City Hall - July 1, 2008

Charlie Rangel, below, discusses the presidential race (Page

16), Floyd Flake, right, preaches politics (Page 29),

and Gracie

Vol. 3, No. 2

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Mansion is still open for business (Page 32).

July 2008

Anthony Weiner,

Seriously ANDREW SCHWARTZ

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JULY 2008

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In the Council Race That Never Ends, Candidates Find Thrills, Frustrations

SCOTT WILLIAMS

Como, Crowley and Ober prepare for rematch this year… and next

BY ANDREW J. HAWKINS JUNE 3 VICTORY IN THE SPECIAL election, Anthony Como (R-Queens) said he planned to surprise his wife with a week-long vacation. Elizabeth Crowley, a Democrat who lost to Como by just 38 votes, said she hoped to take her son golfing in Montauk for a few days.

Those short breaks are about all they can afford.

Como defeated Crowley and several other candidates in the nonpartisan election to fill the Council seat left vacant by Dennis Gallagher, who stepped down in April as part of a plea deal to a sexual assault charge.

But there is another election for the seat coming in November, and interested candidates had only a few weeks after Como’s win was certified to register for the September primary and the November general election. Whoever wins will have to defend the seat again next year.

Como said he shrugs off all campaign exhaustion and keeps moving forward.

“It is what it is,” Como said with what must pass for Zen in Queens. “We knew going into it that it was going to be this way.”

Crowley is also committed to running again, as is insurgent Democratic candidate Charles Ober. But even

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FTER HIS

The main difference between the special election and the November election, Como said, is that this time he will have 145 days of incumbency to his advantage. On the campaign trail, he said he will tout the $3 million in discretionary funds he managed to grab for the district, which includes money to improve Juniper Valley Park, as well as cash for senior centers and schools.

Como said operating a district office will be another key advantage, by enabling him to directly address constituent needs and problems.

“Even though it’s going to be a short period of time,” Como said, “they’re going to see if I was able to accomplish so much in such a short period.”

But Crowley sees Como’s abbreviated time in office as a potential liability. Most of the budget negotiations were done by the time he was sworn into office, she pointed out, preventing him from bringing as much pork as he would have wanted.

“They had some budget cuts for local organizations and he wasn’t really able to spend as he saw fit,” Crowley said. “Rather, the money was allocated before he got in there.”

Anthony Como came out ahead in As she gears up to run again, Crowley said she is trying the June 3 special election, but Liz not to get bogged down in the nuts and bolts of campaignCrowley is hoping to overtake him ing.

Headaches like attorney fees, closing and re-opening this November—or, if not, by 2009. her campaign office, and filing with the Campaign Finance Board and the city Board of Elections can easily distract from the actual issues, she said.

“You have to remain focused,” Crowley said, “not get lost in silly, non-important stuff.”

Fundraising poses another challenge for Crowley.

She was not eligible for matching funds because of outstanding fines and allegations of fraud committed by her campaign during her bid for Council in 2001 against Gallagher. But as the preferred candidate of the Queens County Democratic Party, chaired by her cousin, Rep. Joseph Crowley, as well as with endorsements from the though he came within 300 votes of winning the special Working Families Party and several labor unions, election, Thomas Ognibene, who once held the seat, Crowley still managed to out-raise and out-spend Como and the other candidates by a nearly 3-to-1 margin. vowed not to run again and endorsed Como.

Her loss on June 3 was certainly disappointing, but Como said the voters feel the pain of multiple eleconce she got back down to petitioning, going door-totions more so than he does.

“Numerous constituents have said, ‘I can’t believe door and talking to voters, Crowley said she felt rejuveyou have to go through this again. We voted for you the nated.

“I love talking to voters,” she said. “They say, ‘38 first time. We’re going to vote for you the second time. votes and he’s the Council member, how can that be?’ I It’s just silly,’” he said. tell them, ‘You know, it’s really just ’til November.’”

Ober’s decision to run for the Democratic nomination in September will further complicate Crowley’s bid for the seat. The county organization believes he split the vote and allowed Como to win, and members are doing little to hide their displeasure.

“Charles Ober should stay under the rock where he’s hiding,” said Michael Reich, executive director Ongoing fundraising has not cramped his style of the county party.

Ober said if he fails to win the primary this year, either, Como said, mainly because he relies on small donors rather than labor unions or political action com- there is always 2009. The election laws that prolong this mittees for support. Como has accumulated numerous seemingly never-ending campaign are ridiculous, he contacts from his time spent as an aide to State Sen. said. But he believes his support in the community is Serphin Maltese (R-Queens) and as a commissioner on strong and he is committed to continue to campaign.

Fundraising, Ober said, is what exhausts him. the Board of Elections.

“We managed to raise $67,000,” Ober said. “I don’t “Having that background and that support allows me to continue to do my job and not have to worry about even now how I did that.” making phone calls,” he said. ahawkins@cityhallnews.com

Como said the voters feel the pain of multiple elections more so than he does.

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J U LY 2008

Hoping the Third Run for Higher Office Will Be the Charm

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

Preaching policy, Yassky sets sights on corporate cash and Manhattan voters

Council Member David Yassky is trying to make himself stand out in the comptroller’s race, which may prove the most crowded, competitive and expensive 2009 contest.

BY ANDREW J. HAWKINS

“

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LOT OF THE TRADITIONAL

interests in the city, a lot of the day-to-day players in city government—my guess is the bulk of those vested interests will be supporting one or another of the other candidates,” said City Council Member David Yassky (DBrooklyn), mulling his run for comptroller recently over ice coffees at Starbucks.

“That’s okay by me.”

This is familiar territory. In 2001, he ran for Council against the establishment candidate and won by 10 points. Five years later, he ran as the only white candidate in a four-way primary for a Congressional seat traditionally held by African Americans. He came in second, by just three points.

Next year, his opponents once again have high name recognition and large campaign war chests, a fact he eagerly points to when discussing the race.

But though he is grasping for the underdog mantle, Yassky has already secured support from some of the city’s vested interests himself, raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from top law firms, real estate developers, investment firms and hedge funds. For example, he received over $11,000 from sever-

al lawyers at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, the 15th largest law firm in the world.

There are donations from several other top firms as well, either from the firm or from several partners. Two of the city’s powerful real estate developers, Thor Equities and the Durst Organization, have also donated to Yassky’s campaign.

A Yale law school graduate, Yassky said he appreciates the support he receives from friends and former colleagues.

approaching, Yassky said he began to seriously consider his next move last summer. After consulting several past comptrollers and former aides in the comptroller’s office, Yassky was convinced.

“The more I thought about it, the more I talked about it, the more enthusiastic I got about just how much you could accomplish in that job,” he said.

He quickly put together a new campaign operation, positioning himself as

“A lot of issues go through that office,” he said. “I’m not going to let them go by just because I don’t want to make waves or because I don’t want to ruffle the feathers of the powers that be.”

As he reaches out to new donors, Yassky has also begun to eye areas of the city where he hopes to gain an edge over his rivals. In a race with no Manhattanbased candidates, Yassky is trying to position himself as a surrogate Manhattan candidate, increasing his visibility in Manhattan—especially in the Upper West Side, with its cache of bigmoney donors and high-turnout neighborhoods. In recent weeks, he held a fundraiser on West 87th Street and was spotted at a political club meeting across from Lincoln Center.

“It’s shaping up for Manhattan to be the battleground,” Yassky said.

But he sees other unclaimed votes as well.

“Don’t forget Staten Island,” he said, insisting that his prospects are good in both boroughs.

If he wins, Yassky said he plans to capitalize on the comptroller’s sway over policy. He said he plans to make all audits require city agencies to report on energy efficiency and conservation. He will make economically targeted investments with the city’s pension fund to stimulate the economy and provide for more affordable housing. And, with the City Council slush fund scandal in mind, Yassky said he would be more aggressive in vetting the city’s budget.

“I’ll pick each year a handful of earmark recipients to audit to make sure they are delivering results,” he said.

Yassky said he supported Speaker Christine Quinn’s (D-Manhattan) proposal to make the distribution of discretionary funds more competitive, even though a majority of Council members eventually convinced her to pull back the plan.

He added that he was infuriated by the revelation that earmarks were being parked in fictitious groups in the city’s budget. As comptroller, Yassky said he would strive to hold the Council and any community group that receives earmarks accountable.

A proud policy wonk, Yassky said he plans on making his case as much on the issues as possible, even as others focus on demographics and other bits of politicking in what may well prove the most crowded, competitive and expensive race of 2009.

“I think voters aren’t going to read your 100-page white paper on health care or budget reform,” he said, taking his glasses off and furrowing his brow. “But they will look at a candidate enough to decide if this person is real.” ahawkins@cityhallnews.com

David Yassky said he is modeling his aggressive platform on the current and former attorney generals, Andrew Cuomo and Eliot Spitzer.

“Law guys and gals stick together,” he said.

Yassky is one of five announced candidates for comptroller, trying to find a spot at least into a run-off among Council Members Melinda Katz (D-Queens) and David Weprin (D-Queens), Assembly Member James Brennan (D-Brooklyn) and Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión (D). Queens Council Member John Liu (D) may also make the race.

With the end of his term fast

the activist, environmentalist candidate who will use the powers of the comptroller’s post to improve the efficiency of city government. He said he is modeling his platform on the current and former attorney generals, Andrew Cuomo (D) and Eliot Spitzer (D).

Yassky said he admired the way Spitzer and Cuomo were aggressive in their use of the office, adding that he hopes to be a similarly aggressive comptroller.

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With McMahon Running for Congress, Democrats Search for New BP Candidate Opponent for Oddo in 2009 race may need to come from outside existing party structure

BY DAN RIVOLI C OUNCIL M EMBER M C M AHON (D-Staten Island) set his sights on retiring Rep. Vito Fossella’s (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) seat, he was diligently cobbling together a campaign for borough president.

But now he is running for Congress, and, most observers say, likely to win. That leaves the race with just one candidate, Council Minority Leader James Oddo, and the Democratic Party—in this traditionally Republicanleaning borough—back at square one in recruiting a candidate.

That is no reason for Democrats to worry about 2009, McMahon said.

“There are still many ‘top tier’ candidates on the island: a Democratic state senator, three Democratic Assembly members and a few community leaders,” he said.

Though most borough president candidates in the other boroughs are already well on their way with fundraising, county Democratic chair John Gulino said there is more than enough time to put together a successful campaign.

Right now, though, his only focus is the Congressional race, he said.

“I take things systematically,” he said.

Nonetheless, Gulino said he has already interviewed several prospective candidates—though he would not divulge any names.

Two of the borough’s representatives in Albany have been mentioned as possible Democratic candidates.

Assembly Member Michael Cusick, who many had expected to run for Congress but backed out at the eleventh hour, deferred any consideration of a candidacy for borough president until after he wins re-election in the fall.

“Once we get through November, I will be able to focus on what the future will be,” Cusick said.

State Sen. Diane Savino, who lives in Staten Island but has half of her district in Brooklyn, has also been mentioned as a replacement candidate for McMahon.

Savino said she has not approached anyone about running, though community leaders and party members have come to her. The main priority for her, however, is getting a Democratic majority in her chamber. If this happens, she could quickly gain seniority, which could entice her to stay in Albany.

SCOTT WILLIAMS

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EFORE

No clear choice among the Democrats has emerged to take Michael McMahon’s spot as the borough president candidate to face Council Minority Leader James Oddo.

“I’m committed to the Senate and getting in the Senate majority,” she said. “If we’re not, that will certainly change the discussion.”

Freshman Assembly Members Matthew Titone and Janele Hyer-Spencer are also possibilities, though neither is viewed as a likely candidate.

A McMahon-Oddo race would have been highly competitive. Both were popular in their respective districts and ended January with roughly the same amount of money in the bank (McMahon edged out Oddo, $148,000 to

$134,000). The two were also both friendly with labor unions—major sources of campaign cash. McMahon had also built up a strong relationship with the Conservative Party, which could have been a major boost to a borough president candidacy.

With McMahon out, Oddo said local labor and other supporters no longer face the Solomonic choice between the two of them.

“A lot of folks in unions who are happy with my voting record had a difficult choice to make,” Oddo said. “I think a lot of them are freed up.”

All the more reason for the Democrats, if they do not want to cede the race to Oddo, to settle on a candidate who will start fundraising, said 2001 Democratic borough president candidate, former Council Member Jerome O’Donovan. Otherwise, they may well face the same fate the Staten Island GOP is suffering through in the race to replace Fossella.

“That’s a position we don’t want to be in next year,” he said. “We want someone who will be recognizable.”

That does not necessarily require the candidate to be an elected official, O’Donovan said.

“It’d be a difficult task, but there are civic leaders and business leaders,” he said.

Current Borough President James Molinaro (C), for example, never held office. But he was well known for serving as deputy borough president to Guy Molinari.

Though Molinaro narrowly beat O’Donovan in 2001, O’Donovan’s campaign manager Tom LaManna said that, especially without McMahon running against him, Oddo would be extremely tough to beat, no matter whom Democrats recruit.

“Jim Oddo—now I’m a partisan guy, [but] he is kind of like our Marty Markowitz,” he said, referring to the Brooklyn borough president. “He’s suited for the job.”

Regardless of any Democratic deliberations that are underway or have yet to begin, Oddo said his interest is in finishing his term on the Council and focusing on his own campaign.

Asked to look ahead, Oddo recalled the words of Teddy Atlas, a Staten Island boxing trainer and commentator.

“He once told me, ‘Never depend on somebody else’s weakness to be your strength,’” Oddo said. “I’m not going to depend on who my opponent is.” drivoli@manhattanmedia.com

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Candidates Already Preparing for Special Election to Succeed McMahon f Council Member Michael McMahon (D-Staten Island) moves from City Hall to Capitol Hill this November, he will leave his much-coveted North Shore council seat behind. And many candidates are already lying in wait.

There are five candidates filed with the city Campaign Finance Board for the 2009 Democratic primary.

There is also Assembly Member Michael Cusick (D-Staten Island).

Cusick, who chose to sit out the Congressional race, has remained silent on his political future, though there is speculation he might run for the seat and possibly parlay that into a bid for Council speaker.

Cusick said he is focusing on reelection now that he has a rare challenge from the GOP. “After November,” he said, “I will assess what the future will be.”

One potential problem with him

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running exists: Cusick is currently living outside McMahon’s Council district, in neighboring James Oddo’s (RStaten Island) district, though his official address for now remains the same as when he lived with his wife.

Without Cusick, the special election, in certain aspects, will be a redux of the 2001 primary: a staffer to the outgoing Council member running against an African-American community activist.

In 2001, McMahon, who was passed over by the borough’s Democratic Party, was a civic leader-cum-legal counsel to his predecessor, Jerome X. O’Donovan. He beat Deborah Rose, a Community Board 1 member and chair of Community School Board 31, by 170 votes.

With term limits already bearing down on McMahon next year, his chief of staff Kenneth Mitchell announced

his own bid to move from staffer to elected official.

“I don’t think it’s a right of passage,” Mitchell said, explaining, “I know the land use procedure, the budgetary process. I know the players in the Council.”

Priscilla Marco, a community liaison to State Sen. Diane Savino (D-Staten Island/Brooklyn), is also running.

As the North Shore of Staten Island becomes increasingly diverse—the area is home to sizable African American, Sri Lankan and Liberian communities—black candidates are vying to be the politicians that reflect the cultural mix, thus ending the stranglehold Italian and Irish Americans have on all the borough parties and elected posts.

According to Kelvin Alexander, who ran for the Assembly seat now held by Matthew Titone but does not plan to

run for Council, a party-endorsed African American candidate will show the black community, the bulk of the party’s rank and file members, that it is not taken for granted by party leaders.

“They need to step up and say, ‘Listen, these people are qualified,’” Alexander said. “They can choose one of the black candidates that represent their most loyal constituency.”

Rose, who has filed to run again, and Rev. Tony Baker hope to fit that bill.

Baker said he was not overly concerned with splitting the AfricanAmerican vote, especially in a special election.

“I really believe I have a broad base of appeal,” said Baker, a retired military sergeant. “My background is such that I’ve been engaged in the broader community in Staten Island.”

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—DR drivoli@manhattanmedia.com

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Notes from the Frenzied Campaign:

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

Candidates Try to Steady Themselves in Still Shifting Race

Looking to tug at the purse strings instead of the heartstrings, McMahon told the crowd that he will be an advocate for maritime issues in Washington.

Off the Fundraising Circuit, McMahon Goes for a Picnic with a Side of Politicking

BY DAN RIVOLI RIVING ALONG STATEN ISLAND’S

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waterfront-hugging road Richmond Terrace, Council Member Michael McMahon (D-Staten Island) and his campaign aide Carmen Cognetta were on their way to a picnic.

Along the way, McMahon spotted his friend, Borough President James Molinaro (C-Staten Island), parked on the sidewalk outside of a construction site.

Cognetta, the driver for the day, pulled his sky blue Toyota Prius over for an impromptu pit stop.

“Need extra muscle?” McMahon yelled to Molinaro, getting out of the car.

But Molinaro’s engine was fine—the borough president was on the side of the road inspecting a friend’s property, helping his friend with a permit problem relating to sidewalk repair.

