According to new tax filings, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's (R) wife, Mary Pat, who works part-time on Wall Street, earned $475,854 for her job as a director at Angelo, Gordon & Co. and $34,698 from Cantor Fitzgerald, the AP reports.
ALBANY—Under a law approved in the final days of this year's legislative session, New York State United Teachers' elected officers will, for the first time, be able to simultaneously accrue time toward their state and private union pensions.
The law, signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo last month, allows NYSUT officers to accrue time toward their pensions through the state Teacher Retirement System while serving as union leaders. More specifically, it lets school districts offer paid leaves of absence to teachers who vacate their classroom positions to work for the union, while NYSUT reimburses the district for the officers' salaries and benefits.
After NYSUT officers serve for five years, they become vested in the union's private pension system, spokesman Carl Korn said. Therefore, officers could eventually be earning time toward both—a benefit former NYSUT president Richard Iannuzzi said is inappropriate.
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The Legislature considered the bill at the same time Cuomo and lawmakers were negotiating changes to the state's teacher-evaluation system. The bill was introduced in early June, when Cuomo's office was engaged in closed-door negotiations with NYSUT over changes to the rating system. The Assembly passed the pension bill on June 19, the same day Cuomo announced he had reached a deal with the union, and the Senate passed it the next day.
State Republicans want to know if Gov. Cuomo’s live-in girlfriend, “Semi-Homemade’’ celebrity chef Sandra Lee, is subsidizing his living expenses with income from companies doing business with the state, a possible “gifts law’’ violation, The Post has learned.
Republicans — who recently accused Lee, owner of the $1.2 million, six-bedroom, Westchester home where the First Couple lives, and Cuomo of failing to pay their fair share of property taxes — are combing public records for the names of Lee’s clients to see if they’re doing business with the state or trying to influence state policy, sources said.
“License! Global,’’ a trade publication, reported in 2012, for instance, that Lee, a Food Network star, author of numerous cookbooks and a magazine publisher, had “teamed up” with TV Guide magazine for a new magazine with “high-profile corporate sponsors’’ such as Verizon and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s Web site shows that the companies together have hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with New York.
“Companies that hire Lee surely know she’s the governor’s girlfriend and that could be a factor in their decision to pay her,’’ said a GOP operative involved in the research.
Lee is also frequently paid to speak before food and other industry groups, although the names of the companies are generally not publicly disclosed.
Celebrity Talent, a booking agency, says online that Lee charges a minimum in the range of $25,000 to $50,000 for speeches.
She gets from $50,000 to $99,999 for speaking overseas, the agency says.
If Lee and Cuomo were married, Lee would be required to disclose details of her income to the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE), which would then check for possible conflicts of interest.
But JCOPE, in an April 2013 decision, held that Lee, despite her relationship with Cuomo, doesn’t have to make any disclosures.
“The governor should be disclosing how much if anything he is contributing to the household costs,’’ said Jessica Proud, a spokeswoman for GOP gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino.
“If his household is benefitting from businesses that have business before the state, that should be disclosed by the governor, who said he was going to have the most transparent administration in history,’’ Proud continued.
Cuomo’s office repeatedly refused to provide any information on what, if any, cost-sharing arrangements the governor has with Lee.
Cuomo’s aides have said in the past that the governor kicks in for household costs including property taxes. But the governor’s publicly disclosed income-tax returns don’t show him making property-tax payments that could be tax-deductible.
Cuomo is paid $179,000 a year as governor and, according to a financial disclosure filed last month, will be paid $700,000 to $900,000 by HarperCollins for a forthcoming memoir.
All the other members of the board of Regents are unqualified political appointees. It sure helps to be the wife of a billionaire without appropriate experience to become the Regents Chancellor. Skill, competency, educational background are irrelevant in the NY state crony culture of Regents appointments. What matters? Do you have a billion dollars in assets. Are you friendly with Shedon Silver? Are you ready to rubber stamp everything Cuomo wants? Are you in favor of charter school expansion and do you agree that public schools are failing "our" kids? If you are willing to answer yes to all of the above, then you can be appointed to the Board of Regents.
Former President Clinton will administer the oath of office for the mayor-elect at his Jan. 1 inauguration ceremony at City Hall, the transition team announced Saturday.
And former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — who hired de Blasio as her campaign manager during her 2000 Senate campaign — will attend with her husband.
"Chirlane and I couldn't be more excited to have President Clinton and Secretary Clinton stand with us,” de Blasio said in a statement, which highlighted that he had worked for President Clinton as a regional director at HUD.
