Brad Lander steered a half a billion dollars towards his lobbyist wife's clientele of NPGs

 

NY Daily News

Since Brad Lander took over as the city’s fiscal watchdog in January, his comptroller’s office has approved nearly $550 million in contracts with nonprofit organizations that are members of an umbrella organization his wife oversees, a Daily News analysis of city contracts shows.

Lander’s wife, Meg Barnette, is the president and CEO of Nonprofit New York, which serves as a lobbyist and as an advocate for about 900 member nonprofits across the city.

Nonprofit New York is one of the key entities behind a push to ensure nonprofits that do business with the city are paid in a timely manner. Barnette serves on a joint task force focused on the issue that was formed by Lander and Mayor Adams.

More than 35 organizations that count themselves as members of Nonprofit New York have contracts that Lander’s office has reviewed and signed off on since he became comptroller in January, records show.

According to a News analysis of those records cross-checked against the group’s online list of members, those contracts add up to at least $544 million in city business.

The relationships between the umbrella group Barnette oversees, the nonprofits it represents and her husband, the comptroller, raise the question of whether the web of connections represents a conflict of interest or could be construed as one.

Nonprofit New York’s primary stated goal is “member-building,” and one of its main revenue sources is membership dues, according to the group’s website.

Richard Briffault, the former chairman of the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board, said that to avoid the appearance of a conflict, Lander should disclose the connections between his wife’s nonprofit and its members publicly and institute an internal policy laying out how he would recuse himself in matters related to Nonprofit New York’s clients.

“It would be wise policy to say, in effect, I’m going to recuse from anything involving these entities,” said Briffault, now a professor at Columbia University Law School. “It would certainly be good of him to make clear he is going to recuse from anything having to do with them.”

A former comptroller’s office official agreed based on the “optics alone.”

“It plants a seed of doubt,” the source said. “It doesn’t exactly instill public trust.”

de Blasio's D.O.E. will use fed funding to contract non-profits for schools recovery

NY Post

The city Department of Education has allocated $350 million in federal funding to combat educational damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, The Post has learned.

According to a budgeting memo issued last week, the money will support a range of initiatives from literacy programs to new arts offerings.

Every school in the nation’s largest public system will receive a minimum of $75,000 and a maximum of $600,000 to aid in “academic recovery” after the pandemic upended consecutive school years.

Each recipient must dedicate at least 20 percent of its award to pay for arts-related programs, according to the memo.

While the money cannot be used to hire new full-time teachers, the document states that schools can use it to finance additional class sessions and nonprofit partnerships aimed at helping kids get back on track.

“This funding is available for expenses incurred September 1, 2021 through June 30, 2022,” the memo reads. “Schools are encouraged to schedule funds and implement eligible programming as soon as possible.”

The money will also be used to pay teachers to systematically assess the academic standing of their students and address learning gaps.

Wards Island homeless shelters run by Governor Cuomo's sister non-profit group are in slum conditions

 

THE CITY

Last fall, a Cuomo administration agency signed off on a new shelter on Wards Island to be operated by HELP Social Services, part of a nonprofit founded decades ago by the governor and chaired by his sister, Maria Cuomo Cole.

The Office of Temporary & Disability Assistance had inspected the facility several times before and after it opened on three floors in a state psychiatric hospital. On Oct. 5, the agency certified that the site on the island between Manhattan and Queens was fit to provide safe lodging for single homeless men, records show.

Then cold weather arrived.

Inspections by the Coalition for the Homeless found interior temperatures in two dozen rooms on all three floors of the new shelter hit lows in the high 50s. Men slept with their jackets on. Extra blankets and space heaters arrived, but the chill remained. At one point, some men were moved into city-run shelters.

That wasn’t the only problem for HELP on Wards Island. An investigation by THE CITY discovered that as the state has approved an expansion of HELP’s homeless shelters in the city, multiple woes have plagued the nonprofit’s four Wards Island facilities.

THE CITY’s examination, based on public records, interviews with clients and accounts of inspections of the Wards Island HELP shelters by the Coalition for the Homeless, found:

• Raw sewage flooding a basement, black mold creeping along walls and ceilings, and a summer blackout that stranded a man in an electric wheelchair for hours in the dark. On Memorial Day, inspectors found another man in a wheelchair locked in a bathroom – apparently by shelter staff.