They headed back to their cars, both

off to the New York Container Terminal’s annual Fourth of July picnic.

“Don’t eat all the hot dogs before I get there,” Molinaro called out as McMahon got back into the Prius.

Tom Petty’s “American Girl” was blasting over the loudspeakers by the time McMahon and Cognetta arrived to the

ping backs, giving high fives and shaking meaty hands along the way.

McMahon has been to the picnic before. But this year is different. This year, he is running for Congress. And this year, he is endorsed by New York Container Terminal President James Devine. The terminal employees are all

There have not been many campaign events like this since he jumped into the race May 29, with most of his time instead spent at fundraisers in New York, Albany and Washington. picnic, set up on an empty port overlooking the narrow water separating Staten Island and New Jersey. Taking off his sport coat, McMahon waded into the sea of neon yellow-vested union men, slap-

members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA)—just one more acronym McMahon can add to his alphabet soup of union support.

Union support is a key component to

McMahon’s campaign to succeed Rep. Vito Fossella (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn), who announced his retirement after a DWI arrest led to revelations of his long-term affair and love child with a Virginia woman.

There have not been many campaign events like this since he jumped into the race May 29, with most of his time instead spent at fundraisers in New York, Albany and Washington. He estimates that he has pulled in at least half a million dollars in just those first few weeks, helping convince the national Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to include his race in its special “Red-toBlue” program.

Though he still faces a primary challenge from 2006 nominee Steve Harrison, McMahon seems to already be looking past that battle, focusing his talk on reaching for voters outside of his party, ethnicity and ideology.

“The goal is to win the election in November,” McMahon said. “I have to reach out to independents and conservatives in the mid-island and South Shore.”

To do so, he is touting his Council record and relationship with community associations to win votes in the general election and the primary.

“Across this island, I worked closely with civic groups,” McMahon said. “I’ll continue to do that on Staten Island and expand that into Brooklyn, the new frontier.”

He has been touting his record on this, too, and at the Container Terminal picnic was praised by Devine for working with Molinaro to revive the dock. That earned them their invitations.

McMahon, Molinaro and Devine took the stage, with the Goethals Bridge as a backdrop.

After the Pledge of Allegience, Devine gave glowing praise to Molinaro and McMahon, “the guy we, the New York Container Terminal, desperately want to send to Washington,” Devine said.

Devine pressed his employees to vote for the person who has their fiscal interest in mind.

“When you get your paycheck on Thursday, remember Mike McMahon,” Devine said.

Molinaro, who pushed the Staten Island Conservative Party to endorse McMahon but could not sway the Brooklyn or state party, threw his support to McMahon when Republicans could not field any prominent elected officials. McMahon ran on the Conservative Party ticket in his 2005 reelection to the Council, a safe Democratic seat.

“That man happens to be a Democrat.

I’m a Conservative,” Molinaro told the crowd of several hundred employees.

“But you vote for your best interest. Mike McMahon is in your best interest.” drivoli@manhattanmedia.com

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Scrambling to Reintroduce Himself, Straniere Brings His Petitions Door-to-Door

J U LY 2008

seat, Dr. Jamshad Wyne, a local cardiologist and the borough GOP’s finance chair.

The two college-aged volunteers, decked out in homemade WYNE FOR CONGRESS T-shirts, were also collecting signatures at the Waldbaum’s exit.

“Most of the time, they don’t know who he is. Sometimes we have to explain,” said Kurt Low, one of the volunteers. “Sometimes, they sign ‘cause he’s a Republican.’”

Neither candidate is being supported by the party, which is looking for someone to replace Frank Powers, the designated nominee who suddenly died of heart failure June 22.

There seem to have been enough signatures collected to use his committee on vacancies to fill the spot. But there have not been any takers—which leaves Straniere scrambling for the nomination the party cannot seem to give away.

The death of Powers and the possibility of the GOP cross-endorsing the Independent or Brooklyn Conservative Party candidate propelled Straniere to restart his political career rather than focus on his year-old hot dog business.

“The Republican Party should nominate a Republican to office,” Straniere said. “I think to unite the party, they need to get behind my candidacy and win this seat.”

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Straniere’s relationship with the borough GOP tanked when he ran a 2001 primary for borough president against Republican-endorsed James Molinaro, a registered Conservative and deputy borough president.

With both sides still sore from that showdown, his nascent candidacy is struggling to get off the ground. The three-way primary which may result, though, was far from his mind as he struggled to get enough signatures to make his own run possible.

One Waldbaum’s shopper came close to signing Straniere’s petition until she inquired about other candidates.

Then she remembered something about him.

“Don’t you live in Manhattan?” she asked.

“I do, but I’m moving back, of course,” Straniere said.

“I can’t sign it for someone who lives in Manhattan,” she said. A Manhattanite cannot relate to Staten Island issues, she explained.

Straniere tried one last plea to no avail.

“I was your Assemblyman for 24 years!” he said.

But she had already walked away. drivoli@manhattanmedia.com

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Passed Over Again, Harrison Doggedly Pursues His Two-Run Strategy

BY DAN RIVOLI

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ANDREW SCHWARTZ

URING MORNING RUSH HOUR AT

Though Straniere told Waldbaum’s shoppers that he is running for Congress, his first major hurdle is collecting enough signatures to even qualify for ballot placement, much less survive any legal challenges.

BY DAN RIVOLI STRANIERE’S 24-YEAR Assembly career ended in 2004 when the local GOP backed the primary challenge of a 29-year-old Council chief of staff, Vincent Ignizio, in the Republican primary in Staten Island.

Ignizio, who has since moved to the City Council, emerged the victor.

Straniere did not allow that niggling fact get in the way of a good pitch as he tries to grab enough signatures for ballot access as a Republican candidate for Congress.

“I’m Assemblyman Bob Straniere and I’m running for Congress,” he told shoppers as they entered the supermarket, leaving out the word “former.”

The day before the Fourth of July, around 3 p.m., Straniere started Day 2 of petitioning at a Waldbaum’s Supermarket

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OBERT

in Prince’s Bay, near the southernmost tip of the island.

The area is deep in Republican country but more people declined to sign Straniere’s petition for being registered Independents and Conservatives than being Democrats.

To those who declined to sign, he quickly responded “Can’t use ya,” and moved on to the next.

Straniere does not have time to waste.

He is under the gun to get over 1,250 signatures by July 17, the filing deadline.

By 4 p.m., staffer Betty Kain suggested moving to a new location.

“We won’t gain anything,” Straniere said. “It’s time wasted. It takes so long to get anywhere.”

Straniere’s efforts were slightly thwarted by two campaign volunteers of another Republican seeking the congressional

the Staten Island Ferry terminal, Steve Harrison was a man of few words. He had to be. With clumps of people rushing past as the ferries approach the dock, he barely had time for a very fast “Hi, how are ya? Steve Harrison running for Congress—” Before Harrison hit the last syllable, he shifted his attention to a new person sprinting towards the closing ferry terminal, then another. When the crush of commuters became a stampede to catch the boat, Harrison and his two-man campaign crew stepped aside.

This was a prime location for the cash-strapped Harrison: thousands of Staten Islanders, many of them Democrats with only newspapers and iPods to occupy their attention between ferries. And as an added bonus, the ferry fleet was down a boat that Wednesday, leaving more people waiting in the terminal.

Harrison, who had been at the ferry terminal since 7 a.m., is on a quest to connect with registered Democrats in his primary race against Council Member Michael McMahon (D-Staten Island).

Most people may have written the nomination—and the general election—off as

McMahon’s, but Harrison spends much of his time on the campaign trail reminding people that there is a primary. And that is Sept. 9. And that he needs their help.

Despite Staten Island’s reputation as a Republican stronghold, national and local Democrats are hungrily eyeing the congressional seat that will be vacated by disgraced Rep. Vito Fossella (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn), optimistic that after 28 years of Republican control the seat will flip.

“Democrats will win,” commuter Linda Novak whispered to Harrison, cupping a hand to the side of her mouth. “I can’t say that too loud over here.”

His current campaign is in a marked departure for the man who fashioned himself as the conservative Democrat in a failed bid for the City Council’s Bay Ridge district in 2003. When Harrison finds a Democrat, he immediately launches his platform: a laundry list of progressive causes and national issues like war—“I want to end the war in Iraq,”—trade—“I oppose NAFTA, CAFTA, HAFTA, LAFTA,”—and energy— “We got to get away from oil.”

Slowly, he drew some interest among the captive crowd.

“What will you do with Iran and our interest in Israel, the only democracy in

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Notes from the Frenzied Campaign: the Middle East?” one woman asked.

“Israel has the right to defend itself,” Harrison answered. “I favor a two-state solution.”

This was not enough for the woman, who launched into a barrage of questions on Israel regarding land giveaways, border lines and partitioning.

As the conversation grew more heated and attracted a suddenly curious crowd of onlookers, Harrison switched roles.

Instead of a candidate, he turned himself into a debate moderator.

“I’ll talk with anybody. I’m not a mealy-mouth Democrat,” Harrison later said. “I don’t adjust my message. It might get you elected, but you don’t get much accomplished.”

When the ferry doors open, the circle breaks. A man who argued a more proPalestine position, James Stewart, hangs back for a moment, pulling the conversation to a more parochial issue: Harrison’s Brooklyn residence.

“I agree with you,” Stewart said. “But I don’t know anything about you. You’re from Brooklyn.”

“Where does my mother live?”

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

Candidates Try to Steady Themselves in Still Shifting Race

A cash-strapped Harrison takes his message to the Staten Island Ferry terminal, the borough’s busiest transportation hub, hoping to connect with registered Democrats.

Harrison asked.

“I don’t know.”

“In Staten Island.”

But that is not enough for Stewart.

Staten Island makes up two-thirds of the district, and most Staten Islanders want to see one of their own representing it.

Being from Brooklyn hurts. But being a repeat candidate, after pulling 43 percent in 2006, helps.

“Most people know me from the last election. This is the two-run strategy,” he said.

That still was not enough for the coun-

ty organizations in Brooklyn or Staten Island to give him the nomination again this time around, when they suddenly saw a victory as possible. First, Council Member Domenic Recchia (D-Brooklyn) was the candidate, though he never did move into the district. Then, when Fossella’s implosion moved a Democratic victory from long shot to likely, the Democratic organizations passed over Harrison again, choosing McMahon.

So the first task was getting on the ballot. The night before the ferry appearance, he was going around the borough’s North Shore projects, which have the highest concentration of black voters, the bulk of Staten Island’s registered Democrats.

One of the people he encountered, Sylvia Ancrum, recognized him the next morning on her way into Manhattan. She stopped to say hello, despite the open ferry doors and the emptying waiting area.

“Looking to stomp in Stapleton?”

Ancrum said, referring to the North Shore neighborhood.

“We’ll be stomping,” Harrison said.

“We’ll be stomping a lot.” drivoli@manhattanmedia.com

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With Fossella out, Already Sparse City GOP Bench Grows Emptier Disgraced congressman’s downfall accentuates Republicans’ prospect problem

BY DAN RIVOLI MOLINARI HAS TAKEN TO using grim language about the local party he helped build.

“The Republican Party is bleeding these days. The blood is flowing at all three levels of government,” said Molinari, the former Staten Island congressman and borough president and top city GOP power broker.

In his borough, a traditional Republican stronghold, the GOP struggled to recruit a congressional candidate to replace retiring and scandal-ridden Rep. Vito Fossella (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn), Molinari’s successor and protégé. The Democrats have thrown the party’s support to Council Member Michael McMahon (D-Staten Island).

Molinari has often floated the idea of Fossella running for mayor, even as a potential 2005 primary challenger to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The only Republican in the city’s House delegation and a former Council member who had cruised through each of his elections, Fossella was seen by many as the party’s logical next standard bearer for Gracie Mansion. That he is young and good-looking with, what seemed like, a solid family helped, too.

“There was a good marketing appeal there,” Molinari said.

Though Fossella had long denied he was interested in the job, many

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Republicans had held out hope he would eventually change his mind. Now they see the sudden dissolution of his political future as highlighting the problems they are having finding a strong candidate for next year’s mayoral race.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has denied his own interest in running for mayor, and his registration as an independent anyway leaves open the question of whether he would even seek the Republican nomination if he were to run.

Bruce Blakeman has floated his name. But the only person that showed interest in running for mayor is grocery store magnate John Catsimatidis. While his deep pockets and willingness to fashion himself as a Republican are attractive qualities to the GOP, his history as a long-time Democratic donor who recently switched parties is off-putting to some major Republican players, including Molinari.

Though neither of the last two Republican mayors had previously held office, Republicans are always eager to field candidates with proven electability and a base of constituents. But there are not many other options—the number of elected Republicans in the city can by now be counted on two hands: four state senators, three Council members, one Assembly member and one district attorney.

So with Fossella out, even more people are talking about State Sen. Martin Golden (R-Brooklyn) jumping into the race.

Golden, who called himself the “go-to guy” for the city in his majority conference, has been slowly building a profile outside of his Bay Ridge district, often being the Republican mouthpiece on television for controversial topics like former-Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s (D) plan to give drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants.

hopefuls from the State Senate like Roy Goodman (R-Manhattan) in 1977 and John Marchi (R-Staten Island) in 1969 and 1973.

A candidate like Fossella or the politically simpatico Golden could draw strength from standing up for the city when dealing with the different levels of government, the way Republican politicians aim to do in a Democratic city, argued Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway.

“Your position on abortion or gay marriage is not part of the job description for the mayor of New York,” Conway said. “Having someone who can deal with Albany is.”

That was a quality Molinari saw in Fossella and believes the next Republican mayoral candidate will have to prove to the public to win. Since that candidate will not be Fossella, however, Molinari said the task ahead for a Republican candidate in this heavily Democratic city will be even more difficult.

“We’ve pulled a rabbit out of the hat a couple of times. No reason to say it can’t happen again,” Molinari said. “But the rabbit is getting tired.” drivoli@manhattanmedia.com Direct letters to the editor to editor@cityhallnews.com.

The number of elected Republicans in the city can by now be counted on two hands.

Golden has been fundraising frequently and amassed a $608,532 war chest for an uncontested re-election, though not all of that money would be available for a city race.

Golden, who might be in the minority come November, said he is entertaining the possibility of a mayoral bid and would have the support from Molinari, whom he consults frequently.

“We speak all the time. But we haven’t moved forward on that particular issue,” Golden said.

If he jumped into the race, Golden would follow in the tradition of mayoral

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Like Political Protesters, DC 37 Struggles to Organize in Central Park After six months of closed-door negotiations, municipal union goes public with effort life, was also once the province of unions.

But when the Conservancy was created in 1980 and charged with the task of revitalEVERAL DOZEN MEMBERS OF DC 37, the city’s largest municipal izing the park, the new organization began employee union, swarmed the to replace municipal employees hired by the Parks Department with its gated entrance to the Conservancy O F E T private workforce.

Garden, a posh reception area H own AT Since then, the union tucked along the eastern edge of workforce in Central Central Park.

Park has dwindled rapWell-dressed patrons of the idly to a meager two Central Park Conservancy, the dozen or so—a trend public-private partnership that mimicked in parks manages the park, began to across the city. trickle in for music and refreshLate last winter, the ments. At 6 p.m. sharp, the protestunion began quietly rebooting ers were there, too, handing out leaflets attacking the Conservancy’s “anti-union its organizing drive, approaching Conservancy workers after work and tactics.”

The spectacle was orchestrated in the having them sign cards affirming their hope of stoking a response from manage- interest in forming a union. By early this year, DeJesus said, organizers had gathment.

A few minutes after the fundraiser ered signatures from a majority of the Conservancy’s approximately 140 bluestarted, management complied.

A Conservancy employee named Katie collar workers—enough to petition for a emerged to ask the protest organizers, union election. They could not find many with all the politeness she could muster, of the other workers, since these were generally seasonal or part-time. to “call it a night.”

To secure the remaining signatures When D.C. 37 organizing director Edgar DeJesus refused, Katie explained and convince the rest of the workers to that she would now have to call support the union, organizers began Conservancy President Douglas Blonsky. approaching them in the park during Which is exactly what DeJesus wanted. working hours.

That, according to DeJesus, tipped off Central Park, cherished by New Yorkers as an idyllic escape from urban Conservancy management.

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DC 37 alleges that Blonsky began meeting with workers to discredit the union effort and DC 37 during working hours.

They also say he interrogated workers he suspected of helping union organizers in one-on-one “captive meetings.”

DC 37 decided to first confront the Conservancy on Feb. 14, when organizers met with Blonsky and presented written proposals for how to conduct a fair and transparent union election. Eight days later, DeJesus said, he received a two-line email from the Conservancy’s lawyer rejecting the proposal and retaining the right to campaign against the union.

Workers have since begun asking DC 37 for their cards back, and the number of park workers at union meetings has dwindled. At the same time, the Conservancy has been hiring seasonal workers for the summer months, winnowing the percentage of workers who have formally agreed to form a union.

One Conservancy worker who has helped lead the organizing effort said talk of the dispute had all but ceased among park employees, and that only a handful of his co-workers were still interested in unionizing. He said he felt deserted.