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De Blasio will recite his official oath at midnight on Dec. 31. The de Blasio campaign would not say where the official swearing in would take place or who would administer that oath.
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De Blasio's hour-long inauguration ceremony will take place at noon on Jan. 1, on the steps of City Hall.
Recommended reading: No one left to lie to by Christopher Hitchens. Excellent study of the redoubtable Clinton, who, apart from needlessly sanctioning the capital punishment of the mentally retarded Ricky Rector, also bombed countries to deflect from his libidinous shenanigans. Clinton was an awful President, who is pimping his equally unethical, selfish wife for President. Don't buy it. As a Dem, no way I vote for Hillary. No way.
The Pearson Foundation, the charitable arm of one of the nation’s largest educational publishers, will pay $7.7 million to settle accusations that it repeatedly broke New York State law by assisting in for-profit ventures.An inquiry by Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general, found that the foundation had helped develop products for its corporate parent, including course materials and software. The investigation also showed that the foundation had helped woo clients to Pearson’s business side by paying their way to education conferences that were attended by its employees.
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The attorney general’s office also examined a series of education conferences sponsored by the Pearson Foundation, which paid for school officials to meet their foreign counterparts in places like Helsinki and Singapore.The trips were made public after a series of columns in The New York Times, which detailed the expensive hotels and meetings with corporate executives that were staples of the experience.Several school officials who went on the trips represented education departments that had contracts with Pearson. The investigation did not determine whether those officials had awarded any new contracts based on any improper influence. But the report found that executives from other companies were not invited to attend, giving Pearson’s corporate side a clear advantage.The attorney general portrayed a culture at Pearson in which the lines between business and charity were often blurred. Pearson remains the largest donor to the Pearson Foundation, and the staff of the foundation included several Pearson employees. The board was made up entirely of Pearson executives until 2012.
ALBANY — The battle between the Legislature and Gov. Cuomo's anti-corruption commission is set to explode Friday.
The Senate and Assembly plan to jointly file papers in Manhattan Supreme Court to quash subpoenas from the commission that seek detailed information on lawmakers’ outside income and clients, according to sources.
Private lawyers representing the legislators will argue that the subpoenas are overreaching, violate the constitutional separation-of-powers edict and seek protected client information, sources said.
They will also charge that the panel is improperly browbeating the Legislature into accepting an ethics reform deal, they said.
“It’s about protecting the institution of the Legislature,” said one source.
Following a spate of legislator arrests this spring, Cuomo repeatedly warned he would use the state Moreland Act to form a corruption-probing commission unless the Legislature passed an ethics package. After lawmakers balked, Cuomo created the panel in July.
Regents Chancellor Tisch's ties to alleged embezzler draw scrutiny. "It's all very incestuous" NYPost on "cronies": http://t.co/bdIdRA2rTc
— Patrick J. Sullivan (@PSulliv) November 3, 2013
William Rapfogel really lost a sweet deal when he was charged last month with stealing millions of dollars from his employer, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.
Turns out, he wasn’t just getting a $500,000 salary from the charity. His contract with the agency was also paid school tuition for Rapfogel’s three children.
Now, attention is starting to focus on the powerful people who helped give Rapfogel such royal treatment — and who didn’t notice his alleged swindling.
People have been talking about Merryl Tisch, wife of Loews CEO James Tisch and the chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents. Tisch is the chairwoman of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.
“She would have had to OK his employment contract,” said my source.
Assemblyman Majority Leader Sheldon Silver is also raising eyebrows. Silver not only secured Tisch her Regents post, he also employs Rapfogel’s wife, Judy Rapfogel, as his chief of staff.
“It’s all very incestuous,” said my source. “Everybody is scratching each other’s backs.”
According to the authors, Romney and his team were shaken by what they discovered about Christie during “Project Goldfish,” as the hush-hush veep search process was known. His “disturbing” research file is littered with “garish controversies,” the authors write: a Justice Department investigation into his free-spending ways as U.S. attorney, his habit of steering government contracts to friends and political allies, a defamation lawsuit that emerged during a 1994 run for local office, a politically problematic lobbying career that included work on behalf of a financial firm that employed Bernie Madoff. And that’s not to mention the Romney team’s anxiety about the governor’s girth.
