Fuzzy memory on Rivington House deal

From the NY Post:

First Deputy Mayor Tony Shorris suffered numerous memory lapses about the Rivington Street nursing-home fiasco, telling investigators more than two dozen times that he couldn’t recall incidents, ­emails or details, records show.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s right-hand man claimed he couldn’t remember a meeting with Stacey Cumberbatch, a city commissioner, or the content of any conversations they had about Rivington in 2014.

His schedule showed a July 25, 2014, meeting with Cumberbatch, then head of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, where the deal was on the agenda.

Shorris also said he believed his decision that the property should remain a nursing home — rather than be sold on the open market — was communicated to the agency.

But he couldn’t recall how.

“I’ve asked myself that question. I do not remember the exact mechanism. I just don’t,” he told investigators for city Comptroller Scott Stringer, according to a transcript of the July 27 interview obtained by The Post through public-disclosure laws.

Asked if he had met with Cumberbatch about Rivington in 2014, Shorris replied, “Probably. I can’t say I remember exactly.”

What does he have to hide? A lot, apparently

From DNA Info:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has a private way of discussing city business — using an email account from his company, Bloomberg L.P.

DNAinfo New York has learned of correspondences between Bloomberg and a deputy mayor in which each uses an @bloomberg.net email address to discuss city-related matters.

The identity of the deputy mayor, the dates of the emails and the content of the correspondences are being withheld by DNAinfo to protect the source.

It isn't clear how often the mayor uses a private email account to communicate with his inner circle. But the discovery of the @bloomberg.net correspondences drew concerns from good government groups who see it as a way of avoiding oversight.

“It’s an end run around public access to public documents,” civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel said.

Like most government employees, Bloomberg and his staff have City Hall-issued email accounts. Under state law, the public has the right to see copies of those emails.

Siegel and Bob Freeman, the executive director of the Committee on Open Government, both said that the public also has the right to officials’ personal emails when the correspondences discuss government matters.

However, the public first needs to know the addresses of those personal accounts, Siegel said.

“I do believe that when public officials do public business using their private emails, those emails are subject to the Freedom of Information Law,” Siegel said. “When people resist giving up that information, it’s an end run around. We should criticize that kind of behavior.”

A search of a Bloomberg L.P. terminal shows that at least nine members of the mayor’s inner circle have @bloomberg.net email accounts.

They are: deputy mayors Patty Harris, Cas Holloway and Robert Steel; chief policy adviser John Feinblatt; director of intergovernmental affairs Haeda Mihaltses, Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott; counselor to the mayor Michael Best; senior adviser Shea Fink and mayoral spokesman Marc LaVorgna.

Fixup planned for B116th Street

From the Daily News:

The city plans to pump $500,000 into a vital shopping strip in Rockaway in an effort to overhaul blighted and storm-torn storefronts.

Merchants along Beach 116th St. — a gateway to the beach — will have access to grants for new awnings, signs and other improvements, officials said.

Deputy Mayor Robert Steel is expected to make the announcement Wednesday during a visit to Rockaway.

City Small Business Services Commissioner Robert Walsh said various city agencies are pitching in with planters, benches and better lighting to freshen up the strip.

Beach 116th St. has long struggled with shuttered shops and panhandlers from nearby halfway houses.

Many of the small business owners were hit doubly hard during Superstorm Sandy, suffering damage to their shops and homes.

Quinn proposes schools become all-day babysitting service

From Metro:

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced a fleet of education proposals this morning, including extending the school day and axing textbooks and using tablets instead.

Quinn targeted the education system with her speech at the New School.

The Speaker is battling to be the next mayor, facing an ever-growing list of competitors to replace Mayor Michael Bloomberg when he finishes his term next year.

Her proposals, which she vowed would cost less than $300 million, included appointing a deputy mayor for education and children.

She also wants to make the school day longer, keeping students until 6 p.m. five days a week in schools with the highest percentage of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch.

No more textbooks would be needed under her plan – instead, students would use tablets.

I'm sure tablets cost much less than books. And are we also providing free dinner to the children since they'll be there until 6pm? How about another round of school buses?

It's who you know...

From the NY Post:

Deputy Mayor Patti Harris’ stepson enjoyed a meteoric city career, with nine raises in nine years, before he quit his $175,000 job last August and got a pretax $57,803 payment for unused vacation days, The Post has learned.
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Michael Lebow is the son of Harris’ husband, MTA board member Mark Lebow.

Soon after Harris became Mayor Bloomberg’s top deputy, Michael, then 27, was hired by the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication at $115,000 a year to help launch the 311 call-in system.

