When City Council members give money to nonprofit groups run by their relatives, we call it pork.
So what do we call it when a city agency gives away $2 million to help vulnerable people, and $700,000 of it goes to groups heavy with political clout?
How about glazed ham? It's better than pork - it's a prime slab of cash from a respected agency, untainted with the odor of Council member items. And it has a sweet, shiny coating to shield it from any hint of favoritism.
This glazed ham was served up in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, two Brooklyn neighborhoods where a big rezoning led to fears that greedy landlords would push out poor tenants. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development put aside $2 million to counsel and protect tenants, and said it would hire local groups to do the work.
A coalition of seven nonprofits from the neighborhood applied as one in a bid to handle the whole project. The city liked them well enough to give them $1.3 million and more than half of the area as their territory.
Who got the rest? Some went to United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, an Orthodox group that politicians like to court. It asked to serve the Orthodox parts of Williamsburg that it knows better than any other group, and got $216,570 to do it.
But how to explain the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council?
That group - synonymous with its founder, Assemblyman Vito Lopez, the powerful head of the Assembly Housing Committee - applied for areas it wanted. The city agreed and gave it $475,265.
"They said it was done through a blind process," said Paul Cogley of Churches United, one of the seven groups. "It seems like a very political decision."
Some wonder why a group based in Ridgewood and Bushwick is serving Greenpoint and Williamsburg. And some have noted that Lopez helped broker the rezoning deal that included the $2 million in the first place.
"Whether or not the group has clout, they put in a good proposal," said Bill Carbine, HPD's assistant commissioner for neighborhood preservation.
HPD said Ridgewood Bushwick's application got the highest score of the three, but didn't reveal the criteria or the results.
"They're looking for someone who has the capacity," added Lopez, noting that Ridgewood Bushwick already handles legal assistance work in Williamsburg. "I'm open to having a reasonable dialogue with anyone who wants to work on this."
Ridgewood Bushwick has a long history and a solid track record in its neighborhoods. It is also no stranger to pork, glazed ham and other choice cuts of your tax dollars: Ridgewood Bushwick has received almost $21.5 million in other city funds over the last three years.
There's much more at stake. The city is working on rezoning 19 acres of old factories for up to 1,000 new homes on a triangle of land where Williamsburg meets Bushwick meets Bedford-Stuyvesant.
When nonprofits get picked to develop those homes, they'll get money, staff and influence. And when HPD held a seminar last fall to figure out the future of the area, the invited groups included UJO and Ridgewood Bushwick.
It's not pork. It's glazed ham.
alisberg@nydailynews.com
City Council's glazed ham is still porkySaturday, June 14th 2008, 7:00 PM NY Daily News
A powerful Brooklyn lawmaker who has delivered millions of dollars in state aid to his district is also on the payroll of one of the community groups he has funded - but won't say what he's paid to do.
Assemblyman Vito Lopez (D-Bushwick) has been a consultant to a not-for-profit housing group since 1998, earning as much as $57,600 a year, according to tax records and check stubs obtained by The Post.
Lopez's consulting fees come on top of the $92,000 annual salary he earns as a state lawmaker and committee chairman.
When asked about his role as a consultant and any possible conflict with his position as chairman of the Assembly's Housing Committee, Lopez erupted in a bizarre tirade.
"On Tuesday we're feeding 2,000 senior citizens, what are you doing?" he snapped.
"How much do you get paid?" Lopez continued. "Unless you tell me how much you get paid and what you're doing on Christmas, I won't answer your questions."
Yet even when that information was provided, Lopez still refused to discuss his consulting work or explain what the housing-management group does in his district.
Lopez even suggested The Post's questions be posed to one of his daughters. He later tried to say he was joking with that suggestion.
Lopez is among Gov. Pataki's strongest supporters in the city. He has boasted of the tens of millions of dollars that he has brought to his district annually for housing and other programs.
Groups he has founded depend heavily on state largess. His Bushwick-Ridgewood Senior Citizens Center, an umbrella group for many of the district's not-for-profits, receives $7 million a year in public funds.
Community Property Management Inc. operates housing built or rehabilitated by groups affiliated with the Bushwick-Ridgewood Senior Citizens Center. Officials at the management group did not return calls for comment.
In filings with the state's Legislative Ethics Committee, Lopez, as required by law, declared his consulting work for Community Property Management during 1998, 1999 and 2000.
In those filings, Lopez described the work as providing technical assistance for program development, but was not required to state his income.
Source Citation: "POL BENEFIT$ FROM STATE-AIDED GROUP.(News)." New York Post (New York, NY) (Dec 23, 2001):
Monday, June 16, 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Vito Lopez Moves To Take Pfizer's Brooklyn Site By Eminent Domain
by Eliot Brown | March 26, 2008 | New York Obsever
Vito Lopez.Earlier this month, in the brief few-day period when only one governor was embroiled in a sex scandal, Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez introduced a bill to use eminent domain to take pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s approximately 15-acre manufacturing plant site in East Williamsburg and turn it into affordable housing (he's talked about this previously).
With the plant slated to close later this year, Pfizer had put out a search in January for developers to buy the land and build a mixed-use, mixed-income development out of the site.
Though the company has yet to report any progress along that front, and even that concept—of a mixed-income complex—angered Mr. Lopez, the Assembly housing committee chairman, who previously has expressed revulsion at the notion that the company would proceed down a path that would bring it any significant financial gain.
The bill, introduced March 13 with 20 other legislators signing on, instructs the Division of Housing and Community Renewal to take the property with eminent domain. In the bill’s justification listed on the Assembly’s Web site, Mr. Lopez said he was taking action on Pfizer because it failed to donate its land, as it has done in other instances. "Though Pfizer has shown concern for other communities coping with job loss and housing needs, it appears the global company has little interest in returning the land in question to the State of New York," the justification reads.
Assuming Mr. Lopez can read the tea leaves as well as any other veteran Albany legislator—one would imagine the bill has little chance of going anywhere—perhaps he is using it to push Pfizer to include more affordable housing in whatever becomes of the site.
