Ferreras not running for third term

From the Times Ledger:

State Assemblyman Francisco Moya (D-Jackson Heights) announced Thursday that he will run for the City Council in the 21st District after City Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras-Copeland (D-East Elmhurst) decided against running for re-election this fall.

Ferreras-Copeland first won her seat on the City Council in 2009, becoming the borough’s first Latina elected official and she went on to make history in 2014 when she became the first woman and first person of color to be named the head of the Council’s powerful Finance Committee.

“After a great deal of thought and prayer, I have decided not to run for re-election,” Ferreras-Copeland said in a statement to Politico. “I have had the privilege of representing the 21st District in Queens for eight years, where I’ve fought for the education of our children, the rights of women and families, and the protection of our immigrants.”

Ferreras-Copeland married Aaron Copeland in a 2015 wedding officiated by Mayor Bill de Blasio, but Copeland works as an aerospace engineer in Maryland.

“As a mother and a wife, it has become increasingly difficult to have my family divided in two locations,” she said. “Although this is not an easy decision, this is what makes sense for my son, for my family, and for me.”

(In other words, Hiram has a lot of dirt on her.)

Bloomberg ready to stop shoveling

From AM-NY:

It’s a dirty job, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s apparently tired of it.

During a ceremonial groundbreaking Thursday in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where a developer will turn the vacant Federal Building #2 into a new industrial center, Hizzoner griped about having to shovel dirt – a mock ritual done at such events.

“I can’t wait for the last one. You have no idea,” Bloomberg reportedly said after rolling his eyes.

That makes two of us, pal.

He got what he wanted, so who cares?

From the NY Times:

Michael R. Bloomberg was testifying this month about his diamond-encrusted campaigns, but he might as well have been talking about the balky state of his mayoral enterprise after 10 years.

The mayor likes to insist that he was de facto drafted for a third term, that City Council members and corporate worthies pulled at his hem, begging him to overturn term limits and run again. “A number of people kept coming to me and asking if it were possible,” the mayor also testified. No doubt some importuned. But many, not least his own aides, counseled against it.

A third term is a politician’s Death Valley. It’s a land of the lost in which third-stringers are press-ganged into becoming first-stringers, midlevel managers space out as you talk, and City Council members start to talk back. Not to mention that miscreants and consultants often grab for what is not legitimately theirs.

And true to historical form, very little has gone swimmingly for our potentate in chief. He purchased a third term at not inconsiderable personal cost — he spent a tidy $105 million on his re-election — and now his headaches proliferate.

Bloomberg's mediocre legacy

From the Village Voice:

After a charmed first decade in politics, Mayor Mike Bloomberg is mired in his first sustained losing streak.

His third term has been shaky, marked by the Snowpocalypse, the snowballing CityTime scandal, the backlash to Cathie Black and "government by cocktail party," and the rejection by Governor Andrew Cuomo of his plan to change how public-school teachers are hired and fired. With just a couple more years left in office, Bloomberg is starting to look every one of his 70 years.

Soon, he'll be just another billionaire.

The mayor's legacy is remarkably uncertain—largely because he's done his best to keep New Yorkers in the dark about what it is he's really set out to do in office.

In part, this is because the mayor has been far more effective at selling his Bloomberg brand than in getting things done. But it's also because what he has done—remaking and marketing New York as a "luxury city" and Manhattan as a big-business monoculture—he prefers to discuss with business groups rather than the voting public.

Withholding information while preaching transparency is a Bloomberg trademark. He aggressively keeps his private life private—meaning not just his weekends outside the city at "undisclosed" locations, but also his spending, his charitable giving, and his privately held business.

The column is 5 pages long and makes for some great poolside reading! Check this part out:

Middle-class incomes in New York have been stagnant for a decade, while prices have soared, with purchasing power dropping dramatically. Never mind Manhattan—Queens taken as its own city would be the fifth most expensive one in America. While unemployment in the city has dropped below 9 percent, through June the city had replaced only about half of the 146,000 jobs lost during the recession—and the new jobs have mostly been in low-paying retail, hospitality, and food services positions, according to the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy. Poorly paid health care and social-service jobs, often subsidized by the city, make up 17.4 percent of all private-sector jobs as of 2007, a nearly one-third increase since 1990. Only 3 percent of the private-sector jobs in New York are in relatively high-paying manufacturing positions as of 2007, a figure that's in the low double digits in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston. And the jobs expected to appear over the next decade are also clustered at the bottom of the pay scale.

