THE WFP WON THAT’S WHY IT COULD GO EXTINCT
Workingfamilius Particus
CIT YANDSTATENY.COM
@CIT YANDSTATENY
WHY NO LGBT IN MWBE? THE WOMEN WHO COULD BE MAYOR WHY NYC EVER ELECTED RUDY
October 21, 2019
Politics Over Policy Approach Not Helping Affordable Housing One of the miracles of New York is the strong backbone of community that small building owners have built across the city over the past few decades. These are people who live in the communities where they own buildings. They know their tenants by their first name. They shop in local stores. They are the anchors of their neighborhoods. Our organizations’ decision to go to court over New York’s Rent Stabilization Law (RSL) was to protect these small property owners whose very survival and financial lives are in jeopardy because of a regulatory scheme that, while being unlawful and inefficient, has also been exacerbating the loss of affordable housing for decades. The RSL was enacted in 1969 and has been re-authorized every three years since by the City Council and amended extensively by the State Legislature. Further, despite continued re-authorizations, including this June’s draconian expansion of the law by the Legislature, the RSL has never in over a half century addressed the problem it was enacted to fix. It achieves exactly none of the goals that it was supposed to address and prevents construction of new apartments and the improvement of existing apartments. Worse, it does not in any way target its relief to low-income New Yorkers. “Landlord” has become an epithet in the pitched political battles being fought in our hyper-partisan era. But the simple fact is that there are thousands of small building owners across the city struggling to get by. Owners who are trying to provide quality affordable housing to their tenants, but are facing financial devastation because of a fatally flawed regulatory system that is easily exploitable by tenants who have won the housing lottery. Take the case of one of our members who inherited tenants in two one-bedroom rent-stabilized apartments when he bought the building. The two tenants in two separate apartments are middle to upper-class professionals. They also happen to be married and recently bought an apartment together that cost well over a million dollars. Now they claim their child was raised in both apartments and should be able to lay claim to both. The owner will never be able to recover the money he spent to bring his building up to code because of these two apartments. Worse, the modest rents barely cover the property taxes. And with no abatements, the taxes and operating costs will soon exceed the rents. In most situations, the costs will be borne by the other tenants in the buildings — their own neighbors. It’s a precarious situation for everyone, one that’s echoed across the five boroughs. Stories like this from thousands of small owners across the city are why we went to court. Owning a building in New York is already extremely costly: taxes, water and sewer charges, and routine maintenance. People don’t realize that many owners are struggling just to get by. Countless smaller property owners, many of whom speak English as a second language, often work day jobs to cover their costs and return to their buildings each night to sweep halls, maintain boilers, collect garbage, shovel sidewalks — all the work required to take care of their tenants. It’s time to fix a broken system — time to remove the barriers preventing landlords from running their businesses. Tenants deserve access to the high-quality, affordable apartments that the RSL is keeping from them. We filed suit to halt the deprivation of the constitutional rights of small property owners, and force reform that will result in increased development of rental properties and alleviate New York’s constrained housing market. Our leaders have failed everyone. Our lawsuit is the only way to guarantee that the city and state adopt a fair and efficient means of providing housing to those most in need.
October 21, 2019
City & State New York
CELESTE SLOMAN; DAVID GARCIA/SHUTTERSTOCK
EDITOR’S NOTE
BEN ADLER Senior editor
THE WORKING FAMILIES PARTY, the progressive minor party created two decades ago to act as a left-wing check on the Democrats, stands at the precipice of potential obliteration, as the commission appointed by its longtime nemesis Gov. Andrew Cuomo to study public financing also considers abolishing fusion voting. But while that move – which could cost smaller parties their ballot lines – might be a death knell for New York’s other minor parties, including the Conservative and Reform parties, the WFP is in a somewhat different position. As Ross Barkan writes in our cover story this week, the WFP has evolved into a campaign strategist for progressive candidates in Democratic primaries. In recent years, it has been successful at electing sympatico politicians and moving the state’s debate leftward. In fact, public financing was only finally boosted onto Albany’s agenda by the WFP-supported progressive takeover in 2018. If fusion voting does go away, one might say the WFP was a victim of its own success. And its work outside the bounds of typical minor party activities, Barkan points out, may show a way forward for the WFP, even without fusion voting and the ballot line that comes with it.
CONTENTS
RUDY GIULIANI … 8
How he ever managed to win New York City
WORKING FAMILIES PARTY … 12 The WFP won. But is it a victim of its own success? WOMEN FOR MAYOR … 20 Who might still run in 2021
MWBEs … 23
Will the city and state ever hit their contracting goals?
LGBT-OWNED BUSINESSES … 29
Why don’t gay owners have an MWBE program?
WINNERS & LOSERS … 38 Who had the best week?
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October 21, 2019
City Council members – those whose districts the jails will be located in – got other concessions as well, including additional affordable housing and a new community theater.
CUOMO DROPS THE N-WORD
NEW JAILS PLAN APPROVED
After years of planning, debate and horse trading, the New York City Council has officially approved Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to close the Rikers Island jail complex and open four new borough-based jails in its stead. Under the plan, the four jails would be able to house a combined 3,544 inmates, significantly fewer than
the 15,000 that Rikers can hold. The capacity of the new jails is down from original estimates – which stood at 4,600 people – as part of a deal struck to make them smaller to appease local City Council members. The city revised its estimated daily jail population by 2026, when Rikers is set to close, from 4,000 inmates to 3,300, which it said allowed for the jails to be smaller than originally planned. Key
A Cuomo made it on TMZ, but it’s not the one you may think. Rather than Chris Cuomo of cable news fame, it was Gov. Andrew Cuomo who found himself on the celebrity tabloid site. What for? Well, he used the N-word on live radio, during one of his regular appearances on WAMC’s “The Roundtable.” Host Alan Chartock asked Cuomo about a recent New York Times story about Cuomo delaying Medicaid spending that suggested he was being influenced by a powerful hospital group. Rather than answer the question, Cuomo immediately pivoted to the paper’s use of the N-word in a recent op-ed about anti-Italian racism. He quoted the piece’s use of the phrase
YOUR NEW SUBWAY RIDE There’s a new sheriff in town at amNewYork, and Tuesday’s paper had the nameplate – and slimmed-down masthead – to prove it. Schneps Media bought amNewYork and the new red and black logo now matches the color scheme of Schneps’ corporate brand and some of the other publications in its ever-expanding empire. As Tuesday’s cover read: “It’s a new day at amNewYork.”
“When you have six lanes and then you go to nine lanes, there’s gotta be a better a-traffic a-flow. Non è passo. It’s simple math.” – Gov. Andrew Cuomo, speaking in an exaggerated Italian accent at the Columbus Day parade, insisting, despite data that says otherwise, that traffic has improved on the new Kosciuszko Bridge, via Streetsblog NYC
“The era of mass incarceration is over. Over!” – New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, on the passage of a plan to build four new borough-based jails and close the Rikers Island jail complex, via Gothamist
“n----r w-p,” which was at one point a slur used against southern Italians. Although some black leaders – like Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie – did not take issue with Cuomo’s use of the word, others were less forgiving. After the fact, Cuomo remained mum on the incident and his office did not release a transcript of the interview as it usually does.
DOUBLE JEOPARDY LOOPHOLE CLOSED
From now on, any Trump associate from New York convicted of a federal crime can no longer rely on a potential pardon to keep them out of prison. Under a new law signed by Cuomo, the state’s so-called double jeopardy loophole has been closed, allowing prosecutors to pursue state-level charges if someone receives a federal pardon for a criminal conviction. However, the scope is fairly narrow and only allows the state to step in if there is determined to be a conflict of interest for the president. That is, the state cannot unilaterally decide to prosecute anyone from New York who has been pardoned. The law also does not apply to anyone already convicted of a crime, or someone who has already entered a plea. This means that people like former Trump
FELTON DAVIS; OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR; LEV RADIN, RICH KOELE/SHUTTERSTOCK; U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
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October 21, 2019
campaign chairman Paul Manafort – who has been convicted – and former Rep. Chris Collins – who has pleaded guilty – cannot face state charges if they are pardoned.
AOC ENDORSES BERNIE
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has been having a tough time recently – he suffered a heart attack, he’s starting to stagnate in the polls and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is emerging as the progressive candidate to beat, evidenced in part by attacks against her during the most recent
City & State New York
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By the numbers: NYC’s plan to close Rikers
Democratic presidential debate. So Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s decision to endorse him couldn’t have come at a better time. She planned to officially announce the endorsement alongside Sanders at a rally at Queensbridge Park over the weekend. A new Siena College poll found that Warren is tied with former Vice President Joe Biden at the top among New York Democrats at 21%, with Sanders following at 16%. Ocasio-Cortez’s backing may help in New York and nationally among progressives on the fence between Warren and Sanders.
THE PROPOSAL to close the Rikers Island jail complex and replace it with four new jails crossed a major threshold Thursday afternoon. In a contentious vote that could reshape how thousands of New Yorkers are locked up, the New York City Council approved a plan from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration to replace the facility with detention centers in several boroughs. Here’s how it all breaks down:
4 The number of new jails planned – 3,300 The estimated daily jail in Chinatown, Downtown Brooklyn, Kew Gardens and Mott Haven.
population in the city by 2026, compared to today’s average of 7,700.
36-13 The City Council’s vote $8.7 billion The city’s estitotal on the jails plan, for and against – which counts as a close vote in the overwhelmingly Democratic City Council.
10 The number of active jails
expected to be permanently closed by the plan – nine on Rikers Island, plus the Barge in the Bronx.
2026 The year the city plans to
close Rikers and open the new jails.
$265 million How much
the city is devoting to reduce incarceration by increasing pretrial supervised release and building affordable housing near the jails.
THE
WEEK AHEAD
TUESDAY 10/22 The state Public Campaign Financing Commission is holding a hearing on Long Island, starting at 10 a.m. in Smithtown. The last scheduled hearing will be in Buffalo on Oct. 29.
INSIDE DOPE
The commission has to issue recommendations by Dec. 1 for setting up a system to publicly finance campaigns. Lawmakers could return to Albany before the end of the year if it tries to end fusion voting.
mated cost for building the new jails.
295 The proposed height, in feet,
of the new Brooklyn and Manhattan jails. The Queens and Bronx jails are both planned to be 195 feet.
0 The number of jails on Staten Island, both now and after the plan is implemented.
44 Months since then-New
York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito endorsed closing Rikers Island, setting the vote in motion.
- Jeff Coltin
THURSDAY 10/24
THURSDAY 10/24
The state Senate Higher Education Committee holds a hearing to discuss public higher education costs at 11:30 a.m. at Brooklyn College. Another will be held Oct. 28 at SUNY New Paltz.
All of the leading names in the NYC and state contracting scene are getting together at City & State’s 2019 Government Procurement Conference, starting at 9 a.m. at 226 W. 44th St. in Manhattan.
GREEN GRADES 6
CityAndStateNY.com
October 21, 2019
BY ZACH WILLIAMS
THE BEST AND WORST STATE LAWMAKERS ON THE ENVIRONMENT New York state lawmakers are getting high marks from a leading environmental group after they spent the session tackling climate change, toxic chemicals, water quality and other environmental issues. As a whole, Democrats did much better than Republicans in the legislative scorecard released by EPL/Environmental Advocates, the lobbying arm of Environmental Advocates of New York. The organization rated lawmakers from 0 to 100 based on their votes on more than two dozen bills.
NYS Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act Environmental Rights S.2072 A2064 PFAS-Free Firefighting Foam S.439-A A445A The Child Safe Products Act, S.501-B A6296A Chlorpyrifos Ban | S.5343 A2477B Oil and Natural Gas Drilling Prohibition | S.2316 A2572 Polluter Pays | S.3337-C A5477C Environmental Justice For All | S.2385 A1564 Environmental Justice Zones | S.181 A1779 Renewable Energy Retention Act | S.23 A1779 Preventing Overfishing | S.2317 + A2571 “Finger Lakes community preservation act” | S.2270-A A5029A It Makes WaterSense | S.354-A A2286 1,4-dioxane Ban | S.4389-B A6295A Protecting Vulnerable Species | S.5098 A6600 Preserving Communities from Overdevelopment and Sprawl (Ulster County) | S.6235 A129 Ocean Acidification Task Force | S.2411 A2573 Reduce Toxic Mercury in Light Bulbs | S.2139-B A2501A Dangerous Jewelry | S.4046 A6041 Paint Stewardship | S.4351 A6373 Cleaner Air for Kids | S.2890 A6358 Water Withdrawal Transparency | S.1724 A6244 Energy Star State Grants | S.31 A6599 Menstrual Product Ingredient Disclosure | S.2387-B A164B Electric Scooters and Bicycles with Electric Assist | S.5294A A7431B
FOR
AGAINST
Robin Schimminger might want to join the GOP The Western New York Democratic assemblyman notched a 68 on this year’s scorecard, which is a relatively decent score for a Republican, but might not impress his caucus colleagues when they reconvene in January. State Sen. Phil Boyle received the only perfect score among GOP lawmakers Believing in climate change and opposing oil drilling could help Boyle fend off challenges the Dems might throw at him in 2020. Plus, he gets to protect the planet! Ouch, a score of 30? Assemblyman Christopher Friend of the Southern Tier is no friend of the environment. Mercury in lightbulbs? Lead in jewelry? Acid all over the ocean? Too bad for Friend that there was no vote on legalizing a baby seal clubbing season. State Sen. Simcha Felder is now in environmentalists’ good graces The 2016 Oil Slick Award recipient’s efforts to join the Democratic conference helped his environmental score in addition to his political prospects this year. His score jumped from 68 in 2018 to 93 this year.
Democrats Republicans
STATE STATE SENATE SENATE
BILLS
Republican state Sen. George Amedore got the not-socoveted Oil Slick Award The lawmaker, who represents a district stretching from Albany to Poughkeepsie, distinguished himself by voting against climate change legislation and efforts to control toxic chemicals. But, whatever, someone’s got to protect the cherished chlorpyrifos industry. For some reason, he declined an interview request.
October 21, 2019
City & State New York
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A Q&A with state Senate Education Committee Chairwoman
SHELLEY MAYER Why are you hosting roundtable discussions across the state to discuss the state public school funding formula? We wanted to get on-theground experiences – rather than those from statewide organizations – with the Foundation Aid formula and with the challenges school districts face. So we’re having roundtables in Yonkers, Buffalo, Syracuse, Long Island and Queens. After that, a public hearing will be held in Manhattan on Dec. 3. We will be hearing from teachers, superintendents of large and small districts, members of boards of education, activists and PTAs.
What’s the goal for these discussions? I’m not sure whether we will write a report, whether we’ll come up with a bill, or whether we will wait for what the governor proposes in the budget and counter-propose something. We’ll meet as a conference and decide how we want to synthesize these recommendations. What did you learn at the first roundtable? It was wonderful to hear from some of our small rural districts in the Hudson Valley that have their own very unique set of challenges. One issue that came up was tax certioraris (where property
owners challenge their tax assessments, leading to less money for the local school district if the challenges are successful). These districts owe millions of dollars back that they have to take out of their budgets – and there are no additional funds for them. That’s a real challenge. Then there is the inadequacy of social workers, guidance counselors, art teachers and librarians.