Pfizer opposes the measure (who would have thought), and emailed this response:
Pfizer Inc strongly opposes A10272 (V. Lopez), a bill to allow the seizure of Pfizer-owned property in Brooklyn by eminent domain for the development of affordable housing by New York State. Not only is the concept of state-sponsored eminent domain extremely premature at this point and potentially chilling for development statewide, but the legislation’s justification fails to mention that affordable housing is one of the key uses currently being considered as part of potential future private development scenarios for this property.
Vito Lopez.Earlier this month, in the brief few-day period when only one governor was embroiled in a sex scandal, Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez introduced a bill to use eminent domain to take pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s approximately 15-acre manufacturing plant site in East Williamsburg and turn it into affordable housing (he's talked about this previously).
With the plant slated to close later this year, Pfizer had put out a search in January for developers to buy the land and build a mixed-use, mixed-income development out of the site.
Though the company has yet to report any progress along that front, and even that concept—of a mixed-income complex—angered Mr. Lopez, the Assembly housing committee chairman, who previously has expressed revulsion at the notion that the company would proceed down a path that would bring it any significant financial gain.
The bill, introduced March 13 with 20 other legislators signing on, instructs the Division of Housing and Community Renewal to take the property with eminent domain. In the bill’s justification listed on the Assembly’s Web site, Mr. Lopez said he was taking action on Pfizer because it failed to donate its land, as it has done in other instances. "Though Pfizer has shown concern for other communities coping with job loss and housing needs, it appears the global company has little interest in returning the land in question to the State of New York," the justification reads.
Assuming Mr. Lopez can read the tea leaves as well as any other veteran Albany legislator—one would imagine the bill has little chance of going anywhere—perhaps he is using it to push Pfizer to include more affordable housing in whatever becomes of the site.
Pfizer opposes the measure (who would have thought), and emailed this response:
Pfizer Inc strongly opposes A10272 (V. Lopez), a bill to allow the seizure of Pfizer-owned property in Brooklyn by eminent domain for the development of affordable housing by New York State. Not only is the concept of state-sponsored eminent domain extremely premature at this point and potentially chilling for development statewide, but the legislation’s justification fails to mention that affordable housing is one of the key uses currently being considered as part of potential future private development scenarios for this property.
Monday, February 18, 2008
All in the family
This little piggy went to the City Council.
His name was Erik Dilan.
This little piggy got paid $122,500 a year, but that wasn't good enough.
This little piggy got money for his wife, too. Because the money was available and because all the little piggies were getting theirs.
What we recount is, unfortunately, no fable. Rather it is fact, as documented by the Daily News I-Team, which has been digging aggressively into the City Council's gross misuse of so-called member items.
Dilan is among the many lawmakers who have been dipping into enormous slush funds as a way to distribute taxpayer moneys to favored organizations. The process has entailed phony official records, an utter lack of accountability, alleged thefts and blatant conflicts of interest.
A Council member designates a group for funds, declaring it does valuable community service of some kind. With the lightest of scrutiny, the city writes a check. There's no audit on how the money is eventually spent.
The recipients of Dilan's largess have included the North Brooklyn Community Council, a nonprofit organization based in a Bushwick storefront. Over the past three years, Dilan has directed a total of $187,500 to the group in increasing chunks of money, $30,000 then $57,500 then $100,000.
The organization lists only one salaried employee on tax forms: executive director Jannitza Luna. And, surprise, surprise, Luna became Dilan's fiancée in 2006 and his wife in 2007. According to the group's last tax return, Luna was paid $45,000 in 2006.
What she did for the money is unclear, as is what the organization has been doing. On the most recent city filing, it reported organizing youth sports teams, but Dilan said the group now focuses more on "immigrant services."
That all this passed muster in the City Council demonstrates anew that lawmakers have run wildly out of control with member items.
The City Charter requires Council members to disclose conflicts of interest, including whether family members would benefit from grants. Lawmakers must reveal conflicts on the record of Council meetings and, since last year, on special disclosure forms. (That the forms are riddled with grammatical errors is beside the point.)
Dilan appears to have made the required reports, going so far on his written document as to deny, laughably, that steering money to North Brooklyn represented a conflict.
He asserted that the group paid his wife not with city money, but using a separate slab of pork he got from the state through a political pal, Brooklyn Democratic boss Vito Lopez.
By Dilan's reckoning, then, he's in the clear. He followed all the rules, so it's appropriate to pour money into his wife's employer. But it shouldn't be okay. Abolish member items.
Tuesday, April 22nd 2008, 4:00 AM Daily News Editorial
His name was Erik Dilan.
This little piggy got paid $122,500 a year, but that wasn't good enough.
This little piggy got money for his wife, too. Because the money was available and because all the little piggies were getting theirs.
What we recount is, unfortunately, no fable. Rather it is fact, as documented by the Daily News I-Team, which has been digging aggressively into the City Council's gross misuse of so-called member items.
Dilan is among the many lawmakers who have been dipping into enormous slush funds as a way to distribute taxpayer moneys to favored organizations. The process has entailed phony official records, an utter lack of accountability, alleged thefts and blatant conflicts of interest.
A Council member designates a group for funds, declaring it does valuable community service of some kind. With the lightest of scrutiny, the city writes a check. There's no audit on how the money is eventually spent.
The recipients of Dilan's largess have included the North Brooklyn Community Council, a nonprofit organization based in a Bushwick storefront. Over the past three years, Dilan has directed a total of $187,500 to the group in increasing chunks of money, $30,000 then $57,500 then $100,000.
The organization lists only one salaried employee on tax forms: executive director Jannitza Luna. And, surprise, surprise, Luna became Dilan's fiancée in 2006 and his wife in 2007. According to the group's last tax return, Luna was paid $45,000 in 2006.
What she did for the money is unclear, as is what the organization has been doing. On the most recent city filing, it reported organizing youth sports teams, but Dilan said the group now focuses more on "immigrant services."
That all this passed muster in the City Council demonstrates anew that lawmakers have run wildly out of control with member items.
The City Charter requires Council members to disclose conflicts of interest, including whether family members would benefit from grants. Lawmakers must reveal conflicts on the record of Council meetings and, since last year, on special disclosure forms. (That the forms are riddled with grammatical errors is beside the point.)