3rd term's not a charm for Bloomie

From the NY Post:

Black's hiring took on a symbolic meaning far greater than the job itself. The secretive, unpopular choice of someone who was too far outside the box opened a window into Bloomberg's state of mind.

It wasn't a pretty picture. Starting with his manipulation of the term-limits law, Bloomy has been erratic. Even more telling than scandals like CityTime, the mayor is too flip about public concern.

Through his discipline and the persistence of talented staffers, Bloomberg mostly kept that imperious persona hidden for eight years. But the third term, staffed with a third team, has worked on him like a bottle of wine: It loosened his tie and his tongue.

He acts as if the job is somewhere between an entitlement and a consolation prize and that he can do it on automatic pilot. He's tuned out dissent and, in trickle-down fashion, some aides assumed a license to distort facts and trample truth.

From the Daily News:

So now Bloomberg, the only person in the whole city - besides Cathie Black - who thought [Cathie] Black should be schools chancellor despite her spectacular lack of qualifications, fires her because she isn't qualified for the job. It really is kind of wonderful. Bloomberg replaces Black with a different kind of crony, a City Hall insider named Dennis Walcott, apparently having just remembered that Walcott went to public school.

The mayor of New York is suddenly supposed to have turned into a very big guy because he said, "I take full responsibility for the fact that this has not worked out." It was a huge relief, of course, to people all over town who started to worry that they were to blame for Black's appointment.

This is apparently how low we currently set the bar for our elected officials: We're expected to carry them around the room when they admit they made a mistake...

The mistake was a third term for Bloomberg, the sense of entitlement he brought to the whole process. He is still running television commercials even though he is no longer running for anything. Commercials about Bloomberg, paid for by him. Perfect.

There he goes again...

NEW YORK (AP) - Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent who has considered running for president, declared Monday that an independent has a better chance at succeeding in the White House than a Republican or a Democrat.

The billionaire Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent mayor toyed with a third-party run in 2008 but ultimately abandoned the idea. He has said unequivocally he won't run in 2012, but during a forum at Harvard University on Monday he endorsed the idea of an independent in the White House.

"I think actually a third-party candidate could run the government easier than a partisan political president because the partisan political president — yeah he's got half the votes, but he can't get the others — whereas the guy in the middle may very well be able to get enough across the aisle," Bloomberg said.

The mayor, who founded the financial information company Bloomberg LP and whose fortune is estimated at $18 billion by Forbes magazine, is considered a potential, if long shot, candidate in 2012. He can afford to wait until well into the election year before he has to decide whether to run, largely because he doesn't have to raise money.

It also serves Bloomberg well to keep the door open and buzz alive because it sustains an air of mystery around him and makes him a relevant national figure well into the later years of his third term as the head of the nation's biggest city.

When asked during the forum Monday whether he would run, Bloomberg said he will not. He said he asked the New York City voters who elected him in 2009 for another four years, adding that he is "sort of inclined" to fulfill that promise.

He said, though, he believes there will be a point at which "the public gets so upset that they say, 'I'm going to pick the third party.'"

Bloomberg bought support

From the NY Times:

It was one of the flash points of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s bid to overturn term limits and clear the way for a third term: officials and workers with the Doe Fund, a nonprofit group that works with the city’s homeless, testifying at Mr. Bloomberg’s behest before the City Council in support of his effort.

To critics of Mr. Bloomberg’s efforts to extend term limits, including some candidates who had prepared to run for mayor, the Doe Fund officials’ appearance amounted to a clear conflict of interest. For one thing, the organization, which has provided help to the homeless, drug addicts and ex-inmates for a quarter-century, has been awarded tens of millions of dollars in city contracts.