For Christie, who is coasting to reelection on Tuesday and already laying behind-the-scenes groundwork for a 2016 presidential bid, the book’s revelations are a Drudge-ready public relations nightmare that will send his advisers scrambling to explain awkward aspects of his record and his personal life just as he is stepping onto the national stage.
In an excerpt from their new book Double Down: Game Change 2012, TIME’s Mark Halperin and New York’s John Heilemann look at Mitt Romney’s on-again, off-again flirtation with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to be his running-mate. Codenamed “Pufferfish,” in the aquatic-themed parlance of the campaign’s vetting team, Christie was a constant thorn in the side of the Romney campaign, going back to a 2011 demand that the eventual Republican nominee refrain from fundraising in the Garden State until Christie bestowed his endorsement. The New Jersey Governor’s tardiness to joint fundraising events peeved the punctual candidate, and Christie’s demand for lavish travel arrangements upset Romney’s staff. But Christie’s ability to passionately explain the candidate’s message to donors and voters made him a favorite for the spot, especially with Romney’s chief strategist Stuart Stevens.There is so much crooked activity in this guy's background that he makes Jon Corzine look like the Dalai Lama.
The campaign passed over the potential 2016 candidate amid concerns about his ability to stand up to public scrutiny. The authors quote from the campaign’s secret vetting report on Christie, listing the red flags that kept him off the ticket and could keep him out of the White House, should he choose to run in 2016. The report noted that Christie had failed to fully explain a number of issues. These included information on an SEC settlement by the New Jersey governor’s brother, Todd, the terms of a defamation lawsuit settlement signed by Christie, information on Christie’s previous lobbying clients, medical records on his personal health and the citizenship status of Christie’s domestic employees. “If Christie’s possible selection is to move forward, these items should be obtained,” the document read.
As a first-time candidate for New York City comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr. was feted at a downtown fund-raiser in 2001 by two luminaries of the black business world: the hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and Mr. Simmons’s money manager, a veteran Wall Street financier who made his fortune promoting hybrid securities known as convertible bonds.Speaking in between rap and poetry-slam performances, the financier, Tracy V. Maitland, made clear why he had taken an interest in the little-watched race for comptroller. “When you control $85 billion,” he told 200 guests crowded into a popular art gallery, “you get a lot of attention.”
Over the last 12 years, Mr. Thompson has repeatedly gotten Mr. Maitland’s attention.After that fund-raiser, Mr. Maitland became a regular contributor to the campaigns of Mr. Thompson, who is now running for mayor. Later, he pushed unsuccessfully for Mr. Thompson’s wife to be hired as president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, where he is a trustee.
Mr. Maitland’s attention was not unrequited. In 2006, Mr. Thompson honored him at a Black History Month observance. And in 2008, his office for the first time began investing city pension assets in convertible bonds, pouring $324 million into Advent Capital Management, the firm Mr. Maitland founded. By the time Mr. Thompson left office, in 2009, Advent was earning $2 million a year in fees on those investments.Mr. Thompson’s ties to Mr. Maitland reflect a pattern that emerges from an examination of Mr. Thompson’s stewardship of the pension funds and, more broadly, the comptroller’s office: Again and again, Mr. Thompson reaped political gains from those he awarded city business.As he oversaw the city’s $85 billion pension system, Mr. Thompson steered the funds into a diverse range of new investment categories, expanding from heavy concentrations in stocks and bonds into private equity, real estate and niche funds. Yet performance was lackluster: nationwide, more than half of large public pension funds outperformed the five city funds’ combined 4.84 percent return from 2002 through 2009, according to a widely used yardstick compiled by Wilshire Associates, an investment advisory firm. Meanwhile, the city’s roster of fund managers, and their fees, tripled — and Mr. Thompson collected more than $500,000 in campaign donations from them.Mr. Thompson’s credentials as comptroller and a seasoned manager are central to his mayoral campaign, in which he has portrayed himself as the grown-up in the Democratic field — less liberal, strident and showy, but best prepared for the sober task of managing an unruly city.But interviews and a review of thousands of pages of records — schedules, e-mails, pension statements and campaign finance reports — suggest frequent overlap of Mr. Thompson’s political ambitions and the comptroller’s operation, and, that like many pension overseers at the time, he raised campaign money aggressively from those seeking business from his office.
Nowhere was Mr. Thompson’s embrace of those investment firms more evident than on the guest list to his second swearing-in, in January 2006. The 250 names included a small number of relatives, union leaders and elected officials; more than 50 lobbyists; and another 50 fund managers, placement agents and others who stood to gain from the city’s pension funds.