Dilan appears to have made the required reports, going so far on his written document as to deny, laughably, that steering money to North Brooklyn represented a conflict.
He asserted that the group paid his wife not with city money, but using a separate slab of pork he got from the state through a political pal, Brooklyn Democratic boss Vito Lopez.
By Dilan's reckoning, then, he's in the clear. He followed all the rules, so it's appropriate to pour money into his wife's employer. But it shouldn't be okay. Abolish member items.
Tuesday, April 22nd 2008, 4:00 AM Daily News Editorial
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Buy a Judgeship INC
You would think that the disgrace of Brooklyn Democratic Party boss Clarence Norman would have at least slowed the gush of money from judicial candidates to his successor in the party machine. Think again.
When the Brooklyn Democrats elected Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez their new leader in October 2005, the already-powerful politician pledged to restore order to a party rocked by judicial corruption. He was replacing Clarence Norman, a prodigious fundraiser who had been convicted of abusing party funds and was accused of pressuring judges to hire party-picked workers.Although not dogged by charges of malfeasance, the new leader has certainly continued his predecessor’s practice of vigorously shaking his borough’s money trees. And an examination of the Friends of Vito Lopez campaign disclosure file at the state Board of Elections reveals that his donors include almost every borough candidate for the bench.Since his elevation last year, Lopez’s committee has collected $193,760 — including more than $6,000 in contributions from 18 different judges and judicial candidates. During the period of 1999 to 2005, Norman averaged roughly $4,400 from similar donors. (For year-to-year comparisons of judge giving, see today’s LexMetrics.)The dynamics are most stark in this year’s Supreme Court race. Of the 20 non-incumbent candidates approved by the Brooklyn screening panel last July, 15 gave at least $250 to the Friends of Vito Lopez at a fundraiser held a few weeks before the evaluation.According to an individual who attended the event and who demanded anonymity, Lopez held the event in the backroom of a pizzeria in Williamsburg. “They’ll send out an invite, usually you have food, drinks, and try to get as many people’s support as possible,” she explained. “You don’t want to be the person who doesn’t go.” The five candidates who did not contribute to the judicial kitty did not receive the party’s nomination.One of those losers was attorney Mark R. Dwyer, counsel to Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan DA. “I’m not in the habit of making political contributions,” he said simply, declining to discuss what his failure to donate might have meant. When asked why he might have missed the Democratic fundraising boat, he responded, “I’ve never been involved in that circle.” Civil Court candidates also donated. These races are essentially settled during the September primary, because like the Supreme Court race, the party’s nod assures election victory in the overwhelmingly Democratic borough. In June, the Friends of Vito Lopez received contributions from both Dena Douglas and Jacqueline D. Williams — the two candidates who won the Democratic Party’s nomination to the Brooklyn Civil Court. Repeated calls to Assemblyman Lopez were not returned. In addition, several calls to his judicial contributors also went unreturned.Some observers feel that the Brooklyn scene didn’t change too much with the new leadership. Kent A. Yalowitz, an attorney at Arnold & Porter, spent months studying the Brooklyn Democratic machine. Yalowitz was one of the many attorneys leading Surrogate Judge Margarita Lopez Torres’s landmark lawsuit that overturned the Supreme Court selection system in New York.“It’s a fair inference that under the current regime, candidates need to curry favor with these people,” he explained. “From what I can tell, Assemblyman Lopez doesn’t represent a change in the philosophy.”The rules governing judicial campaign donations are in some ways more intricate than for other offices. According to Lee Daghlian, a spokesperson for the Board of Elections, most political campaign accounts can be kept open “forever,” but judicial campaign accounts must be closed shortly after the election. Additionally, incumbent justices are prohibited from contributing to political campaigns — a rule that Daghlian said has been in effect for at least 25 years: “It was for ethical reasons,” he said. “They wanted judges to be insulated from this process, particularly sitting judges.”This year, Lopez’s first test as party leader in Brooklyn, all five Supreme Court candidates backed by party leadership passed muster without a hint of struggle among the delegates who ultimately pick the justices at the convention. They will almost certainly win in the ceremonial election in November. And every successful Supreme Court candidate in Brooklyn, barring one incumbent, contributed at least $250 to a fundraiser for Lopez.
According to the 2006 Judicial Campaign Ethics Handbook, these contributions are permitted during a candidate's 'window period.' The window period commences nine months prior to the earliest of the following dates: (1) the date of formal nomination, or (2) the date of a party meeting at which the candidate would be endorsed, or (3) the date that the petition process begins.
