I’ve built a trail so that if I need to prosecute, or take away your privileges, I have what lawyers might consider a dream. I have all the documents for them, they can build the trail, and a judge can decide whether they truly did know what they were doing and that they were trying to deceive the department. Now, that’s a pretty big step in the right direction.

Dilan: I think overall the buildings inspectors and the Buildings De-partment do a good job and there are very few—considering how many buildings there are in this city—there are very few collapses, but it’s clear that one building collapse is one too many, and I think the only way to protect that is to have effective building inspectors to go out there and look at the sites, and for the general public to inform the city and the Buildings Department as soon as they possibly can to make sure that unsafe conditions get reported as expeditiously as possible.


Lou Coletti,President & CEO, Building Trades Employers’ AssociationI think that the unionized construction in-dustry needs to fi nd a way to reduce con-struction costs if we want to be competitive in the market place.

We are developing strategies of negotiation

ISSUE SPOTLIGHT: CONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT

Sound-bitesto make these goals hap-pen.

I think that fi nancing transportation and in-frastructure projects is something that needs to be discussed. I know that the state is very busy, but these projects are impor-tant to promoting growth in the future.

Richard Anderson,president, New YorkBuilding CongressOne of the major issues I see is the contin-ued funding for the Metropolitan Transit System. There is a huge gap for the year 2012 that needs to be discussed by the Leg-islature.

Among other things, we will be encourag-ing the state Legislature to fund the gap and seeking to encourage other organizations to

do the same.

Most things that need to be discussed are luckily on the agenda. In terms of what will be discussed in the next session, I see the budget and the MTA as huge issues on the agenda, and they will be playing out with a lot of agony for everyone.

Michael McKee,Tenants Political Action CommitteeAffordability. Government needs to invest in afford-able housing rather than luxury housing, like they have done with 421-a leg-islation.

We will be promoting the construction of affordable housing in New York.

We must renew the Rent Protection Laws to protect tenants. This is something that will most certainly be a big part of the agenda next session.

Margaret O’Donoghue Castillo,incoming president of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of ArchitectsA redundant and bureau-cratic regulatory system, a stagnant economy and a general desire to reduce construction costs—even before capital markets froze—are pressuring ar-chitects to limit creativity and quality in design. We need to address these challenges by creating a more effi cient review process, and to advocate for creativ-ity and sustainability in design without sac-rifi cing public safety.


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www.cityhallnews.com20 December 13, 2010 CITY HALL

issue spotlight: ConstruCtion and development

AtlAntic YArdsAfter a slew of lawsuits over the state’s use of eminent domain and cash flow problems, the Atlantic Yards project in downtown Brooklyn overcame its final legal obstacles in Novem-ber 2009. The first phase—construction of the Barclay’s Center Arena—is already underway and has a slated completion date of 2012. The second stage of the project, consisting of 16 commercial and residential high-rises, has no scheduled completion date.

FAr WestsideHudson Yards, the area between 30th and 42nd streets, Eighth Avenue and the Hudson River, has been undergoing development and rezoning to make the “underutilized” section of the city the new hub for commerce and traf-fic. The Bloomberg administration has also suggested a plan for the No. 7 subway line to travel beyond its current extension from the Far West Side, tentatively scheduled for 2013, to Secaucus, N.J.

Willets Point redeveloPment PlAnWhat was once a 60-acre ash dump of auto-motive fluids and petroleum in Queens will soon be transformed into what the city bills as “New York City’s next great neighborhood,” though it was not approved without some controversy in a Council concerned about lo-cal businesses in the area. Right now, devel-opers are working on improving offsite infra-structure such as better vehicular and bicycle access to the neighborhood. Expansion of residential buildings, retail and construction for this ambitious project will not be complet-ed until the year 2017.

columbiA universitY exPAnsionAfter acquiring a contested block of land through eminent domain, Columbia lost no time in planning the development of the area that extends from 125th to 133rd streets and

from Broadway to the Hudson River. Currently it is preparing for the first stage of develop-ment by implementing utility improvements to update the 19th-century sewage systems, as well as vacating and demolishing buildings in the area. This stage is expected to be finished in 2015. The second phase of the plan has a target completion year of 2030 and includes buildings for research, a school of international affairs and graduate student housing.

second Avenue subWAYThe Second Avenue Subway, which will travel along the eastern drag from 125th Street all the way to the Financial District, is scheduled to be built in four stages. The current first phase of construction includes massive underground work, with aboveground sidewalk and street lane closures along Second Avenue from 96th to 63rd street. Businesses along the stretch have complained about the project’s impact on their customer base. The project has a tenta-tive completion date for 2017.

mega-Project rundown

Make sure New York’s key policy makers know the issues that matter to you in 2011.