He’d dropped out of Washington University and held IT gigs at Bloomberg LP and Rudin Management. His first job required six years’ experience for those without a BA.

“It’s actually rare to find a tech person who didn’t start working in the field as a young student,” said City Hall spokesman Stu Loeser.

But an ex-DOITT worker griped: “No one knew exactly what he did, but it was ‘Hands off . . . He’s Patty Harris’ stepson.’ ”

Where does Patti spend her time?

From the NY Post:

Deputy Mayor Patti Harris, Mayor Bloomberg’s closest aide, makes $246,000 a year overseeing a dozen city agencies, but City Hall refuses to document how and where she spends her days.

Harris’ hours became an issue last year after the mayor tapped her to head his $1.75 billion Bloomberg Family Foundation. She and other city officials were spotted at the charity’s Upper East Side headquarters during city work hours.

The Post on Jan. 5 requested under the Freedom of Information Law a year of her public schedules.

Ten months later, City Hall has yet to comply, failing to give any explanation for the long delay.

How Bloomberg rewards his volunteers

From the NY Times:

Michael R. Bloomberg took his turn in the witness chair in one of the odder political trials in recent memory. Never glancing at the jurors, his facial muscles held in equipoise during cross-examination, he called to mind a lizard sitting in the sun.

Patricia E. Harris, the first deputy mayor, took off three months from her day job to “volunteer” in the mayor’s campaign, and walked away with a $450,000 thank-you from the mayor. Kevin Sheekey, the former deputy mayor, also “volunteered” and walked away with a pile. (He promised on his first day of testimony to ask his wife how much the mayor paid him; the next day, Mr. Sheekey explained that the couple had taken in a movie and darned if the question had not slipped his mind.)

It’s in this context that Mr. Haggerty finds himself sitting at the defense table staring at old friends. He was not so much a “volunteer” as a prized political operative who specialized in putting his candidates on the ballot, and trying to knock opponents off. He is adept at what is called ballot security in a courtroom — but voter suppression on the streets of New York.

From NY1:

Bloomberg largely kept his cool under intense cross-examination, even when the questions touched upon everything from his decision to run for a third term to a payroll scandal at City Hall.

He did, however, show a lack of knowledge about some key aspects of the case, namely the laws governing contributions to political parties.

“Quite frankly we were a little surprised with the number of questions that the mayor simply did not know the answer to,” said Dennis Vacco, attorney for John Haggerty.

At one point, in an apparent effort to discredit the mayor, the defense tried to use words from the mayor's own autobiography against him. The prosecution pounced, calling it courtroom theater.

“That is not an ambush when we are pointing to the witness’ own words in an autobiography. This is the DA’s witness. He is not ours. You would think that the DA would come better prepared,” said Vacco.

Bloomberg comes out of hiding

From the NY Post:

A defiant Mayor Bloomberg said "I make no apologies" for not telling the public about the arrest of former Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, breaking his silence after ducking reporters and critics for days after The Post broke the story.

"I make no apologies for either the fact that Mr. Goldsmith has left city government or for treating the Goldsmith's family with basic decency," the mayor said about the domestic dispute that landed Goldsmith in the slammer in D.C. on July 30.

When asked today by The Post if Goldsmith would have been fired for his performance had he not been arrested, Bloomberg astonishingly said, "no."

Bloomberg added that someone close to Goldsmith called the administration on July 31, told them of the arrest and said Goldsmith would offer his resignation. Goldsmith called Bloomberg personally on Aug. 1 to offer it formally, and it was accepted.

Goldsmith resigned after getting arrested

From the NY Post:

The blizzard didn't bury him -- roughing up his wife did.

Former Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith -- who drew sharp criticism for bungling the Christmas storm that shut down the city -- actually resigned in disgrace after his wife, fearing for her life, had him arrested during an argument turned violent, The Post has learned.

Just days before he suddenly stepped down as Mayor Bloomberg's chief of operations, Goldsmith was arrested at his Georgetown home after his wife, Margaret, told cops he smashed a phone and grabbed her as she desperately tried to call cops, a Washington, DC, police report reveals.

He lives in DC but was deputy mayor of NY? How did he pull this off?

Queens residents may be able to shop more easily in the meatpacking district

From the NY Times:

If the third section [of the High Line] is completed, it will end near the terminus of the extended No. 7 subway line, said Robert K. Steel, the deputy mayor for economic development. People could ride the subway from Queens, then walk the High Line through Chelsea to the meatpacking district, said Mr. Steel, who recently became a resident of Chelsea, just a block from the High Line.

So who along the 7 line in Queens is dying to do this? A show of hands, please...

