New York City Council

Before the New York City Council decided last week to vote in favor of Michael Bloomberg’s plan to extend term limits, attorneys were already challenging the new law in court.

Reports after the Council voted made note of two lawsuits, one filed by members of the Council who opposed the majority and the other, filed on October 22, on behalf of,  read more »

More from intern Glenna Goldis at the Council term-limits hearings:

The second set of testimony on term limits today included Comptroller Bill Thompson, who yesterday said he would run for mayor even if it meant challenging Bloomberg. Several times, the audience began to clap but then stifled itself to avoid censure from the chair.

But there were other testifying officials who received more attention from the Council.

Representative Nydia Velazquez, who testified first, said that times of crisis were exactly when the electoral process needed to be respected. She said that the proposed legislation to allow term-limited incumbents to run for an extra term would hurt minority opportunities for office, which could in turn draw a veto from the federal justice department.

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At a Crain's business breakfast in Midtown this morning, Christine Quinn said she doesn't think her career as City Council speaker will be "defined" by the "problem" the council has in the slush fund scandal.

Quinn said she, and others, will be judged by the solutions they propose to problems as they arise.

It's among the most concise attempts to frame the recent money problems in the Council, and to regain the mantle of reform her prospective candidacy was premised on.

Here’s an invitation for a May 4 fund-raiser for City Councilman Kendall Stewart, who had two staffers indicted for stealing taxpayer money meant for a nonprofit in their Brooklyn district, .

Stewart had steered money to the group in the past; he was not named in the indictment.  read more »

A little more than a year ago, Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched his pathbreaking "PlaNYC 2030" urban sustainability plan. According to the city’s own progress report on the plan’s first year:

 

The implementation of PlaNYC's 127 initiatives requires the effort of more than 20 City agencies; the help of our Sustainability Advisory Board; partners and supporters from all across New York City; and close cooperation with the City Council and other elected officials. In the first year since the release of the plan, we completed rezonings, planted 54,484 trees, moved our taxis and black cars toward fuel efficiency, encouraged bicycling with 60 new lane miles, and engaged New York City in the most significant transportation discussion in a generation.

   read more »

Charles Barron isn't the only member of the City Council who regards Christine Quinn's discretionary-fund shell-game as a grave offense. Barron is generally outspoken and has been critical of Quinn in the past, but another member, who has had a considerably more collegial relationship with the speaker, said on background that her conduct was pretty much indefensible.

"The story is, you know, there's like no other budget code [for setting aside money]," this member said.  read more »

More than 70 major corporations will meet with environmental scientists at The Wild Center in the Adirondacks in June to "produce a slate of possible policy and regulatory options to overcome market and other barriers that are inhibiting implementation of substantial low-cost greenhouse gas emission reductions." [usclimateaction.org]  read more »

If you live in Brooklyn, or any outer-borough really, I'm sure you've seen it before: the requisite post-work grocery bag getting lugged home on the train. Often it's the ubiquitous Whole Foods and Trader Joe bags bouncing along the platform awaiting voyages across the East River.

Recently, the City Council passed a bill – despite intense lobbying against it by food retailers – to issue street vending permits for vegetable stands in the city's poorer neighborhoods. It's clear to anyone living in the areas included in the measure – like my neighbors in Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant – that fresh, decent produce is not as readily available as it is in much of Manhattan. Cue that long trip home from Whole Foods.  read more »

 Take a look in the back of your closet and haul out that old laptop running on Windows 95 with less computing power than your Blackberry.

In fact, go ahead and open your sock drawer and take out that first-generation Ipod that stopped working after it went through the rinse cycle in your blue jeans.

All of these electronic devices contain toxics: cadmium, lead and mercury.

According to a 2006 report to the Natural Resources Defense Council by students in Columbia’s M.P.A. Program in Environmental Science and Policy, over 100 million personal computers are tossed away every year and about 500 tons of electronic waste is disposed every week in New York City.

While most toxic waste is regulated by the federal government, small businesses and households are exempt from these rules. Seeing this problem, a number of governments here and in Europe have started to regulate the disposal of electronic waste.