SPECIAL LEGISLATIVE PREVIEW ISSUEIssue Date: January 10 - Advertising Deadline: January 3

For advertising information, please contact 212-284-9735 or [email protected]

This special issue will preview the outlook for some of these critical areas:

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTEDUCATION

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21

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CITY HALL AD OUTLINES.pdf 12/6/2010 10:19:48 AM


TOTAL NON-PERSONNEL OFFICE EXPENSES:

SPENT:

Staten IslandQueensManhattanBrooklynBronx

387,000 529,000 382,000 376,000 198,000

300,000Bronx Overall Economic

Development Corporation

11,500Design Presentation Assoc.

(engineering fi rm)

13,000Books

296,000Postage

39,500Staples

13,500Economic development

62,000Connect Inc.

60,000Manhattan Legal Services

66,000Rental payments

to New York State

72,000Computer Service

Contracts

47,000 Xerox Corporation

22,000Staples

36,000July 4 Ever (4th of July Parade)

22,000 Xerox Corporation

4,700Hyatt Cards and Gift

BY CHRIS BRAGG

Of the city’s fi ve borough presi-dents, two of them—Manhattan’s Scott Stringer and the Bronx’s

Ruben Diaz, Jr.—are seen as headed for bigger things, probably as soon as 2013.

The other three—Queens’ Helen Mar-shall, Brooklyn’s Marty Markowitz and Staten Island’s Jim Molinaro—are closer to the ends of their career and likely to have made their fi nal appearances on bal-lots last year.

That is not the only difference. When it comes to staffi ng, the fi ve

borough presidents have fairly similar costs, with their budgets ranging between$3 million and $4 million. The salary rang-es for various positions are roughly the same. But their use of discretionary funds for offi ce expenses varied wildly over the course of the last year.

Out of the $387,000 that the Bronx bor-ough president’s offi ce has spent on dis-cretionary expenses this year, $300,000 went directly to the Bronx Overall Eco-nomic Development Corporation, the of-fi ce’s economic development arm.

The money has gone to hire staff for the group, which in turn has leveraged its funding into $25 million in micro-loans for businesses in the Bronx, according to Marlene Cintron, the corporation’s president. During his fi rst two years in of-fi ce, Diaz, Jr. has stressed an anti-poverty agenda.

The Bronx borough president’s of-

fi ce, meanwhile, has cut many other ex-penses to the bone in order to fund the corporation, spending only about $200 on postage by relying almost entirely on e-mail and social media, and only $1,300 on computer contracts.

“We understand that anytime we don’t spend money on something, we can use that money to help another small busi-ness,” Cintron said.

Rather than putting any discretionary spending money toward economic devel-opment in relatively well-to-do Manhat-tan, Stringer’s offi ce has directed $50,000 to a vendor called Manhattan Legal Ser-vices, which helps low-income residents with legal problems, and $62,000 to Con-nect Inc., a group “dedicated to prevent-ing interpersonal violence and promoting gender justice,” according to its website. A spokeswoman said this was part of the offi ce’s emphasis on combating domestic violence.

Of the $382,000 total spent by Manhat-tan, one of the biggest expenses, $66,000, went to rental payments to New York State for its northern Manhattan offi ce in Harlem, as well as $50,000 on miscel-laneous offi ce equipment.

The Bronx borough president’s offi ce may not have been spending much on postage, but the Brooklyn borough presi-dent’s offi ce was: $296,000, or over half of Brooklyn’s overall spending on offi ce-related expenses, went to postage.

A spokesman for the Brooklyn offi ce said that much of that went to fund the

distribution of Markowitz’s quarterly newsletter Brooklyn!!, which goes to about 400,000 registered voters in the borough. Out of the borough’s $529,000 in total spending, an additional $39,500 was spent at Staples and $13,500 on economic development.

In Queens, $72,000 of the borough’s $376,000 in offi ce expenses was spent on computer consulting services, nearly $50,000 had gone to rental agreements with the Xerox Corporation and another $24,000 to Manhattan Ford Lincoln-Mer-cury, a West Side car dealership. The only economic-development-related spending appears to be $1,200 given to the Farm-ers Boulevard Community Development Corp., though another $45,000 went to two community groups, Elmcor Youth and Adult Activities Inc. and the Wood-have-Richmond Hill Volunteer Ambu-lance Corps.