If the person becomes a candidate in the general election, the window period ends six months after the general election. Otherwise, if the candidate loses the primary election, or fails to be nominated or endorsed in the applicable convention, caucus or party meeting, the window period ends six months thereafter.*
At the same time, the election window carefully limits the types of spending allowed: “During the judicial candidate’s window period, the candidate may (unless otherwise prohibited by law or rule) attend and speak at gatherings on his/her own behalf (including attending his/her own fund-raising event) and purchase two (2) tickets to and attend a politically-sponsored dinner or event, including a fund-raising event for other elected officials or candidates.”During the last seven years of election filings, several other judges ponied up to the Friends of Vito Lopez committee.In 2002, Brooklyn lawyer Eugene Hurkin and his household donated $600 to the Friends of Vito Lopez and, between 2001 and 2003, another $2,262 to the Committee to Re-Elect Clarence Norman. In 2001, his son, Allen Hurkin-Torres, donated $300 to Norman’s committee via his own election committee. That same year, Allen won a seat on the Supreme Court.Ironically, the recent federal ruling calling for reforms of the judicial nomination process might just increase the number — and amount — of judicial candidate donations to the Lopez machine. How that will affect Lopez’s relationship to individual members of the bench is an open question.In U.S. District judge John Gleeson’s January opinion in Lopez Torres vs. New York State Board of Elections, the judge overturned the state’s judicial selection system for the Supreme Court and ordered the state legislature to create a new one. Legislative action is expected early next year.In one scenario, the current system could be replaced by an open primary. That would probably jack up the price of judicial elections by hundreds of thousands of dollars.Conversely, the new system could follow the lead of other states — selecting judges based by merit systems, rather than elections, or creating alternative public funding for judicial races.In his 77-page decision, Judge Gleeson described Vito Lopez’s attempts to manipulate the career of Brooklyn Surrogate Margarita Lopez Torres: “If she hired [Vito] Lopez’s daughter, a recent law school graduate, as her court attorney, [Vito] Lopez would get Lopez Torres nominated to fill an upcoming vacancy on the Supreme Court that the party leadership had earmarked for a ‘Latino,’ ” Gleeson wrote, revealing the dark side of Vito Lopez’s
When the Brooklyn Democrats elected Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez their new leader in October 2005, the already-powerful politician pledged to restore order to a party rocked by judicial corruption. He was replacing Clarence Norman, a prodigious fundraiser who had been convicted of abusing party funds and was accused of pressuring judges to hire party-picked workers.Although not dogged by charges of malfeasance, the new leader has certainly continued his predecessor’s practice of vigorously shaking his borough’s money trees. And an examination of the Friends of Vito Lopez campaign disclosure file at the state Board of Elections reveals that his donors include almost every borough candidate for the bench.Since his elevation last year, Lopez’s committee has collected $193,760 — including more than $6,000 in contributions from 18 different judges and judicial candidates. During the period of 1999 to 2005, Norman averaged roughly $4,400 from similar donors. (For year-to-year comparisons of judge giving, see today’s LexMetrics.)The dynamics are most stark in this year’s Supreme Court race. Of the 20 non-incumbent candidates approved by the Brooklyn screening panel last July, 15 gave at least $250 to the Friends of Vito Lopez at a fundraiser held a few weeks before the evaluation.According to an individual who attended the event and who demanded anonymity, Lopez held the event in the backroom of a pizzeria in Williamsburg. “They’ll send out an invite, usually you have food, drinks, and try to get as many people’s support as possible,” she explained. “You don’t want to be the person who doesn’t go.” The five candidates who did not contribute to the judicial kitty did not receive the party’s nomination.One of those losers was attorney Mark R. Dwyer, counsel to Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan DA. “I’m not in the habit of making political contributions,” he said simply, declining to discuss what his failure to donate might have meant. When asked why he might have missed the Democratic fundraising boat, he responded, “I’ve never been involved in that circle.” Civil Court candidates also donated. These races are essentially settled during the September primary, because like the Supreme Court race, the party’s nod assures election victory in the overwhelmingly Democratic borough. In June, the Friends of Vito Lopez received contributions from both Dena Douglas and Jacqueline D. Williams — the two candidates who won the Democratic Party’s nomination to the Brooklyn Civil Court. Repeated calls to Assemblyman Lopez were not returned. In addition, several calls to his judicial contributors also went unreturned.Some observers feel that the Brooklyn scene didn’t change too much with the new leadership. Kent A. Yalowitz, an attorney at Arnold & Porter, spent months studying the Brooklyn Democratic machine. Yalowitz was one of the many attorneys leading Surrogate Judge Margarita Lopez Torres’s landmark lawsuit that overturned the Supreme Court selection system in New York.“It’s a fair inference that under the current regime, candidates need to curry favor with these people,” he explained. “From what I can tell, Assemblyman Lopez doesn’t represent a change in the philosophy.”The rules governing judicial campaign donations are in some ways more intricate than for other offices. According to Lee Daghlian, a spokesperson for the Board of Elections, most political campaign accounts can be kept open “forever,” but judicial campaign accounts must be closed shortly after the election. Additionally, incumbent justices are prohibited from contributing to political campaigns — a rule that Daghlian said has been in effect for at least 25 years: “It was for ethical reasons,” he said. “They wanted judges to be insulated from this process, particularly sitting judges.”This year, Lopez’s first test as party leader in Brooklyn, all five Supreme Court candidates backed by party leadership passed muster without a hint of struggle among the delegates who ultimately pick the justices at the convention. They will almost certainly win in the ceremonial election in November. And every successful Supreme Court candidate in Brooklyn, barring one incumbent, contributed at least $250 to a fundraiser for Lopez.
According to the 2006 Judicial Campaign Ethics Handbook, these contributions are permitted during a candidate's 'window period.' The window period commences nine months prior to the earliest of the following dates: (1) the date of formal nomination, or (2) the date of a party meeting at which the candidate would be endorsed, or (3) the date that the petition process begins.
If the person becomes a candidate in the general election, the window period ends six months after the general election. Otherwise, if the candidate loses the primary election, or fails to be nominated or endorsed in the applicable convention, caucus or party meeting, the window period ends six months thereafter.*
At the same time, the election window carefully limits the types of spending allowed: “During the judicial candidate’s window period, the candidate may (unless otherwise prohibited by law or rule) attend and speak at gatherings on his/her own behalf (including attending his/her own fund-raising event) and purchase two (2) tickets to and attend a politically-sponsored dinner or event, including a fund-raising event for other elected officials or candidates.”During the last seven years of election filings, several other judges ponied up to the Friends of Vito Lopez committee.In 2002, Brooklyn lawyer Eugene Hurkin and his household donated $600 to the Friends of Vito Lopez and, between 2001 and 2003, another $2,262 to the Committee to Re-Elect Clarence Norman. In 2001, his son, Allen Hurkin-Torres, donated $300 to Norman’s committee via his own election committee. That same year, Allen won a seat on the Supreme Court.Ironically, the recent federal ruling calling for reforms of the judicial nomination process might just increase the number — and amount — of judicial candidate donations to the Lopez machine. How that will affect Lopez’s relationship to individual members of the bench is an open question.In U.S. District judge John Gleeson’s January opinion in Lopez Torres vs. New York State Board of Elections, the judge overturned the state’s judicial selection system for the Supreme Court and ordered the state legislature to create a new one. Legislative action is expected early next year.In one scenario, the current system could be replaced by an open primary. That would probably jack up the price of judicial elections by hundreds of thousands of dollars.Conversely, the new system could follow the lead of other states — selecting judges based by merit systems, rather than elections, or creating alternative public funding for judicial races.In his 77-page decision, Judge Gleeson described Vito Lopez’s attempts to manipulate the career of Brooklyn Surrogate Margarita Lopez Torres: “If she hired [Vito] Lopez’s daughter, a recent law school graduate, as her court attorney, [Vito] Lopez would get Lopez Torres nominated to fill an upcoming vacancy on the Supreme Court that the party leadership had earmarked for a ‘Latino,’ ” Gleeson wrote, revealing the dark side of Vito Lopez’s
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Pfizer Offering Williamsburg Plant Site for Affordable Housing—So, Why’s a State Assemblyman Trying to Seize It?