On Feb. 13, the City Council passed its own E-waste bill.

Anthony DePalma writes in The New York Times:

The City Council on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bill that would impose a $100 fine on anyone who throws an old computer, printer or other electronic gadget into the trash. Recycling the electronic waste will become mandatory, and manufacturers will be required to take back their own products as well as those made by companies that have gone out of business….  read more »

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In a speech that will inevitably be viewed through the lens of her mayoral ambitions, Christine Quinn has embarked on a State of the City address touching on her ability, as Council Speaker, to get involved in parts of the city outside her home borough of Manhattan. “Instead of governing from City Hall, we've gotten knee-deep in our neighborhoods,” she said.

(Her father Larry had introduced her moments earlier by saying that his goal was to be a “five-borough father of the Speaker before I’m term-limited.”)  read more »

Perhaps legislators all received new gavels for the holidays, as there seems to be a whole bunch of hearings in the next few days relevant to economic development.

A list for those that like sitting in the uncomfortable chairs of City Hall and elsewhere:  read more »

A helpful reader sent in this recent mailing from Assemblyman Dov Hikind of Brooklyn which features rather prominently a man by the name of Joe Lazar.

That's the same Joe Lazar who is running for City Council in Hikind's section of Brooklyn, and, hypothetically, could benefit from this kind of taxpayer-funded exposure.

“As of now he wants to run, but he hasn’t made up his mind finally,” Hikind told me just now. “I don’t think anybody has announced to be honest with you.”

It’s an important distinction because, according to Hikind, announced candidates can’t appear in publicly funded mailings like this.
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“The fact that somebody is thinking about running is a whole different ball game,” Hikind said.

More after the jump.

According to that Citizens Union study, one of the City Council’s most prolific advertisers with public money is James Gennaro of Queens.

His spokeswoman, Lee Landor, emailed over this reaction to the report:

"We do not believe that our ads are excessive. Additionally, all of our ads provide our constituents with our district office information so that anyone who has questions or concerns can easily reach us. These ads make us even more accessible to our constituents and assist in making it known that we're here and available to them.

"Also, all political ads are paid for by Councilman Gennaro's campaign committee funds; if there's a political message in an ad, it's an ad paid for by the campaign committee."  read more »

The City Council passed the budget, giving us a must-read document for people with an interest in securing public funds called Schedule C.

The good stuff in this version starts on page 32, which outlines the "discretionary allocations." It shows how much was spent on each local project, and which Council member is responsible for getting the money.

Your finds or general observations are welcome.

Here’s a picture of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly after a town hall meeting on West 125th Street last night featuring the mayor and some top commissioners.

Most of the questions directed at Bloomberg at the event were about zoning, housing, police relations and job development. No one asked about the street renaming effort for Sonny Carson that seemed to dominate proceedings in the City Council earlier this week.  read more »

Spotted in the City Council Chamber: Tom Weiss, a political gadfly most famous for stalking Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum to the point that Gotbaum invoked him as a reason for not releasing a public schedule. Weiss is in the front row of the Chamber's balcony among other people supporting a proposal to name a street after black nationalist Sonny Carson.

Mathieu Eugene was just sworn into the City Council, according to a reader who, unlike me, is at City Hall today.

Interestingly, though, Eugene still hasn't signed the Council's official paperwork affirming that he is eligible to hold office. Eugene, you'll remember, had some trouble meeting Council requirements after he first won election to the office.

"They're satisified he met all the requirements to hold office," Eugene spokesman, Scott Levenson, just told me, referring to the City Council.

Speaker Christine Quinn is expected to address the matter at a press conference before today's meeting of the full Council.

And for anybody keeping track, score one for Eugene's main adviser, Una Clarke.

Democratic Councilman Joe Addabbo is having a fund-raiser on May 24th for his not-yet-announced race for state Senate against Republican Serph Maltese.

Maltese is best known outside his Queens district for having one of the closest re-election campaigns last year. Democrats narrowly lost that race with candidate Albert Baldeo, who is vowing to run again.