So much of what happens at the City Council occurs under the radar that few noticed when Speaker Christine Quinn started her second term in January 2010 with appointments that boosted the power of Vito Lopez, a synonym for scandal. Lopez ruled Brooklyn politics as its Democratic Party boss, chaired the state Assembly’s influential Housing Committee for years, and had long been collecting city and state funding for Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, a huge social service empire that doubled as his very potent political base.
While Lopez had long been a Quinn ally, the speaker was taking the relationship to a new level. Having passed on a planned mayoral candidacy after backing the term limits extension that allowed Michael Bloomberg to run again, Quinn was already laser-focused on her next mayoral opportunity in 2013. As several Council members told WNYC, she was also quite willing to use the array of powers available to a speaker to solidify a Lopez alliance. Lopez not only could be expected to decide what candidate got the Brooklyn Democratic endorsement in 2013, he had the power to deliver blocs of actual votes, unlike county leaders elsewhere in the city.
The powers Quinn would exploit on Lopez’s behalf are little appreciated by the mayor-obsessed media and public. The speaker is the second most powerful official in city government, the only formidable check and balance in the charter. The $70 billion budget must be approved by the Council, allowing it alone to alter the fiscal priorities of the mayor’s side of City Hall. In a city where lucrative real estate projects are a political lifeline, the Council has final say on the development deals the mayor proposes, a power that Quinn has used as speaker to win friends and influence donations.
Quinn told WNYC that while she would have liked to get the support of the Democratic Party organizations in Brooklyn and other boroughs, she never cut deals with Lopez or other county leaders in exchange for their support of her mayoral candidacy. "Look, obviously in politics people want things, and sometimes they happen and sometimes they don’t," she said. "But this kind of belief that there were all of these commitments made, all these promises made, before I got the support of county organizations or individual members is just not accurate."
Moreover, she said, she cut off all dealings with Lopez when it became apparent that he had sexually harassed women who worked for him. "I think everyone who worked with Vito Lopez was shocked and stunned by his disgusting behavior," she said. "I had no idea he was that kind of a person, none."
Still, Quinn used her powers as speaker to benefit Lopez until he was disgraced. This story is a chronology of how she played the insider game with one of New York’s ultimate insiders, and perhaps a window into the kind of mayor she might be.
Former Comptroller Bill Thomson’s campaign scheduled a conference call this morning on the topic, where Brooklyn Councilman Lew Fidler played the role of attack dog. Mr. Fidler, who served with Mr. de Blasio on the City Council, said that Mr. de Blasio’s meetings with lobbyists reminded him of the career politician he knew very well.
“It is so typical of the Bill de Blasio that I know,” said Mr. Fidler. “They were caught red-handed meeting with people like Extell.”
Mr. Fidler went on to say that this lack of transparency from Mr. de Blasio is symptomatic of larger character flaws. “A candidate for elected office, for something as important as the mayor has to have what I like to call the ‘Three C’s,’” Mr. Fidler explained, alleging Mr. de Blasio lacked these qualities. “They have to have the ‘character’ to know the difference between right and wrong, the ‘common sense’ to know good ideas from the bad ideas, and ‘chutzpah’ to get the good ones done.”
Citizens Union found that by June 2011, the three council members that got the most in individual discretionary allocations were Recchia, Dian and Lew Fidler, all Brooklyn council members with longstanding and deep ties to Lopez. They combined for $43 million in a single year, more than Quinn herself and many times more than the majority of council members.
One council member close to Lopez who asked not to be identified told WNYC: “Vito is the only county leader who actually sends the Council a list of what he wants.” When Quinn complied, she told the council member: “He should be happy.”
The executive director of Gov. Cuomo’s anti-corruption commission was sued 17 times by the state Board of Elections — an agency her panel is now charged with investigating.Cuomo’s commission is set to focus on the influence of campaign contributions on government and compliance with election and lobbying laws.From 2001 to 2009, commission executive director Regina Calcaterra was treasurer of Women PAC, which gave money to city candidates who supported women’s issues.In 2002, Calcaterra was first sued twice in her role as the political action committee’s treasurer by the Board of Elections for failing to file two required financial disclosures. She received a $144 fine that she paid.She subsequently was sued another 15 times for missing additional filing deadlines, with a judge backing the state at least nine times. The other cases were dropped because the state couldn’t serve her papers informing her of the lawsuits.Calcaterra sources say she was unaware of the judgments until 2009 because the legal papers were not delivered to her directly--instead going to people and addresses with no associations to her.