January 20, 2008
The New York Observer
Eliot Brown
All of Pfizer’s plans, however, could be for naught if State Assemblyman Vito Lopez is successful in a bid to claim the site with eminent domain and develop it for affordable housing. First reported in Crain’s New York Business, Mr. Lopez, a Brooklyn Democrat, has been drafting a bill that would have the state’s housing agency acquire the site, then issue its own request for proposals so as to create about 1,700 housing units.
Mr. Lopez, the chairman of the Assembly’s housing committee, has pushed for large levels of affordable housing, often irking city officials and other legislators who consider his demands unreasonable and unrealistic. His efforts, however, received a shout-out from Governor Spitzer in his State of the State address last week, in which he praised Mr. Lopez for his commitment to affordable housing.
Pfizer, in a candid statement, said the company finds it “extremely puzzling that a legislator would propose a government seizure of private property through eminent domain to ostensibly re-develop the properties with the same types of uses we are already considering.”
article
The New York Observer
Eliot Brown
All of Pfizer’s plans, however, could be for naught if State Assemblyman Vito Lopez is successful in a bid to claim the site with eminent domain and develop it for affordable housing. First reported in Crain’s New York Business, Mr. Lopez, a Brooklyn Democrat, has been drafting a bill that would have the state’s housing agency acquire the site, then issue its own request for proposals so as to create about 1,700 housing units.
Mr. Lopez, the chairman of the Assembly’s housing committee, has pushed for large levels of affordable housing, often irking city officials and other legislators who consider his demands unreasonable and unrealistic. His efforts, however, received a shout-out from Governor Spitzer in his State of the State address last week, in which he praised Mr. Lopez for his commitment to affordable housing.
Pfizer, in a candid statement, said the company finds it “extremely puzzling that a legislator would propose a government seizure of private property through eminent domain to ostensibly re-develop the properties with the same types of uses we are already considering.”
article
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Voter Registration Coverup?
LOPEZ, VITO J
THIS DATA IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY
NEW YORK VOTER REGISTRATIONS
Name: LOPEZ, VITO J
Address:
64 CONSELYEA STREET 1 FL.
BROOKLYN, NY 11211
County: KINGS
Date of Birth: 6/5/1941
Gender: MALE
VOTER INFORMATION
Party Affiliation: DEMOCRATIC
Registration Date: 1/1/1984
Date Last Voted: 11/2/2004
Congressional District: 12
State Senate District: 17
State House District: 53
Precinct: 01
VOTING HISTORY
PRIMARY ELECTION 2002: VOTED
GENERAL ELECTION 2002: VOTED
PRIMARY ELECTION 2001: VOTED
GENERAL ELECTION 2001: VOTED
PRIMARY ELECTION 2000: VOTED
GENERAL ELECTION 2000: VOTED
PRIMARY ELECTION 1997: VOTED
GENERAL ELECTION 1997: VOTED
PRIMARY ELECTION 1996: VOTED
GENERAL ELECTION 1996: VOTED
64 CONSELYEA STREET 1 FL. Was own by the director Lilly Tarantino of a non profit called Swing 60’s Senior Center – According to the buzz it was one room that Vito rented in that private home.
One week after the Post article below Vito moved to Stanhope Street to a larger apartment.
Norman's Successor Facing Own Scandal
By Jim Hinch
New York Post
November, 25, 2005
Just one month after replacing scandal-plagued pol Clarence Norman as Brooklyn Democratic Party boss, Assemblyman Vito Lopez appears headed for his own tub of legal hot water.
Three activists have filed a complaint with the Brooklyn DA, alleging Lopez used a fake address on his voter-registration form and doesn't live in his Brooklyn district.
Instead, say the activists, Lopez for years has shacked up in a Queens condo owned by his Former Brooklyn Democratic party bossgirlfriend, Planning Commissioner Angela
Clarence Norman (above) was indicted Battaglia, who also happens to be executive
for four offenses. director of a housing nonprofit Lopez founded.
A spokesman confirmed that the district attorney had received the complaint, dated Oct. 24, but declined to say if an investigation has begun.
Falsifying a voter-registration address is a felony.
When told of the complaint, Lopez's chief of staff, Allison Hirsh, said, "I have no comment," and hung up the phone. Battaglia did not return a phone call to her commission office.
"Vito Lopez is not above the law," said Joseph Garber, one of three signatories on the complaint.
Garber, an activist in Lopez's district who has worked against Lopez-backed judicial candidates, said the pol's alleged fake address has been an open secret among insiders for years.
Garber said he and other disgusted activists decided to air the dirty laundry when Lopez ascended to Norman's throne atop the Kings County Democratic Party in October with vows to clean the organization up.
"Now Lopez is going to be the choirmaster. He'll do just like Clarence Norman, if not worse," said Arthur Steier, another signatory.
Since becoming party leader, Lopez has been throwing his weight around, recently vowing to be a kingmaker in the race for City Council speaker.
Property records show that the address where Lopez is registered to vote, 64 Conselyea St. in Williamsburg, is owned by a woman named Tillie Tarantino.
Tarantino is executive director of the Swinging 60s Senior Center in Greenpoint, which is funded by a Lopez-backed nonprofit.
Reached by The Post at the senior center, Tarantino was asked if Lopez lives at the Conselyea Street house.