An advocacy campaign including City & State First Read provides a targeted way to reach decision makers in New York government and politics. Campaigns Include:
ADVOCACY MESSAGING OPEN-HOUSE PROMOTIONS NEW HIRE ANNOUNCEMENTS Contact us at advertising@cityandstateny.com for advertising and sponsorship opportunities.
Advocates say the state still owes billions of dollars in funding for public schools, so does the formula need to change, or has the state just not delivered on its fair share? If we can’t fund it at its full anticipated funding level, then these inequities continue to be a problem, even if we recalibrate how we measure it. School funding has been a contentious issue between the governor and lawmakers. Any chance these roundtables will lead
to a peace treaty? One thing great about this new Democratic majority in the Senate is we’re willing to engage on this issue. We know it’s not personal. We may disagree with the governor about the law, but our job is to fight for the kids. I’m sure the governor wants to fight for kids. We will find some common ground. Now that Rep. Nita Lowey is not running for reelection, are you interested in running for her seat? I’ve been given a wonderful opportunity to represent my district and to take the lead on an issue that I’m passionate about. So I’m staying put.
Him? 8
CityAndStateNY.com
October 21, 2019
How New York City, of all places, elected Rudy Giuliani.
by A M A N D A L U Z H EN N I NG SA NTI AG O
P
THEN-MANHATTAN BOROUGH PRESIDENT David Dinkins won the 1989 mayoral race, beating Giuliani by just 2% – and Giuliani won the 1993 mayoral election by a similarly thin margin. Polling numbers from the 1989 election showed voters were largely unenthusiastic about both candidates. (Dinkins, who went on to become the city’s first black mayor, defeated three-term incumbent Mayor Ed Koch in the Democratic primary.) Giuliani, who had risen to prominence as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in the 1980s, wasn’t a natural campaigner. He was known for being stiff, lacking warmth – something he made an apparent effort to overcome while campaigning in 1993 – and was considered by some to be a one-issue candidate focused on crime. “I voted for Dinkins in ’89,” Fred Siegel, one of Giuliani’s strategists during the 1993 mayoral race, told City & State. “I reluctantly, at the last minute, ended up voting for Dinkins. I didn’t think Koch deserved another term and I thought Rudy (Giuliani) was running for sheriff.” Another impediment Giuliani faced was being a Republican in a city that overwhelmingly votes Democratic. This became somewhat less of a concern once Giuliani received an endorsement from the city’s Liberal Party when running for mayor in 1993, which gave Democrats a way to vote for him without pulling the lever for the GOP.
Dinkins had decades of political experience, although he had a reputation for being indecisive. Many thought Dinkins breaking the racial barrier at City Hall would have a unifying effect on the city. In office, however, Dinkins developed a reputation for being disengaged and ineffectual. Some felt he showed favoritism toward the city’s black community during a racially charged boycott of Korean American grocery stores in Flatbush, Brooklyn, when African American and Caribbean American rioters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, violently protested perceived governmental favoritism toward the area’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish population. Dinkins’ inaction gave the impression that he wasn’t up to the task of keeping the city under control. Even though crime went down ever so slightly under Dinkins, Giuliani made crime a major focal point of his second mayoral campaign.
MARK LENNIHAN/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK
RESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who once held the honorary title of “America’s mayor” when he led New York City, has tarnished his legacy with his apparent orchestration of a plot to pressure Ukraine into digging up dirt on one of the president’s political opponents. To make matters worse for Giuliani, it was revealed this month that two men associated with him and his Ukraine dealings were arrested and indicted on criminal charges for funneling foreign cash into U.S. elections. Two additional men have been arrested in connection with the case. Giuliani’s recent behavior raises the question of how he rose to prominence by winning over New York City’s mostly Democratic electorate. After surveying news clips from the late 1980s and early 1990s, speaking with city historians and one of Giuliani’s strategists, it seems his mayoral win in 1993 can be boiled down to five essential elements: faith lost in a seemingly ineffective mayor, a city desperate to curb crime, fraught race relations, the Crown Heights riots and a referendum to have Staten Island secede. It’s impossible to imagine Giuliani winning a citywide election today, but here’s how he did it back then.
October 21, 2019
City & State New York
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Fred Siegel, one of Rudy Giuliani’s strategists during his successful 1993 mayoral race, said that people had written New York City off as “ungovernable” in the early ’90s, and Giuliani gave voters “a sense of how it could be made governable again.”
IN 1990, NEW YORK CITY reported a record-high 2,605 homicides – the same year Dinkins took office. The city was frightened and looking for a reprieve. “There were more than 2,000 homicides a year in New York (in the 1990s) – they’re under 300 now,” said Kenneth T. Jackson, a history professor at Columbia University. “It’s a vast difference, though (crime) actually started to come down a little bit under Dinkins. The number of policemen in the city increased. Still, crime didn’t go down very much, just a little bit. The crime rate really went down under Giuliani.” But it wasn’t just crime. There was a general sense of unrest, especially among Hispanic and white voters, that the city was uncontrollable and that the general quality of life in the city had declined. “People had simply written New York off,” Siegel said. “There was a sense that it was finished. It was the ungovernable city. And (Giuliani) didn’t buy
that. He had a sense of how it could be made governable again – and he achieved it, which is quite extraordinary.” Giuliani had a successful and high-profile career as a federal prosecutor, where he took on organized crime, political corruption and malfeasance on Wall Street. His background in law gave many the impression that he was the right person to reform the wayward city. “I think Giuliani came across as a person who was a defender of law and order,” Jackson said. “In a way that he seems to have lost his bearing now, but that (law and order) was kind of his mantra. This person represented stability.” Giuliani had numerous ideas and proposals to crack down on the city’s persistent crime, which most notably included the death penalty for convicted murderers (which is not within the mayor’s jurisdiction), ending parole for violent offenders (also not within the mayor’s
CityAndStateNY.com
jurisdiction), putting school safety in the hands of the NYPD, cracking down on drug dealers and their customers, and ending aggressive panhandling, such as the notorious “squeegee men” who cleaned car windshields without permission and demanded payment for it. He also vowed to curtail funding for services that aided the homeless and limit stays at homeless shelters to 90 days. He convinced the city that he could actually implement a change in policing – which he did, for better and for worse. The former prosecutor also had a friendly relationship with the city’s police force, as demonstrated by his involvement in a raucous, booze-driven 1992 police rally on the steps of City Hall. The rally was organized in response to several issues that upset the NYPD, such as Dinkins’ refusal to approve the NYPD’s use of semiautomatic pistols,
inviting the family of a man killed by the NYPD to Gracie Mansion and the consideration of a proposal to retool the force’s existing review board – which was one of Dinkins’ campaign promises. Giuliani was present during the rally leading drunken hoards of off-duty police officers in chants and criticizing Dinkins’ administration. “They (the off-duty officers) were giving Dinkins the finger right in front of City Hall,” Jackson said. “And Giuliani was their candidate, no question.” The rally, led almost entirely by white officers, also signified the city’s palpable racial tensions during the time, between the city’s white and black communities. During the rally, officers used racial slurs to refer to Dinkins, chanting “the mayor’s on crack.” Some held signs that referred to Dinkins as a “washroom attendant” and depicted him as a racist caricature with bulging lips and an afro. Giuliani’s participation in the rally also highlights what has become more apparent in recent years: his undeniable racial biases. But at the time, it helped illuminate Dinkins’ inability to be the peacemaker his constituents had hoped he would be – which benefited Giuliani. IN 1993, RACE WAS alluded to but not directly addressed until President Bill Clinton gave a speech at a fundraiser in support of Dinkins’ reelection in September. Clinton insinuated that voters had an aversion to voting for Dinkins because of his race by saying that “too many of us are still too unwilling to vote for people who are different than we are.” In October 1993, Giuliani released an advertisement suggesting that Dinkins was using race to shame voters into voting for him. “The Dinkins campaign is trying to make this an election about race because they want to avoid the issue of competence,” Herman Badillo, the New
October 21, 2019
York City comptroller candidate on the Republican Party and Liberal Party lines at the time, said in Giuliani’s ad. The Republican candidate didn’t just use his advertisement to accuse Dinkins’ of “playing the race card,” he also used it to take advantage of white voters’ racial anxieties about casting a vote for Dinkins. An unidentified white voter in Canarsie, Brooklyn, admitted that she wouldn’t vote for any black candidate at the time, and told The New York Times that black people “have proven themselves to be a hostile race.” Giuliani’s strategy worked, according to Jackson. “It seemed to many people that under Mayor Dinkins’ leadership, the racial divide in New York City was becoming larger,” Jackson said. “And Giuliani seemed to be the person who would put a lid on racial disagreement.” Giuliani recognized that Dinkins had a majority of the city’s black vote in 1993 – though, many members of the black community were also left feeling disappointed Giuliani used racial by Dinkins’ leadership – so he put a resentment over lot of energy into trying to win over how David Dinkins handled the Crown some of the city’s many other ethnic Heights riots to his groups, such as the city’s Hispanic, advantage. Giuliani Jewish and ethnic white communigot 77% of white ties, such as Italian Americans and votes; Dinkins got 95% of black votes. Irish Americans. For example, he admonishing Dinkins for his ineffective leadership during the 1991 Crown Heights riots, which targeted Hasidic Jews. Though the riots happened two years prior to the mayoral election, Giuliani took advantage of the pain still felt within the neighborhood’s Hasidic Jewish community, making Dinkins’ faulty leadership during the riots one of the key focal points of his campaign. “I do not believe there would have been any confusion on the part of police in Crown Heights about when to make arrests,” Giuliani told a crowd of Jewish voters in 1993. “I believe if I were mayor of New York City, they would have made arrests at the first moment that a rock was thrown through a store window, a car was burned or a person was beaten up because they were Jewish or for any other reason.” Giuliani helped to sour Dinkins’ image and fostered the image of Dinkins being a weak leader, Daniel Soyer, a history professor at Fordham University, told City & State. A polling analysis from 1994 revealed that voters from all ethnic groups shifted slightly in Giuliani’s direction, compared to the 1989 election results. But the voting remained heavily racially polarized in 1993: Giuliani got 77% of the white vote and Dinkins got 95% of the black vote, according to exit polls. OTHER ETHNIC GROUPS may have been hesitant to back Giuliani, but a majority of the city’s white voters were more than enthusiastic about voting for the Republican candidate. Giuliani was very well received in predominantly white neighborhoods such as Bay Ridge, Brooklyn – and the whole of Staten Island. In fact, Staten Island is believed to have helped push Giuliani over the finish line and clinch his mayoral victory, thanks to the borough’s high voter turnout tied to a referendum proposing Staten Island secede from the rest of the city. About 20,000 more Staten Island voters showed up to vote in 1993 than in 1989. “There was a substantial increase in turnout in Staten Island, which went heavily in Rudy’s favor,” Siegel said. Of course, Staten Island did not secede, but what some would argue was the impetus for the secession movement – the city’s increasing nonwhite population – continued. In 1990, 43.2% of the city’s population was white, and in 2010 that number had dropped to 33.3%, according to census data. If you were to rerun the 1993 race with the same ethnic vote shares over the 2013 electorate, Giuliani would have lost. And if Giuliani attempted to run for mayor again today, he almost certainly wouldn’t win – and that’s not even taking his recent cable news antics into consideration.
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JOE MAJOR/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK
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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTER 226 WEST 44TH STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10036 THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2019 | 9:00AM-4:00PM Working with others brings in new ideas, drives innovation and creates space for better ways of working. Collaboration can act as a force multiplier, where the parties are greater than the sum of their parts. It can also help organizations tackle significant challenges. The COLLABORATIVE TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE will showcase how public and private sectors working closely together can innovate at speed and bring technological and business ideas that will truly help transform the government. PANEL TOPICS WILL INCLUDE: HOW THE HEALTHCARE AND EDUCATION SECTORS CAN CREATE HEALTHY NEIGHBORHOODS FINTECH IN NEW YORK TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIPS FOR PUBLIC SAFETY AND SECURITY NEW YORK GOVERNMENT: CHALLENGES & SOLUTIONS FOR KEEPING UP WITH EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY
FEATURED SPEAKERS JOHN PAUL FARMER, Chief Technology Officer, New York City MAHESH NATTANMAI, Chief Digital Health Strategist, New York State Department of Health MIKKO BAYLOSIS, Project Manager, Initatives NYCEDC MATTHEW HOMER, Executive Deputy Superintendent of Research and Innovation Division, New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) ASSEMBLYMAN RON KIM, Sponsor of Fintech legislation JESSICA TISCH, Deputy Commissioner for Information Technology, New York Police Department DEANNE CRISWELL, COMMISSIONER, New York City Emergency Management Department ASSEMBLYMAN CLYDE VANEL, Chairman, Internet and Technology Committee CORDELL SCHACHTER, Chief Technology Officer, New York City Department of Transportation RSVP at CityAndStateNY.com/Events For more information on programming and sponsorship opportunities, please contact Lissa Blake at lblake@cityandstateny.com
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October 21, 2019
WHAT’S LEFT? by R O S S B A R K A N
LEV RADIN/SHUTTERSTOCK
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The Working Families Party was founded by outsiders to make New York more progressive. Now it could be a victim of its own success.
N A BALMY NIGHT in September, Maurice Mitchell, the new national director of the Working Families Party, introduced a leading presidential contender to thousands of her delirious supporters. “Repeat after me: People power! People power!” Mitchell shouted to crowd thronging Washington Square Park. “In the past few months, the Working Families Party had a deliberative process that included state chapters, members and supporters. I couldn’t be prouder to say this morning we announced our support for (U.S.) Sen. Elizabeth Warren for the Democratic nomination!” Mitchell stepped back from the podium, his lips closed with satisfaction, as the crowd began to roar. For Warren, who entered the race as an underdog to household names like former Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the rally was an affirmation of her place in the top tier of the presidential field. For the WFP, it was something like an apotheosis: a once-fledgling political party, launched at a nadir for progressive politics, had arrived on the national stage, backing a lefty candidate who may go all the way. Mitchell’s blue and white WFP sticker, pasted over his heart, was visible for everyone to see. But all was not well, because nothing is ever so simple with the most prominent and powerful third party in New York’s history. The WFP’s decision to endorse Warren had enraged backers of Sanders, who was the party’s choice in 2016, when the self-described socialist launched an insurgent campaign against Hillary Clinton that captivated millions. Jacobin, a magazine that serves as the house organ for socialists and their preferred candidates, declared the WFP had “written itself out of history.” Leftists canceled their monthly donations to the party. WFP staffers were harassed online, enduring threats that were racist and sexist in nature. Anger festered among Sanders’ supporters as the WFP refused to say how exactly Warren won the internal vote. Half of the votes came from just 56 delegates on the national committee, while the other half were drawn from an estimated 10,000 dues-paying members and progressive activists. Some of the delegates lead large community organizations that belong to the party, like New York Communities for Change. These
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Thousands flocked to an Elizabeth Warren rally at Washington Square Park. The WFP took heat from leftists for backing Warren over Bernie Sanders.