• As of May 24, the three shelters in facilities within city Department of Buildings jurisdiction had 71 building code violations — some dating to 2017. The fourth shelter, Meyers, where the heat outage struck, is in a state building and is not inspected by the city’s Buildings Department. The city 

Department of Homeless Services says most of the violations have been addressed, though they’re still in the process of certifying that the repairs are complete and have allocated $10 million for upgrades.

• HELP currently has 33 active contracts with the city dating back as early as 2013 — 20 of which wound up costing more than their original estimated amounts by as much as 80%. While the city contracted for $371.8 million in services, HELP USA has so far been paid $419.5 million.

• Since 2008, Cuomo Cole, her shoe-designer husband, Kenneth Cole, seven other members of HELP’s board and several top employees have written dozens of checks totaling $451,285 to Andrew Cuomo’s campaigns for governor, a review of campaign finance records shows.

 Stephen Mott, a HELP spokesperson said, “We are now and have always been a non-political organization. We have never endorsed any candidates for public office, nor have we ever raised money for political purposes.”

Mott added, “HELP USA has been working with the homeless for more than 30 years. We are deeply committed to this work and proud of our record of service to the people of New York City.”

Gov. Cuomo’s office declined to comment. During an interview with Cuomo Thursday on WAMC, host Alan Chartock spoke generally about donors expecting something in return. The governor scoffed at the notion of pay-to-play.

“If anybody ever walked up to me and said, ‘I contributed to your campaign and I therefore want you to do me a favor,’ I would knock that person on their rear-end in a nice, polite, legal way,” Cuomo said. “But look, I think it’s simpler than that. If you can be bought off for a contribution — I don’t care for $10 or $5,000 or $50,000 — you are unethical or you are criminal.”

That would also make you a prostitute, Andrew. 

Which is just as unethical as nepotism motivated patronage.

de Blasio illicitly rewarded city hall and presidential campaign PAC donors to abused third party transfer program for city foreclosed buildings

 
NY Daily News

Groups selected by the city to take over foreclosed properties both employ and have close ties with dozens of donors who have given generously to politicians with a say over the fate of the valuable buildings.

A Daily News analysis of for-profit and non-profit entities approved by the city to take over the “distressed” buildings found workers and directors for most of those entities donated cash to local political campaigns. Of the 37 outfits approved for the city’s controversial “third-party transfer” program, at least 21 employ or have close connections with someone who donated, campaign finance records revealed.

Political observers and critics of the program say the donations, coupled with the city picking the companies to take over the properties, many of which are in quickly gentrifying neighborhoods, raise thorny issues.

“These are the kind of things that make me wince. There is something here that doesn’t smell right,” said Betsy Gotbaum, executive director of the Citizens Union good government group. “Who benefits? Why are these particular people benefiting?”

All told, from 2013 campaigns to the present, the donors gave at least $100,000 to local and national political causes, including Mayor de Blasio’s presidential run. Of all the politicians they’ve given to, de Blasio holds the most sway. He is chief of a bureaucracy that chooses who gets the valuable properties and who doesn’t.

Since his 2013 mayoral run, de Blasio has received $4,900 from Nancy Lepre, president of Avante Contracting; $10,950 from Frank Carone, a board member and audit committee chairman at RiseBoro Community Partnership; and approximately $14,000 from others affiliated with the city-selected, third-party-transfer companies.

Both Avante and RiseBoro are among entities approved by the city to take ownership over buildings the city forecloses on. Other companies whose board members, employees or relatives have given include Lemle & Wolff, the St. Nick’s Alliance and the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board.

But Carone stands out among this broad constellation of donors.

 But Carone stands out among this broad constellation of donors.

 Not only is he on the board of directors at RiseBoro, the non-profit once known as the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council and synonymous with the disgraced late Assemblyman Vito Lopez, Carone is the chief lawyer for the Brooklyn Democratic Party. In that role, he wields vast influence over the candidates the party chooses to sit as judges in Brooklyn’s courts.

The judges chosen by the party go on to hear cases involving foreclosures under the third-party transfer program. If a judge rules in the city’s favor, the city can then transfer the properties to entities such as RiseBoro, which can then begin collecting rent from tenants.

“It is very troubling,” said Serge Joseph, a lawyer for a Bronx co-op that was recently foreclosed on under third-party transfer. “If you put that on top of everything else, it becomes overwhelmingly troubling.”

 “Everything else,” according to Joseph and many other critics of TPT, is the lack of notice provided to owners by the city prior to transfers taking place, the way the city defines a “distressed” property, and the city’s failure to provide assistance to struggling buildings in its Housing Development Fund Corporation (HDFC) program.