"No comment," she said, and hung up
The New York Post
October 1, 2005 Saturday
SECTION: Sports+Late City Final; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 140 words
HEADLINE: DEM FOES CALL BROOKLYN POL OUT AT HOME
BYLINE: Jim Hinch
BODY:
Political opponents of Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez are preparing to file a complaint with prosecutors that Lopez does not live at the house where he is registered to vote, but instead is shacking up with his girlfriend in Queens.
Lopez was lobbying hard this week to replace recently convicted Assemblyman Clarence Norman as Brooklyn's Democratic Party leader.
Allies of civil court judge candidate Martin Needleman, whom Lopez opposed in last month's primary, say Lopez will need to clean up his own act before replacing the tainted county leader.
Calls to Lopez's district office were not returned.
Lopez is registered to vote at a house on Conselyea Street in Williamsburg. But property records show the house is owned by Tillie Tarantino, who heads a senior citizens center operated by a nonprofit Lopez founded.
THIS DATA IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY
NEW YORK VOTER REGISTRATIONS
Name: LOPEZ, VITO J
Address:
64 CONSELYEA STREET 1 FL.
BROOKLYN, NY 11211
County: KINGS
Date of Birth: 6/5/1941
Gender: MALE
VOTER INFORMATION
Party Affiliation: DEMOCRATIC
Registration Date: 1/1/1984
Date Last Voted: 11/2/2004
Congressional District: 12
State Senate District: 17
State House District: 53
Precinct: 01
VOTING HISTORY
PRIMARY ELECTION 2002: VOTED
GENERAL ELECTION 2002: VOTED
PRIMARY ELECTION 2001: VOTED
GENERAL ELECTION 2001: VOTED
PRIMARY ELECTION 2000: VOTED
GENERAL ELECTION 2000: VOTED
PRIMARY ELECTION 1997: VOTED
GENERAL ELECTION 1997: VOTED
PRIMARY ELECTION 1996: VOTED
GENERAL ELECTION 1996: VOTED
64 CONSELYEA STREET 1 FL. Was own by the director Lilly Tarantino of a non profit called Swing 60’s Senior Center – According to the buzz it was one room that Vito rented in that private home.
One week after the Post article below Vito moved to Stanhope Street to a larger apartment.
Norman's Successor Facing Own Scandal
By Jim Hinch
New York Post
November, 25, 2005
Just one month after replacing scandal-plagued pol Clarence Norman as Brooklyn Democratic Party boss, Assemblyman Vito Lopez appears headed for his own tub of legal hot water.
Three activists have filed a complaint with the Brooklyn DA, alleging Lopez used a fake address on his voter-registration form and doesn't live in his Brooklyn district.
Instead, say the activists, Lopez for years has shacked up in a Queens condo owned by his Former Brooklyn Democratic party bossgirlfriend, Planning Commissioner Angela
Clarence Norman (above) was indicted Battaglia, who also happens to be executive
for four offenses. director of a housing nonprofit Lopez founded.
A spokesman confirmed that the district attorney had received the complaint, dated Oct. 24, but declined to say if an investigation has begun.
Falsifying a voter-registration address is a felony.
When told of the complaint, Lopez's chief of staff, Allison Hirsh, said, "I have no comment," and hung up the phone. Battaglia did not return a phone call to her commission office.
"Vito Lopez is not above the law," said Joseph Garber, one of three signatories on the complaint.
Garber, an activist in Lopez's district who has worked against Lopez-backed judicial candidates, said the pol's alleged fake address has been an open secret among insiders for years.
Garber said he and other disgusted activists decided to air the dirty laundry when Lopez ascended to Norman's throne atop the Kings County Democratic Party in October with vows to clean the organization up.
"Now Lopez is going to be the choirmaster. He'll do just like Clarence Norman, if not worse," said Arthur Steier, another signatory.
Since becoming party leader, Lopez has been throwing his weight around, recently vowing to be a kingmaker in the race for City Council speaker.
Property records show that the address where Lopez is registered to vote, 64 Conselyea St. in Williamsburg, is owned by a woman named Tillie Tarantino.
Tarantino is executive director of the Swinging 60s Senior Center in Greenpoint, which is funded by a Lopez-backed nonprofit.
Reached by The Post at the senior center, Tarantino was asked if Lopez lives at the Conselyea Street house.
"No comment," she said, and hung up
The New York Post
October 1, 2005 Saturday
SECTION: Sports+Late City Final; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 140 words
HEADLINE: DEM FOES CALL BROOKLYN POL OUT AT HOME
BYLINE: Jim Hinch
BODY:
Political opponents of Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez are preparing to file a complaint with prosecutors that Lopez does not live at the house where he is registered to vote, but instead is shacking up with his girlfriend in Queens.
Lopez was lobbying hard this week to replace recently convicted Assemblyman Clarence Norman as Brooklyn's Democratic Party leader.
Allies of civil court judge candidate Martin Needleman, whom Lopez opposed in last month's primary, say Lopez will need to clean up his own act before replacing the tainted county leader.
Calls to Lopez's district office were not returned.
Lopez is registered to vote at a house on Conselyea Street in Williamsburg. But property records show the house is owned by Tillie Tarantino, who heads a senior citizens center operated by a nonprofit Lopez founded.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Vito Uses Slush to Fight Cancer
A top Brooklyn pol uses the pork barrel against cancer
December 26th, 2006 from the Village Voice
by Tom Robbins
The Voice questions how legislators (and Vito Lopez in particular) have a free hand in the pork barrel to benefit themselves as much as their constituents.
There's the $5,000 grant approved for Bobbi and the Strays, the Ozone Park, Queens, group that finds lost pets; there's the $10,000 for the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks in upstate Cohoes so the lodge can fix its ailing HVAC system; there's the $2,500 to erect permanent signage in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in midtown; and the $2,000 for the German American Club in Albany so the group can finally pave its parking lot.
New York's media have always had a field day with the state legislature's "member items"the $200 million slush fund out of which legislators are allocated a set amount of funds (calculated according to political clout) to spend pretty much as they please. This good old-fashioned pork-barrel spending is the kind of thing that greases political wheels, even if taxpayers might not see it as urgently needed. Traditionally, assembly and senate leaders kept the names of the givers secret, a move that necessitated a bit of a guessing game as to which member was responsible for which item.
