Sunday, December 13, 2015

Because money grows on trees

From NYC Council Watch:

Does the Council imagine that the good times will roll on and on? When a downturn hits, it will be interesting to hear the cries of pain when these social service programs are forced to scale down.

Your Watcher was fascinated last February by the tremendous effort and resources that the Speaker’s office poured into her egregious “State of the City” address. As you may (or probably don’t) recall, she built an extremely elaborate website to livestream her speech, which was branded with a special “Lift Every Voice” theme, very much like a political campaign.

As I wrote then, there is no reason for the Speaker of the Council to give a “State of the City” speech. The mayor is supposed to give one, according to the Charter, but there is no such obligation for the speaker. Think about it: does Carl Heastie give a “State of the State” address? No. Did John Boehner give a “State of the Nation” speech? How absurd.

In any case I FOILed the Council to get information on the cost and planning of Melissa Mark-Viverito’s speech. Building fancy websites is not cheap, and livestreaming an event costs a lot too. The Council’s FOIL officer took nine months to answer my request, and what she gave me makes the release of Hillary Clinton’s emails seem like the epitome of transparent, open government. I received scores of pages of emails that were entirely redacted except for the “From” line. About twenty pages were totally black: it was only just possible to see that these pages were nothing more than screenshots of the website. So why were they blacked from view?

So much for the openness Mark-Viverito promised upon her election. Her office’s answer to my simple request to see emails pertaining to the production of the exercise in vanity that was her “State of the City” speech is an embarrassment.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

The political class of NYC with very few exceptions, believe they can do anything they want.
Manhattan slightly better because the people there have the brains to at least watch and comment intelligently.

Elsewhere, the received wisdom by most is to criticize your elected makes the community look bad.

Anonymous said...

"Manhattan slightly better because the people there have the brains"

WHAT?! They elected De Blasio and the whole crew...

Anonymous said...

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps the expensive overly elaborate website was for Mark-Viverito's obvious Puerto Rico lobbying efforts. Every other word out of her mouth is why we should direct our taxpayers' money to her beloved Puerto Rico. If she feels that strongly about P.R., let her go live there and vacate the Speaker's position for someone competent, who works for their NYC constituents instead of a territory hundreds of miles away.

Anonymous said...

You know the old saying, And honest politician can't ever be trusted

Anonymous said...

It's very simple - they're socialists. Either we solve the government spending problem gradually with reform or we wait for it all to collapse and rebuild from the ground up.

Looks like it'll be the latter.

Anonymous said...

"Manhattan slightly better because the people there have the brains"

WHAT?! They elected De Blasio and the whole crew...

----

look at greenwich village, landmarks west, that tribeca group. then look at how we celebrated the 50th anniversary of landmarks. look at the newsletters that the politicians send in the city - night and day compared to the talking down to children which is the sense you get from this side of the river. hudson river a waterfront park, the east river soon to be flooded highrises built on brown fields.

sorry guys, but you need to start getting the news from outside of queens to get a sense on just how much you are getting hosed.

JQ LLC said...

Didn't all these funds come from the settlement from some big banks dealing with drugs and terror and shady investing, HSBC I think also Citi and Chase, and these elected clowns think that because the city has these profligate funds they have to waste it. The speaker has zero credibility, although she had none before.

If this irresponsible spending is an indication then if Puerto Rico thinks that Melissa is an advocate for their country and the struggle they are going to avoid bankruptcy, they are loco.

Anonymous said...

the wench just wants some camera time. Same as the rest of them.

Anonymous said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/nyregion/new-york-city-to-aid-immigrants-amid-stalled-national-reforms.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=1


Who knew that farming plays a significant role in the local economy?
Harvesting votes or harvesting cash.

Anonymous said...

How much doe as Katz spend on hers?

Anonymous said...

The CDC should put that picture on condom packages.

Anonymous said...

Typical communist.