The Conservancy declined to comment on the allegations of harassment and union suppression. Through a spokesperson, Blonsky released a state-

ment defending the Conservancy’s treatment of its workers and calling for a union election.

“The Conservancy feels strongly that each employee—once they’ve been given a chance to learn all of the facts—has the opportunity to vote in a free and open government-administered election,” he said. “Transparency is vital in this process.”

The dispute has caught the attention of both the City Council and the Parks Department.

In April, Council Member Joseph Addabbo (D-Queens) wrote a letter to Conservancy employees co-signed by 27 other members of the Council supporting their effort to unionize. He said he had traded phone messages with Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe about the issue, and that they would continue to monitor the situation to see if further action was necessary.

“If we get to the point where the workplace environment is being jeopardized, or even the work being done at Central Park is being jeopardized, then I believe it’s in the best interest of the City Council and Commissioner Benepe to step in and resolve it,” he said.

But, he added, “only if it gets to that point—and it may be heading in that direction.” sgentile@cityhallnews.com

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ON/OFF THE RECORD BREAKFAST

Building the Future for New York and a Million More New Yorkers erhaps more than any other, housing is a central issue to New Yorkers. And with real estate prices remaining at record highs in the city despite a struggling economy, a packed room of people gathered to hear City Housing Commissioner Shaun Donovan discuss “Affordable Housing and the Future of New York” at the On/Off the Record Breakfast on May 18. From the massive increase in housing construction during the Bloomberg administration to why the current housing crisis presents a prime opportunity to change the country’s and the city’s approach to housing, Donovan addressed a wide range of topics related to housing.

Following are selections from the edited transcript.

Q: There’s a sense these days that affordable housing is rarer than before. What are people who feel this way missing that you see?

A: Well, first of all, as the mayor often says, this is a good problem to have. The fundamental problem that we have in affordable housing today is the problem of the success of New York City. The city is growing. People from all over the world want to live here, and that’s driven up housing prices. There’s no question, when the mayor came in 2001 right after 9/11, he put together a housing plan that was a fiveyear, 65,000-unit housing plan. Over the first few years of the administration, housing got less affordable. There’s no question. Part of the problem is even when you start a major investment in housing, it takes a few years to actually see those units come online. … In fact, we have more subsidized housing today than we did when the mayor came into office.

The real issue is that a market rate unit that was previously affordable to a low or moderate-income person, because of the pressure in the market, got more expensive.

Q: Is the legal definition of affordable housing correct, or do you think “affordable” should mean something else?

A: I often get this question from elected officials and community folks who say, “This is the standard for New York City and the whole metropolitan area, and it includes suburban areas. The income in my community is much lower. Shouldn’t you use my community’s definition of affordable housing rather than some national standard?” The truth is, Congress sets this standard, HUD has a definition they use for the entire country, it governs all the federal programs, and it would be impossible to just administratively figure out a system where every singe neighborhood had a different system, and try to get Congress to pass that. But what we can do—and this is what we do—we’re not tied to some particular definition of affordability from the federal government. We have and we’ve created the flexibility to vary our programs with a whole new set of resources—the Battery Park City Housing Trust Fund, a whole range of things that we’ve done under the Bloomberg administration to make our programs more flexible. So when we sit down in front of a community board or an elected official to say, “Let’s talk about what this community needs,” we can get units at the very lowest income, below 30 percent of median income for the whole city. We can get units that are middle-class units. We can vary those in away that work for that community—despite the fact that there’s this national definition out there.

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

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Q: Do you think there’s enough of an understanding in Washington of why New York needs the kinds of investments that you want them to adopt for New York?

A: I guess I would enlarge the question a little bit. I think the fundamental challenge has been to demonstrate to the American people that they know affordable housing is important. What they don’t necessarily know is that government knows how to do it right. … The truth is, when affordable housing works, it’s almost invisible.

We’re doing today, and lots of folks in this room are doing mixed income developments. We have a project that is moving its way through the approval and construction process right now in the Bronx that will combine market-rate condominiums with supportive housing with the formerly homeless. We are combining and integrating market-rate and affordable housing in a way that nobody would have thought possible a few decades ago. And, frankly, it means that we have to get out and tell the positive story, because a lot of folks don’t even know that there’s affordable housing in that building or that it’s part of their community. The image that remains is this old outdated image of public housing that failed.

We’ve got a lot of work to do to explain the advances that we’ve made and what we’ve learned and to demonstrate that yes, in fact, we will use taxpayer dollars wisely in terms of rebuilding. I think there is an opportunity, given the subprime crisis. A mentor of mine that I worked for in my first government job in Washington said, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” In fact, we have an opportunity, despite the terrible things that are happening in neighborhoods because of the subprime crisis, to really reframe the housing challenges, nationally, as a result of what we’ve seen over the last few years. Housing is on the national agenda again maybe for the first time in a generation. We have an opportunity, I think, to really utilize that to reframe the issue.

Q: Can you estimate how many housing units the city will need at certain years?

A: If you look back, in the 1990s, the city grew by over 400,000 people. We only added. All the units that got housing permits to be built in the 1990s, the total over

those ten years was about 75,000 apartments. You do the math. 75,000 apartments aren’t going to fit 400,000 people or anywhere near it. So we entered, when the mayor came into office, with a big housing deficit.

Simply put, we didn’t have enough housing for the people that were here. We probably need about 100,000 units to make that work. Add to that the million people we expect to add to the city by 2030, and even subtracting the units that are under construction today but haven’t been completed and occupied yet, we need about an additional 265,000. In total, we’re talking about over 350,000 units to the city to accommodate our growing population by the year 2030. In fact, what we did in PlaNYC, we went neighborhood by neighborhood and figured out where could those go and what we needed to do, whether it’s rezoning, whether it’s adding transportation capacity, whether it’s decking of rail yards and highways—a whole range of things to accommodate that growing population. We came up with places where we though we could build up to 500,000 units. The private market is not going to respond to every one of those opportunities. But we think within those 500,000 units of housing opportunities we can likely get the 365,000 units that we need.

Q: Is it possible to get 365,000 new units in the next 22 years given the rate of construction?

A: In fact, it’s very achievable. Over the last three years, we’ve seen a dramatic boom in housing construction. …

We’ve seen more than 30,000 permits each of the last three years—never happened before in the history of keeping these numbers. We’ve only had one year ever that was more than 30,000 permits. That’s a great start, but we don’t need to keep this pace to sustain that level.

Just do the math. We could probably be at half of that level of construction on average and still get to that 365,000 units.

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To view a video of the whole On the Record portion of the interview, go online to www.cityhallnews.com.

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Prime Number 20

BY SUSAN CAMPRIELLO OSNOW SAYS THAT HE and Jerry Skurnik are the oldest living couple in New York politics.

But though they have been business partners for 20 years and friends for even longer, the two had to be coaxed into staying near each other for long enough to pose for a photograph together.

“We’re never in the same room together,” Osnow explained.

Many of those they work with call Osnow and Skurnik “No Overlap,” Osnow explains, because the two naturally gravitate toward, and manage, different aspects of the company.

But in their office suite in the Woolworth Building, their voices do overlap, and frequently.

“There’s nothing that he does,” Osnow began describing their roles.

“Very little,” Skurnik interjected.

“That I do,” Osnow finished.

The secret to the success of their lengthy professional relationship, they say, is their complimentary personalities and skill sets.

Prime New York, their two-man data service company, provides political and grassroots campaigns with lists matching constituents’ ethnicities to voting histories. These lists can be used to profile the ideological leanings of neighborhoods and organizations.

Skurnik and Osnow met on thenMayor Ed Koch’s 1982 gubernatorial campaign.

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Originally thinking of being general political consultants, Skurnik and Osnow were given the idea of making the company a list business by Scott Stringer over dinner in Chinatown after a campaign event for one of Osnow’s clients.

With only one other list business around for competition at the time, Osnow and Skurnik quickly found clients and, as their almost-partner Sabini now says, they have become the list service name brand.

“They can deliver the [data] sort you want right away,” he said.

Until recently, most Prime New York’s work for campaigns involved printing labels and mailing cards. Campaigns often ordered many different lists for many different mailings over time. Today, campaigns get everything at once.

Beyond election season, Prime New York also matches voting lists to membership lists for organizations, from grassroots campaigns to labor unions looking to see how their members feel about issues.

Stringer, who still speaks with pride about his role in the firm’s origins, said Skurnik and Osnow have done well with the idea he inspired.

“They deal with everybody— Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives,” Stringer said, pointing out that sometimes opposing candidates order similar lists from the firm, “and yet everybody has a great fondness for them.”

For years, Prime New York printed mailing labels or cards or printouts of con-

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

Skurnik and Osnow celebrate two decades of polls, numbers and term limits

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer called Jerry Skurnik and Stuart Osnow “part of the folklore of New York City politics.” said, but not before Skurnik, leaning back in his chair, cut him off.

“I’m a political guy, not a computer guy,” he said.

Once done by fax or expensive dial-up modem calls to Hawaii, now orders are placed through an automated system online. With these well within Skurnik’s technological abilities, Osnow has been freed to help troubleshoot client problems. He also concentrates on sales, mailings and e-mail blasts.

Skurnik specializes in helping clients understand the voter lists they have purchased. Among his specialties is helping pare down mailings by analyzing voter lists to determine likely voters.

Their interests diverge outside the office as well. Osnow, a clarinet and saxophone player, is on the board of the Brooklyn-Queens Conservatory of Music.

Skurnik, meanwhile, is partial to trips to Las Vegas casinos.

They have connected through

“There’s nothing that he does,” Osnow began describing their roles.

“Very little,” Skurnik interjected.

“That I do,” Osnow finished.

By the mid-1980s, they each had separate consulting businesses sharing a small office space in Time Square. They talked about merging their respective operations with John Sabini, who instead became the Queens County Democratic Chair following Donald Manes’ suicide, launching a career in government.

stituent voting lists for clients. Most of this data, generated by partner company Voter Contact Service, headquartered in Hawaii, can now be downloaded from the internet or e-mailed to a client as a file.

At first, Osnow worked with the computers and used to make all their orders because he knew computer lingo, Osnow

Osnow’s eight-year-old twins, going to Mets games together and making an annual trip to a conference in Hawaii.

And looking at their own business, they agree that there is clear room for improvement: the method of using last names to determine a voter’s ethnicity must be refined, they both say, to avoid confusion between Caribbean and African-American last names or Soviet and Eastern European ones. Different ethnic groups tend to have different voting patterns.

But there is little opportunity for such time-intensive projects, with all the new lists to generate and match. They expect 2009 to be a busy year, with the volume of candidates expected. That candidates with smaller constituencies tend to use more lists will boost business as well.

“If we had a 20th anniversary shirt made,” Osnow said, “it would say, ‘Term limits are good for business, but bad for government.’” scampriello@manhattanmedia.com Direct letters to the editor to editor@cityhallnews.com.

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For Council Members Looking to Higher Office, Willets Point Presents Dilemma Tension between professed solidarity with storeowners and labor support of plan

BY RACHEL BREITMAN CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS are finding themselves caught between a rock and a hard place—or, more aptly, a mud pit and a chop shop—as they try to protect Willets Point from the threat of eminent domain.

The city’s $3 billion redevelopment plan for the Queens neighborhood calls for leveling the frequently flooded 62acre plot of auto body repair shops, dirt roads and food supply businesses to make room for an office park, a hotel, restaurants, residential housing, new retail and a convention center. The city’s Economic Development Corporation has already acquired land from two neighborhood merchants, but continues to wrestle with small business owners unwilling to abandon their shops.

While 29 of the 51 Council members signed a letter in April proclaiming solidarity with the storeowners who work in the shadows of Shea Stadium, they now face opposition from union leaders and state legislators who have thrown their support behind the new development.

“The redevelopment plan,” boasted Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber, in a statement, “already has the support of City, State and Federal elected officials, labor groups and environmental advocates.”

But Queens Council members, many of them eyeing runs for higher office, have contested the plan, pushing for greater compensation for business owners and more designated affordable housing.

Council Member Hiram Monserrate (D-Queens) has been criticizing the new development since February.

“The plan is clearly insufficient,” said Monserrate, who represents Corona, East Elmhurst, Elmhurst and Jackson Heights and now is poised to take the State Senate seat currently held by John Sabini (D-Queens) this fall. But Monserrate tempered his criticism with optimism, “that we can work together on a development plan,” and labeled the unions’ support, “an incredibly important piece to this project.”

Monserrate is walking a tight rope between unhappy business owners, represented by the Willets Point Industry and Realty Association, and labor interests, excited by the 23,000 jobs the Bloomberg administration has promised with the plan.

The Association filed suit against the mayor, Department of Environmental Protection and Departments of Sanitation and Transportation in April,

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Assembly Member Nettie Mayersohn joined a rally in support of Willets Point redevelopment at City Hall. “I have no idea why anyone is opposed to it,” she said. charging that the city had failed to provide basic repairs to the streets and storm sewers to enable the use of eminent domain.

“The businesses will have nowhere to go,” said Patricia Jones, a spokesperson for the Association, who sent an open letter to several New York labor leaders asking them to withdraw support for the redevelopment.

But the New York City Central Labor Council remained enthusiastic as they rallied for the redevelopment on the steps of City Hall June 26, flanked by a swath of Queens Democrats which included Assembly Members Nettie

Mayersohn, Mark Weprin, José Peralta, Ellen Young, State Sen. Toby Stavisky and Borough President Helen Marshall.

“I am so glad they are finally going to do something about the area,” said Mayersohn.

Reflecting on shop owners and housing advocates who have protested the plan, she added, “I have no idea why anyone is opposed to it.”

The neighborhood community board also gave renovation a thumbs-up, albeit with some restrictions.

“The EDC and the entire city have come up with some very solid, reasonable, valid recommendations,” said

Charles Apelian, chair of the land use subcommittee for Queens Community Board 7. “The board did not support eminent domain, but realized it could be a necessary part of the process.”

On June 23, the subcommittee approved the plan to rezone the area by a vote of 22 to 3. The full community board followed suit the following week by a vote of 21-15, with provisions that the EDC create a mitigation fund to pay for resulting traffic and infrastructure problems and a second vote on the final plan after a developer is selected.

Council Member John Liu said he understands the opposition, and that is why he joined fellow Queens Democrats Monserrate and Council Member Tony Avella in an open letter recommending Community Board 7 reject the rezoning of Willets Point.

Sorting through the conflicting interest groups on either side of the Willets Point debate may pose problems for Liu, who has amassed a large campaign war chest in preparation for an indeterminate run next year, and for others like him.

“I don’t think it’s possible to break it down into a black or white issue,” he said.

But, he added, “It is always good to have labor behind you.”

Avella has been less gentle in his criticism for the plan or the overall development history of the Bloomberg administration.

“This will put family-owned businesses into bankruptcy,” said Avella. “They haven’t been addressing community concerns, and they have a bad track record.”

This puts Avella, himself a prospective 2009 mayoral candidate, in a position which potentially antagonizes both the administration and organized labor.

“As a resident of Tony Avella’s district, I won’t support him if he isn’t creating jobs,” said Whitestone resident Jim Conway, the political director for the Local 14 Operating Engineers Union.

Before the Council votes this fall, Liu, Monserrate and Avella will have to weigh the risks and benefits of endorsing the plan or remaining opposed.

Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf advised them to stick to their guns.

“It’s wise to take a community advocate position, and it’s always smart to be against eminent domain,” he said. “Some might say that they are risking alienating the labor vote, but labor alone has never won an election for anyone.” rachellbreitman@yahoo.com Direct letters to the editor to editor@cityhallnews.com.

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ON/OFF THE RECORD BREAKFAST

The Chairman in the Chair, on War, Taxes and Hillary Clinton year and a half into his first term as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charlie Rangel was the speaker at the June 30 On/Off the Record Breakfast held at the Commerce Bank location on 42nd and Madison.

Speaking to a standing room-only audience, Rangel discussed what the work he has been doing as chairman has meant for New York and for the nation, and what having the title of chairman has meant for his ability to get attention for his positions. Rangel laid out his take on closing tax loopholes, the real story behind his role getting Hillary Clinton to run for Senate and drop out of the presidential race and his view of racial tension in New York City.

What follows are selections from the edited transcript.

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Q: The economic situation is very much on people’s minds. At this point, would you call this a recession, a slowdown, a rough patch? What is it to you?

A: I don’t care what you call it. When it reaches the point you’re saying that middle class Americans cannot put food on the table and have to go to pantries and tell their kids that they can’t stay in college, can’t meet their rent, can’t meet their mortgage payments—that is sadder than anything that’s happening at Wall Street, because this is really what’s made America to me so great. … There’s no one that came to this country that didn’t want to be middle class. And now they’re taking that away from us, and no one’s raising hell about it. In other words, it would seem to me that if, after all the struggle after two or three generations, it reaches the point that you can’t take care of your family and someone from the government says, “I’m from the federal government. I’m going to pass $169 billion in stipends.” That’s a hand-out. And guess what— you’re borrowing the money to do it. It would seem to me that common sense would say that any tax code that doesn’t protect the middle class is economically flawed.

Anybody that justifies it is not being honest.