Letitia James was an outsider when she won her New York City Council seat exclusively on the Working Families Party line. Now she’s the establishment-backed state attorney general.
verely undercut the party. Many powerful labor unions, once its lucrative backbone, left the party last year under pressure from the governor. And the leftist movements they helped build have arguably overtaken the party. Groups like the Democratic Socialists of America and Justice Democrats – with their lodestar, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – represent a new vanguard of the left: more radical, unapologetic and disdainful of the Democratic Party. The WFP, in many ways, could become a victim of its own success. Before the left’s recent ascent, they were the uber-progressives. The governor views them as enough of a player to try to end them. If a state commission set up to allow the public financing of political campaigns manages to kill fusion voting, the lifeblood of New York’s third parties, the WFP would hobble on having already won the war. “Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders dramatically reshaped the landscape of New York and national politics. When Ocasio-Cortez won, you saw the apex of that reconfiguration,” said Bob Master, a prominent labor leader and a founder of the WFP. “All of a sudden, you have a new set of actors who are independent of institutional foundations. And these actors are doing things that even a couple of years ago seemed unimaginable.”
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HE LEFTWARD MOVEMENT of New York politics represents exactly what the WFP sought to accomplish when it was founded in 1998. At the time, Rudy Giuliani was in his second term as mayor of New York City. George Pataki, another Republican, was the governor of New York, and Republicans had an ironclad grip on the state Senate. Conservative Republicans had taken control of Congress and passed a welfare reform bill that slashed benefits and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, who had declared “the era of big government is over.” The WFP, a brainchild of Dan Cantor and labor leaders such as Master, had its origins in something called the New Party, a third party founded in the early 1990s to be a home for progressive Democrats and organized labor frustrated with the Democrats’ rightward drift. The New Party had national ambitions: to bring fusion voting to every state in America, so left-leaning third parties could cross-endorse Democrats and – by threatening to withhold that endorsement – drive them left. Through legal challenges (most states bar fusion voting), the New Party hoped to eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court and have laws preventing fusion voting ruled unconsti-
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leaders largely preferred Warren. The fallout threatened to destabilize coalitions the WFP has forged and maintained over its 21-year existence. For all its boasts of increasing its national power – the WFP now organizes in 18 states, including Wisconsin, Colorado and Connecticut, plus Washington, D.C. – it is chiefly a New York force. In the past year and a half, the WFP has played a pivotal role in flipping the New York state Senate to Democratic control and nearly elected a democratic socialist, Tiffany Cabán, as Queens district attorney. The policy victories in Albany have been significant: new voting laws, driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants, stronger rent regulations and a far-reaching plan to combat climate change. “The WFP has effectively moved New York politics to the left and given a real voice to progressives,” said Karthik Ganapathy, a progressive consultant who has worked for Sanders and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. “They gave progressives an alternative vehicle to make their voices heard outside of the traditional Democratic Party machine that runs New York.” Yet the WFP inhabits a precarious moment. Its mortal enemy, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is alleged to be behind an ongoing effort to end fusion voting in New York, which could se-
City & State New York
“OCCUPY WALL STREET AND BERNIE SANDERS DRAMATICALLY RESHAPED THE LANDSCAPE OF NEW YORK AND NATIONAL POLITICS. WHEN OCASIO-CORTEZ WON, YOU SAW THE APEX OF THAT RECONFIGURATION.”
speech at a Lower East Side pizzeria. In the audience was a young political operative named Bill de Blasio, who would hitch his political fortunes to the WFP in the coming years. The votes continued to roll in late into the night and the WFP narrowly cleared the threshold, securing its place on the ballot for the first time. As a political party, it would have a ballot line to lend to Democrats and gain the ability to spend much more aggressively on its endorsed candidates. The victory had even greater symbolic value. For decades, New York had been home to important progressive third parties, fueled largely by organized labor. In the 1930s, the American Labor Party was New York City’s social justice conscience, battling with Tammany Hall to help elect Fiorello La Guardia as mayor. At its peak, the party enjoyed a neighborhood presence to rival the Democrats, with thriving political clubs across the city. The collapse of the American Labor Party during the anti-Communist 1940s and 1950s gave way to another the WFP predecessor: the Liberal – BOB MASTER, Party. Founded by labor leaders to be A WFP FOUNDER an anti-Communist alternative for the left, the Liberal Party was influential in the 1960s and 1970s, helping to elect important figures like New York City Mayor John Lindsay. It also controversially contributed to some conservative Republican victories – including Ronald Reagan for president and Alfonse tutional, but it lost at the Supreme Court in D’Amato for U.S. Senate in 1980 – by endorsing its own candidates for those offices in1997, effectively killing the party. In 1998, to gain party status in New York, stead of the Democratic nominees. By the 1990s, the Liberal Party had cethe WFP needed to secure 50,000 votes in a gubernatorial election. Their only option was to mented its move rightward, backing Giuliani back the Democratic candidate, Peter Vallone for mayor and morphing into a corrupSr., a conservative Democrat who, as speak- tion-plagued patronage mill. Its transformaer of the New York City Council, had worked tion created an opening for the WFP. closely with Giuliani. It would be the first of several seemingly contradictory alliances the ILL LIPTON, the WFP’s New WFP would forge to protect its livelihood. York state director and one of “Labor didn’t really have as much clout in its longest-tenured staffers, said, the Democratic Party at the time as it should “You can’t have a fight between have had,” said Sal Albanese, a former Demothe left and Democrats with Recratic member of the City Council who ran unpublicans in control. We formed successfully for mayor in 1997, 2013 and 2017. this institution to challenge that.” Along with Master, Albanese pushed for the The party changed New York by electing idea of a third party that would center the con- more Democrats who cared about raising cerns of private and public sector labor unions, the minimum wage, beefing up tenant probuilding around an agenda of raising wages for tections and creating a fairer criminal justice workers and combating government spending system. The effort began in earnest in 2001, cutbacks. The party would also include influ- when the WFP successfully backed a small ential community organizations committed to number of New York City Council members liberal causes, like ACORN. “We put a ground in Democratic primaries, including James operation together, urging people to vote on Sanders Jr. in Queens. It was not a major playthe WFP line,” Albanese said. er in that year’s mayoral race – billionaire On election night, Vallone lost to Pataki and Michael Bloomberg would pull off the upset it appeared the WFP would not garner 50,000 over Mark Green – and de Blasio himself was votes. Master stood up to give a concession elected to the City Council. But the ground-
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work was being laid for a legislative takeover. Unlike other third parties, the WFP would mostly influence elections by supporting progressive-minded Democrats in primaries. In the general election, winning candidates appeared on the ballot line for a handful of extra votes. Each cycle, more WFP-friendly Democrats joined the City Council. There was the future speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, and the future state attorney general, Letitia James, who were elected in the next couple elections. James was unique for the circumstances of her win: one of the rare candidates to triumph exclusively on the WFP line in a oneof-a-kind special election to replace a slain City Council member. In 2009, the wave crested much higher: the WFP-backed insurgents Jumaane Williams, Jimmy Van Bramer and Daniel Dromm won Democratic primaries and arrived in the City Council, along with Brad Lander, another close ally, and Deborah Rose. De Blasio, a top-priority candidate for the WFP, was the new public advocate. John Liu, another the WFP-endorsed Democrat, was elected city comptroller, becoming New York’s first Asian American elected citywide. Beyond the five boroughs, the victories were piling up. In 2004, the WFP threw its full weight behind Democrat David Soares, who unseated the more conservative Albany County district attorney in a primary. Soares ran on reforming New York’s draconian Rockefeller drug laws, which brought steep, mandatory prison sentences for people convicted of drug crimes. Not long after Soares’ win, state lawmakers voted to significantly soften the laws. The dramatic Soares victory mattered for another reason, one that hangs over the WFP today as the state Public Campaign Financing Commission threatens to tie the end of fusion voting to creating a system of publicly financed campaigns. Until now, the party has been allowed to spend virtually unlimited amounts of cash on favored candidates, in full coordination with the candidates’ campaigns. A 2006 state Supreme Court case upheld the WFP’s lavish spending on behalf of Soares, striking down limitations the state Board of Elections had placed on party expenditures during primaries. The WFP’s cash reserves, fed at that time by unions, could be put to full use. Meanwhile, the WFP would make the sort of alliances it hopes history will forget. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, now the state Senate majority leader, was not a WFP candidate when she first ran for the Senate in 2004, losing by just 18 votes. The WFP endorsed her Republican opponent, Nicholas Spano. Spano was more labor-friendly than the typical Republican; when Stewart-Cousins ran again in 2006, the WFP stayed neutral, rather than back her outright. Though the WFP would work enthusiastically to retake control of the state Senate in
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HOW THE WFP COULD GO EXTINCT It all hinges on the future of fusion voting. By Rebecca C. Lewis
October 21, 2019
The WFP backed Jumaane Williams for City Council and when he ran for lieutenant governor alongside Cynthia Nixon. Now he’s public advocate, the second-highest office in New York City.
The Working Families Party is no stranger to headlines – lately, it’s been making news for its support of fusion voting, which may be on the chopping block, depending on what the state Public Campaign Financing Commission decides to do. Ostensibly, the commission is meant to create, as its name suggests, a public campaign finance system for state elected positions, but it could also tackle fusion voting under the statute that created the commission. So what is the WFP, and how exactly does the third party work? Here’s a handy guide to help make sense of the minor party and its work in New York. What makes the WFP a party? In New York, a party gets official designation if its candidate for governor received at least 50,000 votes. When this happens, the party goes from being simply an organization to an actual party and receives the perks that go with it, including a party committee, which has a much higher contribution limit than normal committees, and a housekeeping committee, which is used for expenses related to running the party and has no contribution limits. Party committees are also able to make unlimited transfers to its candidates.
Why does it want to keep fusion voting? The WFP generally runs candidates through fusion voting, giving its ballot line to Democrats it supports through a Wilson Pakula, which enables a party to allow a nonparty member to appear its ballot line. This is especially true for gubernatorial races, when the WFP cross-endorses the Democratic candidate, ensuring that its candidate will receive the necessary 50,000 votes for the party to retain its automatic ballot access and remain an official party. The party also prides itself on not being a spoiler thanks to fusion voting – it can run candidates and keep its status while not risking splitting the progressive vote and potentially allowing a conservative candidate to win. The question of whether the WFP could keep its party status without fusion voting remains unclear. The party has only 41,633 active registered members statewide, but the Green Party, which has about 15,000 fewer active members, always runs its own gubernatorial candidate and constantly receives enough votes. However, if fusion voting is eliminated, the WFP may be reluctant to run its own candidates for fear of splitting the liberal vote. What is the state WFP’s relationship with the national party? The WFP originated in New York – whose state chapter remains the most prominent and powerful – in 1998. The national party, as well as different state chapters, came later. The New York chapter, led by Bill Lipton, has a state committee that votes on whom it wants to endorse, since that person is usually a nonparty member. The WFP gives its ballot line to that person, a move that theoretically should be set in stone before Democratic primaries, but often includes a workaround to give the line to someone else if necessary. A similar process happens at the national level, when party leadership and party members vote on which candidate to endorse.
2008, playing decisive roles in electing Democrats on Long Island and in the North Country, the liberal third party would triangulate too. Labor unions needing favors from the Republican-controlled state Senate would back the GOP over Democrats, and the WFP, loathe to alienate its labor allies, would do the same in certain cases. “They were supportive of Joe Bruno when he was the Republican (state Senate) majority leader for many years,” said a labor leader who worked with the WFP at the time and requested anonymity to speak frankly. “They refused to support Democratic candidates in marginal districts.” By the 10-year anniversary of its founding, the formula for the WFP’s success was quite clear: unite influential labor unions with party activists, undergirding it all with a highly effective canvassing operation. This for-profit operation would have a formal name, Data and Field Services, and endorsed candidates would pay for its services. In 2009, one of City & State’s predecessor publications,
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What does the party stand for? The Working Families Party has roots with both labor unions and community groups, although its union backers have decreased considerably in recent years. (More on that later.) More than anything, though, the WFP is a progressive third party whose support is seen as a candidate’s left-wing bona fides.
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City Hall, published an investigative series about the WFP’s relationship with Data and Field Services, prompting federal and local investigations. After the 2009 cycle, Randy Mastro, a Republican attorney, filed a lawsuit alleging the WFP was circumventing campaign finance laws by offering its services to endorsed candidates at illegally reduced rates. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York launched a probe as well, though no charges were filed. Enough damage was done. In 2011, the WFP reached a settlement with Mastro, paying $100,000 to cover his legal fees and agreeing to shut down Data and Field Services. Its prized outside canvassing arm was no more.
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HE WFP, THROUGH necessity and savvy, has reinvented itself several times over, morphing internally as its façade has remained largely unchanged from its founding days. In the 2000s, it was the party of organized labor,
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with a for-profit canvassing arm attached. In 2010, Andrew Cuomo was elected governor, forever altering the party’s trajectory. In New York City politics, all would be well. The 2013 cycle was triumphant: de Blasio was elected mayor, James became public advocate and the City Council chose Mark-Viverito as its speaker. The City Council, more conservative in the Bloomberg years, went into full progressive bloom. A new law guaranteeing paid sick days to city workers, a long-standing priority for the WFP, was passed within weeks of de Blasio taking office, after Bloomberg and his allies had bottled it up for a decade. There were wrinkles, however, that hinted at trouble ahead. De Blasio’s victory in the Democratic mayoral primary was not a product of the WFP’s foresight, because the party’s labor affiliates could not agree on a candidate to endorse, forcing the party to remain neutral. Those close to Mark-Viverito credited 1199SEIU, the all-powerful health care workers union, with twisting arms on the City
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Council to elect her, not the WFP. And then there was Cuomo. The governor, a centrist in the New Democrat mold, called for capping property tax increases, expanding charter schools and accepted bipartisan rule that would keep Republicans in power. The state’s heavyweight unions, such as 1199SEIU, warmed to Cuomo – or at least learned to properly fear him. The WFP 2.0. was born in 2014, when progressive activists backed Fordham University law professor Zephyr Teachout’s primary campaign against Cuomo. The party’s labor union affiliates sided with Cuomo, while the party’s grassroots members argued for Teachout. In the end, to guarantee 50,000 votes in the general election, the WFP endorsed Cuomo. A deal was struck with the help of de Blasio, who enjoyed a closer relationship with Cuomo at the time: The WFP would endorse Cuomo if the governor agreed to back a host of liberal priorities, including raising the minimum wage and campaigning for Democratic state Senate candidates. In the end, Republicans kept control of the Senate that fall, riding a national wave. Cuomo hardly helped the Democrats at all. He resented having to bargain with WFP at all, which he dismissed as a “fringe” party. Cuomo’s office did not return requests for comment about his history with WFP. The Teachout dilemma, for the first time, would also throw the WFP’s transactional nature into the public eye. That fall – as part of a deal that ultimately fell apart to reunite state Senate Democrats with a breakaway faction of Democrats, the Independent Democratic Conference – the WFP withdrew its support from two Democrats running against IDC members. “I have been turned off by how transactional they have been – not just in my case but in many other instances as well,” said Liu, one of the candidates who lost the WFP’s backing in 2014 and lost the primary. “I understand their need to be transactional for survival’s sake, but that also calls into question the foundation of their validity.” In 2018, the WFP finally spurned Cuomo during the Democratic gubernatorial primary and selected Cynthia Nixon as its nominee, even though the WFP eventually switched back to Cuomo after he won the Democratic nomination. Under pressure from Cuomo, labor unions began abandoning the WFP. The unions had been a consistent source of cash and ground troops. Without them, the WFP would have to hunt for new sources of revenue.