They say she had believed the PAC was closed in 2003. A letter sent to the Board of Elections seems to back up the contention.
But Board of Elections spokesman John Conklin said the needed paperwork to close the PAC campaign account was never filed, which meant Calcaterra was required to make the filings. He also said Calcaterra filed notice that the PAC would not be raising or spending money in the 2004 election cycle — an odd move if she thought the PAC had been closed.Conklin said that Calcaterra also called the Board of Elections in 2006 to talk about closing down the PAC — proof she knew it was still open — but never followed up.Calcaterra next contacted the board in 2009, a year before she tried to run for state Senate as a Democrat in Suffolk County. A deal was quickly cut in which the state waived close to $5,400 in fines after she agreed to make up the PAC’s missed filings. The PAC account was then closed.“This PAC had penalties levied against it, which were later waived, because the (Board of Elections) was not aware that we had filed to shut it down years earlier and that it was completely dormant with a near zero account balance,” Calcaterra said. “As soon as I became aware of administrative issues with the PAC I rectified them and the PAC paid a $100 fine.”Conklin replied that “there were misunderstandings on both sides.”
Intent on preserving the Bloomberg administration’s education legacy, the Department of Education has hired a favored consulting firm to craft a plan that would safeguard a signature policy.
The city has hired the Parthenon Group to assess the strengths and weaknesses of system through which principals choose support organizations to provide professional development, curriculum, and budgeting help.
The consulting firm, which has previously studied school closures and small schools for the department, is charged with crafting a strategic vision to ensure that Children First Networks are preserved when another mayor takes over next year.
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Those steps could include recommending parts of the networks to sacrifice as “low-hanging fruit” in order to save the broader structure. They could also include launching restructuring pilots that the next mayor would inherit when he or she takes office in January.
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The Parthenon project’s details reveal the extent of the department’s machinations to stop a new administration from changing the direction of the city’s schools. The department has previously worked to extend the Bloomberg administration’s education policies by getting the Panel for Educational Policy to sign off on school space-sharing agreements that would begin in 2014 and on contracts for network providers that would extend through the next mayor’s first term.
NEW YORK CITY — The executive of an educational consulting firm who was banned from working for the Department of Education in 2009 has been working at a charter school in East New York since winter.George Leonard, who runs an nonprofit consulting firm called Friends of Bedford, has been contracted at the Imagine Me Leadership Charter School in Brooklyn even though he was barred from working for the city school system four years ago for misuse of funds while principal of Bedford Academy High School.Leonard had been declared ineligible to work for the DOE following a 2009 investigation that found he used thousands of dollars to pay the salaries of employees who were not qualified to be regular DOE employees.In 2011, Leonard's Friends of Bedford billed the DOE for $59,000 for professional development and tutoring services it provided Brownsvile’s Mott Hall Bridges Academy, which drew criticism from city investigators who claimed the DOE was not doing enough to prevent blacklisted firms from obtaining contracts.Sources at the school said its new director, Katherine Corbett, took over during the winter and hired Leonard's firm. They said Corbett essentially started her own LLC, which the charter school pays, then she pays Leonard's firm. The teachers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, shared documents relating to the school with the Friends of Bedford logo on it, in addition to memos from school officials where Leonard is CC'd.Teachers at the school have been disgruntled since receiving letters in April saying they were being fired at the end of the year and they would have to reapply for their jobs.The Department of Education had no comment when asked whether contractors on its banned list were eligible to work for charter schools.
Mayor Bloomberg – defending Speaker Christine Quinn today against attacks over the City Council’s discretionary funding policy – called his possible successor a “person of enormous integrity.”
Quinn has “done an excellent job running the city,” said Bloomberg.
The two have sparred recently over Quinn’s support for an NYPD inspector general, which Quinn says would provide needed oversight and Bloomberg says would hobble crimefighting. But the mayor put those differences aside today when asked about member items.
“I have always supported member items as long as they are administered and checked carefully,” said Bloomberg.
Quinn also supports the distribution of member items, a long-standing funding source which has come under renewed fire since Queens Councilman Dan Halloran was arrested on corruption charges.
Halloran, a Republican, allegedly offered to dole out his council discretionary funds to a cooperating FBI witness in a wide-ranging probe targeting state Sen. Malcolm Smith.
Quinn’s Democratic primary opponents – particularly Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and former Councilman Sal Albanese – have used the scandal to pounce on Quinn and call for an end to the funding.