Q: Healthcare is another major concern you have spoken about in the past—if, as you hope, the next president is Barack Obama, do you think that there will be another big effort to redo the health care system in this country?

A: He can’t afford not to address it, because it’s a hemor-

Q: You were one of her stronger backers. When the last primary was held, there was a period between that night and when she decided to leave the race.

The reports at the time had it that you were one of the people who convinced her that it was time to exit the race. What did you say to her to convince her that it was the right moment?

A: I said the New York delegation was prepared to stay with her until the very end. And we thought that had come.

Q: Do you think Senator Obama should pick her as his running mate?

A: I think the more people that really want her as vice president that would just shut up, the easier it might be for someone to make that decision without having it appear as though a lot of pressure was being placed on the Democratic nominee. All I can say is, that if you got 16 million votes on one side and 16 million votes on the other side, and together that’s 32 million votes, it just makes a lot of arithmetic sense to me.

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

Q: You’re the first chairman of the Ways and Means Committee from New York in 50 years. What do you think it means for New York to have a congressman from New York as chair of this so important committee?

A: The first and most important thing is, you don’t have to explain to a chairman from New York City the problems New York City has. … Sometimes when you are the chairman, it’s not exactly what you have done but what you have stopped from being done. We’ve gone through a tough time with this administration and, even though it doesn’t fall within the jurisdiction of the Ways and Means Committee, my opposition to this immoral war, I think, has been enhanced by the fact that they can say, “Rangel, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.” It makes a difference. Whether it should or not—that doesn’t make any difference. The fact is it does make a difference. Whenever there’s anything concerning veterans, I feel with all of my heart that this country has been so unjust in the way we’ve treated those people that were asked to go off to fight this immoral war. If I just go down in history as the last one to fight this war, I’d be all right.

wife for seven years before I asked her to get married. I still think it was my idea to get married. So yes, I convinced her to run for the Senate.

rhage. You cannot avoid the hemorrhage. Health care is a hemorrhage. Jail care as opposed to education is a hemorrhage. The war is a hemorrhage. If you just recognize what’s going on, that’s an accomplishment. Something’s got to stop. That’s the stop. And someone should say, “And how are you going to pay for it?” And I submit to you that there are trillions of dollars in the tax code, preferential treatment if you will, that serves not economic purpose. Since I’ve been the chairman of the Ways and Means committee, it shouldn’t surprise you that I have a lot of new friends. It’s totally unbelievable. I try to remember their names. I see them in the papers. They really reached me not through them stopping by the house on the weekend, saying, “Charlie, can we talk?” The way they get my attention is getting the Congress’s attention— and that’s through a lobbyist. You have to understand that CEOs are very intelligent people, and if you show them a loophole, they’d be stupid not to take advantage of it. To just say that good CEOs take advantage of loopholes is redundant. They do that. But if you were to ask them, “Are you taking this loophole at the expense of education? No. At the expense of healthcare? No. Do you ever take into consideration the cost of this war? As it relates to what’s happening to our economy? No.” But who does these things? The lobbyists. What is the lobbyist paid to do? To get preferential treatment. That’s their job. You mean having an economically sound economy is not their job? No, it’s not. Education and health? No, it’s not their job. … Their job is to get those tax loopholes. And they have been pretty darn effective. So I put out a tax bill that said I can reduce—and that’s the Democrats on the committee, taxes for 99 million people—reduce the taxes and pay for it by closing loopholes. It’s been in the Wall Street Journal. It’s been in all the major newspapers. No one’s run me out of town yet.

Q: Let’s talk about the presidential election a little more. You were the person who convinced Hillary Clinton to run for Senate in the first place.

A: Let me clear the record on that. I was engaged to my

Q: In New York City, there have been questions about where we are on issues of racial sensitivity related to the Sean Bell shooting and the verdict.

Some people say we’re in a much better state than we were. Some say that there are tensions under the surface that were exposed with the shooting.

What’s your take on where things are in this city?

A: I don’t think they were under the surface at all. People don’t truly understand that in the Sean Bell case, the law was against the victims. The law was against the victims.

There’s not none of this business about having a jury of your peers when you are the victim and you’re in law enforcement. The peers of a policeman charged with violating his responsibility are the judges and the district attorney’s office. They are the peers. When a defendant knowingly says, “I don’t want any regular people, I want one of my peers. I want a judge because he or she can be objective,” than you already set that the law is against the victim. To have a law like that is wrong. To have officers being trained without living in the city is wrong.

Q: Do you think it says anything greater about the situation in the city as far as racial tension or unfairness in general?

A: It’s so bad that black cops don’t know which side they’re on as it relates to fairness in terms of victims, where certain neighborhoods you figure you can mistreat citizens a hell of a lot easier because of their color or economic background. That is so obvious that everyone knows that. Very few people want to talk about it, but if you had just have some kids in school to ask, “Where would you most likely get shot? Does your color make a difference as to the likelihood of getting shot?”

Kids can answer those questions. It’s all we can talk about, but it exists. And it’s sad.

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To view the video of the whole On the Record portion of the interview, including Rangel’s thoughts on the war and how race may play into Barack Obama’s candidacy over the course of the general election race, log on to www.cityhallnews.com.

CITY HALL

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urrently, drivers across the country are charged an insurance premium regardless of the number of miles they drive. That means that a person who drives 40,000 miles could have the same premium as a person who drives just 2,000 miles.

As part of a larger effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Oregon state legislators tried to offset that disparity, creating tax incentives for insurance companies that offer “PayAs-You-Drive” (PAYD) programs.

This option is intended to encourage drivers to rack up fewer miles by providing the incentive of lower premiums— the fewer miles driven, the lower the premium.

Several supporting studies have found that encouraging reductions in miles driven would also alleviate traffic and reduce the number of car-related accidents.

“With less driving you get a bunch of environmental and societal benefits,” said Chris Hagerbaumer, deputy director of the Oregon Environmental Council, which lobbied for the bill.

The Oregon law does not compel insurance companies to offer PAYD but

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ELSEWHERE Salem, Oregon

Environmental Advocates Hope for Pay-As-You-Drive Road Trip

By Michael Szeto instead gives insurance companies a $100 tax credit for every car that is insured under the program. This lack of compulsion helped the bill pass without much opposition from insurance companies and special interest groups.

Since the structure of New York State insurance laws requires companies to take into account drivers’ previous loss claims and driving history, bringing PayAs-You-Drive to New York would pose significant problems. Only with coupled amendments to other laws would legislators be able to begin offering tax credits.

According to the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, New York would have the third

J U LY 2008

largest reduction in driving if the state passed Pay-As-YouDrive, behind New Jersey and Hawaii. Driving in New York could decrease by up to 11.5 percent.

But the concept has not generated much support in the Empire State, though Assembly Member Robert Sweeney (DSuffolk), Chair of the Assembly Environmental Conservation Committee, said he was willing to consider the proposal.

In April, the Assembly passed a bill he introduced which would authorize the Department of Environmental Conservation to set limits on greenhouse gas emissions. If signed into law, the new standards would require reductions of 2.3 percent each year starting in 2015, toward a goal of an 80-percent reduction by 2050.

Sweeney, the bill’s chief sponsor, said Pay-As-You-Drive was piecemeal pollu-

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tion reform, as opposed to his legislation, which he claimed would “try to reduce greenhouse gases across the board.”

State Sen. Carl Marcellino (RNassau/Suffolk), chair of the Senate Environmental Conservation Committee, has a companion bill that, in addition to the reduction requirement, creates a task force to study the damage of global warming and to propose solutions. That bill has not been moved out of committee.

That leaves New York without a PayAs-You-Drive law, which to those who call the bill a success in Oregon comes as a surprise.

“I don’t know why other states haven’t taken this up, as it’s a great idea, especially with rising oil prices,” said Oregon State Representative Jackie Dingfelder (D), the chief sponsor of Pay-As-YouDrive. “The key is getting the word out so folks know it’s available.” mszeto@manhattanmedia.com Direct letters to the editor to editor@nycapitolnews.com

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Sign-up for e-mail updates at

www.cityhallnews.com AN OPEN LETTER

BY THE MANAGEMENT OF THE LOWER EAST SIDE TENEMENT MUSEUM We are currently in discussion with a group of our part time and per diem employees which asked the Museum to recognize a union limited only to themselves, excluding the full-time employees. We have said in the past, and we reiterate today, the Museum’s commitment to recognize any union that establishes itself as the choice of a majority of our employees in an appropriate unit. The Museum believes that any union that might be formed should represent not only part-time and per diem employees but also full time employees, since they are the people with the greatest vested interest in the future success of the Museum, committed to work at the Museum on a regular basis.

The Museum wants to ensure that this debate, insofar as it enters the public arena, is based on facts. Part-time and per diem educators, make between $17.00 and $25.00 an hour. That is a higher wage, by far, than at any comparable museum in the city and it is indicative of the high regard in which the Museum holds its educators who lead tours for visitors.

When this issue first arose November 2006, the Museum urged its per diem or casual employees to move into full -time positions or become regularly scheduled part-timers in order to regularize their relationship to the Museum and to gain access to the benefits that accrue to regular employees. They declined, preferring the flexibility afforded by per diem and part time work to pursue their other interests.

The Museum also believes the National Labor Relations Board, formed in the 1930s to protect the rights of workers seeking to organize a union, is the appropriate and best vehicle to conduct a secret and non coercive ballot to ascertain whether our employees within that appropriate unit desire to form a union. They have refused to approach the NLRB to mediate this situation.

If the majority of its employees vote in favor of a union, the Museum will fully respect that decision and proceed to negotiate.

That is the Museum’s commitment to its employees, to its visitors, to its supporters and to the history it interprets every day.

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Anthony Weiner,

Seriously

BY EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE

CITY HALL

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J U LY 2008

a few blocks from his home in Forest Hills. Breakfast that day is a waffle covered in butter and syrup, carefully cut into quarters along the lines and eaten with his hands. He has a cup and a half of coffee, poured over a large cup of ice, and, at the waitress’ prompting, a small glass of orange juice, because, he reflects, that is probably good for him.

About 250 votes separated Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer from the 40 percent he would have needed to avoid a runoff. All through that night and campaigning at a subway stop in Harlem the next morning, Weiner— who came in a distant second, 10 points behind—planned to continue the fight, even though most of his top advisors had already recommended he leave the race.

He could have waged a protracted battle with Ferrer’s campaign over counting absentee votes, and dispatched staffers to the Board of Elections the next morning preparing to do just that.

He might have lost. He might have won.

Instead, he quit, sparing Democrats the kind of divisive, potentially racially charged primary that had eviscerated the party in 2001, and sparing himself a run against the popular mayor who was already by that point pouring millions into the race.

Suddenly, the wisecracker was a statesman. Suddenly, the scrappy underdog was the frontrunner for 2009.

Weiner himself tried to play down the strategizing that went into the decision.

Maybe he would have won the run-off, he said. Maybe he would have beat Bloomberg. But his only interest at that moment, he insisted, was keeping the Democratic Party united and conceding a defeat he had already himself accepted.

“People stop me all the time and say, ‘You should have run,’ ‘You should have kept at it,’ or ‘You would have beaten him,’ or something like that. And then there are people who say ‘Great job,’” he said. “And I’m like, ‘Dude, I lost.’”

He may not have gotten the nomination. But, most political observers agree, he certainly did not lose.

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the alternative minimum tax for those with joint returns of $225,000 or less. The cuts would be paid for with a tax surcharge on people making over $1 million annually.

A year later, the bill remains in the Ways & Means Committee, where it is apparently not a top priority for Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (DManhattan).

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

“I hope that one of the things that people are going to see in the campaign and alsoif I’m fortunate enough to be mayor is that I’m going to do the job with a smile on my face,” Weiner said.

“Sometimes itfeels like Mike Bloomberg is getting a root canal when he’s in the Blue Room.”

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nthony Weiner has been holding himself in these days.

“Apparently, funny isn’t in like it was in 2005,” he said. “Now angst-ridden is in, so I’m doing that this year.”

This was a joke. A quiet joke, an increasingly rare public joke—not quite the kind of laugh line as any of his hot dog slogan jokes during the 2005 race, or the more raunchy play on his name that he used to use as mock enticement while campaigning at the Gay Pride parade.

Three years after his first run for mayor, a year before his second, this is who he is now, who he has developed into being, and who he has forced himself to become.

He is not as funny as he once was. And without a popular, millionaire incumbent in the race, his new campaign for mayor is not at all a joke.

“It wouldn’t be fair to characterize this as a six-year plan to become mayor or anything like that,” Weiner said, reflecting on all that has happened since 2005 in a diner

ack in Washington, Weiner looked over his campaign agenda again. Gradually, he began crafting laws that accomplish similar things to what he had talked about when running.

“The campaign ended, but it was part of a continuum of me trying to get these things done,” he said.

This included revisiting his middle class tax cut. He introduced and has since re-introduced the Middle Class Tax Relief Act, legislation which would provide a 10-percent tax credit and doubled child tax credit for people with joint returns of $150,000 or less, eliminate taxes altogether for those with joint returns of $25,000 or less and eliminate

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“I think Anthony Weiner’s a wonderful legislator,” Rangel said, “but we have not discussed any of his issues which concern taxes, or Ways and Means issues.”

Weiner has introduced 42 bills in the current Congress—more than three times the average for representatives, and well ahead of most of the New York delegation. But only an amendment providing $1 million in additional funds to the National Park Service has passed.

As with the stalled tax legislation, Weiner blames this mostly on not being able to find common ground between his own progressive agenda and what George W. Bush would be willing to sign into law.

But that has not stopped him from trying. Weiner has specialized in legislation aimed at larger homeland security improvements and at providing more targeted benefits to New York, from his proposed AmeriCorps-administered GothamCorps to his now-progressing effort to reopen the Statue of Liberty crown.

Often, the bills take on both, as with one which would revive the Clinton-era C.O.P.S. program, providing funds to hire up to 50,000 new police officers nationwide.

Then there is a bill to limit the fees charged by check-cashing businesses, or another to prohibit any drug manufacturer from having a controlling interest in companies managing pharmacy benefits.

“I spend a lot of time doing what you don’t get to do in a campaign, which is sitting with smart people, thinking longer thoughts, trying to have a fuller and more fleshed-out sense of the challenges facing the city and the country,” he said.

His regular schedule of “tutorials” with policy experts on issues like education, social entrepreneurism and job cre-

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JULY 2008

t most, Weiner’s model bill would provide 790 visas under the new classification he would create. It is not a major piece of legislation, and does not seem likely to even be considered by the Senate anytime soon. Yet, for the better part of a week, the proposal was all over the news.

This is the danger of being the frontrunner in next year’s mayor’s race, which, like it or not, Weiner seems to be.

He can draw crowds to his Sunday press conferences, even when they are just to publicize unsexy topics like reduced summer job funding, but everything he does is examined with increasing scrutiny, and every misstep or racy quote becomes potential front page news—yet another reason for a man with a naturally sharp tongue and lightning-fast wit to try to keep himself in check.

But there are benefits. Without an incumbent mayor seeking re-election and with a higher profile from his own performance in 2005 and since, Weiner had already raised more money for the ’09 campaign by this past January than he did for the entire ’05 run. He will very soon have collected enough to reach the campaign finance limit for the primary, though there is still almost a year and a half to go before the election.

“I’ve never had more money than the other guys,” he said. “I’m going to this time.”

This is new territory for Weiner, who has been the underdog throughout his political career—in his first race for Council, in his first race for Congress, in the minority in Washington and in the ’05

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

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Detailed ideas, like legislation to double the funding for summer jobs programs, are once again at the heart of Anthony Weiner’s mayoral campaign, though this time he is promoting them without as many jokes. ation are helping him begin to craft his platform for next year. Though he is not yet ready to discuss many details, he is rehearsing them in speeches that grow out of these discussions.

The overarching theme, though, remains looking out for “the middle class and those struggling to make it there,” the rhetoric he has been building on since first coining it in the 2005 race.

Weiner calls this vital to the fabric of the city.

“We have this ethos of aspiration,” Weiner said. “We really are the middle class capital of the world.”

Weiner saw that including in the middle class both those with middle class incomes and those who want to reach that level expands both the number of people included and the kind of policies they need. This was Weiner’s mini-revolution in Democratic thought, said Jim Kessler, a friend and another former Schumer aide who co-founded the progressive D.C.based strategy center Third Way. “A lot of Democrats don’t particularly understand the middle class, even though they think they do. Anthony’s one of those elected officials who truly does,” Kessler said.

The Congressional Middle Class Caucus, which Weiner created in April and has seen swelled to 37 members from both parties and 19 states, is just the latest move to make this, and not some supposed outer-borough allegiance, the defining characteristic of his political persona.

This is a natural progression: Weiner grew up in Brooklyn, the son of a teacher and a lawyer, and represented the old neighborhood for 14 years in the Council and Congress before his first run for mayor. He was middle class, his constituents were middle class, and he had spent his career in politics talking about middle class issues.

“Anthony is a guy who knows who he

is. He knows where he came from, he knows what he believes in,” said Anson Kaye, a former chief of staff and Weiner’s communications director for the 2005 campaign. “I don’t think you could change him with a sledgehammer.”