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HAT IS THE WFP? On one hand, that’s an easy question to answer: a progressive political party that, these days, only cross-endorses Democrats. But the WFP doesn’t organize political clubs, like the old American Labor Party, and doesn’t encourage too many of its supporters to register as members of the party, lest they sacrifice clout in Democratic primaries. Some major unions have remained in the party, including the New York State Nurses Association and New York State United Teachers. Their power today derives from how they serve as a nerve center for the professional left. The WFP itself can’t deploy 100 people to knock on doors, but member organizations like Make the Road New York, Citizen Action of New York and New York Communities for Change can. Activist energy no longer exclusively resides within the WFP. Even though its rank-and-file membership may outnumber the Democratic Socialists of America’s, the more than 5,500 members of the democratic socialist organization’s New York City branch are far more willing to volunteer for favored candidates. Grassroots organizations, including the Indivisible chapters, True Blue NY and No IDC NY, arose to furiously challenge the Republican Party’s grip on the state Senate. They set their sights on the eight Independent Democratic Conference members who had formed a power-sharing agreement with the GOP, confronting them at raucous town halls and alerting formerly apolitical neighbors to their existence. Though the WFP had been a critic of the IDC and Cuomo, it was the new grassroots organizations that initially led the effort to oust the IDC. Activists involved credit the WFP with lending direction to the anti-IDC movement, which was led by people unfamiliar with the labyrinthine nature of New York politics. “They would host meetings with various grassroots leaders very early on,” said Susan Kang, a founder of No IDC NY. “Most of us who jumped in early were new to state politics. We didn’t have the institutional knowledge. We didn’t know who the key people to speak to were.” The WFP pulled lists of registered Democrats so the freshly formed organizations could start calling voters long before the primary. On behalf of the IDC challengers, the party paid for staff, digital ad campaigns and rebranded the IDC members as “Trump Democrats.” The WFP evolved, in essence, into the pro bono political consultant of a movement that could exist independent of the party. In 2018, the WFP 2.0. hit a new peak. Six out of the eight anti-IDC candidates won their races. Left-wing novice Julia Salazar, aided by the WFP and DSA, unseated Democratic state
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Sen. Martin Malavé Dilan, who was perceived by some as too close to the real estate industry. Though the insurgents they supported for governor and lieutenant governor, Cynthia Nixon and Jumaane Williams, were unsuccessful, their campaigns won plaudits from the grassroots left, the very people the WFP now relied on most, and Williams came surprisingly close to upsetting Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul. There was, however, one notable missed opportunity for the party: A 28-year-old former Bernie Sanders organizer was running for Congress against the Queens Democratic Party boss, Joseph Crowley. DSA, Our Revolution and Justice Democrats had formed a
doors daily for Cabán, the WFP was the trusted elder statesman of the resurgent left. When a new public financing commission, with Cuomo’s tacit blessing, began to consider whether to ban fusion voting in New York, the DSA – which would be entirely unimpacted – released a statement in support of keeping fusion voting. With or without fusion voting, the WFP has left a permanent mark on the political firmament. It has now existed longer than the American Labor Party, its legacy secure. “You could see it as a successful extension of the strategies around since the big growth of unions in the 1930s,” said Joshua Freeman, a professor of
“I UNDERSTAND THEIR NEED TO BE TRANSACTIONAL FOR SURVIVAL’S SAKE, BUT THAT ALSO CALLS INTO QUESTION THE FOUNDATION OF THEIR VALIDITY.” – STATE SEN. JOHN LIU, A FORMER WFP CANDIDATE
coalition that was generating buzz. The candidate’s visage was popping up everywhere from widely distributed campaign literature to national news outlets. But the WFP’s leadership was wary of endorsing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whom they hardly knew. Crowley may have been a moderate who supported the Iraq War, but he had close relationships with organized labor and was on track to someday become speaker of the House. In a year of warfare against Cuomo and the IDC, the WFP didn’t believe picking a fight with Crowley was worth their time. Crowley took the WFP endorsement and went down with it. As Ocasio-Cortez’s celebrity grew, the WFP was stuck with Crowley on its ballot line, lacking legal options to kick him off.
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HIS YEAR MAY BE remembered as another pivot point for the WFP. Again, they played grizzled political consultant and benefactor to another movement that began without them, endorsing Tiffany Cabán, a young public defender and DSA member, for Queens district attorney. When the campaign was struggling to raise cash, the WFP hired a veteran campaign manager and paid for other field organizers. The major labor unions backed the front-runner, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz. After a monthslong recount and court battle, Katz won by a mere 55 votes. To the democratic socialists who knocked
labor history at the CUNY Graduate Center. If Warren is elected the next president, the WFP would have its first White House ally, which could yield all kinds of clout and spoils. But there are those on the left, dedicated to Sanders’ democratic socialism, who will long remember the day the WFP broke with them. It’s unclear what the WFP can do for a Warren campaign that has already raised a lot of money and spent heavily on building its field operation in early primary states. Even WFP-friendly activists have quietly questioned the wisdom of wading so early into a contest between two candidates beloved by the left, as well as the party’s muddled defense of the decision to endorse Warren in the days after the announcement. Kang, the anti-IDC activist who helped convince the DSA to back Cynthia Nixon for governor a year ago, canceled her monthly donation to the WFP, redirecting it to the Sanders campaign instead. In 2020, the liberal grassroots organizations of New York are plotting primary challenges to members of the Assembly deemed insufficiently progressive. Whether the WFP wants to partake in that battle, threatening its relationship with the Assembly speaker, remains to be seen. The WFP 3.0., with its new national renown, may be its strongest iteration yet – or the version that loses the zeitgeist altogether.
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Ross Barkan is a writer, journalist and former state Senate candidate.
DIVERSITY ANDREW F. KAZMIERSKI/SHUTTERSTOCK
October 21, 2019
IN MANY OTHER CITIES and towns in the United States, racial minorities are actually a minority of the population, and diversity is just a buzzword. In New York City, it’s different. Less than one-third of the city’s residents are white. Almost as many residents are Hispanic. The city is nearly a quarter black, and more than one-eighth Asian. It is as the city’s first black mayor, David Dinkins, deemed it, “a gorgeous mosaic.” But of course, diversity isn’t an end in itself. While
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New York City and state’s diversity – of race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality and more – is something to celebrate, it’s merely a starting point when it comes to politics and policy. Whether it’s through proportional representation, or where New York spends its money – such as on MWBE programs – advocates and elected officials are committed to ensuring that the Empire State is a place where minorities don’t just live – but thrive.
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October 21, 2019
New York City has never had a female mayor. Will that change?
by E M M A W H I T F O R D
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S THE TOP TIER of 2021 New York City mayoral candidates begins to solidify – among them two borough presidents, the New York City comptroller and City Council speaker – one commonality is obvious: They’re all men. The two women in the race so far, Bronx nonprofit director Dianne Morales and contracting company CEO Joycelyn Taylor, lack name recognition and political experience. That’s not to say strategists, consultants and political veterans are ruling out the possibility of New York City’s first “herroner,” tossing out names like veterans of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration Maya Wiley and Alicia Glen, former City Council Speakers Christine Quinn and Melissa Mark-Viverito, and former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz. But while observers say these women could shake up the race if they got in it, it’s crickets so far. Of the group, only Moskowitz and Glen responded to our request for comment – with a definitive “no comment.” Experts on the involvement of women in politics say the dearth of competitive candidates isn’t surprising, considering women are underrepresented in New York City’s elected offices, including the City Council. Currently, only 12 of the 51 City Council seats are held by women. “You don’t have people standing at bat waiting to come up and swing,” said Liz
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Abzug, daughter of 1977 mayoral candidate and former Rep. Bella Abzug, and president of the Bella Abzug Leadership Institute, which provides young women with professional mentoring. “And unfortunately, because of the intensity of this race and the powerful interests that one has to deal with – while connecting with very varied constituencies in five boroughs – it is very tough.” Ravi Gupta, co-founder of Arena, a consultancy that worked with challengers to Albany’s Republican-aligned Independent Democratic Conference in 2018, also identified filling the mayoral pipeline with women in local office as the long-term answer to gender parity in City Hall. “It’s our responsibility to help support as many women as possible running down-ticket,” Gupta said. “That’s obviously the bench for higher office.” Though the election is still two years away, insiders agreed that whoever jumps in must do so soon. “You have to start running now, running all over the boroughs,” Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer told City & State. (Brewer herself has been approached to run for mayor – “people are very kind, they ask me all day long” – but says she won’t. She is reportedly consider-
ing a return to the City Council.) Among the men, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams have yet to officially announce, but have been fundraising competitively. Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. filed to run in July 2018. New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson announced in January he was exploring a run for the office. (New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams has been rumored as one potential late entrant.) Fundraising is one major reason to jump in early. Although she’s never run for office, Glen would have an immediate network thanks to her work at Goldman Sachs and at City Hall, where she spearheaded de Blasio’s housing plan. “Unfortunately everything in this town is controlled by real estate interests, and I think you have to be able to deal with them,” Abzug said.
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RBLFMR, LEV RADIN/SHUTTERSTOCK; ARMAN DZIDZOVIC
From left, rumors have swirled about Melissa MarkViverito, Maya Wiley and Christine Quinn entering the 2021 mayoral race. None of them have officially declared.
Sharon Nelson, who worked for thenNew York City Mayor David Dinkins and now runs an organization for women entering politics called Civically Re-Engaged Women, added that private sector management experience could be an asset. She likes Moskowitz, who is CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools. “(As a CEO), you have to exercise management, ideas and leadership,” Nelson told City & State. “And I think that’s really the main issue when you’re talking about doing an executive job.” Abzug, who supported Quinn’s 2013 run, argued that the current president and CEO of Win, a nonprofit provider of homeless services, could also have a shot in 2021. Quinn has proven fundraising ability, thick skin and wide connections, Abzug said. (Another private sector manager, Jennifer Jones Austin of Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, has been mentioned as a possible candidate. “That’s a rumor,” she told City & State. “I operate a lot on signs, and I haven’t gotten the sign telling me that that’s what I’m going to do next.”) In the media capital of the world, being a strong public speaker and charismatic presence on TV also matters. For these reasons, Brewer said that she likes Wiley, a New School professor and former counsel to de Blasio and former chairwoman of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board. “She’s fabulous,” Brewer said. “She’s on CNN a lot, so she’s got a lot of
poise. She’s a brilliant attorney.” Michael Oliva of Sykes Global Communications, whose firm works primarily with female candidates and counts Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Yvette Clarke among its recent clients, agreed about Wiley’s potential. “She gets a lot of earned (media) exposure,” he said. Candidates like Wiley and Glen may suffer, though, as Quinn did in 2013, from being too closely associated with de Blasio. “We’ll see people shadowboxing the current mayor,” Gupta predicted. Oliva is also skeptical of the chances that Quinn and Mark-Viverito have, based on their unsuccessful campaigns for mayor and public advocate, respectively. In 2013, Abzug recalled, Quinn “was viewed as more under the wing of Bloomberg,” which harmed her in that year’s Democratic primary. Abzug argued, though, that Quinn was always independent-minded and could be perceived as such if she ran this time. Attributes viewed as assets by some are liabilities to others. To the left wing of the Democratic Party, résumés stacked with Wall Street and charter school credentials, and/or close ties to the real estate industry, are causes for concern. “In my personal opinion, any challenger who is taking money from the real estate industry is not a credible challenger in a city like New York where people are being evicted, pushed out
and made homeless every day by that industry,” said Mia Pearlman, co-founder of Lefty, a new consulting firm backing 2020 candidates for state and federal office. Morales, one of the two declared women in the race, told City & State that she will not be taking real estate money. But drawing more leftist candidates into the mayoral pipeline will require structural reforms as well, according to some activists who work on improving gender and racial diversity among elected officials. Cat Almonte, a de Blasio alumna and managing director of The Broad Room, a new nonprofit training women and nonbinary activists, ticked off some legislative priorities. “Things like public campaign financing,” she said. “It’s hard to take at least six months with no pay (to run), ‘Medicare for All,’ student loan forgiveness – just breaking down obstacles that are preventing marginalized New Yorkers from running in the first place.”
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Emma Whitford is a freelance reporter in Brooklyn.
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THE WAY CLEARING FOR October 21, 2019
City & State New York
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MWBEs
This year, lawmakers made it easier to give government contracts to businesses owned by women and minorities. Will it work? by Z A C H W I L L I A M S
FLAMINGO IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCK
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EW YORK CITY is a majority-minority city. More than half of New York state residents are women. But white men own the vast majority of companies that receive government contracts in the city and in the state. And though legislation to benefit minority- and women-owned business enterprises made huge strides in the past year, MWBE advocates said much remains to be done to even the playing field in government procurement. In the final days of the state legislative session, lawmakers renewed and expanded New York City and state’s MWBE programs, which aim to give businesses owned by women and racial minorities a bigger share of government contracts. The changes signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in July extended the state MWBE program through 2024, along with broadening eligibility rules, streamlining procurement processes, creating mentorship programs, increasing transparency and tightening exceptions for waivers to MWBE requirements. The new laws represent big changes to the state’s MWBE rules, which affect both state and city efforts to meet their MWBE goals. Key officials said they plan to advocate for additional changes once lawmakers return to Albany in early 2020 to a program that proponents said is about much more than government dollars and cents.
“The beauty of what MWBE is is that it speaks to what is America,” said state Sen. James Sanders Jr. of Queens, the chairman of the Committee on Banks who led efforts on MWBE legislation in the chamber. “You have an old boys network that basically has had (government contracts) forever and they are using every argument that you can think of to keep it that way.”