But the guessing game ended abruptly this fall when the Albany Times-Union won a lawsuit to compel the legislature to identify the names of the lawmakers and their individual largesse. A new round of stories was sparked this month when the assembly and the senate published files showing who gave what over the last three fiscal years on their respective websites. The lists show that Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno were the biggest givers, doling out millions to their own favorite charities. Bruno even gave $500,000 to a for-profit technology firm headed by a close pala gift now under FBI scrutiny.
Most lawmakers, however, received far less to distribute, and the records show they spread their limited loot around their districts in increments of $1,000 to $5,000. The money goes mainly for respectable civic endeavors: volunteer fire and ambulance departments, community patrols, neighborhood improvement associations, libraries, schools, legal services, and veterans' needs.
By that standard, the $50,000 a year for leukemia research allocated by Brooklyn Democratic assemblyman Vito Lopez is one of the larger individual grants, as well as one that seems to put him squarely on the side of the angels. But it also dramatically demonstrates how legislators have been given a free hand to choose good deeds that benefit themselves as much as their constituents.
Lopez, who last year became the powerful leader of Brooklyn's Democratic Party, earmarked the money for the prestigious Sloan-Kettering Institute, an arm of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a world-renowned facility.
The state grants have gone toward a study of the glucose transporter function, which was described by Dr. Mark Heaney, a leukemia specialist at Sloan-Kettering, as "an effort to study ways that cancer cells differ from normal cells in leukemia patients." In a written statement to the Voice, Heaney said, "We hope this research will one day lead to a therapy for leukemia patients."
That's something in which Lopez has an intensely personal stake. The 65-year-old assemblyman suffers from leukemia himself and has been a patient at Memorial Sloan-Kettering since 1993, when he was first diagnosed with the ailment. In an interview, Lopez, who was first elected to the assembly in 1984, said that he began making the grants shortly after he underwent treatment at the center. "I went in and got treated with heavy doses of chemotherapy, three different regimens. The last time, I almost didn't make it through," he said. "The hospital had a research project that dealt with some vitamins, and they came to me and said they needed probably a million dollars for research. And I submitted it."
Lopez said he had provided the $50,000 grants to Sloan-Kettering every year for the past decade. Initially he made them together with another Brooklyn assembly member, Eileen Dugan, who was also treated for cancer at Sloan-Kettering. Dugan died in 1996. Since then, Lopez has made the grants on his own. He said that he failed to allocate the funding to Sloan-Kettering in the current fiscal year only because he had been absent from the assembly for several months after having a heart operation.
The doctor who originally approached him for the research funding, Lopez said, was the same one overseeing his cancer therapy at the time. That doctor has since died. But Lopez, whose cancer has been in remission for 10 years, said that most of his recent checkups at the hospital have been handled by Heaney, who was listed as the research project director for the grants on the legislative forms submitted by Lopez and approved by the assembly.
"This was a renewal of an ongoing grant," said Joanne Nicholas, a spokesperson for Memorial Sloan-Kettering. "When Dr. Heaney took over the lab two years ago, the grant was already in place. It is a wonderful thing that Mr. Lopez is doing," she added.
Lopez reacted angrily to questions about his giving. He said that he had never undergone any experimental treatments himself and that he had supplied the funding because he had become "more sensitive" to the need for cancer research. "You are going to taint this because I went to the hospital?" he said. "How do you make that dirty? It's remarkable. They get it, and that's about it. I don't have much more to tell you. I guess the legislature gives research money out on a broad level. It was never a major thing."
But the grant stands out for other reasons.
Lopez represents the neighborhoods of Bushwick and Williamsburg, an area that includes some of the city's poorest areas and is located miles away from Memorial Sloan-Kettering, which is on Manhattan's wealthy Upper East Side. There are plenty of cancer sufferers in Lopez's district, but the disease doesn't strike residents in the area any more often than those in the rest of the city, health studies show. The biggest local health problem, according to a 2006 survey by the city's department of health, is asthma: Hospitalization rates for asthma attacks suffered by both children and adults in the area are double that of the rest of Brooklyn, as well as the city as a whole. Infant mortality rates are also higher than the city average, the study found. When it comes to cancer, the most alarming local health indicator, analysts determined, is that more than half of adult males in the district have not undergone colonoscopies, the all-important safeguard against colon cancer.
Lopez chairs the assembly's influential housing committee and serves on committees for economic development, rules, and social services. But he said that health has been an important issue for him as a legislator. "I sign on to every bill that talks about health, about helping people through illnesses. Is that because I became ill? Perhaps." The newly released records show that as a member of Brooklyn's assembly delegation, Lopez has joined his colleagues in steering funds to other cancer prevention programs, such as providing mammograms for uninsured women. But those grants are for small amounts of $1,000 or $2,000 apiece, and the cost is apportioned among each of the legislators.
Had he ever considered sending his annual $50,000 to other cancer research facilities? "No one has ever asked me," he responded.
The member-item data show that Lopez also didn't search very hard in choosing where else to send his annual funding. Aside from the $50,000 to Sloan-Kettering, the rest of Lopez's individual member-item grants in recent years have gone to a large nonprofit community organization in his district with which he is closely connected. Lopez has sent $130,000 annually, in three separate grants, to the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council and one of its affiliates, the North Brooklyn Residents Association. For many years Lopez was a paid consultant to the organization. He also lives with the organization's $116,000-a-year housing director, Angela Battaglia.
Had he ever considered that as a possible ethical conflict? "No. Absolutely not," Lopez said. "I will help and continue to help programs that do a good job. That's how I feel about it. And that's a direct quote."
December 26th, 2006 from the Village Voice
by Tom Robbins
The Voice questions how legislators (and Vito Lopez in particular) have a free hand in the pork barrel to benefit themselves as much as their constituents.
There's the $5,000 grant approved for Bobbi and the Strays, the Ozone Park, Queens, group that finds lost pets; there's the $10,000 for the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks in upstate Cohoes so the lodge can fix its ailing HVAC system; there's the $2,500 to erect permanent signage in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in midtown; and the $2,000 for the German American Club in Albany so the group can finally pave its parking lot.