By next year, all this will be part of an 11-year record in Congress to tout, a history of getting things done, or at least trying to, which he believes this time will convince New Yorkers that he is the man they should want in City Hall.

As with any legislative record, his will also provide potential avenues for attack.

Around Father’s Day, for example, he was issuing press releases pushing for a new tax credit in response to a report that found a 12-percent rise in elderly parents being cared for at home between 2000 and 2006. Instead, what received attention was his bill creating a new visa category for models of a “distinguished reputation” looking to work in the United States.

For a man whose dating life is already tabloid fodder and who is attempting to be seen as serious and as a champion of the common man, this was, at best, offmessage.

A Trendy Friend, Same Middle Class Values hen Ben Affleck was cast in State of Play, an upcoming political thriller about a congressman whose mistress is murdered, he was not given much of a character description beyond “young, ambitious, star congressman.” But when he asked around about people who might fit this description, that was all he needed to point him in the direction of Anthony Weiner.

They had met once before, during the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, when they ran into each other and Affleck told Weiner he was going to run against Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Massachusetts). Weiner, who shares an apartment in Washington with Capuano, gave Affleck a brusque response.

“That’s not such a great idea,” he said. “Stick to funny movies.”

But when they reconnected last year over the movie role, they immediately hit it off—though Weiner’s staff was worried at first.

“We got into a chest-to-chest shouting match over Obama-Clinton within about four minutes. Literally, people were outside the office wondering if they should go in and separate us,” Weiner recalled.

That has defined their relationship ever since.

“We kind of come from the same middle class: fighting is the sport of the thing. It was kind of the rhetorical version of HORSE,” Weiner said. “I left the room thinking, ‘He’s not the typical Hollywood guy.’ He left the room thinking, ‘He’s not the typical political phony.’”

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For the most part, their friendship had been private. But on June 30, Affleck came to town to headline a fundraiser Weiner held at the trendy Meatpacking District restaurant Merkato 55. John Legend also attended, as did several models, local legal legend Sanford Rubenstein, singer/songwriter Duncan Sheik and Nicole Fiscella of Gossip Girl .

Weiner said that the event was almost too chic for him.

“They wanded me for hipness,” he joked.

He deflected the idea that this was a departure from his middle class message. In fact, he insisted, the creative arts crowd the event attracted were just the kind of people whom the city needs to start getting included in discussions of the middle class in the city.

“When I made remarks at that fundraiser, the first thing I said was how we need to save the middle class and make sure there’s affordable places for people to live. It was an applause line,” he said. “Just because you’re a photographer doesn’t mean you’re living in a $6,000-amonth apartment in SoHo.” Nor does he worry about the impact it might have on his image.

“I don’t think there’s any chance of them looking at some fashionable guy in the Meatpacking District and confusing him for me,” he said. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

—EIRD eidovere@cityhallnews.com

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race. He has always figured out canny ways to use this to his advantage, whether by identifying with voters who feel like underdogs themselves or by brandishing it as proof that his are radical policy proposals. Back in early 2005, for example, when he was still grasping for the bottom of the polls, his lack of support was proof that he was preaching a hard truth about the need to cut waste and patronage.

“You may notice that I am not endorsed by political machines or big developers,” he said then. “I am proud of that.”

This time around, his record-setting fundraising is due in large part to significant real estate money, and most expect him to be endorsed by many more elected officials than the one Congressman, two Assemblymen and two major unions who supported him in 2005.

Weiner says he is glad to have the backing, and parses his phrasing from 2005.

“I wasn’t saying that I don’t honor Democratic clubs and institutions,” he said. “They’re valuable. They’re citizens.

They care about the future of our city, too. I was trying to make the point: ‘Look, I’m running a different kind of campaign.

My support is coming from entirely regular citizens who just get up everyday and try to make things go.’”

Without as much of a need to fundraise hanging over him, he will have time to build necessary relationships and court more support, both among the institutional powers and everyday New Yorkers.

Already a frontrunner, Weiner will have more than a year to cement his lead.

www.cityhallnews.com But for all the chatter, the word he prefers to describe himself for 2009 is the same one he favored during the 2005 campaign: outsider.

Then, the word fit because he was behind in the polls and without much support. Now, according to his logic, it fits because he does not currently hold city office.

“I’m still fundamentally a guy trying to break into municipal politics,” he said.

“I’m not a citywide elected official like Billy Thompson or Chris Quinn are.”

Asked to compare those two candidates to the field he faced in 2005, he resists, but uses a backhanded compliment to re-emphasize his point.

“Look,” he said, auditioning a phrase that seems almost certain to become a talking point for next year’s race, “these are two long-time fixtures of city government who have a lot to offer.”

Weiner sets up the contrast, likening himself to Bloomberg.

“I’m an outsider. I’m not a City Hall guy. I’m not someone who’s entrenched in city government. And if I’m able to be successful, I’m going to be able to have a level of independence to accomplish some of the things that he did. So I think that that’s one of the things about the Bloomberg years that people are going to honor, and they’re going to look for who it is that’s able to replicate them.”

In 2005, Weiner ran against Bloomberg.

For 2009, he seems to be preparing, in

many ways, to run as the continuation of Bloomberg.

Bloomberg, though, has made no secret of how unimpressed he has been with Weiner over the years—as when, in March, he called Weiner’s suggestion that getting extra revenue from congestion pricing fees would have made getting money from Congress harder, “one of the stupider things I’ve ever heard said,” and, on further elaboration, “insanity.”

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forward with the general manager, but Tony didn’t care. He was just saying what was on his mind and not sugarcoating it. But that’s him. He’s brazen, he’s in your face,” said Engel, laughing over the memory.

But he knows this is not who he can be on the campaign trail over the next year. Being the jokester was fine for the almost parlor game Democratic primary in 2005, but actually getting people to think of him as executive means fewer wisecracks, fewer snappy one-liners.

Ed Koch, to whom Weiner is often compared in just about every way, remembers the problem well.

“David Garth gave me strict orders that I was not to be funny during the campaign. He thought I had to establish a statesman-like attitude,” Koch said, recalling the advice of his famed political consultant. “Garth said, and he was right, gravitas comes first.

Humor—after they’ve accepted you as a substantial person.”

Weiner has not been to see Garth, and, by the accounts of several former staffers, has never formally addressed a strategy of trying to mute his sense of humor. But he has clearly internalized the need for a change.

This has been an odd adjustment for a man who has always relied on his natural political skills and knows that he is at his best when acting instinctually. He has always used humor to connect.

The problem, he fears, is people not understanding the vastly different views he takes of himself and his work.

“I’m a guy who doesn’t take himself terribly seriously but does take the challenges of the city very seriously,” he said.

“I want to be someone people feel like they want to have a beer with or go to a Mets game with, but I also want people to feel that this is a guy who takes this stuff very seriously, who really every single day is thinking about ideas and trying to figure out how to implement them.”

His strength in 2005 was not his humor, but his ideas, he insisted, and the energy with which he was able to promote them. Those will not be reined in, he said, but expanded as he prepares to reintroduce himself to New Yorkers as a man they should want to be their next mayor.

Still, he can only change so much.

Wisecracking, scrappy and self-deprecating tend to be the words people use to describe him, and no matter the money, no matter the poll position, no matter the efforts to appear more serious, he said, those will still apply.

“I think I’m going to be those things even if I try to tamp them down,” he said.

“Weiner in ’09 is still scrappy and selfdeprecating and everything else.” eidovere@cityhallnews.com

“One of the ironies of the relationship with Mike Bloomberg,” he said, “is that I think I’m probably the most likely to be the one that he looks back at in a couple years and says, ‘You know what? He actually did a lot of the things I care about.’”

Weiner played down their disagreements, or the supposed feeling that he will be less eager to make the city an attractive place for new developers. Overall, he said, he tends to agree with Bloomberg’s focus on big ideas and be very impressed with how the mayor has run the city. And he has been taking notes.

“One of the ironies of the relationship with Mike Bloomberg,” he said, “is that I think I’m probably the most likely to be the one that he looks back at in a couple years and says, ‘You know what? He actually did a lot of the things I care about.’” ot that Weiner wants to be Bloomberg. For one thing, he is planning to take a more enthusiastic approach to the job.

“I hope that one of the things that people are going to see in the campaign and also if I’m fortunate enough to be mayor is that I’m going to do the job with a smile on my face,” Weiner said. “Sometimes it feels like Mike Bloomberg is getting a root canal when he’s in the Blue Room.”

Weiner has never been an executive, but he is a hard-charging, demanding boss who works around the clock and expects the same from his staff. When something goes wrong or takes longer than he believes it should, he is still prone to curse and throw phones—a factor that has contributed to a high staff turnover, with nearly 20 aides who have left since the beginning of this Congress alone.

He is still unabashed about speaking his mind, the “quintessential New Yorker,” said his fried Rep. Eliot Engel (D-Bronx/Westchester/Rockland) who recalled a fundraiser held at a MetsNationals game in Washington in May where Weiner berated Mets general manager Omar Minaya about team strategy.

“I remember thinking I wouldn’t be so

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Brown Aims to Get Now-Blue Upper East Side to Go Red Again

Former firefighter and occasional actor Tim Brown is hoping his biography will help him win back the Upper East Side for Republicans.

BY SAL GENTILE TIM BROWN STARES INTO the gaping abyss that is the subway stop at Lexington Avenue and 86th Street, he sees very little light.

On the many faces headed to work in the early hours on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, he gets little more than the occasional sneer, and frequent dirty looks.

That is the response he gets when he tells people he is a Republican.

“The problem is, when you say ‘Republican,’ people think George Bush,” said Brown, who is hoping to beat Liz Krueger for the Senate seat that stretches from Gramercy Park to the Upper East Side.

Occasionally, though, there is hope.

“When you do get an actual Republican, their eyes light up,” he said.

“It’s like you’re on an island together.”

Krueger’s district used to be one of the state’s and city’s most reliably Republican, represented for decades by Roy Goodman. But as with elsewhere in the state, demographic trends began to

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slowly favor Democrats, and today, the district has about two and a half Democrats for every one Republican.

The steep deficit has helped Krueger trounce each of her challengers since winning the special election prompted by Goodman’s resignation, itself prompted by her near-toppling of the local legend in the 2000 race.

“The Democrats taking the majority is an opportunity for me, as someone who is a Democrat and has gained some seniority in my six years, and I think, more importantly, has gained some really sophisticated understanding of how it works and we can fix it,” she said.

So the election this fall may boil down to an inversion of the one at the top of

The election this fall may boil down to an inversion of the one at the top of the ballot: the Democrat touting her experience, the Republican, his vision for change.

Krueger is now one of the Democratic conference’s more formidable members.

She headed the party’s senatorial campaign committee in 2006, and is counting on putting her acquired influence to use if the Democrats take back the Senate in the fall.

the ballot: the Democrat touting her experience, the Republican, his vision for change.

“I’m change,” Brown said. “I’m the guy coming off the street. I’m a blue-collar guy, I’m a union guy.”

In fact, Brown is union guy twice over,

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

Former firefighter talks national security; Krueger presses health care, economy his membership representing the oddly commingled threads of his eclectic biography: the Uniformed Firefighters Association and the Screen Actors Guild.

Before he was a candidate for State Senate, Brown was a firefighter, one who walked out of the lobby of Tower 2 at the World Trade Center five minutes before it collapsed on September 11, 2001.

Brown soon developed a friendship with Rudolph Giuliani, which led him to support him and work on his presidential campaign, though this put him at odds with his firefighter colleagues, many of whom have spoken out against the former mayor.

On the side, he picked up a recurring role as an inmate on the television series Oz, courtesy of his friendship with the show’s creator, Tom Fontana.

Brown is hoping his biography, despite his party line, will attract voters on the Upper East Side.

“I’m an interesting person,” he said. “I consider myself a new-breed Republican.

I hope that I can become a leader in the Republican Party and take the party in a new direction.”

Brown is using his background to shape an image for himself as the national security candidate in the mold of Giuliani, conjuring memories of September 11 and reminding voters weary of terrorism that the threat of an attack still exists.

“My district has Times Square, has the theater district, has the Chrysler Building, has Grand Central, has the Empire State Building, the United Nations, the midtown tunnel. You know, let’s keep going—how many targets do we have?” he said. “This is so ingrained in our psyche right now that people are going to vote for me because of that.”

Krueger prefers to focus on core domestic issues.

“I’ve been an outspoken advocate for universal health care coverage in New York State,” she said. “I think I’m actually really proud of the work I’ve been doing to help evolve the state’s training and the state’s legislation around health care, health care funding, hospital policy and shifting from acute to primary care.”

Brown has his own opinions on those matters. For one, he thinks Krueger has neglected the district’s hospitals by allowing funding to flow upstate. But before he gets there, he has to get on the ballot—and along the way, convince people to look past the letter next to his name.

“This is hard work,” he said of canvassing the subway stops for Republican signatures. “If you can’t handle rejection, being a Republican in Manhattan sucks.” sgentile@cityhallnews.com

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aking advantage of the Senate Republicans’ willingness to compromise on ideology in their pursuit of remaining in power, Mayor Michael Bloomberg often successfully bent the conference to his will by sprinkling some of his ample fortune and purportedly nonpartisan praise. And, sure enough, with the support of the all-powerful majority, he picked up a fair amount of victories over the last few years, despite his fewer but higher-profile defeats.

Now, though, the tide is turning—and not just because the Democrats are likely to take the majority either this November or by 2010. Already, 35 of the 62 State Senate districts cover parts of the five boroughs. With the upstate exodus continuing and the state population becoming evermore lopsided toward its southern end, this number will only grow after the next redistricting. At the same time, there will be growth in the number of senators from places like Yonkers and Buffalo, where interests often align with the Big Apple’s.

There will then be more than enough senators to start putting together a bipartisan cities caucus that could become the overwhelming force in the Senate.

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Promoting that, rather than one party’s control of the chamber or his own somewhat doubtful gubernatorial prospects, should now become the focus of this mayor, who has a record for pushing positive policy over party politics.

Given the somewhat backward rules of the State Senate that make for a nearly omnipotent majority, his support of the Republicans is understandable. However, given the changing demographics of New York State and the intensifying problems the state government needs to address on behalf of the city, the time for a new approach has clearly come. Who better than Bloomberg to lead the way?

Of course, if he does actually run for governor, leading the charge in state government on behalf of cities across the state would be a savvy political move. A coalition of Republican voters and urban Democrats responding to a proven urban champion could potentially deliver a statewide election.

But Bloomberg cannot do this alone.

Whether or not the Democrats take the majority, the mayor would need Minority Leader Malcolm Smith to play a major role. Smith, who not only is from Queens

himself, but crossed party lines to endorse Bloomberg’s re-election in 2005, would be the perfect partner. If Smith can look past justifiable frustration at the mayor for helping Republicans, and if he can make sure his conference does not tilt too much toward rural and suburban issues to protect marginal seats, he would play a vital role in recalibrating state government to truly help the state’s urban centers.

With Bloomberg leading the effort and the city’s senators united behind him, this can start to happen. There is more than enough to do on the urban agenda in New York, from improving schools to combating crime to strengthening infrastructure to expanding mass transit.

As demonstrated by the avalanche of coverage in the few weeks since City Hall’s sister publication, The Capitol, broke the story about billionaire Tom Golisano wading back into the political fray with his Responsible New York group, a determined man with a clear agenda and sizable checkbook can attract a great deal of attention.

Bloomberg, a more credible messenger, could make an even bigger splash.

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OP-ED Yet Another Sign of Needed Reform to New York’s Criminal Justice System

BY STATE SEN. ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN he case of Marty Tankleff should convince even the most hardhearted conservatives of the need for fundamental reform in our criminal justice system. In 1988, then-17-year-old Marty was convicted of murdering his parents and sentenced to fifty years in prison. His conviction was based almost entirely on a “confession” that was obtained after hours of hostile interrogation in which police falsely told a confused, traumatized teenager that his father had lived long enough to identify him as the attacker. In fact, the interrogating officer wrote the alleged confession, which Marty eventually recanted.

After serving 18 years, Marty’s conviction was vacated on December 12, 2007, and on Monday, June 30, his indictment was finally lifted after a special investigation into his case by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

Marty’s case is a stark—but not unique—example of a disturbing fact about New York’s criminal justice system: we sometimes convict innocent people. This spring, the New York State Senate Democratic Task force on Criminal Justice Reform, which I chair, began a comprehensive inquiry into the critical issue of wrongful convictions.

The taskforce is conducting a series of public hearings around the state to high-

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light cases like Marty’s, to develop legislative remedies for the most pervasive causes of wrongful convictions, and, most importantly, to build support for an independent “Innocence Commission” in our state.

An Innocence Commission would review all cases of exoneration—by DNA or other unassailable evidence—to determine what reforms are needed to prevent wrongful convictions. Commissions in several states have already begun to recommend and help implement improvements in investigations, lab operations, prosecution and judicial review.

The most reliable way for judges and juries to know whether a confession is genuine is to require the videotaping of all custodial interrogations. Video evidence will then protect both the accused from abuse and the authorities from false accusations of improper conduct.