They all f*cked up

From the NY Post:

When two city commissioners decided not to declare a snow emergency during the Christmas weekend blizzard, no one got around to telling Mayor Bloomberg or his deputy mayor.

That startling revelation was one of several disclosures of botched communications and bad decisions that came to light during a five-hour City Council hearing yesterday on the storm that paralyzed the city.

The grilling homed in on why the city didn't declare a snow emergency when forecasters were predicting the Big Apple would be blanketed by a blizzard. Calling an emergency would have kept private vehicles without snow tires or chains off designated snow routes, and banned parking along those routes.

Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith admitted that he and Bloomberg -- who has defended the non-declaration -- were never told of the decision made by the sanitation and transportation commissioners.

Goldsmith apologized for the disastrous response and said that in the future, the mayor or a deputy mayor would make the call.

When asked if that was a new policy, he replied, "Well, it's clearly one we didn't follow two weeks ago."

But Goldsmith -- the former mayor of Indianapolis -- insisted, "The mayor is always in charge. Any of us can get the mayor anytime, anywhere in the world. He answers the telephone."

So why wasn't he questioned at this hearing?

Expensive people in unnecessary jobs

From the NY Post:

Mayor Bloomberg’s new pension watchdog has a lackluster track record on investments — but that won’t stop her from making key decisions for one of the largest retirement funds in the country.

Ranji Nagaswami, 46, was hired last week as the first ever mayoral investment adviser.

The city is paying Nagaswami $175,000 a year to essentially do the same job that Comptroller John Liu’s chief investment officer, Lawrence Schloss, gets $224,000 to do: Oversee the city’s beleaguered $103 billion pension system.

The move signals Bloomberg is fed up with the city paying fat fees to poorly performing money managers — and he’ll step on Liu’s toes to change things, insiders say.

From the NY Post:

City Hall has a new address — Mayor Bloomberg’s Upper East Side charity foundation.

First Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris, Hizzoner’s longest-serving and most powerful aide, spends most of her time at the Bloomberg Family Foundation at 25 East 78th St. since being named CEO of the $1.6 billion charity in May, according to two government sources.

“She’s never at City Hall,” a high-ranking official told The Post. “Her chair is always empty. Everyone in government is talking about it.”

Last week, Harris — who gets a $246,000-a-year taxpayer salary for her City Hall job, and received a $400,000 campaign-consulting bonus from Bloomberg last year — was seen spending at least part of her day at the foundation’s $45 million, six-story Beaux Arts eadquarters. She was flanked by two assistants and was driven there in a city-owned,chauffeur-driven Buick Lucerne.

But Harris, 54, was not the only Bloomberg bigwig seen at the foundation, their chauffeured city vehicles at the curb, during the workday last week. Press Secretary Stu Loeser and Deputy Mayor for Education Dennis Walcott paid brief visits.

Bye, Bob

From the NY Times:

Robert C. Lieber, the former Wall Street executive who has guided the Bloomberg administration’s economic development efforts during the recession, told his staff on Wednesday morning that he would step down as deputy mayor.

Mr. Lieber, 55, who has been in the job since January 2008, has focused on projects including the redevelopment of Coney Island, the city’s takeover of Governors Island and the rezoning of Willets Point in Queens. He also has pushed the city’s economic development strategy beyond big real estate deals to include smaller entrepreneurial initiatives and a number of growth industries.

“I told the mayor this is toughest decision I ever had to make,” Mr. Lieber said. “I love the job. “I’m most proud of having taken a lot of these projects that had been put in the oven but not baked and gotten them done, whether it’s Coney Island, Willets Point or the World Trade Center.”

He got them done? When did this happen?

Bloomberg makes term limits joke

Michael Bloomberg's new deputy mayor, Steve Goldsmith, who is a former mayor himself, said he won't seek office again.

"I said that too," Bloomberg said, to much laughter.

Video from NY Observer.

Bloomberg spends $1M to name building after sidekick

From the NY Times:

Many bosses reward hard-working employees with a pat on the back. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg can build monuments to them.

The mayor, a billionaire, has quietly given at least $1 million to stamp the name of his most trusted deputy at City Hall on a new academic center at her alma mater, Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., according to two people familiar with the arrangement.

The unusual gift, in honor of Patricia E. Harris, the first deputy mayor, highlights what many say is the hidden glue that helps keep Mr. Bloomberg’s extraordinarily loyal, long-serving administration together: the mayor’s money, or at least the promise of it.

Mr. Bloomberg is famous for doling out eye-popping bonuses to staff members on his campaigns, referring sick workers to top doctors, even paying for the large funeral of a City Hall aide. In return, he expects absolute fealty.