Bloomberg said the arrest was not about member items.
“The real problem here is there is a group of unelected people who control the ballot access,” he said.
And “I’ve always said that I think Speaker Quinn, who is getting criticized for this, is a person of enormous integrity and I think she has done an excellent job of running the city. It’s not an easy job but I think she’s done it well,” he said.
Democratic mayoral hopefuls piled on front-runner Christine Quinn last night over term limits at a candidate forum, in one of the liveliest exchanges yet in the race.
“What happened before was a disgrace and it is a mark on the city of New York,” said former city Comptroller Bill Thompson, who ran unsuccessfully in 2009 against Mayor Bloomberg after Quinn pushed through an extension to the term-limits law so Hizzoner could run for a third term.
“There is no indispensable person in this city!” Thompson shouted, attacking Quinn’s and Bloomberg’s defense that it was right to extend term limits to three terms because Bloomberg’s strong fiscal stewardship could best lead New York through the economic crisis.
Quinn defended herself amid the attacks last night in a packed auditorium at St. Francis College in Brooklyn.
“I made a decision a number of years ago based on the economic situation we faced. I believe it was the right decision,” she said.
She also said Public Advocate Bill de Blasio — another mayoral hopeful who has attacked her term-limits move — supported a similar idea when he ran against her for council speaker in 2005.
De Blasio, who fought the term-limits extension in 2008, said he had supported only the notion of changing term limits after an open review, which never took place.
“Democracy got suspended in our town in 2008,” he zinged at the debate last night.
Dr. Hall negotiated her $7.5 million bond — considered a largely punitive figure set by the grand jurors, some of whom argued for it to be $10 million — down to $200,000. She was allowed to use her signature to cover $150,000 of it, with the rest to be paid in cash, said David Bailey, one of her lawyers. She will pay only 10 percent of that, and most of it will be refunded, he said. Dr. Hall arrived at the jail to be processed around 7:30 p.m., surrounded by her lawyers. It was unclear how long she would be there.
Lawyers for the defendants, saying they were baffled by what appeared to be a lack of coordination between District Attorney Paul L. Howard Jr., the jail and the courts, were working to try to reduce the amount of bond set for teachers who had no criminal records and to keep them from spending time in jail.One of the first to arrive was Theresia Copeland, 56, who had been testing coordinator at a southeast Atlanta elementary school. She walked into the jail about 7 a.m. and was booked on a $1 million bond on charges of racketeering, theft and making false statements.“We’ve never had anything in education like this,” said Warren Fortson, a lawyer for Ms. Copeland and two other teachers.“Al Capone, I understand, didn’t have to post a $1 million bond,” he said. “I don’t think a Cobb County grandmother needs $1 million to secure her.”Later, Ms. Copeland’s bail was reduced to $50,000. Others also secured reduced bonds. Only one educator was still under a $1 million bond by Tuesday evening, said a spokeswoman for the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, Tracy Flanagan.
While defense lawyers worked to have their clients freed, a group of black clergy members and former educators spoke out, calling the charges and the bail extreme and an indication of a deeper, long-simmering racial divide in the city and the state.The Rev. Timothy McDonald, a spokesman for the group Concerned Black Clergy, noted that the investigators were white and the accused were largely black.“Look at the pictures of those 35,” he said. “Show me a white face. Let’s just be for real. You can call it racist, you can call it whatever you want, but this is overkill. We have seen people with much deeper crimes with much less bond set.”
Mayor Michael Bloomberg today argued that the U.S. attorney's complaints against State Senator Malcolm Smith and Queens Councilman Dan Halloran present as strong an argument as any for nonpartisan elections in New York City.
"All of this comes out of the fact that we have partisan elections when cities aren't partisan," said Bloomberg today, during a press conference about education in Queens.
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"If you go back to 2005, I think it was, I think I spent $7 million of my own money trying to convince everybody that we should have nonpartisan elections," said Bloomberg (who has very much played the partisan game when he's needed to, and contributed millions of dollars to the controversial Independence Party, which provided him a crucial non-major-party line to run on). "We are the only big city in the country that has partisan elections. The only one. ... But I could not get any newspaper or any good government group or any union or anybody to back it."
"Generally speaking, partisan elections deprive the public of the right to pick their own leaders because the only people that vote and the only elections that matter are the fringe group of whether it's one party or another party," he continued. "And maybe they make good choices, maybe they don't. But it's very hard to argue that it is democratic. It is not. And that's where all this craziness comes from."