We also must explore ways to reduce the number of false eyewitness identifications. Eyewitness testimony can be powerfully persuasive to a jury, but it is subject to suggestion and manipulation.

Nearly 60 percent of wrongful convictions involve erroneous eyewitness testimony.

Simple reforms can minimize false eyewitness identification. Lineups should be conducted by an officer who does not know the suspect. A suspect should not stand out in a lineup as the only person with key characteristics, such as race or

facial hair. Witnesses should be instructed that the perpetrator may not be in the lineup, and that the investigation will continue regardless of whom they pick, or if they pick no one at all. And witnesses should be asked to state how confident they are in any identification they provide.

Finally, for those who have already been wrongfully convicted, preservation and cataloguing of DNA evidence, and access to post-conviction DNA testing, are critical to their chances of exoneration. Shockingly, evidence that can decisively influence appeals based on innocence is often lost or destroyed. In some cases, access to post-conviction DNA testing is denied if a suspect pled guilty, in spite of what is now known about the prevalence of false confessions.

The New York State Bar Association has already begun work on a private “Innocence Commission” to examine these issues. The state should examine that process, and either supplement it with a public commission or simply endorse and adopt its findings. Either way, it is urgent that we fully investigate the causes of wrongful convictions before we convict anyone who is truly innocent.

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Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat, represents parts of Manhattan and the Bronx in the State Senate.

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OP-ED Connecting Poverty Reduction to Economic Development

BY COUNCIL MEMBER ALBERT VANN ’m convinced that we have the ability and the moral obligation to significantly reduce the number of New Yorkers who live in poverty. Int. 801, the Community Impact Report bill that was introduced at the Council’s June 29 stated meeting, began as part of an earnest effort to figure out how we could translate economic development policies into poverty reduction strategies.

All over New York City and often in neighborhoods formerly described as distressed, economic development activity is rampant. For all too many communities of color, economic development has meant racial and income displacement associated with gentrification. Mayor Bloomberg’s “economically developed” New York has become a nightmare for all too many long-time,

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hard-fighting New Yorkers that held these so-called distressed neighborhoods together in the hard times. Many of these New Yorkers “happen to be” low-income, but have the same desires for affordable housing, good paying jobs and effective public services as everyone else. They, too, deserve the ability to remain in this City during these times of booming development.

Int. 801 is an attempt to harness the economic growth that has come to characterize Bloomberg’s New York and to make it work to build communities, not tear them apart. The bill’s reporting disclosures, used as leverage, could help to yield the kinds of outcomes that have been associated with community benefit agreements, including affordable housing, good jobs and improved neighborhood services.

The bill requires developers, city

agencies or affiliated entities that administer public economic development benefits—such as the New York City Economic Development Corporation— to prepare and submit a Community Impact Report to the City Council 60 days prior to approval for benefits.

Affordable housing developments without market-rate or luxury units and social service providers would be exempt.

The bill requires estimates and analyses aimed at revealing the economic and social impacts of development on communities. For example, the bill requires developers to provide or disclose: a comparison of rents in new housing units developed to current rents in the community; whether residents or businesses are expected to be displaced; if and how many people are expected to lose their jobs; and the demographics, including

A Turning Point in Consumer Credit Reform

BY REP. CAROLYN MALONEY he barrage of bleak economic news barreling down on us these days can be hard to digest. In June, the economy shed more than 60,000 jobs, and in May, our unemployment rate surged to 5.5 percent—the biggest onemonth jump in 22 years. In many towns across America, people are shelling out $4 for both a gallon of gas and a gallon of milk.

Times are tough, and more and more Americans are turning to their credit cards simply to make ends meet in this troubled economy.

The credit card debt held by Americans jumped 6.7 percent in the first quarter of this year to nearly $1 trillion, and credit and debit card delinquencies are now at their highest levels in 18 years. These growing debts and delinquencies are hurting consumer spending and threatening to weaken our already fragile economy.

Most people would probably prefer to avoid racking up credit card debt.

Unfortunately, they may not have that

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option. In years past, people could tap into their home equity through low interest loans, lines of credit or refinancing, and access extra cash to see them through a difficult time. The collapse of the housing market has all but eliminated this option for most struggling families, and the sky-high prices of basic necessities have sapped many rainy day funds.

The credit card companies like to cast aspersions on those who fall into their debt traps. They claim that credit card debt is simply an issue of personal responsibility. I agree that people need to take responsibility for living within their means. But the record levels of debt and delinquency we are now seeing do not reflect a sudden decline in personal responsibility. Cardholders are falling victim to card industry practices that make it impossible for them to control their own credit and manage their debt.

How can cardholders be expected to responsibly manage their accounts when their card company can raise the interest rate on their existing balance at any time and for any reason?

We are at a tipping point for consumer credit. We can, and should, learn from the subprime mortgage crisis and act now before we have another mess on our hands. The Democratic leadership has demonstrated its commitment to helping the middle class in these tough economic times by extending vital tax relief to millions of families and passing legislation to address the housing foreclosure crisis and help stabilize the housing market. Now it’s time we turned our attention to passing comprehensive credit card reform legislation to help working families keep more of their hard-earned money and steer clear of the traps of credit card debt.

I applaud the Federal Reserve for recently acknowledging that there are unfair and deceptive practices in the credit card industry, and for proposing strong rules for doing away with many of them.

Unfortunately, regulation is not enough. Only a law has the strength to eliminate unfair and deceptive credit card practices once and for all.

I have introduced the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights (H.R. 5244) to help level the playing field between credit card companies and cardholders.

My sensible and balanced legislation would put an end to many of the most abusive card industry practices such as raising interest rates on existing balances—and doing so even to good cardholders who pay on time and never go over their credit limit—and charging interest on balances that have already been paid off. My bill simply gives cardholders the tools they need to responsibly manage their credit, and puts an end to the tricks and traps that undermine a competitive market. In fact, many of the practices the Fed deemed unfair or deceptive are the same as those addressed in my bill.

I look forward to moving the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights forward so we can give cardholders the fair deal they deserve and ensure that credit card debt isn’t the next shoe to drop in our current economic downturn.

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Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat representing parts of Queens and Manhattan, is chair of the House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit and Vice Chair of the Joint Economic Committee.

race, ethnicity and income levels, of those expected to be displaced or become unemployed.

Int. 801 goes beyond providing job creation estimates. It requires a description of the types of jobs to be created and the number of people living within the community expected to hold these jobs.

The bill will also reveal whether the jobs created will be quality jobs with goodpaying wages and health benefits, and whether workers will be salaried or hourly, permanent, part time or seasonal.

None of the current land use or environmental disclosures, including ULURP and CEQRA (City Environmental Quality Review Act), has the goal of capturing the economic and social impacts of development on communities as does Int. 801. In general, the City Council relies on outside advocacy and planning groups for an informed analytical perspective of the potential social and economic impacts. Inevitably, these advocacy groups have limited information upon which to draw conclusions because development deals are made behind closed doors. Int. 801 would address this by requiring city agencies to conduct these impact analyses via the submission of community impact reports. The bill acts to ensure the legitimacy of report estimates by requiring a description of how such estimates are derived and by requiring city agencies to certify the accuracy of reports submitted by developers.

This bill will also improve the City Council’s land use and economic development decision-making by answering questions about community impact before the ULURP or CEQRA time clocks start.

Thus, the information provided by Community Impact Reports should result in development projects and decisions that are more reflective of the will and needs of the community.

During this time of economic hardship, we have to make certain that taxpayer dollars are used to address real public problems, not just produce profits. The only way to accomplish this is to explicitly include community development as a goal of economic development policies and actions. That is why this bill is so important. It injects the community’s interest directly into the process of public economic development decisionmaking. This approach, I am convinced, will strike that tenuous balance of preserving and strengthening the social and economic infrastructure of communities that we are all striving for in this most ethnically, racially and economically diverse city.

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Albert Vann, a Democrat representing Brooklyn, is chair of the Council Committee on Community Development.

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SENIORS Aging Population Growth: The Challenges Ahead

ISSUE FORUM:

Undiagnosed and left untreated, these conditions can have terrible consequences, including the exacerbation of physical illnesses and even premature death. Most concerning is that only about 20 percent of seniors struggling with mental illnesses obtain the intervention they need. We must improve access to mental health services for seniors if we are to strengthen the chances of seniors living independently as long as possible.

BY COUNCIL MEMBER MARIA DEL CARMEN ARROYO Y THE YEAR 2030, THE POPUlation of senior citizens in New York City is projected to grow by 300,000, a 40-percent increase. People 85 years of age and older comprise the fastest-growing segment of the population. The City Council is facing this growth by launching the “Age Friendly New York” initiative, in collaboration with the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM). This initiative will create a blueprint intended to guide the City in preparing for this projected growth. We must take steps now to improve the myriad of services designed to meet the vast and often overwhelming needs our seniors and their families have.

New York City offers many services, most of which are provided directly through the work of thousands of not-forprofit senior service providers. However, there are several areas in which improvements and changes must be made to broaden their scope to better serve the needs of seniors. Four of these areas are supportive housing, geriatric mental health, HIV/AIDS education and prevention services, and the senior services modernization efforts underway at the Department for the Aging.

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HIV/AIDS Services for Older Adults

expanding the services of city-funded supportive housing to the frail elderly.

Supportive housing funding is available to address the formerly homeless, those with chemical dependencies and physically or mentally disabled persons. But senior citizens and the frail elderly are not included in the definition used to provide funding opportunities for supportive housing. We must redefine supportive housing to include seniors and look for ways to expand supportive services to serve the poor frail elderly who ought to be considered an “at-risk” group.

Geriatric Mental Health Supportive Housing We must examine the state of supportive housing for our city’s senior population and the opportunities that exist for improving the quality of service, increasing the amount of available units and

As we age, we are subject to a host of medical problems, including mental illnesses. One of every five people over the age of 65 suffers from a mental disorder, including anxiety, depression, dementia, substance abuse and schizophrenia.

In the past decade, with the advances in HIV/AIDS treatments and the improvements in the life expectancies of patients, we have seen that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is having a rapidly increasing impact on older adults. It is estimated that in New York City, 29.1 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in 2004 were over 50 years old; and 4.9 percent of new HIV cases in 2004 occurred in people over fifty—and that this population represents the fastest growing segment of HIV-infected persons and will probably make up the majority of HIV patients within a decade.

Due to a different mindset regarding safe sex and the lack of knowledge regarding HIV prevention techniques, older adults are more prone to engage in sexual conduct without the use of condoms. This is especially problematic with older adults who come from different ethnic backgrounds and who demonstrate different cultural attitudes regarding sex, sex education and safe sex methods.

Until July 2007, when the City Council included a $1 million budget initiative,

along with state matching funds, to develop and implement an HIV/AIDS Health Literacy program designed specifically for older adults, neither the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) nor the Department for the Aging (DFTA) had any programs that targeted HIV prevention or care in the population over age 50. It is imperative that we focus efforts to expand and strengthen HIV/AIDS prevention and education programs for older adults.

Senior Services Modernization It is important to note that DFTA is in the process of restructuring its senior center model as well as core aging services such as case management and homedelivered meals. New contracts have been issued or will be issued to the various providers who offer these services.

We at the Council have been very involved in trying to ensure that the transition to these newly designed services does not leave behind any senior who depends on these services. We will continue to keep a watchful eye over this process to ensure that there is a sensible timetable for the implementation of the new contracts that works for providers and seniors, as any redesign of these vital services must be carefully tailored so that the needs of the changing face of our senior population are properly met.

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Maria del Carmen Arroyo, a Democrat representing parts of the Bronx, is chair of the City Council Aging Committee.

The Second Half of Adulthood

BY ASSEMBLY MEMBER JEFFREY DINOWITZ THE YEAR 2030, IT IS projected that more than one in four Americans will be over the age of 60. Baby boomers are turning 60 at a rate of one every seven seconds, with more than 10,000 boomers entering their golden years every day. And each day, the new generation of retirees are leaving the careers they dedicated their lives to in search of something else, something that they have always wanted to do, but never had the time, money or freedom for—until now.

For a generation of Americans who came of age during the tumult of the 1960s and 1970s, I am fairly confident that this generation of seniors will not be spending their days playing mah-jongg at local senior centers, but will more likely be climbing mountains or jumping out of airplanes in their later years.

To plan for the impending wave of

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retirees, there are several questions which must be honestly addressed. First, how does one know they are ready to retire? If you ask any recent retiree they will tell you “you will know.” But the better answer is: after you have concluded the planning of the second half of your life. Planning of this sort includes where you are going to live, money management, healthcare and proximity to family and other caregivers, should the need arise.

Older adults should ask themselves “how do I want to fill my days?” This is often the toughest adjustment for new retirees. After 15 to 20 years of school, and another 25 to 30 years of work, new retirees are not used to the windfall of free time, which can be quite intimidating. Many develop hobbies, spend time with families or get part-time jobs. But the glut of free time remains—and how their time is spent is crucial to their well-being and

that of the community and workforce as a whole.

There are a number of volunteer opportunities in communities throughout New York State that are available to new retirees. For example, local schools and community centers are always in need of help, especially if people are not looking for much compensation. Also, there are numerous community groups made up of older adults whose aim is to assist their peers with their day-to-day lives.

When people retire, they take with them decades of institutional knowledge and experience that cannot be replaced.

The Assembly has supported intergenerational worker training and mature worker initiatives to encourage businesses, government agencies and seniors to remain engaged and active in the workforce. With more and more people entering a point in their lives when they are able to give back, I will continue my

work in fostering an environment where that is possible. We must protect public and private organizations from losing their best and most experienced people to old age.

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Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Democrat representing parts of the Bronx, is chair of the Assembly Aging Committee.

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Prescription Drug Marketing Maturing Policy for a Reform is Long Overdue

Maturing Population

Lois Aronstein, State Director, AARP New York

BY STATE SEN. MARTIN GOLDEN YORK IS IN THE MIDDLE OF a “silver wave”—a major change in demographics that will affect every area of life and culture.

To give you a sense of how significant a change this will be, consider that by 2030, one in four New Yorkers will be over 60, and one in ten will be over 75.

At the same time, people will be healthier longer—as in the cliché, 60 is the new 50. These young-old 60-plusers and 70-plusers are Baby Boomers—they want better services and more opportunities in their golden years. They have more money than their parents, more income security, more invested assets, including houses and property.

Think about what that means. We will move from a youth culture to a mature culture, from mass culture to individuated consumer-driven culture.

In the area of aging, that means we need new thinking, new ways of approaching old problems, even new definitions of the problems.

Areas where we need to think better include what we might call “mature workers,” i.e., people who have retired but who still want to work and want to begin second careers. These people can be a great resource in this state—or they can take their resources and move elsewhere, enriching another state and leaving us a little poorer.

The consumer-centric mature culture I spoke about above is something we can help with. I envision a future where people go online to shop for their medical care and for their pharmaceutical needs the way they do now at, say, Amazon.com for books and goods, or at any of the other online stores, looking for the highest quality at the best price.

We also need more work on a disease that devastates some of our older residents—Alzheimer’s. It may come as a surprise to people reading this—it did to me—but the state has not had any kind of a consistent real long-term strategy or policy for dealing with people and families suffering from Alzheimer’s.

And a final area to think about: longterm care, which is now so expensive that no one without great wealth can afford it. There are really several things to think about with respect to long-term care. First, the cost. Second, helping people to stay in their own homes and communities as long as possible, where they are happier, healthier and have a better quality of life.

So how do we address these issues?

Here are some things we have done— not enough, but it is a start.

Creating the consumer tools. We

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harmaceutical manufacturers spend billions of dollars annually in gifts and other payments to doctors to convince them to prescribe newer, more expensive drugs that are no more effective than older, less expensive ones. When this happens, not only do consumers lose money, but all tax payers lose.

According to a January 2006 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association ( JAMA) entitled “Health Industry Practices That Create Conflicts of Interest”, approximately 90% of the $21 billion marketing budget of the pharmaceutical industry continues to be directed at physicians.

Television ads are just the tip of the iceberg.

An April 2007 article in the New England Journal of Medicine titled, “A National Survey of Physician Industry Relationships”, revealed that 94 percent of the physicians surveyed reported having some type of relationship with pharmaceutical sales representatives and close to 30 percent of those surveyed received payments from drug companies for consulting services and giving lectures.

bill would also prohibit the presentation of false or misleading information at continuing professional education programs and require disclosure of certain potential conflicts of interest in connection with such programs.

This legislation and another bill that would simply have required drug manufacturers to disclose their gifts to doctors failed to pass in the state legislature this year. The drug industry, with its army of lobbyists and political contributions, was successful in stopping all movement of these bills and demonstrating its control on prescription drug policy in our state.

Numerous studies show that while doctors believe their prescribing judgment is not affected by receiving gifts, money, food and other items from drug makers, such influence is real.

Studies also demonstrate that even gifts of low value, such as meals in the workplace, influence prescribing patterns.

An email from a drug company sales manager to his drug sales representatives contained in a New York Times article captures the quid pro quo expectations of drug manufacturers, “Our goal is 50 or more scripts per week for each territory…. If you are not achieving this goal, ask yourself if those doctors that you have such great relationships with are being fair to you. Hold them accountable for all of the time, samples, lunches, dinners, programs and past preceptorships that you have provided or paid for and get the business!! You can do it!”