What was unknown in the fall of 2008, though, was just how much the Doe Fund had benefited from Mr. Bloomberg’s personal philanthropy. A review of Doe Fund documents and tax returns, as well as e-mail messages from the group and interviews with people knowledgeable about its finances, shows that Mr. Bloomberg, through his charitable arms, has regularly given millions of dollars to the group since he became mayor — at least $10 million of which came after the City Council hearings on term limits.

It is clear that an array of well-qualified organizations have been either saved or improved by the mayor’s giving. But many people, not least of all those politicians who have taken on the mayor, have seen a political calculation in the mayor’s largess. Was he merely underwriting good groups, they have asked, or buying political loyalty?

YOU THINK?

Hizzoner the fundraiser

From the NY Times:

This summer, a bevy of aspiring elected officials have received the coveted invitation to be feted at private wines-and-dines at the mayor’s Upper East Side town house.

In recent weeks, the parade of politicians has included Mark S. Kirk, an Illinois Republican running for Senate; Daniel M. Donovan Jr., a Republican candidate for state attorney general; and Michael E. McMahon, a Democratic congressman from New York.

The candidates, who typically leave with a promised $2,300 check from the mayor (the federal limit) and pledges from other invited guests, represent a range of ideologies, but many share the mayor’s views on issues like gun control and charter schools, and have reputations for bucking the party line.

In using his power as a political fund-raiser, Mr. Bloomberg is attempting to kick-start his third-term agenda by accelerating change in Albany and Washington.

He's not thinking much of Charles Rangel these days, though.

Two-timers may not become three-timers

From Gotham Gazette:

When City Council members Sara Gonzalez, Darlene Mealy and Jimmy Vacca voted to extend term limits nearly two years ago, they may not have expected to miss out on the opportunity to serve 12 years at City Hall.

But as the city Charter Revision Commission mulls what type of term limit proposal to put on the ballot this November, members who joined the council after 2002 could end up stripped of their shot at three full terms.

The commission has not decided what type of term limit proposal it will send to voters this fall, let alone whether it will apply to the current council. At a meeting in Lower Manhattan Monday, several members of the 15-member commission voiced support for a return to the two-term limit instead of the current three.

Should voters approve it, the question becomes whether 32 sitting council members will be sent packing after a potential term two. For 13 of them, that means their current term could be their last.

NY League of Conservation Voters: Another group bought by Bloomberg

From the Daily News:

The New York League of Conservation Voters is launching a full-court press to make sure that everyone up for re-election this year knows if they're not committed to green policies, they can forget about getting the environmental group's help staying in office.

Ha! Just dump a boatload of money on them and this ultimatum means nothing.

Noticed this post on the Neighborhood Retail Alliance's website:

If, however, the League really wants to earn genuine stret cred, it should begin by rescinding its support of the Willets Point development boondoggle. It had given Mayor Mike the glad hand for the project arguing-against all evidence-that the development would be a "green project."

Now that it has been demonstrated that the Willets Point plan will generate 80,000 car trips a day-with all of the concomitant carbon emissions-it should join with the NRDC in calling for an independent traffic study under the National Environmental policy act before any ramps off of the Van Wyck get built to snarl traffic even further.

Until it does, the League will not only lack street cred in our view, but it will be seen as nothing more than a muñeco of the hypocritical Kermit the Mayor.

Damn straight.

• NYLCV hooked up with Claire Shulman's phony LDC to push for a boondoggle that will make the environment WORSE instead of better!
• It has sat by silently while Bloomberg plans to "compromise" with the Ridgewood Reservoir.
• This phony group endorsed the turd for a third term back in APRIL of last year!

Open up your books and show us where your money comes from, NYLCV. (I think we know the answer already.) It's too bad the environment is not really your top priority. Just your cover. What a joke.

3rd term not exactly a charm

From the NY Post:

Four months into Mike Bloomberg’s third term — amid a fiscal crisis, the threat from Albany cutting 18,500 city jobs, and of a growing roll call of top aides departing City Hall — Bloomberg appears to be a Mayor alone, his old guard falling faster than the new blood trickles in.