Helping out Addabbo, according to this fund-raising email a reader forwarded, is Stuart Appelbaum of RWDSU, and other labor leaders. Addabbo, coincidentally, chairs the labor committee in the Council.

"I gave him a pass in 2006," Addabbo just told me just now, referring to his decision not to run against Maltese earlier.

Addabbo said he'll make his formal announcement about the 2008 cycle at an appropriate time. That appropriate time, he said, won't be May 24th.

And from the department of weird coincidences...Addabbo was talked about as a potential state Senate candidate last year by unnamed people in Bloomberg's administration. Today, Addabbo appeared alongside Bloomberg in the Rockaways, where Bloomberg was denying a story, from unnamed sources, about running for governor.

The fund-raising email is after the jump.  read more »

In a lawsuit filed earlier today, a coalition of baseball bat manufacturers and others said that the City Council’s ban of metal bats will make high school baseball games less safe and less fun.

“The Bat Ordinance is harmful to high school players, coaches, schools and high school baseball, as well as to bat manufacturers," the lawsuit said. "It will increase costs for New York high school players and teams, make high school baseball in New York less enjoyable and less competitive and not improve safety in any way.”

The bill passed the Council despite being vetoed by Mayor Bloomberg, who said, "I do not think it is the city’s business to regulate that.”

The 26-page lawsuit is here.

On Union Street in Brooklyn this weekend, I came across a poster that said the “black community said yes” and “4 white people said no” to renaming a street after controversial activist Sonny Carson. (My mostly failed attempts at cell phone pictures of the poster are here and here.)

There is also a rally this morning in Foley Square in support of the Carson renaming.

And a bill that excludes Carson from a list of streets to be renamed will be discussed by the City Council on the Wednesday.

Sydney Beveridge has more on this stuff over here.

I ran into City Council candidate Mathieu Eugene outside PS 139 in Brooklyn today, shortly after he voted for himself.

 Eugene, with a cadre of campaign supporters up and down the block handing out his literature, told me that when he tried voting for himself, the lever in the booth was stuck.

 "The machine didn't work," he said.

 

A few minutes later, one of his opponents, Harry Schiffman, passed us on his way to get some coffee. He said he had no trouble voting.

Yesterday, I caught up with Councilman Hiram Monserrate, who has come under fire for supporting a Sept. 11 first-responder detoxification program associated with the Church of Scientology.

Scientology's most famous booster, Tom Cruise, held a fund-raiser last night for the program.

Monserrate, a former cop, told me he spoke with Sept. 11 rescue workers who have benefited from the program, and said that critics are motivated by their own agendas.

"The bottom line is the program provided a better quality of life for hundreds of rescue workers that have taken the program," he said. "I myself personally have spoken to dozens of them who've had serious ailments, problems with upper respiratory infections, breathing problems."

He added, "I think it's unfortunate that some of the pundits, some of the pro scientists, some of the industries, who have their own reasons for having their own opinions clearly -- right, the pharmaceutical companies and the medical profession in particular -- question an alternative means of providing health care.

"This is the same type of thing they said about chiropractors twenty years ago. The same arguments that they're using here."

I asked Monserrate, who introduced a Council proclamation to declare last Thursday L. Ron Hubbard day, in honor of the science fiction author who created Scientology, if he would ever consider becoming a Scientologist.

"No," he said. "Councilman Hiram Monserrate is Christian, who was raised as Evangelical Christian. That's my faith. That's not on the table. This has zero to do with Scientology. The program has zero to do with Scientology. They don't espouse it. They don't promote it."

A bill to remove the name of controversial activist Sonny Carson from an omnibus street renaming bill passed the Parks and Recreations Committee earlier today. Several people who tried protesting the vote were escorted out of the City Council chamber, where the meeting was held, according to a source.

On Monday, the full Council will vote on the bill.

More details later.

A federal judge has just ordered Wellington Sharpe back on the ballot for the April 24th special City Council election in Brooklyn's 40th district, sources tell me.

Sharpe had been removed because he failed to collect enough valid signatures on his petitions. By my count, that makes a total of three candidates who will not be running for this office. For the second time in about two months.