Governor Paterson recently introduced common-sense prescription marketing reform legislation to prohibit drug manufacturers from giving gifts to physicians that exceed $50 in aggregate, with exceptions being made for prescription drug samples. The

AARP believes that drugs should be prescribed based on science, research, and what is best for a patient. Gifts and slick sale presentations have no place in our doctors’ offices. Reform of how prescription drugs are marketed is long overdue.

passed legislation to create an online comparison of pharmaceutical prices, searchable by drug and ZIP code. It’s the Prescription Drug Prices in New York State, at http://rx.nyhealth.gov/pdpw/.

Believe it or not, it took us three years to get this up and running. It’s a simple concept—let people comparison-shop for their pharmaceutical needs. What you’ll find out if you sign onto the website is that the cost of drugs varies even within the same ZIP code by as much as 200 percent.

On mature workers, we’ve launched some initiatives, including a mature workers Task Force, which brings together all the relevant State agencies and local providers to develop long-term goals and policies. We are also taking a new look at how we arrange access to education for those who want to start second careers, how we might help businesses to understand the value of older workers, and how we might make use of what is potentially a tremendous volunteer force.

On Alzheimer’s, we’ve done something similar, bringing together all the state agencies and local providers to work on policy for this state. We’re also developing tax credits for the purchase of locator technologies—GPS or other systems that will give families peace of mind when a relative wanders off. On long-term care, we have developed a whole new way of financing, the Long Term Care Compact, which uses insurance, private resources and public subsidies to offset costs while allowing people to retain their income and assets.

There are so many things we need to do in this area, so many interesting challenges before us, but let me sum up with what I think is the major challenge: developing a new way of thinking about seniors in our society. As older becomes younger and the norm, New York is rethinking what society and individuals need to enjoy the quality of life we have all come to expect.

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Martin Golden, a Republican representing parts of Brooklyn, is chair of the State Senate Aging Committee.

It’s About Time: LGBT Aging in a Changing World REGISTER NOW! SAGE’s Fourth National Conference on LGBT Aging Sponsored by:

October 12 – 14, 2008 New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge Join aging service providers, policymakers, practitioners, activists, LGBT Seniors and others who want to learn and share with each other.

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J U LY 2008

ISSUE FORUM: SENIORS

Preparing for the Future of Aging, Today

BY COMMISSIONER EDWIN MÉNDEZSANTIAGO

C

OMMUNITIES

AROUND

THE

world are in the midst of a major demographic transformation.

And New York City is no exception.

Today, New Yorkers are living longer and healthier than ever before with the number of older adults expected to increase dramatically by 2030. In fact, in 25 years, older New Yorkers will outnumber school-age children, marking a historic milestone for the city. So the time is now—it is essential to strengthen the city’s aging network in order to provide the best possible programs and services for its 1.3 million seniors.

To address this “longevity revolution,” the Department for the Aging (DFTA) embarked on an ambitious mission to modernize its three key services: case management, home-delivered meals and senior centers. While New York City’s senior population is growing and changing rapidly, the provision of senior services has remained virtually unchanged for four decades. Our city’s seniors deserve more: a modernized system that will ensure that critical services are more relevant to the seniors of today and include more consumer-driven choice and diversity in programming.

We can’t do this alone. We are collaborating with seniors, community

partners and elected officials to design a comprehensive vision for the future of aging services. New York City is fortunate to have a strong community of knowledgeable and passionate aging professionals that have effectively informed the modernization process.

By working together, we can strengthen our system and ultimately provide our city’s older adults with services that reflect the highest level of quality.

Modernization began with case management—the foundation of the Department’s three core services. The redesigned case management system offers a comprehensive and holistic approach, with the case manager serving as the gatekeeper for all of the Department’s in-home services. By assisting older New Yorkers to safely maintain their independence, case management providers enable seniors to age in place and remain more fully engaged in their communities.

A critical component of modernization is establishing a stronger link between case management and homedelivered meals. The case manager now determines eligibility for home-delivered meals while also ensuring that clients are assessed for a wide array of additional services. As part of this holistic assessment, seniors are carefully screened to determine if they are able to have a

choice between daily delivery of hot meals or twice-weekly delivery of flashfrozen meals. Seniors who are determined to be medically frail or at risk of social isolation will continue to receive a daily delivered hot meal, as well as other supportive services such as friendly visiting and telephone reassurance.

In 2004, the Department launched its Bronx home-delivered meals pilot program, Senior Options, which offered clients the choice between hot and flash-frozen meals.

An independent evaluation conducted by KPMG found that 87 percent of participants were satisfied with the pilot, and 86 percent of participants were glad to have a choice in the type of meal they received. Building on the success of this model, the Department’s home-delivered Meals Request for Proposal (RFP) promotes greater meal choice and delivery flexibility for clients, including a greater focus on special dietary meals and culturally appropriate meals.

Finally, the Department’s modernization of the city’s senior centers aims to create a consumer-driven network of healthy aging centers where seniors can enjoy an array of activities that promote physical, social and mental wellness and vitality. Senior centers might offer exercise classes, disease management and prevention programs, volunteer opportunities, opportunities to participate in the arts, computer classes and dis-

cussion groups and cooking and nutrition classes. While meals will remain a key center service, all centers will focus programmatically on wellness, tailoring activities to the specific needs and desires of the communities they serve.

The Department’s modernization efforts are in keeping with the reforms that are sweeping the nation in the field of aging, health and long-term care. A modernized system will empower and enable all older New Yorkers to live healthier, fuller and more productive lives. The modernization of aging services will further advance New York City’s position as one of the world’s great age-friendly cities, supporting its older population with home and communitybased services that promote successful aging.

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Edwin Méndez-Santiago, LCSW, is the commissioner of the New York City Department for the Aging.

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29

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Out of Office, But Still in a Powerful Pulpit Floyd Flake now builds his power base through his congregants, not Congress

BY ANDREW J. HAWKINS REV. FLOYD FLAKE looks out at his congregation at the Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral in Jamaica, Queens, he is likely to see two of the city’s top politicians: Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-Queens), Flake’s successor in Congress, and Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith (D-Queens).

Though he has been out of Congress for more than a decade, Flake still manages to keep himself in tight political circles. And not all of them are bible studies.

Smith and Meeks are just two of the many elected officials who look to Flake for political—and spiritual—guidance.

That fact, in addition to his prowess in pulling in city, state and federal money for economic development projects, as well as the power of his endorsement, has kept Flake a major political figure.

And indeed, Flake has a flock of politicians who have embraced his moderate, up-by-the-boot-straps style philosophy even as they generally diverge from his socially conservative stances.“To be pastor,” Smith said, “you’re like a politician.”

For more evidence, look no further than Flake’s desk, which is piled high not with religious tracts and sermons, but with periodicals—Newsweek, The Economist, the New York Times, etc.

“I try to stay informed about the world,” Flake said.

Now he seems to have settled comfortably into the role of kingmaker, granting his political blessing on the chosen few.

“There are very few people who run for an office statewide, or even federal, that don’t come consult or talk to me to find out what my positions are and whether they can get my support,” Flake said, seated at a dark green marble table in his church office.

Those who have benefited under Flake’s political tutelage say they admire his ability to make tough decisions when he knew they could be politically unpopular.

“He made the hard votes because he knew they were right,” Meeks said. “I try to guide myself in the same manner.”

Meeks said that Flake’s influence has remained potent despite a decade out of office because he oversees one of the largest congregations in the city, with more than 23,000 members. That adds up to a lot of voters, he said.

“On any given Sunday, politicians from presidents on down will stop by just to worship,” Meeks said.

The make-up of Flake’s congregation, which is mostly middle-class homeowners, has also been an asset to his postCongressional career.

“When you represent that many people,

W

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

HEN

“There are very few people who run for an office statewide, or even federal, that don’t come consult or talk to me to find out what my positions are and whether they can get my support,” said Rev. Floyd Flake. where the median income and voting rates are high, you will always be important to many people,” said City Council Member Leroy Comrie (D-Queens), who has worked closely with Flake over the years.

Flake got his start working for the political campaigns of Ed Koch (D) and Jimmy Carter (D). Though he never expected to become a politician himself, he said he ran for office because he believed he could better use the political system to benefit his congregants and community. In 1986, he won his first term after a slate of economic development victories which he said demonstrated his skills at turning blocks of vacant land into businesses and affordable housing.

Throughout his career, he was alternately praised and criticized for his tendencies to reach across party lines to broker deals. He riled the Democratic Party by endorsing the re-elections of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R) and Gov. George Pataki (R).

He has crossed party lines beyond New York as well, co-chairing conservative African-American candidate Ken Blackwell’s (R) unsuccessful campaign for Ohio governor.

Today, Flake serves as a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, writing editorials in favor of school vouchers.

But Flake said his take on bipartisanship can be boiled down to a simple youscratch-my-back philosophy.

“Most of the things we felt we could support each other on, we did,” Flake said

of his Republican colleagues. “The things we couldn’t support each other on, we did not.”

Flake has been an imperfect mentor to Democrats in the city in other respects. In 1990, he and his wife were indicted for embezzlement and tax evasion. Two years later, federal attorneys dropped the charges. Undeterred by his brush with scandal, Flake remained in office for another five years before retiring.

Flake said he has never accepted anything in return for his support and endorsement.

“Never got anything personal from a politician,” he said with a grin peaking out from under a mustache that hugs the corners of his mouth. “Never want to.”

Smith, who was district director of Flake’s congressional office, credits Flake with inventing a new style of politics, one that he has since assimilated into his own style as Senate minority leader.

Flake often uses his pulpit to preach economic empowerment, Smith said. He encourages his congregants to contribute money to the church for the benefit of the community and then taps his political supporters to clear the necessary development hurdles.

The result, Smith said, is a new paradigm. And a new word.

“I would call it ‘plurginess,’” he said, “a combination of political, clergy and business.”

Flake’s record of working with Democrats and Republicans is a model Smith said resonates especially in the

minority community.

“One of the things, I think, from a minority community standpoint that’s held us back is we’ve allowed ourselves to get wrapped up in the partisanship,” said Smith, who was last elected to the Senate in 2006 carrying four ballot lines— Democrat, Republican, Working Families and Conservative.

This summer, Democrats and Republicans will be battling over the slim majority in the State Senate, giving Smith the opportunity to employ some of Flake’s teachings—including “plurginess”—as he leads his conference through the campaign season.

Flake said, though, that he will limit his role in the race to that of a spiritual counselor for politicians seeking guidance.

“Spirituality is not a limitation to emotional catharsis but can be productive as an agent of change,” he said.

Flake said he is looking forward to getting involved in the 2009 citywide election when the races become more settled.

“A number of candidates have come to see me,” he said. “But I think the field is too vast right now.”

At 65 years old, Flake said he has lost interest in elected office, saying that being the leader of his church is now the highest office he could want. Plus, he added, the perks are better.

“I basically have access to all the tracks to get the resources that my community needs without having to serve in office,” Flake said, “and a better salary.” ahawkins@cityhallnews.com

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CITY HALL

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J U LY 2008

“Taxi Ray,” Driver of Last Checker Cab and Bloomberg Fan, Dies at 82

BY MICHAEL SZETO KOTTNER, NEW YORK’S iconic “Taxi Ray,” died June 14 of a heart attack on the sidewalk beside his cab. He was 82.

Born in the city in 1926, Kottner was the middle child, between two sisters. At 19, he was drafted into General Patton’s Third Army in World War II, and fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

Kottner started at Columbia upon his return to study veterinary medicine but left to become a taxi driver when he became unable to cope with the aftereffects of his military service.

R

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

AY

OBITUARY A lifelong New Yorker who drove taxis for over 60 years until the day he died, Kottner saw the city evolve and grow around him even as he and his old Checker taxi remained a constant.

“He really loved his job,” said Mustafa Saleh, a store owner in Hell’s Kitchen who knew him.

Since the Taxi and Limousine Commission took away his medallion five years ago, Kottner had been giving free rides to anybody who hailed his taxi.

Instead, he accepted only tips—but he said he made more money that way than he would have from fares.

Ray Kottner first used a sign atop his taxi to promote Michael Bloomberg’s presidential candidacy—and, later, his own.

He acted as Hell’s Kitchen’s neighborhood chauffeur, driving residents anywhere around the city they wanted.

He also was known to help local shop owners like Saleh by carrying merchandise in the back of his cab.

Felix Miller, the day manager at one of Kottner’s favorite restaurants, Hallo Berlin, considered Kottner like family.

“He’s like your uncle. He would always put a smile on your face,” Miller said.

Miller recalled taking rides in

Kottner’s iconic 1982 Checker taxi cab— one of the last cars the Checker Taxi Company made before ceasing production in 1982. Kottner, a Checker devotee, bought his last cab two years ago from a seller in North Carolina after the 1976 Checker taxi cab he had owned for six years broke down.

Kottner paid close attention to politics and policy throughout the five boroughs and beyond.

“He was a prodigious reader. He read

and retained everything,” said Jeanne Merlino, Kottner’s younger sister.

A big fan of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Kottner had a sign made for the top of his taxi promoting “Bloomberg for President.” But as Bloomberg continued denying interest in the 2008 election throughout 2006 and 2007, Kottner changed the sign to “Bloomberg Won’t Run, Soooo… Taxi Ray for President.”

He even carved out a platform, which in a February 2007 interview with City Hall he outlined as focused on his own proposals for fighting crime and expanding renewable energy. As of then, he said he had already collected 19 votes.

“If Bloomberg won’t change the world,” Kottner said at the time, “then Taxi Ray will.”

Kottner has already been cremated and his ashes placed at Ferncliff Cemetery in Westchester. His taxi, however, remains where Kottner last parked it on 45th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues, the rooftop sign still declaring his candidacy. Its fate for now remains unknown.

Robert Santoro, Kottner’s nephew, said the family plans to sell the famed Checker cab, committed to keeping it out of a junkyard.

“It’s too good for that,” he said. mszeto@manhattanmedia.com Direct letters to the editor to editor@cityhallnews.com.

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J U LY 2008

The Mayor May Not Be Home, But the House is Hopping Gracie Mansion remains key venue for city government under Bloomberg

BY SAL GENTILE

A

MONG

THE

MANY

BOOKS

stacked decoratively within the neat mahogany bookcases of Gracie Mansion are a series of ruminations on the concept—and consequences—of power.

There is The Power Broker, sitting next to The Price of Power, an intricate account of the cloak-room machinations that ruled, and ended, the Nixon administration.

Perhaps the theme is appropriate: even though Michael Bloomberg does not live in the historic home perched above the East River, Gracie Mansion remains a vital and bustling place of business for the Bloomberg administration.

Once a retreat for mayors and their families—the Giuliani family wore the place out so thoroughly that extensive renovations were required after they left—Bloomberg has turned Gracie Mansion into a place where city agencies and community activists go to do business and connect, while he stays in his townhouse just under a mile away, on East 79th Street.

“Gracie is unique in that it’s a little bit of everything for a lot of different people,” said Evelyn Erskine, a spokesperson for the Bloomberg administration.

The mayor’s office and other city agencies hold more than 150 events there each year, including receptions, agency get-togethers and even the occasional labor dispute.

The building is also used for staff retreats, the onslaught of administration holiday parties in December and meetings which members of the administration prefer to hold outside of the City Hall bullpen—where no one, Bloomberg included, has either a door or wall.

The imposing home has also become a place for politicking.

At the height of the mayor’s push for congestion pricing in February and March, he met with 23 members of the City Council and 17 members of the Assembly for coffee or dinner on five occasions, trying to woo the undecided legislators to his side.

Some, like Council Member Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan), came out of the meetings in favor of the mayor’s plan.

Maybe it was the food.

“The best,” Jackson recalled. “It was five-star, without a doubt.”

But Jackson said the more casual atmosphere of Gracie was the real selling point, enabling the legislators to discuss the congestion plan and other things differently than at his office at City Hall.

“When the mayor hosts a dinner, he talks freely and openly,” Jackson said.

The environment, with light glancing off the East River and a regular breeze

Top: Gracie Mansion has undergone a multi-million dollar rehabilitation effort since 2002, making it a popular place for city officials to do business. Left: Much of the Federal-era style has been restored by decorators to its original appearance.

brushing in from Hell’s Gate, helps too.

“It’s spacious, it has an antiquity and a history, and people enjoy being there,” said former Mayor Ed Koch (D), who lived in Gracie Mansion and used it occasionally for meetings and official dinners himself.

The most striking feature about the mansion today is its delicately crafted stillness—even more striking considering the mansion’s condition just a few years ago. By the time Donna Hanover left at the end of 2001—her husband, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R), had left months earlier, when they separated—the whole place was on the verge of collapsing.

“Staircases were sagging, the porch was in danger of collapsing and the indoor plumbing was not working,” said Susan Danilow, director and president of the Gracie Mansion Conservancy.

Shortly after taking office, Bloomberg appointed a decorator to oversee the

multi-million-dollar restoration of the mansion’s interior. With a sizeable cash infusion from the mayor himself, the vestiges of Federal-era décor were carefully manicured and restored. The result is a conventionally straightforward mansion—much like the conventionally straightforward administration which now uses the official residence as its own home.