Earlier this week Bloomberg’s longest serving and most loyal and powerful aide, Deputy Mayor of Operations Ed Skyler, announced that he would be leaving by the end of the month to run government relations for Citigroup, where he’ll earn a reported $1 million-a-year salary.

Skyler’s departure came on the heels of Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey’s March announcement that he would be assuming a lucrative top post at Bloomberg LP, as well as the departure of communications director James Anderson, who went to work for the Mayor’s charitable foundation.

Bloomberg’s sustainability guru and the architect of PlaNYC, Rohit Aggarwala, also announced this week that he will be following his wife to California after his April 10 wedding, where he’ll start looking for a new job.

After years of loyally beating the drum for their boss, Bloomberg’s top aides are now thinking first about what’s best for them before weighing what fits City Hall’s interests. In total, more than 15 high-level staffers and commissioners have announced their departure since Bloomberg decided to run for a third term.

The Daily News noticed as well.

Third term starts off with a fizzle

From the NY Post:

In the first State of the City speech of his third term, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday pledged to do "more than any city has ever done" to improve the lives of residents, even as he offered no grand new initiatives.

Observers said the constituencies he targeted for aid -- from small businesses to troubled kids -- indicated the mayor was acutely aware of November's close election.

With government resources scarce, Bloomberg concentrated on relatively low-cost strategies for helping the neediest, which elicited only tepid applause from an audience of several hundred gathered at Frank Sinatra HS in Astoria, Queens.

Bloomberg thinks he'll be on Easy Street during 3rd term

From the Huffington Post:

But the mayor has had many second-term setbacks.

The founder of financial information company Bloomberg LP garnered a whopping re-election victory. But shortly after his inauguration, the death of a 7-year-old girl brought close scrutiny of him and the child services agency.

Nixzmary Brown was tortured and beaten to death by her stepfather. Officials said she might not have died if the child welfare caseworkers involved in her case had acted more quickly in investigating suspected abuse when concerns were raised months earlier.

In winter 2006, the mayor vehemently denied an interest in running for president while his associates whispered otherwise. By spring, the mayor's operatives had begun to plant the seeds for a campaign.

He spoke out on national issues and found reasons to travel to presidential swing states. He changed his party registration from Republican to independent, while he had a team of people examine how he could get on the ballot as a third-party candidate.

"The fact that they were concentrating so much on this sideshow presidential campaign – it had to take away attention from day-to-day operations," said Doug Muzzio, public affairs professor at Baruch College.

By summer 2006, his reputation for handling crises smoothly during his first term – including a transit strike, a citywide blackout and the shooting of a councilman inside City Hall – risked being hurt by his response to a weeklong blackout in Queens.

Critics said the mayor should have come to the neighborhoods sooner than he did. But Bloomberg's aides said he was focused on preventing wider outages and had misinformation about the size of the blackout.

Throughout his second term, the mayor was embarrassed by problems among some city agencies.

In 2007, two firefighters died in a blaze at a condemned asbestos-filled building being dismantled at the World Trade Center site. It revealed the Fire Department was failing to inspect many construction sites and uncovered communications lapses between many agencies.

After two fatal crane accidents and several other construction deaths in 2008, Bloomberg admitted he was not satisfied with the agency, and his buildings commissioner resigned.

The mayor also had a number of policy disappointments.

While he set a goal of reducing the city's homeless population by two-thirds by 2009, the number of those in shelters reached an all-time high of more than 39,000, some 3,000 more than when he took office.

He failed to persuade the state Legislature to sign onto his plan to raise money for mass transit by making Manhattan's most congested streets essentially toll roads.

In addition, his administration gave up a plan to force the city's taxi fleet to go entirely hybrid by 2012, after taxi drivers and advocates sued in federal court.

The jet-setting mayor, who has homes in Colorado, Florida, Bermuda, London and upstate New York, has also had to contend with questions about how his own energy use isn't environmentally friendly.

He ordered his drivers to stop leaving the engines running in his SUVs after The Associated Press found them idling all over the city, sometimes for more than an hour.

Bloomberg insisted last week that he has learned from experience and that his second term was better than his first. He predicted his third term "will be even easier."