New York's media have always had a field day with the state legislature's "member items"the $200 million slush fund out of which legislators are allocated a set amount of funds (calculated according to political clout) to spend pretty much as they please. This good old-fashioned pork-barrel spending is the kind of thing that greases political wheels, even if taxpayers might not see it as urgently needed. Traditionally, assembly and senate leaders kept the names of the givers secret, a move that necessitated a bit of a guessing game as to which member was responsible for which item.
But the guessing game ended abruptly this fall when the Albany Times-Union won a lawsuit to compel the legislature to identify the names of the lawmakers and their individual largesse. A new round of stories was sparked this month when the assembly and the senate published files showing who gave what over the last three fiscal years on their respective websites. The lists show that Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno were the biggest givers, doling out millions to their own favorite charities. Bruno even gave $500,000 to a for-profit technology firm headed by a close pala gift now under FBI scrutiny.
Most lawmakers, however, received far less to distribute, and the records show they spread their limited loot around their districts in increments of $1,000 to $5,000. The money goes mainly for respectable civic endeavors: volunteer fire and ambulance departments, community patrols, neighborhood improvement associations, libraries, schools, legal services, and veterans' needs.
By that standard, the $50,000 a year for leukemia research allocated by Brooklyn Democratic assemblyman Vito Lopez is one of the larger individual grants, as well as one that seems to put him squarely on the side of the angels. But it also dramatically demonstrates how legislators have been given a free hand to choose good deeds that benefit themselves as much as their constituents.
Lopez, who last year became the powerful leader of Brooklyn's Democratic Party, earmarked the money for the prestigious Sloan-Kettering Institute, an arm of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a world-renowned facility.
The state grants have gone toward a study of the glucose transporter function, which was described by Dr. Mark Heaney, a leukemia specialist at Sloan-Kettering, as "an effort to study ways that cancer cells differ from normal cells in leukemia patients." In a written statement to the Voice, Heaney said, "We hope this research will one day lead to a therapy for leukemia patients."
That's something in which Lopez has an intensely personal stake. The 65-year-old assemblyman suffers from leukemia himself and has been a patient at Memorial Sloan-Kettering since 1993, when he was first diagnosed with the ailment. In an interview, Lopez, who was first elected to the assembly in 1984, said that he began making the grants shortly after he underwent treatment at the center. "I went in and got treated with heavy doses of chemotherapy, three different regimens. The last time, I almost didn't make it through," he said. "The hospital had a research project that dealt with some vitamins, and they came to me and said they needed probably a million dollars for research. And I submitted it."
Lopez said he had provided the $50,000 grants to Sloan-Kettering every year for the past decade. Initially he made them together with another Brooklyn assembly member, Eileen Dugan, who was also treated for cancer at Sloan-Kettering. Dugan died in 1996. Since then, Lopez has made the grants on his own. He said that he failed to allocate the funding to Sloan-Kettering in the current fiscal year only because he had been absent from the assembly for several months after having a heart operation.
The doctor who originally approached him for the research funding, Lopez said, was the same one overseeing his cancer therapy at the time. That doctor has since died. But Lopez, whose cancer has been in remission for 10 years, said that most of his recent checkups at the hospital have been handled by Heaney, who was listed as the research project director for the grants on the legislative forms submitted by Lopez and approved by the assembly.
"This was a renewal of an ongoing grant," said Joanne Nicholas, a spokesperson for Memorial Sloan-Kettering. "When Dr. Heaney took over the lab two years ago, the grant was already in place. It is a wonderful thing that Mr. Lopez is doing," she added.
Lopez reacted angrily to questions about his giving. He said that he had never undergone any experimental treatments himself and that he had supplied the funding because he had become "more sensitive" to the need for cancer research. "You are going to taint this because I went to the hospital?" he said. "How do you make that dirty? It's remarkable. They get it, and that's about it. I don't have much more to tell you. I guess the legislature gives research money out on a broad level. It was never a major thing."
But the grant stands out for other reasons.
Lopez represents the neighborhoods of Bushwick and Williamsburg, an area that includes some of the city's poorest areas and is located miles away from Memorial Sloan-Kettering, which is on Manhattan's wealthy Upper East Side. There are plenty of cancer sufferers in Lopez's district, but the disease doesn't strike residents in the area any more often than those in the rest of the city, health studies show. The biggest local health problem, according to a 2006 survey by the city's department of health, is asthma: Hospitalization rates for asthma attacks suffered by both children and adults in the area are double that of the rest of Brooklyn, as well as the city as a whole. Infant mortality rates are also higher than the city average, the study found. When it comes to cancer, the most alarming local health indicator, analysts determined, is that more than half of adult males in the district have not undergone colonoscopies, the all-important safeguard against colon cancer.
Lopez chairs the assembly's influential housing committee and serves on committees for economic development, rules, and social services. But he said that health has been an important issue for him as a legislator. "I sign on to every bill that talks about health, about helping people through illnesses. Is that because I became ill? Perhaps." The newly released records show that as a member of Brooklyn's assembly delegation, Lopez has joined his colleagues in steering funds to other cancer prevention programs, such as providing mammograms for uninsured women. But those grants are for small amounts of $1,000 or $2,000 apiece, and the cost is apportioned among each of the legislators.
Had he ever considered sending his annual $50,000 to other cancer research facilities? "No one has ever asked me," he responded.
The member-item data show that Lopez also didn't search very hard in choosing where else to send his annual funding. Aside from the $50,000 to Sloan-Kettering, the rest of Lopez's individual member-item grants in recent years have gone to a large nonprofit community organization in his district with which he is closely connected. Lopez has sent $130,000 annually, in three separate grants, to the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council and one of its affiliates, the North Brooklyn Residents Association. For many years Lopez was a paid consultant to the organization. He also lives with the organization's $116,000-a-year housing director, Angela Battaglia.
Had he ever considered that as a possible ethical conflict? "No. Absolutely not," Lopez said. "I will help and continue to help programs that do a good job. That's how I feel about it. And that's a direct quote."
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