The city and state are both pursuing goals of having 30% of government contracts go to MWBEs. Cuomo announced on Oct. 2 that the state reached 29.13% – more than $2.93 billion worth – in state contracting. New York City reached 19% as of October 2018 and has not provided more recent numbers. The city only has until 2021 to reach its 30% goal an-
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October 21, 2019
THE RACE TO 30%
STATE MWBE CONTRACTS* NEW YORK CITY MWBE CONTRACTS**
*SOURCE: EMPIRE STATE DEVELOPMENT **SOURCE: MAYOR’S OFFICE OF CONTRACT SERVICES, DEPARTMENT OF SMALL BUSINESS SERVICES
nounced in 2016 by Mayor Bill de Blasio, but his administration said in July that certifying 9,000 MWBEs represented substantial progress toward that goal. “We have the firms, we have the available capacity to perform the work,” said Jonnel Doris, senior adviser and director of the Mayor’s Office of Minority and Women-Owned Businesses. “We’re moving in the right direction.” Critics of MWBE requirements have argued that minority and female contractors lack the capacity to take on the largest types of state or city business, such as gigantic public works projects. New changes to state law will allow larger MWBEs to get a piece of the action by raising the cap on the personal net worth of eligible business owners from $3.5 million to $15 million. “That will give these smaller businesses, the MWBEs, an opportunity to get higher revenues,” said Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte of Brooklyn and chairwoman of an oversight subcommittee on MWBEs, “which in turn would allow them to do bigger jobs in the future.” Another change allows government agencies to have more leeway in allocating contracts to MWBEs by raising the minimum size of contracts that can be awarded in New York state without a formal procurement process from $200,000 to $500,000. Another bill passed by lawmakers created a pilot mentorship program in the state Dormitory Authority, a public authority that builds facilities throughout the state on behalf of local governments. New legislation allows for up to $20 million of Dormitory Authority revenue to go toward providing technical services and other assistance to MWBEs to make them more competitive. One bill proposed by Bichotte and Sanders and signed into law by Cuomo creates
an MWBE mentorship program within the New York City Department of Design and Construction. A second bill sponsored by the same lawmakers increases reporting requirements among public agencies and contractors and requires that the latter show they made a good faith effort to find an MWBE for subcontracting work before a waiver from MWBE requirements would be allowed. “A lot of the big companies say, ‘Oh, we don’t have enough waivers ... and the MWBEs are saying: ‘Well, you guys are issuing too many waivers, so it’s not fair,’” Bichotte said. “Now we have a publicized process where, if a waiver is granted, if a waiver is mandatory, it’s published – what company, what bid it was, whatever.” Despite progress in recent years made on reaching their respective 30% goals, both the city and state have a long way to go before MWBEs have a share of government
“You have an old boys network that basically has had it forever and they are using every argument that you can think of to keep it that way.” –state Sen. James Sanders Jr.
contracts that proportionately represents the demographics of New York. Near the top of the city’s legislative wishlist in the upcoming year is getting state authorization for the city to use owner-controlled insurance programs and contractor-controlled insurance programs – insurance policies held during construction projects. “It helps spread the insurance costs to the project team, and lower project costs for the agency and for a particular MWBE,” Doris said. “Generally speaking, MWBEs have higher premiums because they’re smaller businesses, and that’s a challenge to profitability and also making them be able to scale their particular business.” With the state budget process set to kick off in January, funding for “a big capacity program across all agencies” to expand procurement for MWBEs is also going to be at the forefront of legislative efforts, Bichotte said. MWBEs could also benefit from additional mentorship programs in other state agencies, including the Health Department, Education Department and the Office of General Services, she said. And Empire State Development, which certifies MWBEs on behalf of the state, could also benefit from additional resources to cut down on the backlog of businesses awaiting certification and technical services, Bichotte added. Cuomo incorporated the MWBE issue into the state budget proposal he unveiled last year, shortly after promising the “most progressive agenda this state has ever seen, period” in his third inaugural address. Bichotte and Sanders successfully argued, however, that the MWBE proposals Cuomo included in the budget should be taken out. They would have expanded and renewed the state MWBE program, which is based on the state’s Article 15-a law, but the lawmakers were hoping to do more to change both the city and state MWBE programs, even if it delayed action on the issue for months. Cuomo and lawmakers were able to strike a deal in the final days of the legislative session that included compromises on issues like loosening eligibility requirements and increasing the cap on personal net worth, more than a year after Cuomo vetoed a bill that would have eliminated the cap altogether. Now with the state closing in on its 30% MWBE goal, there is a possibility that Cuomo will want to up the ante on the issue, as he did before, when the state met a 20% goal he had set in his first term. What he proposes in his state budget early next year will set the tone on MWBEs and other issues for the rest of the year. Cuomo, perhaps more than any other state official, has never had trouble invoking the state motto “Excelsior” – Latin for “ever upward.” Only time will tell how much that will apply to MWBEs.
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October 21, 2019
RODNEYSE BICHOTTE
are typically a little bit higher. Now when MWBEs are bidding, there’s a 10% bid credit.
CHAIRWOMAN, ASSEMBLY SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF MINORITY AND WOMEN-OWNED BUSINESS ENTERPRISES
Does that mean they can be 10% more expensive? Yes.
AN EDGE IN BIDDING What got accomplished during this past state legislative session on the issue of MWBEs? There was the extension of Article 15, (which authorizes the state MWBE program). We also got an expanded New York City MWBE program, and we passed a bill to approve a pilot mentor program in the Dormitory Authority of the state of New York. In New York City, we addressed increasing the threshold to $500,000 on contracts that are exempt from a formal procurement process and the Department of Design and Construction also now has a mentorship capacity program. We also lifted the personal net worth cap on MWBE owners to $15 million. This will give smaller MWBEs an opportunity to get higher revenue, which in turn will allow them to do bigger jobs in the future.
Are there other ways that smaller MWBEs are gaining a competitive edge? Things like bid credits were huge. A lot of times when the state is looking for what is the best bid, they look for the lowest competitive bid. But MWBEs are typically smaller, and they provide a different type of value: hiring minorities and women, being able to create jobs in their communities, building wealth and all that stuff. Because they are smaller scale, they don’t have the opportunity to take advantage of economies of scale. When you’re a larger company, you can, for example, buy a whole bunch of supplies at a cheaper rate. MWBEs can’t do that. So their costs
How about the certification process? The problem at the state level was it took forever to get certified. So we expanded the time that you’re certified from three years to five years. That way there’s not a backlog of people renewing. The second thing is we gave Empire State Development 21 days to respond to an applicant on anything that is wrong with an application. Once everything is submitted, it should not take more than 45 days to get a completed certification. Most of the conversation about MWBEs is either about the state or New York City. What about other cities? Schenectady and Buffalo are two cities that have been active in terms of having some form of an MWBE program. They’re nothing like New York City, obviously. But they have mentorship and some technical service. It’s not as formal and as comprehensive as the New York City program.
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City & State New York
JONNEL DORIS
We got authorization for mentorship programs for construction, particularly around construction services – that is at the city Department of Design and Construction. We’re beginning to work through building that out and going through the authorization that we just received. Secondly, the Legislature increased the city’s discretionary spending cap from $150,000 to $500,000, on par with what the state is doing. The last piece that we were able to get was a prequalify list. MWBEs have to be qualified (and) they have to have the ability and capacity to do the work, but these tools are critical to helping us advance the program.
SENIOR ADVISER AND DIRECTOR OF THE NEW YORK CITY MAYOR’S OFFICE OF MINORITY AND WOMEN-OWNED BUSINESSES
WHAT THE CITY WANTS How’s the city been doing on MWBEs in the past year? We haven’t released fully all of our numbers for the last fiscal year. We have increased the number of our firms to help address the 30% goal. We have hit that big target of 9,000 firms certified. So we have the firms. We have the available capacity to perform the work. We’re also doing better than we reported last time on utilization. So we’re moving in the right direction. The city bases its 30% goal on the projected value of a contract, but New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer says this overstates the use of MWBEs. Why use that metric rather than actual spending? I think a better representation of what the city is currently doing is to count the
contracts that we are ultimately responsible for as a city. Every contract that we count has been registered by the comptroller, so there’s no ambiguity with our numbers. Numbers are straightforward. It gives credibility to our numbers that these are actually the amounts that MWBEs are actually winning, and that’s why we report on it the way we report on it. A lot happened on MWBEs this year in the state Legislature, did you get what you were looking for?
What do you want from the state Legislature next year? The one thing that our firms face are really issues around insurance. We did request last year from the state an owner-controlled insurance program, which the city cannot do at the moment based upon the local municipal law and state finance law. There is also a contractor-controlled insurance program. Those are two insurance programs that the state is using on some of its projects that we would like the same authority for the city to use.
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OCTOBER 24, 2019 The procurement process continues to be a major source of business for private organizations in New York. Just last fiscal year, over $19 billion in contracts were available for procurement in New York City. However, successfully navigating the process remains difficult and out of reach for many organizations. The Government Procurement Conference will foster business partnerships between the city and state level government, prime contractors, and small, minority, service-disabled veteran-owned, and women-owned businesses.
FEATURED SPEAKERS DAN SYMON Director, New York City Mayor’s Office of Contract Services SEAN CARROLL, Chief Procurement Officer, New York State Office of General Services CHARLETTE HAMAMGIAN, Senior Executive Director of the Division of Contracts and Purchasing New York City Department of Education ASSEMBLYWOMAN RODNEYSE BICHOTTE, Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Oversight of MWBE COUNCILMAN BEN KALLOS, Chairman, Committee on Contracts MERSIDA IBRIC, Deputy CommissionerNew York City Office of Citywide Procurement STATE SEN. JAMES SANDERS JR., Chairman, Task Force of MWBEs GREGG BISHOP, Commissioner New York City Small Business Services VALERIE WHITE, Empire State Development COUNCILWOMAN HELEN ROSENTHAL, New York City Council RACHELMILLER, Associate Commissioner and Agency Chief Contracting Officer, New York City Administration for Children’s Services COUNCILMAN ROBERT E.CORNEGY JR., Chairman, Minority-and Women-Owned Business Enterprise Task Force RSVP at CityAndStateNY.com/Events For more information on programming and sponsorship opportunities, please contact Lissa Blake at lblake@cityandstateny.com
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LGBT-MWBE? October 21, 2019
City & State New York
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New York sets special goals for contracting with companies owned by women and racial minorities. Why aren’t gay owners included? by J E F F C O L T I N
NITO/SHUTTERSTOCK
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USINESS WASN’T exactly booming for Sam Lehman – until his company came out of the closet. “My business probably increased 70% after I joined the LGBT Chamber of Commerce,” he said. “It opened up many doors.” Lehman is a gay man and co-founded Columbia Consulting Group, a technology consulting and staffing firm for other companies. And in the decade since his company was certified as an LGBT-owned business, he’s become an outspoken advocate for the process and the opportunities it has provided. Many private firms, Lehman explained, have supplier diversity representatives who act as liaisons with contractors who aren’t straight, cisgender white men. (Cisgender refers to people whose gender identity matches their birth sex.) And now, New York City Councilman Ritchie Torres is trying to get the city government to catch up with the private sector. He’s introduced a bill, Intro. 1463, that would make the city recognize LGBTowned businesses and encourage the city to contract with them. “Diversity does not happen on its own, naturally. The city has to be intentional about it,” Torres told City & State. “Why should New York City be less progressive than corporate America?” New York City already has a well-established MWBE program for businesses owned by racial minorities and women. Launched in 1992, the program is based on a series of rigorous studies that have shown there’s a disparity between the number of such businesses available to perform government work and how much the government contracts with them. That’s the legal framework that allows New York City – and other governments around the country, including New York state – to set
specific goals for giving contracts to businesses owned by minorities and women. Despite the program, the disparity is stark. A study of contracting from 2006 to 2015 found that while 51% of available vendors were owned by minorities and women, just 10% of city procurement dollars went to such firms. While the MWBE program is based on mathematical analysis, it’s not impossible to change. In September, the City Council passed legislation adding Native American-owned businesses to the program. Native American-owned busi-
nesses only make up less than 1% of firms available for contracting, and now the city will have specific goals to meet. So are LGBT-owned businesses the next to be added to the program? No – and that’s by design. “We do not believe in set-asides. We do not believe in quotas,” said Jonathan Lovitz, senior vice president at the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce, which has been a leading advocate for Torres’ bill and similar legislation around the country. “In no way are the goals or percentages by any
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October 21, 2019
other community touched by this.” That’s a persistent myth around the legislation, Lovitz said, and one that seems to put him and other supporters of the bill on the defensive whenever they’re talking about expanding government contracting with LGBT-owned businesses. Because the sector can be so competitive – and lucrative – there’s a lot of competition among business owners. And a program to help one segment of business owners can feel like it’s taking away resources from another segment. Add in the fact that 58% of New York’s LGBT population is white, and half are men, an attempt to add LGBT business owners to the existing MWBE program could look like a bill to help a cohort of business owners that don’t need a leg up. That’s why Torres’ bill as written actually wouldn’t change much. It would require the New York City Department of Small Business Services to create an opt-in registry of LGBT-owned businesses certified with the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce, then make resources and training on city contracting available to them. There aren’t any utilization goals in writing, as there are with the MWBE program. There actually couldn’t be, because the city hasn’t included LGBT-owned businesses in the disparity studies that form the legal framework for the program. A companion bill sponsored by New York City Councilman Daniel Dromm and co-sponsored by Torres, Intro. 1453, could open up the door for a more expansive program by requiring the city to conduct a disparity study to prove whether or not LGBT-owned businesses get
Various proposals to help veteran-owned businesses in city contracting haven’t gotten off the ground either. Advocates say the fear that supporting LGBT-owned businesses could harm MWBEs is unfounded. “We laugh about the argument, ‘Well, isn’t this just eating away at the pie for other communities?’” Lovitz told City & State. “‘I dare you to say that to the African American or Hispanic or Asian American gay business owner who’s also a woman. That what you see about them is only what makes them valuable.” After introducing it in February and making a public push for it in June during Pride Month, Torres’ bill has yet to receive a public hearing. New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson seemed miffed at a September press conference following accusations he was holding up the bill, but a City Council spokesperson reached this month –New York City Councilman Ritchie Torres would only say the Torres and Dromm bills “are going through veterans, adding more categories could the legislative process.” Dromm didn’t open up the whole procurement system to a respond to a request for comment and Torres downplayed any issues, saying legal challenge. “If you just put whoever you want in ... he was hoping to schedule a hearing. you would lose your MWBE (program),” But supporters like Lovitz were quick to shame the City Council for not moving he said. Those fears may be hurting legislation more quickly. “It’s a matter of getting New York similar to Torres’ on the state level. State Sen. Brad Hoylman is sponsoring a bill that caught up with the rest of the nation,” Lowould provide help with government con- vitz said. “The fact that cities like Baltitracting to not just LGBT-owned business- more and Nashville, Orlando and Tampa, es, but also those owned by veterans and LA and Chicago have all beaten New York people with disabilities. But the bill has City to recognizing the LGBT business died in committee each year since 2016. community is absolutely unthinkable.” a fair share of city contracts. Advocates point out there’s established evidence, both statistical and anecdotal, of LGBT-owned businesses being underutilized in government procurement. But that bill would likely prove more controversial than Torres’ relatively simple one. “The MWBE program is a federally designated program. You just can’t jump up and add whoever you wish to it,” state Sen. James Sanders Jr. told City & State. Sanders, who is black, is the chairman of the Senate’s Task Force on MWBEs. He’s also a disabled military veteran, he said, and as much as he’d like to help fellow disabled
New York City Councilman Ritchie Torres supports bills that would provide resources for LGBT-owned businesses and study whether such businesses get a fair share of city contracts.
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JEFF REED/NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL
“Why should New York City be less progressive than corporate America?”
October 21, 2019
City & State New York
JAMES SANDERS CHAIRMAN, STATE SENATE COMMITTEE ON BANKS
WHY YOU CAN’T JUST ADD TO MWBEs What’s the big picture with promoting MWBEs? The beauty of MWBEs is that it speaks to what is America. This is merely saying: “Yes, you guys are far behind, but as of this moment, we will start acting in a fair fashion.” New York City is a majority-minority city. If you take the populations of people of color and women, that’s a good 70% of the population. Yet, we’re only talking about that 30% of the contracts. LGBTQ people might also need a boost in government contracts, what about adding them to the existing MWBE program? The MWBE program is a federally designated program. You just can’t jump up and add whoever you wish. For example, I am a veteran. I actually am a disabled veteran, but one step at a time. You cannot
put veterans in this program – not even disabled veterans – because they are not one of the protected classes as designed by the federal government. You cannot add disabled vets as much as we all love them. It’s a federal program and so the argument over LGBTQ and others is apples and oranges. So what is coming up in the state Senate on MWBEs next year? We are going to try some stuff around insurance. You have owner-controlled insur-
ance programs. It is a policy held by a property owner during the construction that covers all liability and loss arising from a project. So the owner takes the insurance on the whole project – think of it that way. That is one of the problems that we’re going to tackle. A greater problem is access to capital that we asked to look at (in) New York and find out why we’re trailing so many other states. Take JFK Airport. There are few MWBEs that can compete at the level that the contracts require. This is after we’ve had these programs for many years. So we need to have an overhaul of the entire program. How would you compare the New York City and state MWBE programs, considering your experience at both levels? We put more things in the city for judging success, compared to the state. It’s a comparison of apples and oranges. At the state level, we did a disparity study and that proves there’s a problem. From there, you can come up with remedies based on those problems. And you have got to have more transparency.