Another candidate seeking to get back on the ballot, Maria Gina Faustin, remains off the ballot. For now.

UPDATE: A Board of Elections spokeswoman said the printing costs for the new ballot is between $45,000 to $50,000.

Shortly after he was singled out for having one of the lowest attendance rates in the City Council, I happened to catch Larry Seabrook on his way to the National Action Network dinner at the Sheraton last night.

In the video after the jump, he's joined by Jose Rivera, the Bronx County leader. (Or, as he described himself, Seabrook's "street lawyer.")  read more »

An informed reader tells me that a federal judge in Brooklyn is hearing testimony from a consultant to Mathieu Eugene and a high-ranking City Council aide to determine whether Eugene got an unfair advantage in his second run for City Council.

Eugene, for those of you who haven't followed this strange tale, won an initial special election for a council seat in Brooklyn, but didn't take office after he was unable to prove that he was a resident in the district.  read more »

I'm in Albany today for what is affectionately known around here as Tin Cup Tuesday, where various interest groups come to ask the legislature for money. This week's tin cup shakers include members of the New York City Council.

Here's one elected official waiting to get into the fancy Fort Orange Club, one of the most popular fund-raising venues in Albany.

-- Azi Paybarah

When I spoke with Bill de Blasio the other day about the mayor's plan to end "play to play" and tweak campaign finance laws, I quoted him saying this:

"I'd like to remind people, and Dick Dadey will confirm this, the toughest campaign finance law in the country was passed by the New York City Council. It was not started by a mayor. It was not started by an independent commission. It was created by the City Council."

I didn't ask Dadey for his own take at the time. But the mere mention of his name in conjunction with de Blasio's criticism of the mayor's proposal brought him in for some sharp criticism in our comments section.

Here, via email, is Dadey's response:

"In regards to Citizens Union position on pay-to-play contributions, I would like to set the record straight since many of the comments in the posts are factually incorrect.

"Citizens Union supports the adoption of strong legislation that would 'restrict' political contributions from those who do business with the city and has advocated for such reforms consistently over the past several years. It is our hope that the Council will soon propose and pass such legislation that the Mayor would then sign into law. We believe this is a preferable and more effective way to achieve the goal of addressing the issue of 'pay to play" contributors than if the Campaign Finance Board were to pass on its own a rule implementing such. The City Council has played an important and necessary role in creating and strengthening the city's campaign finance program. We feel that the Council has missed past opportunities to strengthen it even further, but one of the reasons that New York has a model national program is because of the City Council's long commitment to it. The other reason is because of the way in which the law has been strongly enforced and the program properly administered by the Campaign Finance Board.

"CU supports "pay to play" legislation that would be enforceable and not onerous, but would limit the influence peddling that goes on in the form of contributors who feel that in order for favorable consideration to be given to their interests - like government contracts - they need to make a contribution in order to their interests to be in play, aka "pay to play." We also believe that any legislation should not "ban" a contributor's constitutional right to participate in the political process by denying them a chance to make a contribution to a candidate of his or her choice; instead we favor setting a low limit at which a contributor could give without being subjected to a "pay to play" restriction should they have business with the city. We look forward to continued thoughtful dialogue on this critical issue."

-- Azi Paybarah

So it seems like for whatever reason (Concern over process? Personal inconvenience? Wonderment at the irony of a self-funded billionaire attempting to regulate campaign finance?), one the most controversial proposals from the mayor's State of the City speech among other city officials was his proposal to ban political contributions from people who do business with the city.

After the mayor's state of city speech, I caught up with Bill de Blasio, who, like Bill Thompson, had some reservations about the mayor's idea.

"I don't think it was wise or necessary for the mayor to suggest that he would go around the City Council, the legislative branch," de Blasio said. "Policies on campaign finance law have to be determined with the council. And I think we have provided some important balance in the process.

"I'd like to remind people, and Dick Dadey will confirm this," de Blasio continued, with Dadey looking on, "the toughest campaign finance law in the country was passed by the New York City Council. It was not started by a mayor. It was not started by an independent commission. It was created by the City Council."