The interior is pristine, the façade accessible and the mansion, above all, well-managed.

That helps make the receptions, dinners and barbeques held on the grounds a powerful political tool for cementing the mayor’s connections to key political allies and repairing relationships when necessary.

“It gives representatives and key people within city government an opportunity to connect and to relate to the leadership of that given community, to build trust and also a collaborative relation-

ship,” said Guillermo Linares, commissioner of the Office of Immigrant Affairs.

Like all agencies, Linares’ office works in coordination with the Gracie Mansion Conservancy and the Mayor’s Office of Special Events to book the popular space.

“Very often, when we invite people to these events, it is reflective of already ongoing relationships that are developing with city agencies,” Linares said.

And sometimes the house works to develop new relationships.

Maura Giannini, former chief negotiator for the New York musicians union, was there in 2003 when a strike by her organization crippled Broadway for days.

Though the mayor stopped in only briefly during the round-the-clock talks, by sequestering negotiators in Gracie Mansion, he established himself as a constant presence. The final deal was the product of small bands of negotiators who met in the large wooden foyer in the middle of the night.

“It is important where it is, and that both sides perceived that there was pressure from the mayor in some way to reach a deal,” Giannini said. “I think it makes a big difference that you’re in this neutral place that has a lot of political overtones.” sgentile@cityhallnews.com —with reporting by Daniel Macht

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CITY HALL

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J U LY 2008

33

BACK IN THE DISTRICT

From Coney Island, With Love The first Russian-born politician in New York, Brook-Krasny presides over a changing district

BY ANDREW J. HAWKINS WEST DOWN S URF Avenue in his new gray Nissan SUV, Assembly Member Alec Brook-Krasny (D-Brooklyn) was doing what many politicians enjoy doing: being a tour guide.

“This,” he said in a James Earl Jonesby-way-of-Moscow accent, “is Coney Island.”

Brook-Krasny said he loves practically everything about Coney Island, a place synonymous with roller coasters, beach combers and carnival barkers. Fast food, especially Nathan’s Famous, holds a special place in his heart, he said, as he drove past the green and yellow sign.

“I’m not a formal dinner guy,” he said.

“Although surf and turf is not bad.”

As New York’s first Russian-born elected official, Brook-Krasny’s love of hot dogs and other American fare speaks to his desire to broaden his appeal beyond the borscht and blintz-eating citizens of Brighton Beach, which, including Coney Island, Dyker Heights and Bay Ridge, comprise his district.

While he has used his position as “the Russian assemblyman” to allocate money for victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and to push for election material to be printed in Russian, Brook-Krasny said meeting the needs of the residents of Coney Island, most of whom are AfricanAmerican, is sometimes even more of a priority.

“I’m trying to bring them all together,” he said of the culturally divergent populations of Brighton Beach and Coney Island, “and dismantle all the stereotypes.”

To that end, Brook-Krasny took a recent afternoon in his district to meet with several of his African-American constituents, people who he calls the “next generation of leadership in Coney Island.”

In his district office, he met with Anthony Killiebrew, a 22-year-old sprinter who hopes to compete in the 2008 Olympics.

“Get his autograph,” Brook-Krasny joked. “This kid is going to Beijing.”

Killiebrew, meanwhile, was more impressed that Brook-Krasny used to own and operate one of his favorite spots growing up in Coney Island, the nowclosed amusement area called Fun-ORama.

“That was the place to go for me,” said Killiebrew, alive with the memories.

After a brief meeting to discuss several youth service groups that BrookKrasny helps fund, Assembly member and the runner concluded their meeting

D

LAURA SAYER PHOTOS

RIVING

Assembly Member Alec Brook-Krasny is a fervent supporter of afterschool programs, like the one ran by Maria McNeill in Coney Island. with a back-slapping hug.

“The Olympics, you’ve got to win!”

Brook-Krasny said, to which Killiebrew simply responded, “Fun-O-Rama!”

In 2006, his political connections with Rep. Jerrold Nadler (DBrooklyn/Manhattan) and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz (D) helped win him his seat in Albany.

His profile as a prominent businessman in the Russian-speaking community helped too, and he proudly discussed his ties to the rapidly growing Russian community in Brooklyn.

“Of course people know I’m representing Brighton Beach,” he said with a grin.

“As soon as I open my mouth people know this.”

After immigrating to New York in 1987, Brook-Krasny bought a 14,000 squarefoot dusty warehouse and turned it into Fun-O-Rama. He also helped found the Council of Jewish Émigré Community Organizations, an umbrella organization for over 40 Brooklyn community groups.

He served as treasurer of the local community board and ran unsuccessfully for Assembly and City Council in 2000 and 2001, respectively, before being elected to succeed retiring Assembly Member Adele Cohen (D) in 2006.

In a campaign marred by accusations of voter intimidation and petition fraud from both sides, Brook-Krasny edged out fellow Russian émigré Ari Kagan by only 140 votes.

Since then, he has solidified his standing in the district, with most Russian-language newspapers in Brooklyn predicting a smooth re-election this year.

As of yet, he has no primary challengers and only one general election opponent, Robert Capano, the former head of disgraced Rep. Vito Fossella’s (R-Brooklyn/Staten Island) Brooklyn operation.

If he wins re-election, Brook-Krasny will be one of several lawmakers who will preside over the most dramatic redevelopment of Coney Island in the area’s 150-year history.

But with negotiations faltering and the size of the area allotted for amusement rides shrinking, some residents fear the development will destroy the history and heritage of Coney Island.

Brook-Krasny said that development is necessary to allow the amusement area to make enough money to stay in business. Otherwise, Coney Island will continue to decline, as it has in recent years, he said.

“We all have the desire to preserve the heritage of the amusement area,” BrookKrasny said. “But I’m always saying preserving the heritage of the amusement is a very tricky thing.”

Brook-Krasny said he envisions a development on par with the one under way in Harlem: It should balance the preservation of Coney Island while allowing it to become a more self-sustaining business.

With that on his mind on a recent brilliant spring day, Brook-Krasny went to visit a variety of community groups with which, as a newly elected official, he is beginning to foster relationships.

These groups, he said, are the glue that holds Coney Island together.

At Art’s House Dance School on Mermaid Avenue and West 17th Street, Brook-Krasny received another enthusiastic hug, this time from the school’s founder Sophia Harrison who just secured a $10,000 grant for her school— with the Assembly member’s help, of course, she said.

A block to the west, Brook-Krasny checked in on Mathylde Frontus, who had just opened a new office for her social service non-profit, Urban Neighborhood Services. The sign outside still advertised a beauty shop. The walls were still painted a gaudy yellow and blue.

The non-profit is representative of the changing face of his district, BrookKrasny said, with residents beginning to organize to help themselves in the face of widespread poverty and a lack of sufficient community services.

People like the ones he met with that day, he said, are “the real leaders for the future of Coney Island.”

As a leader of Coney Island in his own right, Brook-Krasny said he much prefers American politics to Russian politics. He notices the differences when he speaks to politicians from his homeland.

“When I’m meeting with people in my position in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine,” he said, “the first thing I hear from them, ‘Do you have any car from the government? Do you have an apartment from the government?’”

The answer always surprises them, he said.

“I say, ‘No,’” Brook-Krasny said. “Next question is, ‘Why are you doing it?’” ahawkins@nycapitolnews.com

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JULY 2008

Marty’s Summer of Mobsters and Mermaids

Hungry for a Pay Raise Themselves, Cajun State Legislators Try for 123Percent Jump New York state legislators earn at least $79,500 annually, although many get extra payments—or lulus—for serv-

ices such as accepting leadership roles.

But several legislators have been pushing for a pay raise of up to $20,000, or 25 percent.

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz (D), who may still jump into the 2009 mayor’s race, has been so far spending his summer rubbing elbows with actor Joseph Gannascoli from The Sopranos and mermaids at the 25th annual Mermaid Parade in Coney Island.

That is a much lower increase than one sought by Louisiana state legislators, who at the end of their session tried for a 123-percent raise in salaries. Of course, they currently make far less, around $16,800 annually. This bump would have only brought their salaries up to $37,500.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), widely considered a potential vice presidential pick for Sen. John McCain, declined at first to veto the measure, allowing for the pay raise and for the legislature to prove their strength against the executive office.

But Jindal came under fire for this position, with many Louisianans reminding him that he had promised during his

ODDS&Ends

2007 campaign that he would not allow the legislature to pass a pay raise that would go into effect while they were holding office.

Subject to harsh criticism from constituents, some of who even supported a recall effort, he vetoed the bill June 30.

GOP Seats in Buffalo and Staten Island Trade Wholesomeness for Scandal Former Reps. Susan Molinari and Bill Paxon were the mid-90s “it” couple in GOP politics. Holding safe Republican seats in Staten Island and Buffalo, respectively, they looked to hold sway in D.C. and New York for decades to come. Now they are a decade out of office and their

Old Vegas bookmakers have been trumped by new technology, and dozens of websites exist to bet on the outcome of all sorts of things, including who will be picked to run for vice president. Intrade lets people buy shares in the candidates’ futures. Ladbrokes gives odds to bet against. Here are this month’s standings.

***2008 VICE PRESIDENTIAL ODDS*** LAST MONTH

CURRENTLY

LAST MONTH

CURRENTLY

REPUBLICAN 2008 VP NOMINEE

PRICE ON INTRADE

PRICE ON INTRADE

ODDS ON LADBROKES

ODDS ON LADBROKES

Mitt Romney Tim Pawlenty Mike Huckabee Charlie Crist Bobby Jindal Lindsey Graham Rudy Giuliani

20.5 15.8 13.1 N/A N/A 1.9 2.7

5 to 1 6 to 1 10 to 1 N/A N/A 14 to 1 20 to 1

3.5 to 1 7 to 1 9 to 1 11 to 1 9 to 1 17 to 1 51 to 1

DEMOCRATIC 2008 VP NOMINEE Hillary Clinton Chuck Hagel Bill Richardson Kathleen Sebelius Joe Biden John Edwards Al Gore

24 14 11.1 9 4.1 3 0.2

LAST MONTH

CURRENTLY

LAST MONTH

CURRENTLY

PRICE ON INTRADE

PRICE ON INTRADE

ODDS ON LADBROKES

ODDS ON LADBROKES

7 to N/A 10 to N/A N/A 10 to 12 to

6 26 13 6 13 13 13

22.1 N/A 8 N/A N/A 3.1 5.2

15.6 12 7.5 7 6.9 5 5

1 1 1 1

to to to to to to to

1 1 1 1 1 1 1

**DATA As of July 7, 2008

seats could end up in Democratic hands next year for the first time in a generation.

While the power couple’s marriage and wholesome family friendliness made them a congressional version of Leave it to Beaver, the events leading to their seats possibly switching parties may better resemble an episode of Melrose Place. Weddings and pregnancy have given way to illegitimate kids, family feuds, public intoxication, teen sex cover-ups, eccentric billionaires, secret dinner meetings, a scorned wife, the possible comeback of the retired patriarch, feigned amnesia, sudden deaths and bizarre funeral outbursts. The races to replace Molinari’s successor Rep. Vito Fossella and Paxon’s successor Rep. Thomas Reynolds have been anything but wholesome.

And with all of this playing out separately from the soap opera that engulfed Albany this year, Buffaloians and Staten Islanders can be excused if they try to change the channel.

Both races even each had two guys named Powers show interest—the unrelated Democrat Jon and Republican Mike in Buffalo and the father/son duo of the late Republican Frank and Libertarian Frank Jr. on Staten Island. Only Mike Powers did not jump into the soap opera, instead becoming the star of his own Night Court by accepting a town judgeship in the Buffalo suburb of Clarence. With over three months until the November election—and the possible October surprise— there is still time for more plot twists to take over both races. Stay tuned.

By Susan Campriello, John R.D. Celock and Andrew J. Hawkins.

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CITY HALL

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J U LY 2008

35

: Independent Streak onnie Lowenstein thinks she would make an awful politician. She is not, after all, interested in toeing any line but a budget line.

But she is fiercely protective of what she sees as her office’s defining feature: its independence. The Independent Budget Office (IBO) was created in 1996 as a way to reign in the expanding influence of the mayor in the city’s budget negotiation process, and Lowenstein has been there from the beginning.

She was appointed director in 2000, and has since been reappointed.

Her mandate, as she sees it, is to make the city budget as transparent and accountable as possible, by evaluating the mayor’s preliminary budget and delivering her own revenue forecasts. Often these projections clash with those of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Lowenstein sometimes finds herself in the crosshairs.

Taking a break from examining the final city budget, she discussed her experiences as IBO director under both the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations, the role of IBO in the budget process and her potential future, or lack thereof, in elected life.

What follows is an edited transcript.

R

CH: Why do you think we did not find out about the City Council slush-fund scandal sooner? Is there something, in the future, we should all be looking out for?

RL: I think the Council has moved towards making the process more transparent.

Ironically, had they not a year ago started putting members’ names up against the member items […] at that point it became obvious that there was something amiss. So it was one of those moves towards greater transparency, I think, that revealed the extent of the problem. I think I should add that most of what they’ve instituted in this round I think will go a long way from it happening ever again.

CH: Like what?

RL: Vetting, along with the administration, to make sure that organizations are legitimate, that they’re large enough that they file tax returns – things that, in retrospect, seem commonsense, but haven’t been happening.

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

City Hall: How have your interactions with staffers and elected officials informed your thinking about the role that the IBO serves?

Ronnie Lowenstein: Well, the city budget is not at all transparent. The city ironically releases reams of data, but the data is nearly incomprehensible unless you know what you’re looking for or how it works. And for that reason, that makes people like us particularly useful. Even in an administration such as this one—where they’re relatively free with information, certainly relative to their predecessor—there is still something to be said. As long as we do the budget the way we do, focusing on control rather than transparency, there’s a need for places like IBO.

eting as well, and there are many ways to make this information accessible to a broader range of people. To butcher a Barbara Jordan quote, “Budget’s too important to be a spectator sport.” And it’s places like IBO that get the spectators out of the stands and into the playing field.

CH: Do you ever find yourself caught between the various parties involved in negotiating the budget?

RL: People use our work day in and day out. We’re, of course, not at the table. We don’t take policy positions.

We very deliberately made the decision to not take policy positions, because what we care about is the credibility of the numbers and the analysis. So people use our revenue forecast and, other than [the Office of Management and Budget], we’re the only place in the city that’s chartermandated to do a full-fledged revenue forecast. And because it’s credible, people will go to the administration and say, “IBO says that there will be far more revenue in 2010 than OMB was saying.”

I think, within the last few weeks, there was a fair amount of controversy over the cost of the pension re-openers. There were estimates ranging from no cost at all to $200 million and we came out and did an estimate on the fiscal impact with sufficient information that people could understand what our analysis entails and why it was different. And I think that’s been useful.

To butcher a Barbara Jordan quote, “Budget’s too important to be a spectator sport.” And it’s places like IBO that get the spectators out of the stands and into the playing field.

CH: The office was created during Rudy Giuliani’s first term—how much have you found the role of the IBO depends on the mayoral administration?

RL: Initially, under the Giuliani administration, although IBO has a strong guarantee of access to information in the city charter, they weren’t at all willing to provide that information. We took the administration to court, as did many others. We won, I think, a very strong decision, and following that our access became much better.

So, I think once we received the access to information that we needed—the court guaranteed that we’d receive it—I think our function has been largely the same. I think the degree of cooperation with the current administration has been vastly better.

Q: What have you learned about managing the budget that, ideally, everybody involved in working on the budget would know about the process?

RL: One thing I’ve learned is the need for greater transparency. This is one place where we do weigh in on policy prescriptions. The city’s budget has served us well for decades now as a good way to control spending and stay on top of tax revenues, make sure that we’re balanced. But there are other important functions of budg-

CH: You are now in your second full term.

Are you interested in serving a third?

RL: I haven’t crossed that bridge yet. I think I probably have the best job in city government.

I’m working in fields I really care about. I work with people that are smart and really interested in public policy and I have the ability to one day look at tax issues and then later that afternoon talk about homeless prevention policies—and not have to worry where IBO’s budget is coming from three weeks down the road is a very attractive position.

CH: So does that mean there are other public policy positions that you’d be interested in?

RL: No, what I think I’m saying is: I’m enjoying this one immensely.

CH: Does that preclude a future in a mayoral administration or elected office? Because then you would have to be political. You would have to toe the line, so to speak.

RL: It suggests that I would make a very bad politician, or very bad political candidate. I’m not attuned to telling people what they want to hear particularly. I’m much more concerned about finding information that’s solid. Ultimately, it’s my belief, and the belief of everyone working here, that by putting out better information, the quality of the public discourse will be raised.

And ultimately, that’s going to mean better public policy.

I’m not out there advocating for smaller class sizes or more homeless shelters or lower taxes; what I am doing is providing the information that will allow the elected officials to make those ultimately subjective trade-offs.

I have a lot of respect for people who can do that. But that’s not what I do.

—Sal Gentile sgentile@cityhallnews.com

C

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