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October 21, 2019
JOHNATHAN SMITH
Got any specific examples? One of the things that we heard from MWBEs was how could we make the certification process or the recertification process as accessible and as transparent as possible. We changed the recertification period from three years to five years. We’ve also made changes to the certification process to make it more transparent, and we reduced the amount of paperwork that a firm has to provide in that process. We have a number of growing and developing industries across the state, particularly in the information technology area. We’ve learned to have industry-specific opportunities and resources – in technical assistance, for example.
NEARLY REACHED MWBE GOAL So how is the state doing on reaching its 30% goal with MWBEs? The 30% goal is really looking at the total contracting opportunities across New York state agencies and authorities and making sure that MWBEs are being utilized appropriately according to their availability across the state. We are at 29.13% – less than 1% away from the governor’s 30% goal. So hypothetically, if the state spent $1 billion on contracts, $300 million of that should go to MWBEs, is that how that 30% works? Exactly. How is the state tailoring its outreach to different industries to better boost MWBE participation? The state MWBE division held a number of expos and town halls in every region of the state to hear from local MWBE firms,
to hear from local businesses, to hear from local stakeholders about what they need to succeed with contracting opportunities. What we’re going to do over the next year is take the lessons from those conversations and think about how we are tailoring our programming to meet the specific needs of different industries and regions across New York state.
What are the chances that the governor will call for a 40% goal next year now that the 30% goal has nearly been met? We will be conducting a disparity study in the upcoming year. That will be the key factor in forming what the program should look like going forward. Right now our focus is on growing from where we are – 29.13% is not 30%. We have much more work to do.
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DEPUTY SECRETARY FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR
PUBLIC and LEGAL NOTICES / CityAndStateNY.com
October 21, 2019
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Notice of Formation of VIRIDIAN SKYFALL LLC filed with SSNY on July 22, 2019. Office: Richmond County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: Attn: US Corporation Agents, 7014 13th Avenue, Suite 202, Brooklyn, NY 11228. Purpose: any lawful act or activity. BATTERY PARK GOURMET CAFE, LLC Art. Of Org. Filed Sec. of State of NY 5/16/19. Off. Loc. : New York Co. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served & shall mail proc.: c/o Gieto Nicaj, 17 Battery Place, New York, NY 10004. Purpose: Any lawful act or activity.
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FRASHON COMMUNICATIONS LLC filed with SSNY 9/11/2019. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The LLC, Attn: Vashon Smith 523 West 143rd street Apt 5B New York, NY 10031. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose.
Notice of Qualification of 11 OUNCES, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/19/19. Office location: Kings County. LLC formed in Ohio (OH) on 12/26/18. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to The LLC, c/o Cummins Law LLC, 312 Walnut Street, Suite 1530, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202. OH addr. of LLC: 11 Ounces LLC, c/o Cummins Law LLC, 312 Walnut Street, Suite 1530, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202. Copy of Articles of Organization filed with Secy. of State of OH, 180 East Broad Street, 16th Floor, Columbus, OH 43215. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Notice of Qualification of JAYADIT BUILDERS LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/24/2019. Office location: Richmond County, NY. LLC formed in New Jersey (NJ) on 01/29/2015. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. NJ addr. of LLC: JayAdit Builders, Limited Liability Company, 47 Rosewood Rd, Edison, NJ 08817. Cert. of Form. filed with State Treasurer of the State of NJ, Div. of Revenue and Enterprise Services, 33 W State St, #5th, Trenton, NJ 08608. Purpose: all lawful purposes. KENT TOWER REALTY LLC Art. Of Org. Filed Sec. of State of NY 8/30/19. Off. Loc. : New York Co. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY to mail copy of process to The LLC, 242 East 74TH Street, New York, NY 10021. Purpose: Any lawful act or activity.
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Notice of Formation of Lantern Class A Member, LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with NY Dept. of State on 9/12/19. Office location: NY County. Princ. bus. addr.: 1501 Broadway, 28th Fl., NY, NY 10036. Sec. of State designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP, c/o Randi Seigel, 7 Times Square, NY, NY 10036. Purpose: any lawful activity Notice of Formation of Plastic Surgery and Skincare NY, PLLC. Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/16/19. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: Steven Levine, 308 East 72nd St., Apt 8D, NY, NY 10021. Purpose: to practice the profession of Medicine. LEGALNOTICES@ CITYANDSTATENY.COM Notice of Formation of Amanda Mazin Consultants LLC filed with SSNY on September 11, 2019. Office: Westchester County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: c/o Zachary Mazin, McKool Smith, One Bryant Park, 47th Fl, NY, NY 10036. Purpose: any lawful act or activity. Notice of Formation of NYP YC LLC filed with SSNY on July 11, 2019. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 888 7th ave 5th FL NY NY 10106. Purpose: any lawful act or activity. Notice of Formation of Watkins Worldwide, LLC filed with SSNY on June 12, 2019. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 445 E 14th St, 11E, NY, NY 10009. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.
Notice of Qualification of COATUE CT 55 LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/20/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 08/16/19. Princ. office of LLC: 9 W. 57th St., 25th Fl., NY, NY 10019. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC, Attn: Philippe Laffont at the princ. office of the LLC. DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State of the State of DE, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., Federal & Duke of York Sts., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity. CLEVENGER BEACH LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 08/27/2019. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: Keith M. Bloomfield C/O Forbes Family Trust, 767 Fifth Ave., 6th Fl, NY, NY 10153. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose. Notice of Qualification of COATUE CT 56 LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/20/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 08/16/19. Princ. office of LLC: 9 W. 57th St., 25th Fl., NY, NY 10019. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC, Attn: Philippe Laffont at the princ. office of the LLC. DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State of the State of DE, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., Federal & Duke of York Sts., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
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Notice of Formation of 459 CENTRAL AVE LLC filed with SSNY on September 5, 2019. Office: Kings County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 446 Kent Ave Apt 3B, Brooklyn, NY 11249. Purpose: any lawful act or activity. Notice of Formation of DINOCORN, LLC filed with SSNY on August 8, 2019. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 12 W 18TH ST, SUITE 4E, NY, NY 10011. Purpose: any lawful act or activity. Notice of Qualification of COATUE CT 54 LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/20/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 08/16/19. Princ. office of LLC: 9 W. 57th St., 25th Fl., NY, NY 10019. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC, Attn: Philippe Laffont at the princ. office of the LLC. DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State of the State of DE, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., Federal & Duke of York Sts., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
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Notice of Formation of PICTURE TAKER LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 09/13/19. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
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CityAndStateNY.com / PUBLIC and LEGAL NOTICES
Coin Group, LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with SSNY 12/11/2018. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The INC, Attn: United States Corporation Agents, 7014 13th Avenue, Suite 202, Brooklyn, NY 11228. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose. Notice of Formation of Conca, LLC filed with SSNY on September 19, 2019. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 308 East 72nd Street, 4B, NY, NY 10021. Purpose: any lawful act or activity. Notice of Nikolas Trading Company, LLC filed with SSNY on June 17, 2019. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 47 Titus Road, Glen Cove, NY 11542. Purpose: any lawful act or activity. Notice of Formation of TCD Management, LLC filed with SSNY on August 12, 2019. Office: Kings County. United States Corporation Agents, Inc. designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 488 Central Avenue Apt 1 Brooklyn, NY 11221. Purpose: any lawful act or activity. BEGINNER’S EAR LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 09/24/2019. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: Corinna Da Fonseca-Wollheim, 450 North End Ave., 23A, NY, NY 10282. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose.
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Notice of Qualification of RAHF IV Harbor Hill, L.P. Authority filed with NY Dept. of State on 4/2/19. Office location: NY County. Princ. bus. addr.: 551 5th Ave., 23rd Fl., NY, NY 10176. LP formed in DE on 5/15/18. NY Sec. of State designated agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: Cogency Global Inc. (CGI), 10 E. 40th St., Fl. 10, NY, NY 10016. DE addr. of LP: c/o CGI, 850 New Burton Rd., Ste. 201, Dover, DE 19904. Name/ addr. of genl. ptr. available from NY Sec. of State. Cert. of LP filed with DE Sec. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any lawful activity. Notice of Qualification of RAHF IV Sunset Gardens, L.P. Authority filed with NY Dept. of State on 4/2/19. Office location: NY County. Princ. bus. addr.: 551 5th Ave., 23rd Fl., NY, NY 10176. LP formed in DE on 5/15/18. NY Sec. of State designated agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: Cogency Global Inc. (CGI), 10 E. 40th St., Fl. 10, NY, NY 10016. DE addr. of LP: c/o CGI, 850 New Burton Rd., Ste. 201, Dover, DE 19904. Name/ addr. of genl. ptr. available from NY Sec. of State. Cert. of LP filed with DE Sec. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any lawful activity. Notice of formation of Realopoly, LLC. Articles of Org. filed with the Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 08/16/2019. Office located in Richmond County. SSNY has been designated for service of process. SSNY shall mail copy of any process served against the LLC to: 322 New Dorp Lane #6, Staten Island, NY 10306. Purpose: any lawful activity or purpose.” Notice of Formation of ENC Property Maintenance, LLC filed with SSNY on May 20, 2019. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 39 Tynan Street Staten Island, NY 10312. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.
Notice of Formation of Groundworks Consulting LLC filed with SSNY on September 23, 2019. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 21 Stuyvesant Oval, Apt 4H, New York, NY 10009. Purpose: any lawful act or activity. Notice of Formation of UBSL COMPLIANCE LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 09/18/19. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 1333 Broadway, Ste. 500, NY, NY 10018. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Notice of Qualification of UNTITLED PARTNERS, LP Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/22/19. Office location: NY County. LP formed in Delaware (DE) on 08/15/19. Princ. office of LP: 412 W. 15th St., NY, NY 10011. Duration of LP is Perpetual. SSNY designated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Untitled Holdings LLC, Attn: Neeraj Chandra, 412 W. 15th St., NY, NY 10011. Name and addr. of each general partner are available from SSNY. DE addr. of LP: Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of LP filed with Secy. of State of DE, John G. Townsend Bldg.Ste. 4, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Notice of Formation of Red Arrow Advisors, LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/14/19. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: c/o Richard P. Altieri, Carnelutti & Altieri Esposito Minoli PLLC, 551 Madison Ave., Ste. 450, NY, NY 10022. Purpose: any lawful activities.
October 21, 2019
Notice of Qualification of KEYFRAME FUND II, L.P. Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 09/27/19. Office location: NY County. LP formed in Delaware (DE) on 09/25/19. Princ. office of LP: 65 E. 55th St., 35th Fl., NY, NY 10022. Duration of LP is Perpetual. SSNY designated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the Partnership at the princ. office of the LP. The regd. agent of the company upon whom and at which process against the company can be served is John Rapaport-c/o Rapaport Thesis Driven Capital Advisors, L.L.C., 65 E. 55th St., 35th Fl., NY, NY 10022. Name and addr. of each general partner are available from SSNY. DE addr. of LP: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of LP filed with Secy. of State of the State of DE, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity. PW Service LLC. Arts. Of Org. filed with the SSNY on 9/25/19. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to the LLC, 225 Broadway, 44th Floor, New York NY 10007. Purpose: Any Lawful purpose. Notice of Formation of PRK JEWELRY LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 09/23/19. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Jane L. Brody, Esq., c/o Sherman Wells Sylvester & Stamelman LLP, 1185 Ave. of the Americas, Fl. 3, NY, NY 10036, regd. agent upon whom and at which process may be served. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
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SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK COUNTY OF KINGS U.S. BANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, V. ST. CLAIR JOHN; ET AL. NOTICE OF SALE NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN pursuant to a Final Judgment of Foreclosure dated July 23, 2019, and entered in the Office of the Clerk of the County of Kings, wherein U.S. BANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION is the Plaintiff and ST. CLAIR JOHN; ET AL. are the Defendant(s). I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction at the KINGS COUNTY COURTHOUSE, ROOM 224, 360 ADAMS STREET, BROOKLYN NY 11201, on October 31, 2019 at 2:30PM, premises known as 134 EAST 92ND STREET, BROOKLYN, NY 11212: Block 4610, Lot 26: ALL THAT CERTAIN LOT OR PARCEL OF LAND, WITH THE BUILDINGS AND IMPROVEMENTS THEREON ERECTED, SITUATE, LYING AND BEING IN THE BOROUGH OF BROOKLYN, COUNTY OF KINGS, CITY AND STATE OF NEW YORK Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index # 501789/2017. JAMES MARTIN CAFFREY, Esq. - Referee. RAS Boriskin, LLC 900 Merchants Concourse, Suite 310, Westbury, New York 11590, Attorneys for Plaintiff.
Notice of Qualification of LOWER MANHATTAN MANAGEMENT SERVICES, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 09/24/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 08/13/19. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 122072543, regd. agent upon whom and at which process may be served. DE addr. of LLC: CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Notice of Formation of The Promedex Institute, LLC filed with SSNY on June 12th, 2019. Office: Westchester County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 305 Sixth Ave. Unit 3L Pelham, NY 10803. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.
NOTICE OF QUAL. of VC Atlantic Partners LLC. Auth. filed Sec’y of State (SSNY) 8/12/19. Off. Loc: NY Co. LLC org. in DE 8/8/19. SSNY desig. as agent of LLC upon whom proc. against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of proc. to NRAI, 28 Liberty St, New York, NY 10005, the Reg. Agt upon whom proc. may be served. DE off. Addr.: 160 Greentree Dr., Ste 101, Dover, DE 19904. Cert of Form. on file: SSDE, Townsend Bldg., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any lawful activity. Notice of Formation of Bourdeau Acoustic Design LLC filed with SSNY on June 20, 2019. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 2 Pinehurst Avenue, C4, New York, NY 10033. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.