He went on to say, "The only way to do this right is with the City Council. It should not be done as a unilateral action by the CFB."

-- Azi Paybarah

Someone who read the 186-page indictment [pdf] of Brian McLaughlin points out that at least two City Council candidates benefited from one of McLaughlin's schemes:

McLaughlin described a plan to use $2,000 from the SLA account to compensate J Division members who would make $250 contributions, in the names of their wives, to the political campaigns of two candidates who were running for election to the New York City Council.

A spokeswoman for the City's Campaign Finance Board, Kate Schachern, emailed to say, "The CFB does not comment on criminal investigations."

Also, don't spend too much time fretting about the staffers McLaughlin fired and replaced with union buddies in exchange for a cut of their salary. Both are still employed.

Farouk Samaroo—who got a raise two days before McLaughlin fired him—worked on Shirley Huntley's successful state senate campaign. The other, Jeffrey Gotlieb, is now working with City Councilman Joseph Addabbo, chairman of the Labor Committee.

—Azi Paybarah

Last night at the DNC fundraiser at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Bill Clinton spoke to a crowd of about 500 wealthy donors. Patrick Healy has a good round up of the event, but one Clinton-style tidbit that probably made the night of the council speaker happened early on in his speech.

I want to thank the new speaker of the New York City Council Christine Quinn who is here. When Hillary met Christine she came up and we went out to one of our long walks and she said, "you will not believe how good this woman is." We're walking up the hill and I'm getting short of breath and feeling old anyway and right as I was about to expire she said, "she's even a better politician than you are." And I quit going up the hill.

Not that Bill has to campaign for Hillary amongst New York's Democrat-elite, he just does anyway.  read more »

—Nicole Brydson

Nobody seems satisfied with the esteemeed New York City Council these days. Tomorrow, the criticism is coming from an unexpected quarter: The League of Conservation Voters Education Fund is releasing a report on "greenways" to improve the Council.

It's worth looking at the whole report, the look at the partially-fulfilled hopes of 2001 for the Council is particularly interesting for people who followed the fight over changes at the time:  read more »

"Under Speaker Miller, the City Council made eight reforms to their operating rules, which were designed to address the Fresh Democracy Council's goals and provide greater transparency in the Council's operations. Some of these reforms have served the public well, such as the City Council's online legislative tracking system. But others have only changed the written rules of the institution and not its culture. For example, there is a provision to allow Council members to force a vote on legislation stalled before a committee, but it has never been exercised."

An extremely enthusiastic poster over at the National Youth Rights Association writes, "a bill to lower the voting age will soon go before the New York City Council. Proposed by Councilwoman Gale Brewer, the bill would allow sixteen and seventeen year olds to vote in local elections. Councilwoman Brewer is very influential, and the bill is expected to get a lot of support from other area politicians.

"A press conference will be held Wednesday, June 8th, at 11:30 am on the steps of City Hall. At 1 pm that same day, the bill will be formally introduced. Among those expected to attend the press conference and support the effort is Senator Hillary Clinton."  read more »

Hillary's office, however, tells us she'll be in Washington that day. Which kills our conspiracy theory of the moment, which had us asking: How old will those 16- and 17-year-olds be in 2008?

We haven't given out a Brecht Award for a while, probably because we haven't been spending enough time at the Observer's City Hall desk.

That's where we found this one:

BREWER BATTLES GROWING BED BUG INFESTATION May 25, 2005 -- At today's Stated Meeting of the New York City Council, Council Member Gale A. Brewer (D-Manhattan) introduced legislation that would represent a major gain in the City's fight against a growing bed bug infestation. In addition to banning the sale of reconditioned matresses, Brewer's legislation would create a Bed Bug Task Force that would be responsible for monitoring the scope of this dynamic problem and developing the long-term policy solutions needed to curb the spread of this infestation.

"Bed bugs are already a huge threat to New York City residents, and have a real potential to be a menace to the City's economy," said Brewer....  read more »

(What's the penalty for being snarky about bed bug legislation again? Oh, right. Bed bugs.)