A spokesman for the Queens offi ce did not return a request for comment about this year’s expenses. Last year, Marshall was criticized for spending $103,000 on offi ce furniture, including $3,000 chairs.

The largest single offi ce-related ex-pense for the Staten Island borough president’s offi ce appears to be $36,000 spent with a vendor called “July 4 Ever,” which manages the borough’s July 4 parade every year, representing about a fi fth of the offi ce’s total spending of $198,000.

“That’s an event that gets 40,000 or 50,000 people out for it,” explained Stat-

Discretionary Spending The distance between the Bronx and Brooklyn can be $300,000 in economic development over postage

en Island Borough President James Mo-linaro.

Molinaro’s offi ce spent $22,000 with the Xerox Corporation, while $4,700 was spent at Hyatt Cards and Gift. There do not appear to be any expenses for eco-nomic development from this pot of money. Other major expenditures includ-ed $30,000 given to various community groups, such as the Staten Island Em-ployment Education Consortium and the Fisherman’s Conservation Association.

Each borough president’s offi ce bud-get is a fraction of what it used to be, having endured years of cuts by the City Council and the mayor’s offi ce, with most of the funding they receive going to the capital budgets. In 1989, the City Council was given greater authority over func-tions previously assumed by the borough presidents’ offi ces.

With the formal powers of the offi ces reduced, the differences in how the offi c-es spend the money they do have sharply depends on the person at the top, said Baruch political science professor Doug Muzzio.

“You have two young guys who are politically engaged who are trying to pro-mote a policy agenda in various ways,” Muzzio said. “And then there are three other, chronologically older politicians for whom this is their last job—and are going to spend less on a political agenda, and more on what might be called more frivolous, or less central things.” C

[email protected]


Hall: What was your reaction to the offer? Were you excited, nervous?Errol Louis: Oh boy, well it’s not like they called me out of the clear blue sky. My agent had contacted them months ago. She opened up some lines of communica-tion and my agent—as it happens, they had some rela-tionships. They used to represent, well, they still repre-sent, Brian Taff, who was my counterpart up in Albany. He had the job before Liz [Benjamin]. He’s out in Phila-delphia now, but they, you know, they understand that stuff happens in this industry. So I’ve been talking with them for months. So when it finally happened, it was a relief.

CH: Are you coming into this with any new ideas for the show? EL: Yeah, the format is very strong. A very strong brand. So, you know, there are two categories of changes that you bring to it. One is working the existing elements in a different kind of way, asking different round questions at the roundtable and at the interviews. And then the other is to try out new formats. And they’re open to all kinds of new stuff. And even in my first—this is day eight—even in my first seven outings, we’ve done some stuff that’s a little off the beaten trail. I think it was the second day, I had Mark Ruffalo on. That’s not par for the course. But then even with existing elements, I don’t know what oth-er people do, but the way I do book interviews is I read the book. I’m going to bring my own questions and my own perspective to a lot of the existing elements. View-ers are going to see some new faces around the table. So that doesn’t mean we’ve, say, changed the reporter’s roundtable or changed the consultant’s corner, but there will be some people there that maybe viewers haven’t seen in a while or haven’t seen at all.

CH: Are you going to keep doing radio and writing columns?EL: I am strictly here. I gave up my—I resigned from both jobs at the newspaper and at the radio. We did have some conversation about whether or not I’d be able to stay and keep either or both as an additional job. And that conversation was going on at the same time as the Juan Williams controversy broke out. A couple of weeks ago, back and forth, I realized it wasn’t going to happen, it wasn’t going to be in the cards.

CH: There is a lot of cross-platform journalism going on today—blogging and going on air. Do you see op-portunities like that for you in the future?EL: Yeah. I guess if I wanted more work, I could fight for the opportunity to do more work. That is to say, our jobs are a little bit different. Liz is doing a lot of reporting and blogging. I’ll probably be doing less of that, in part because I think I’ve got a busier schedule.

CH: In your columns, your opinions are out there in plain view. Are we going to see some of that on the show?EL: It’s not an opinion show and my role as anchor is not to present or offer opinions. Anybody’s who’s read the 700-plus columns I’ve written over the last few years would probably know the interests that I have, the topics that I’m interested in. I think that will probably be the most no-ticeable connection with the columns that I wrote about, is that if something comes up about Brooklyn, people know that I live in Brooklyn. And I’ve written a lot about my neighborhood.