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PUBLIC and LEGAL NOTICES / CityAndStateNY.com
October 21, 2019
STORAGE NOTICE Modern Moving Inc. will sell at Public Auction at 3735 Merritt Avenue, Bronx, NY 10466 At 6:00 P.M. on NOVEMBER 12th, 2019 for due and unpaid charges by virtue of lien in accordance with the provisions of the law and with due notice given all parties claiming an interest therein, the time specified In each notice for payment of said charges having expired household furniture & effects, pianos, trunks, cases, TV’s, radios, hifi’s, refrigerators, sewing machines, washers, air conditioners, household furniture Of all descriptions and the contents thereof, stored under the following names: - WATSON, JERRY - HERNANDEZ, ANGEL/ - GERALDINE, PEDRO - MEDINA, DAVID - EDWARDS, JOHN - KIM, CHUNG HYUN/ - FITZPATRICK, EDWARD - CHAN KONRAD - HAMPTON, CRYSTAL - COLBERT, RONISHA - LYTHCOTT, ANGELINA, - GARCIA, NAILAH - BROWN NAZZALEE - MARINA, BRYSON- REINOSO, ALVARO PHIPPS - LUZZO, DANIELE
Notice of Qualification of MAGIC VALET LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 09/25/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 09/23/19. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o DHA Capital, 154 Grand St., #45-03, NY, NY 10013. DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State of DE, 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Notice of Formation of Ejimoo, LLC filed with SSNY on July, 9, 2019. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 100 Park Ave, New York, NY 10017. Purpose: any lawful act or activity. KAMAKAMILA LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 10/07/2019. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: Kamakamila LLC, 154 W 14th Street, NY, NY 10011. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose.
LEGALNOTICES@ CITYANDSTATENY.COM
Notice of formation of CF2 GP LLC LLC Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 8/27/19. N.Y. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against it may be served. The Post Office address to which SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC served upon him/her is: 155 E. 44th Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10017. The principal business address of the LLC is 155 E. 44th Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10017. Purpose: To engage in any lawful act or activity.
LEGALNOTICES@ CITYANDSTATENY.COM
Notice of Qualification of Carlyle Investment Management L.L.C. Authority filed with NY Dept. of State on 11/19/2018. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in DE on 7/18/1996. NY Sec. of State designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: The LLC, 520 Madison Ave., NY, NY 10022, principal business address. DE address of LLC: c/o The Corporation Trust Co., 1209 Orange St., Wilmington, DE 19801. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Sec. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any lawful activity.
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT A LICENSE, SERIAL # 1322143 FOR LIQUOR, WINE, & BEER HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR BY THE UNDERSIGNED TO SELL LIQUOR, WINE, & BEER AT RETAIL UNDER THE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE CONTROL LAW AT 13 BARROW ST. NEW YORK, NY 10014. NEW YORK COUNTY, FOR ON PREMISE CONSUMPTION. BARROW WEST VILLAGE LLC.
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT A LICENSE, SERIAL # 1322176 FOR WINE & BEER HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR BY THE UNDERSIGNED TO SELL WINE & BEER AT RETAIL UNDER THE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE CONTROL LAW AT 615 ½ HUDSON ST NEW YORK, NY 10014. NEW YORK COUNTY, FOR ON-PREMISE CONSUMPTION. HUI & YURI INC.
FRASHON COMMUNICATIONS LLC filed with SSNY 9/11/2019. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The LLC, Attn: Vashon Smith 523 West 143rd street Apt 5B New York, NY 10031. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose.
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Notice of Formation of CODE GREEN COMPLIANCE LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 09/18/19. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 1333 Broadway, Ste. 500, NY, NY 10018. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
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CITATION SURROGATE’S COURT, NEW YORK COUNTY THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, By the Grace of God Free and Independent TO: The Public Administrator of New York County; Office of the State Comptroller, Division of Legal Services; Office of the Attorney General of the State of New York; Colleen Sylvia O’Driscoll a/k/a Sylvia Colleen O’Driscoll; John Ellwood a/k/a John Padreigh Ellwood a/k/a John MacKinnon; TO: The heirs at law, next of kin, and distributees of ERIC N. O’DRISCOLL, deceased, if living, and if any of them be dead, to their heirs at law, next of kin, distributees, legatees, executors, administrators, assignees and successors in interest whose names are unknown and cannot be ascertained after due diligence. A petition having been duly filed by Sean O’Driscoll, who is domiciled at 51 Palm Ave., Shorncliffe, QLD 4017, Australia. YOU ARE HEREBY CITED TO SHOW CAUSE before the Surrogate’s Court, New York County, at 31 Chambers Street, Room 503, New York, New York, on December 3, 2019, at 10:00 o’clock in the forenoon of that day, why an Order should not be made in the estate of Eric O’Driscoll, lately domiciled in the County and State of New York: 1. Determining that distributees are entitled to the funds now on deposit with the Office of State Comptroller for the benefit of unknown distributees of Eric N. O’Driscoll; 2. Determining that the Office of State Comptroller be directed to withdraw the funds identified in the Certificate of Deposit and direct payment of same, pro rata, to Sean O’Driscoll, Patrick K. O’Driscoll, Colleen Sylvia O’Driscoll a/k/a Sylvia Colleen O’Driscoll and John Ellwood a/k/a John Padreigh Ellwood a/k/a John MacKinnon, as distributees of the Estate of Eric N. O’Driscoll; and 3.
Granting such other and further relief as the Court may deem just and proper.
Dated, Attested, and Sealed,
HON. RITA MELLA
OCTOBER 8, 2019
Surrogate Diana Sanabria
Seal
Chief Clerk
Littman Krooks, LLP
Rachel Johnston
Firm
Attorney Name
399 Knollwood Road, Suite 115, White Plains, New York 10603
(914) 684-2100 Telephone
Address
NOTE: This citation is served upon you as required by law. You are not required to appear. If you fail to appear it will be assumed that you do not object to the relief requested. You have a right to have an attorney appear for you. Proof of Service must be filed two days prior to the return date, Court Rule 207.7(c). Notice of Formation of Cee Lighting, LLC filed with SSNY on March 30, 2017. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 80 State Street, Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.
Notice of Formation of Drive Better Driving LLC filed with SSNY on September 23, 2019. Office: Richmond County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC:55 Cherrywood Ct Staten Island, NY 10308. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.
Notice of Formation of BRASCHI REALTY, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 10/02/19. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
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CityAndStateNY.com / PUBLIC and LEGAL NOTICES
Notice of Qualification of PurePoint Energy LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/01/2019. Office location: Fairfield County, CT. LLC formed in Connecticut (CT) on 08/17/2007. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o PurePoint Energy LLC, 22 South Smith Street Norwalk, CT 06855 addr. of LLC: c/o PurePoint Energy LLC, 22 South Smith Street Norwalk, CT 06855. Cert. of Form. filed with Office of the Secretary of the State of Connecticut, 30 Trinity Street Hartford, CT. Purpose: Any lawful activity PW Service LLC. Arts. Of
Org. filed with the SSNY on 9/25/19. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to the LLC, 225 Broadway, 44th Floor, New York NY 10007. Purpose: Any Lawful purpose.
Notice of Formation of REFTII, LLC filed with SSNY on August 1, 2019. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 7 EAST LOFTWOOD CIRCLE, SPRING TX 77382 Purpose: any lawful act or activity. Sylverlink LLC. Arts of Org. filed on 10/01/2019 w/ the Sec. of State of NY (SSNY). Office in NY. SSNY is designated agent upon whom process may be served and mail a copy to 40 Morningside Ave Apt 21, NY, NY 10026. For any lawful purpose. Notice of Formation of NEILALEX LLC filed with SSNY on April 12, 2017. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LEGALINC CORPORATE SERVICES INC, 1967 WEHRLE DRIVE, STE 1 #086, BUFFALO, NY 14221. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.
Notice of Auction Notice of Auction Sale is herein given that Access Self Storage of Long Island City located at 2900 Review Avenue, Long Island City, N.Y. 11101 will take place on WWW. STORAGETREASURES. COM Sale by competitive bidding starting on November 1, 2019 and end on November 15, 2019 at 12:00 p.m. to satisfy unpaid rent and charges on the following accounts: Contents of rooms generally contain misc. #1918-Robert Scott Denny; 7 boxes, suitcase, bucket and brush. #3412-Jorge F. Quintero; Clothing rack with clothing, 20 boxes/totes, large TV box, vacuum, paintings, dresser, tables, chair. Misc. items. #4319-1-Quinsessa Harrison; Bags, plastic totes and a plastic organizer with drawers. The contents of each unit will be sold as a lot and all items must be removed from the premises within 72 hours. Owners may redeem their goods by paying all rent and charges due at any time before the sale. All sales are held “with reserve”. Owner reserves the right to cancel sale at any time. Notice of Formation of Caroline Yi LLC filed with SSNY on 9/9/19. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to: 340 E 23rd St, Apt SH1-A. NY, NY 10010. R/A: US Corp. Agents, Inc. 7014 13th Ave., #202, BK, NY 11228. Purpose: any lawful act or activity. Notice of Formation of Grounded PR, LLC filed with SSNY on August 1, 2019. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 31 W 69th 4B, NY, NY 10023. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.
LEGALNOTICES@ CITYANDSTATENY.COM
October 21, 2019
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT A LICENSE, SERIAL # 1322214 FOR LIQUOR, WINE, & BEER HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR BY THE UNDERSIGNED TO SELL LIQUOR, WINE, & BEER AT RETAIL UNDER THE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE CONTROL LAW AT 50 HUDSON STREET NEW YORK, NY 10013. NEW YORK COUNTY, FOR ON PREMISE CONSUMPTION. DONELLA LLC. NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT A LICENSE, SERIAL # 1322230 FOR WINE & BEER HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR BY THE UNDERSIGNED TO SELL WINE & BEER AT RETAIL UNDER THE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE CONTROL LAW AT 203 W 103RD ST NEW YORK, NY 10025. NEW YORK COUNTY, FOR ON-PREMISE CONSUMPTION. ASTROCCO INC. NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT A LICENSE, SERIAL #823042519 FOR LIQUOR, WINE, & BEER HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR BY THE UNDERSIGNED TO SELL LIQUOR, WINE, & BEER AT RETAIL UNDER THE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE CONTROL LAW AT 67-69 St Nicholas Ave NY NY 10026. NEW YORK COUNTY, FOR ON PREMISE C O N S U M P TION. NEW LIFE JUICE BAR & LOUNGE LLC
NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT
PUBLIC NOTICE
COUNTY OF KINGS DITECH FINANCIAL LLC, F/K/A GREEN TREE SER-VICING LLC, Plaintiff AGAINST FLOZENA WEEMS AKA FLOZEMA WEEMS, ET AL., Defendant(s) Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale duly dated May 01, 2019 I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction at the Room 224 of Kings County Supreme Court, 360 Adams Street, Brooklyn, New York 11201, on November 21, 2019 at 2:30PM, premises known as 757 GEORGIA AVENUE, BROOKLYN, NY 11207. All that certain plot piece or parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements erected, situate, lying and being in the Borough of Brooklyn, County of Kings, City and State of New York, BLOCK 4321, LOT 45. Approximate amount of judgment $472,676.04 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment for Index# 500829/2017. CHARLANE ODETTA BROWN, ESQ., Referee Gross Polowy, LLC Attorney for Plaintiff 1775 Wehrle Drive, Suite 100 Williamsville, NY 14221 65892 65892
LI Tower Partners, Inc. proposes to construct two towers in Suffolk County, New York: a 120’ stealth tower (135’ overall) at 19 Jayne Blvd in Port Jefferson Station (Job #44967); and a 160’ monopole (170’ overall) at 260 New Suffolk Rd in Cutchogue (Job #44968).
NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT KINGS COUNTY GREEN TREE SERVICING LLC, Plaintiff against NASSER KHALIL A/K/A NASSER KHALIL, et al Defendants Attorney for Plaintiff(s) Fein, Such & Crane, LLP, 28 East Main Street Suite 1800, Rochester, NY 14614 Attorney (s) for Plaintiff (s). Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale entered October 31, 2017, I will sell at public auction to the highest bidder at Room 224 of Kings County Supreme Court, 360 Adams Street, Brooklyn, New York, 11201 on November 21, 2019 at 2:30 PM. Premises known as 453 85th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11209. Block 6026 Lot 61. All that certain plot, piece or parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements thereon erected, situate, lying and being in the Borough of Brooklyn, County of Kings, City and State of New York. Approximate Amount of Judgment is $538,550.26 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index No 17466/2014. Leo Salzman, Esq., Referee VERJC280
LEGALNOTICES@ CITYANDSTATENY.COM
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT A LICENSE, SERIAL # 1322388 FOR LIQUOR, WINE, & BEER HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR BY THE UNDERSIGNED TO SELL LIQUOR, WINE, & BEER AT RETAIL UNDER THE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE CONTROL LAW AT 253 BUSHWICK AVE BROOKLYN, NY 11206. KINGS COUNTY, FOR ON PREMISE CONSUMPTION. PINK METAL LLC.
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT A LICENSE, SERIAL # 1322261 FOR WINE & BEER HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR BY THE UNDERSIGNED TO SELL WINE & BEER AT RETAIL UNDER THE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE CONTROL LAW AT 1 NASSAU AVE BROOKLYN, NY 11222. KINGS COUNTY, FOR ON-PREMISE CONSUMPTION. VITAL EAST LLC.
Notice of Formation of NEILALEX LLC filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on April 12, 2017. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to: NEILALEX LLC, c/o LEGALINC CORPORATE SERVICES INC, 1967 WEHRLE DRIVE, STE 1 #086, BUFFALO, NY 14221. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.
LEGALNOTICES@CITYANDSTATENY.COM
In accordance with the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and the 2005 Nationwide Programmatic Agreement, LI Tower Partners, Inc. is hereby notifying the public of the proposed undertaking and soliciting comments on Historic Properties which may be affected by the proposed undertaking. If you would like to provide specific information regarding potential effects that the proposed undertaking might have to properties that are listed on or eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places and located within 1/2 mile of the site, please submit the comments (with job number) to: RAMAKER, Contractor for LI Tower Partners, Inc., 855 Community Dr, Sauk City, WI 53583 or via e-mail to his tor y@ramaker. c om within 30 days of this notice. Notice of Qualification of BLOOM TREE SPECIAL OPPORTUNITIES I (GP), LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 09/23/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 09/20/19. Princ. office of LLC: 101 Park Ave., 48th Fl., NY, NY 10178. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Attn: Nitin Wadke at the princ. office of the LLC. DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State of the State of DE, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., Federal & Duke of York Sts., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
LEGALNOTICES@ CITYANDSTATENY.COM
PUBLIC and LEGAL NOTICES / CityAndStateNY.com
October 21, 2019
PUBLIC NOTICE
PUBLIC NOTICE
Cellco Partnership and its controlled affiliates doing business as Verizon Wireless (Verizon Wireless) proposes to collocate wireless communications antennas at three (3) locations. Antennas will be installed at a top height of 72 feet on a 71-foot existing building at the approx. vicinity of 2342 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, Kings County, NY 11233. Antennas will be installed at a top height of 221 feet on a 221-foot existing building at the approx. vicinity of 7 West 21st Street, New York, New York county, NY 10010. Antennas will be installed at a top height of 65 feet on a 68foot existing building at the approx. vicinity of 135 East 149th Street, Bronx, Bronx County, NY 10451. Public comments regarding potential effects from this site on historic properties may be submitted within 30 days from the date of this publication to: Trileaf Corp, Lauren Schramm l.schramm@ trileaf.com, 1395 South Marietta Pkwy, Building 400 Suite 209, Marietta, GA 30067, 678-6538673.
SprintCom, Inc. proposes antenna and equipment upgrades at atop an existing water tower at 480 Michigan Ave in Kenilworth, Union County, NJ and atop an existing building at 645 E 182nd St in the Bronx, Bronx County, NY. SPRINT also proposes the same at 3 buildings in Queens County, NY, including: 1) 23-35 Broadway in Astoria; 2) 222-89 Braddock Ave in Queens Village and 3) at 31-77 32nd St in Astoria.
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT A LICENSE, SERIAL # 1322305 FOR LIQUOR, WINE, & BEER HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR BY THE UNDERSIGNED TO SELL LIQUOR, WINE, & BEER AT RETAIL UNDER THE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE CONTROL LAW AT 592 MANHATTAN AVE BROOKLYN, NY 11222. KINGS COUNTY, FOR ON PREMISE CONSUMPTION. AUTHENTIC PIEROGI INC. NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT A LICENSE, SERIAL # 1322385 FOR LIQUOR, WINE, & BEER HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR BY THE UNDERSIGNED TO SELL LIQUOR, WINE, & BEER AT RETAIL UNDER THE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE CONTROL LAW AT 9 E 17TH ST NEW YORK, NY 10003. NEW YORK COUNTY, FOR ON PREMISE CONSUMPTION. PRIGI CORP
In accordance with the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended and the 2005 Nationwide Programmatic Agreement for Review Under the National Preservation Act; Final Rule, SPRINT is hereby notifying the public of the proposed undertaking and soliciting comments on Historic Properties which may be affected by the proposed undertaking. Accordingly, if you would like to provide specific information regarding potential effects that the proposed undertaking might have to properties that are listed on or eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places and located within ½ mile of the above address, please submit the property’s address and your comments to: Charles Cherundolo Consulting, Inc. at 976 Tabor Road, Suite 4B, Morris Plains, NJ 07950 or via email at tcns@cherundoloconsulting.com
LEGALNOTICES@ CITYANDSTATENY.COM
Notice of Formation of MARE THOURAYA, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 10/01/19. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
Notice of Qualification of BLOOM TREE SPECIAL OPPORTUNITIES I, LP Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 09/23/19. Office location: NY County. LP formed in Delaware (DE) on 09/20/19. Princ. office of LP: 101 Park Ave., 48th Fl., NY, NY 10178. Duration of LP is Perpetual. SSNY designated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 122072543. Name and addr. of each general partner are available from SSNY. DE addr. of LP: c/o CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of LP filed with Secy. of State of the State of DE, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., Federal & Duke of York Sts., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Notice of Qualification of KLDISCOVERY ONTRACK FRANCHISE, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 10/11/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 12/06/18. Princ. office of LLC: 46 E. 8th St., NY, NY 10003. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Electronic device repair and data recovery. NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT A LICENSE, SERIAL # 1322292 FOR WINE & BEER HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR BY THE UNDERSIGNED TO SELL WINE & BEER AT RETAIL UNDER THE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE CONTROL LAW AT 658 9TH AVE NY, NY 10036. NEW YORK COUNTY, FOR ON-PREMISE CONSUMPTION. PUHUNG CORP. LEGALNOTICES@ CITYANDSTATENY.COM
Notice of Auction
Notice of Auction
Notice of Auction Sale is herein given that Citiwide Self Storage located at 45-55 Pearson Street, Long Island City, N.Y. 11101 will take place on WWW.STORAGETREASURES.COM Sale by competitive bidding starting on November 1, 2019 and end on November 15, 2019 at 10:00 a.m. to satisfy unpaid rent and charges on the following accounts:
Notice of Auction Sale is herein given that Citiwide Self Storage located at 45-55 Pearson Street, Long Island City, N.Y. 11101 will take place on WWW.STORAGETREASURES.COM Sale by competitive bidding starting on November 1, 2019 and end on November 15, 2019 at 10:00 a.m. to satisfy unpaid rent and charges on the following accounts:
Contents of rooms generally contain miscellaneous items:#5B12 Alfredo Villamar: clothes, 50+ boxes, books, bags, suitcases; #5T01 Alfredo Villamar:20- boxes,60bags,1- chair, books; #5R12 Kedrick Williams: 7 -boxes, folding table,1movers dolly,2- luggage bags,8- storage bins,1 rug,1- shipping container; #3L24 Andres Helm : 10+ bags, boxes, luggage, shopping cart, misc. furniture.
ntents of rooms generally contain miscellaneous items:#5B12 Alfredo Villamar: clothes, 50+ boxes, books, bags, suitcases; #5T01 Alfredo Villamar:20- boxes,60bags,1- chair, books; #5R12 Kedrick Williams: 7 -boxes, folding table,1movers dolly,2- luggage bags,8- storage bins,1 rug,1- shipping container; #3L24 Andres Helm : 10+ bags, boxes, luggage, shopping cart, misc. furniture.
The contents of each unit will be sold as a lot and all items must be removed from the premises within 72 hours. Owners may redeem their goods by paying all rent and charges due at any time before the sale. All sales are held “with reserve”. Owner reserves the right to cancel sale at any time.
The contents of each unit will be sold as a lot and all items must be removed from the premises within 72 hours. Owners may redeem their goods by paying all rent and charges due at any time before the sale. All sales are held “with reserve”. Owner reserves the right to cancel sale at any time.
Notice of Formation of LJR HOMES, LLC filed with SSNY on September 25, 2019. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 1324 Forest Ave, Suite #185, Staten Isand, NY 10302. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.
LEGALNOTICES@ CITYANDSTATENY.COM PW Service LLC. Arts. Of Org. filed with the SSNY on 9/25/19. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to the LLC, 225 Broadway, 44th Floor, New York NY 10007. Purpose: Any Lawful purpose.
LEGALNOTICES@ CITYANDSTATENY.COM
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LEGALNOTICES@ CITYANDSTATENY.COM
38 CityAndStateNY.com
October 21, 2019
CITY & STATE NEW YORK MANAGEMENT & PUBLISHING CEO Steve Farbman, President & Publisher Tom Allon tallon@cityandstateny.com, Comptroller David Pirozzi, Business & Operations Manager Patrea Patterson, Administrative Assistant Lauren Mauro
Who was up and who was down last week
LOSERS
CREATIVE Art Director Andrew Horton, Senior Graphic Designer Alex Law, Graphic Designer Aaron Aniton DIGITAL Digital Marketing Director Maria Cruz Lee, Digital Content Coordinator Michael Filippi, Social Media Editor/ Content Producer Amanda Luz Henning Santiago
ANDREW CUOMO White people should check themselves whenever quoting rap lyrics, Chris Rock bits and, evidently, The New York Times. The governor violated this cardinal rule when he dropped the N-word on the radio. Though he was quoting an article by the Times on anti-Italian American discrimination, the interviewer was actually asking Cuomo about his administration’s questionable Medicaid funding maneuvers. Next time you change the subject, guv, try not to end up on TMZ.
ADVERTISING Vice President of Advertising Jim Katocin jkatocin@ cityandstateny.com, Account/Business Development Executive Scott Augustine saugustine@cityandstateny.com, Event Sponsorship Strategist Danielle Koza dkoza@ cityandstateny.com, Sales Associate Cydney McQuillanGrace cydney@cityandstateny.com, Junior Sales Executive Caitlin Dorman, Legal Advertising Executive Shakirah Gittens legalnotices@cityandstateny.com, Junior Sales Associate Chris Hogan EVENTS events@cityandstateny.com Sales Director Lissa Blake, Events Manager Alexis Arsenault, Event Coordinator Amanda Cortez, Editorial Research Associate Evan Solomon
Vol. 8 Issue 40 October 21, 2019
THE WFP WON THAT’S WHY IT COULD GO EXTINCT
THE BEST OF THE REST
THE REST OF THE WORST
FRANCES CABRINI
ADAM MCFADDEN
EMILIA DECAUDIN
JOHN PETTIGREW
LETITIA JAMES, JOE LENTOL & TODD KAMINSKY
PERRY PETTUS
RITCHIE TORRES
AL SHARPTON
Thanks to Cuomo trying to out-Italian de Blasio, the saint will get-a her-a statue. You got drunk in college; she’s changing the Democratic Committee’s gender rules.
Now that they closed the double jeopardy loophole, they’ll take Giuliani for $200, Alex. The progressive PAC Arena really really doesn’t want to see a Rep. Rubén Díaz Sr.
Workingfamilius Particus
This ex-Rochester city councilman stole from kids, the elderly and the disabled! The CEO said National Grid couldn’t possibly hook up more homes without a pipeline ... until the utility faced a fine.
CIT YANDSTATENY.COM
@CIT YANDSTATENY
WHY NO LGBT IN MWBE? THE WOMEN WHO COULD BE MAYOR WHY NYC EVER ELECTED RUDY
October 21, 2019
Cover photo lynea/Shutterstock
Corrupt ex-Hempstead trustee: “I’m a dirty politician.” Hey, he said it. His nixed forum to hear “both sides” of the vaccine debate only had the dumb side.
WINNERS & LOSERS is published every Friday morning in City & State’s First Read email. Sign up for the email, cast your vote and see who won at cityandstateny.com.
CITY & STATE NEW YORK (ISSN 2474-4107) is published weekly, 48 times a year except for the four weeks containing New Year’s Day, July 4th, Thanksgiving and Christmas by City & State NY, LLC, 61 Broadway, Suite 1315, New York, NY 10006-2763. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to City & State New York, 61 Broadway, Suite 1315, New York, NY 10006-2763. General: (212) 268-0442, subscribe@cityandstateny.com Copyright ©2019, City & State NY, LLC
MAYOR’S OFFICE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE; MICHAEL APPLETON/MAYORAL PHOTOGRAPHY OFFICE; MIKE GROLL/OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR
ELIZABETH GLAZER & JONATHAN LIPPMAN After fights with NIMBYs, correction officers and #NoNewJails activists, the infamous Rikers Island is finally set to shutter. From its ashes will rise four borough-based jails, all thanks to Elizabeth Glazer, the mayor’s criminal justice leader, and former Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, who led the commission to close the horror show of a jail. Of course, the hard part has yet to come: jailing fewer people and actually treating them better.
OUR PICK
OUR PICK
WINNERS
Nothing gets politicians’ blood pumping like an open congressional seat, so the elected officials of the Lower Hudson Valley were handed quite the gift with Rep. Nita Lowey’s announcement that she’ll retire. The dust hasn’t settled yet, but already two white guys named David are in and a certain presidential scion named Chelsea is out. We say, the more candidates the merrier – it just creates more future losers to nominate.
EDITORIAL editor@cityandstateny.com Editor-in-Chief Jon Lentz jlentz@cityandstateny.com, Managing Editor Ryan Somers, Senior Editor Ben Adler badler@cityandstateny.com, Special Projects Editor Alice Popovici, Copy Editor Eric Holmberg, Staff Reporter Jeff Coltin jcoltin@cityandstateny.com, Staff Reporter Zach Williams zwilliams@cityandstateny.com, Staff Reporter Rebecca C. Lewis rlewis@cityandstateny.com, Tech & Policy Reporter Annie McDonough amcdonough@ cityandstateny.com, Staff Reporter Kay Dervishi
UNITED FEDERATION OF TEACHERS, SHANKER HALL 52 BROADWAY, 2ND FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10004 THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2019 | 9:00AM-4:30PM
We have all learned to accept technology at different rates. We explore the innovation and challenges of new tools, apps and gadgets in our own personal ways. Whether you’re an early tech adopter or more careful user, each of us has a role to play in advancing our organizations in a quickly changing world! This event will cater to everything from entry-level learning about the current state of technology to more advanced discussions. Nonprofit TechCon is the place to go to stay informed of tools and developments, now and looking into the future.
FEATURED SPEAKERS SHEREEN SANTALESA, Vice President, Human Resources, Riseboro Community Partnership KARIN KUNSTLER GOLDMAN, Deputy Chief, Charities Bureau, New York State Department of Law (Attorney General) BESA H. BAUTA, Chief Data Officer, MercyFirst MICHAEL BARRET JONES, Director of Development, The Tyler Clementi Foundation THOMAS DEWAR, Executive Director of Information Technology, Lutheran Social Services of New York RYAN YOUNG, Chief of Operations and Organizational Sustainability, Community Change MARCEL BRAITHWAITE, Director of Community Engagement, Police Athletic League, Inc. VESNA SELMANOVIC, VP, Program Compliance and Performance Measurement, Covenant House New York ALEX MARCUS, Assistant Director of Organizational Development and Talent Acquisition, Good Shepherd Services DARHSAN DESAI, PhD, Professor of Management, Berkeley College Larry L. Luing School of Business DUNCAN REMAGE-HEALEY, Managing Director of Operations, Parenting Journey CHARLIE PANE, Communications Manager, Cornell Cooperative Extension Rockland County MITCHELL PETIT-FRERE, Digital Content Manager, Family Promise AMY WEST, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, AHRC NYC NICK SELBY, Director of Cyber Intelligence and Investigations, NYPD NANCY D. MILLER, Executive Director/CEO, VISIONS/Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired ALBERT J. RIZZI, Founder and CEO, My Blind Spot, Inc DAVID DePAROLESA, Chief Executive Officer, GiveLively RSVP at CityAndStateNY.com/Events For more information on programming and sponsorship opportunities, please contact Lissa Blake at lblake@cityandstateny.com
THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS LIGHTHOUSE TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS CAPALINO + COMPANY GRF CPAS & ADVISORS JMT CONSULTING FUNRAISE
FUNDRAISE UP MAZARS USA LLP NETWORK DOCTOR YURGOSKY CONSULTING ATSG
RKD GROUP SYNAPTITUDE CONSULTING T-MOBILE GOVERNMENT
THE BUILDING TRADES EMPLOYERS’ ASSOCIATION
A Proven Record of Commitment to
MINORITY & WOMEN-OWNED BUSINESS CONTRACTORS AND WORKFORCE DIVERSITY
The 108 Minority and Women-Owned Contractor Members of the Building Trades Employers’ Association are the most M/WBE Contractors of any Contractor Association in New York State.
42% of BTEA Minority and Women-Owned Contractors have construction revenues of $5 million dollars or more.
21% of BTEA Minority and Women-Owned Contractors have construction revenues of $1 to $5 million dollars.
18%
of BTEA Minority and Women-Owned Contractors have construction revenues of $500,000 to $1 million dollars.
19% of BTEA Minority and Women-Owned Contractors have construction revenues of $500,000 or less.
Workforce Diversity The New York City Union Construction Industry is a majority minority workforce.
55.1%
21.2%
of all building trade union workers are minority
are Black/African American
30.5%
3.4%
are Latino
are Asian and Other Minorities
New York City construction occupation employment by race/ethnicity in union and nonunion sectors, by age, 2006-2015 Union
Contractor Capacity by Size of BTEA Minority and Women-Owned Business Members
Non-Union
4.3%
9.3% 20.2% 38.1%
36.6% 55.7%
19%
21%
Over $5 Million
42% 18%
14.8%
$1 to $5 Million $500,000 – $1 Million
Ages 18-40
Below $500,000
21%
2.4%
13.6%
23.3%
31.3% 53%
*STATISTICS BY ROCHESTER RESEARCH ASSOCIATES
37.9% 21.3%
17.2%
B T E A CO N T R AC TO R S H AV E OV E R $ 5 0 B I L L I O N I N P U B L I C AND PRIVATE CONSTRUCTION REVENUE . 1325 Avenue of the Americas 10th Floor | New York, NY 10019 b t e a n y. c o m
Ages 41-64 Non-Hispanic White
Hispanic
Black
All Others