CH: Is it difficult to keep your opin-ions to yourself?EL: No, not at all. In fact, someone called me the other day and asked whether or not I support Wal-Mart coming to East New York. And I told him, I am specifi-cally paid not to have an opinion about that. I was joking, but the reality is, at some point, you let people know that it is a job. It is a job. People think I wanted to do this even if no one was paying me, but I wanted to write contro-versial 600-word essays that would get everyone upset. I hate to disabuse them of this notion. It was a particular job and now I have a different job.

CH: You’ve been on “Inside City Hall” as a guest. How is it different being the host?EL: Yeah, it’s like night and day. Some friend suggested to me—yeah, in 2008, I did over 100 appearances on CNN during the presidential campaign. A similar number the following year. I have told people, and it’s true, the dif-ference between being a guest on television and being the anchor of a television show is like the difference be-tween eating in a restaurant and running a restaurant. Very different. Just because you like to eat food doesn’t mean you are ready to run a restaurant. I mean, if you’re a guest, you’re on for 10 minutes. You can pick your mood, you can pick the point that you want to make,

you can always back off if you want to. CH: What’s your current take on political journalism in New York?EL: The two complaints that I hear the most are that we don’t go in depth enough and that we don’t get into ar-eas that real people care about. And we spend a little too much time on what is essentially a closed conver-sation among the political elite, the celebrities and the very wealthy in our town. I think all of those criticisms are valid. And what I have not done over the last decade or so is complain about it publicly, because I have been fortunate enough to have a really high-profile platform. And my feeling is, the only rational response if you have a platform is to lead by example and to do the work you think ought to be done instead of complaining about

what’s not getting done.

CH: Then how do you bring more people into the political conversa-tion?EL: Well, it’s not just that. Let’s take last year as an example, in the may-oral race. Much of the coverage, in particular the misinterpretation of the polling data, really affected the out-come of the race. And a lot of people, I think, understood by the end what it was that I was talking about and even writing about, which was that they just completely got it wrong. I have a Masters degree in political science and I know how to read polls. I know that stuff. But, there was—it was just

a failure. A failure.

CH: Are you going to keep the Cuomo clock ticking?EL: We did not announce the Cuomo clock last Friday. In fact, that’s a scoop. You are the only one who will know that. We did not have it run on Friday. And you know, we called the Cuomo camp and let them know. It was the result of what little political capital I had in my first week. We used it all up. … I said look, I’m going to try to get him on, but you have to give me something to work with and you have to be able to let me have that conversation with him. And I won. But that’s not a permanent sensation, mind you, and I ended up having a brief conversation with the governor-elect afterwards just to let him and his folks know, it’s like, look, there’s a reason we call them guests, whatever beef you have obviously predated me—if we could start over again, that would be great. C

—Andrew J. [email protected]

City Hall Insider

Back Forth

Back & Forth

Back & Forth&

& &

&

Blue JayRadio host and Daily News columnist Errol

Louis, a veteran political commentator and journalist, was a natural for taking over

hosting duties on “Inside City Hall,” having logged serious hours on radio and as a guest on many CNN shows.

Before taping a show at the end of his second week on the job, Louis took a moment on set to talk about his approach to the job, the death of old-school journalism and the end of the “Cuomo clock.”

What follows is an edited transcript.

andrew schwartz photos

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“The difference between being a guest on television and being the anchor of a television show is like the difference between eating in a restaurant and running a restaurant.”

24

When (Insert target) WIns, neW Yorkers Lose!

“New York CitY will Use NearlY

$300 MILLIon iN saviNgs over the Next FoUr Years to restore DozeNs oF Major iNFrastrUCtUre ProjeCts aND Create 1,800 CoNstrUCtioN jobs.”

- Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, City of New York

(2009, 12 Agency City-wide Project Labor Agreement)

“ProjeCt labor agreeMeNts’ labor Cost saviNgs For the ProjeCt’s DUratioN...were qUite sigNiFiCaNt at

$221,427,522.” - PLA Post-Audit,

Hill International

(2005, SCA Project Labor Agreement)

neW York CItY heaLth anD hosPItaLs

CorPoratIon:

aLLoW Us to ProVIDe YoU WIth thIs saVIngs anD

Create JoBs For neW Yorkers

quality • safety • opportunity

bUilDitUNioN.CoM

agenCY-WIDe ProJeCt LaBor

agreeMents saVe

neW Yorkers MILLIons

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City Hall - December 15, 2010

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