Mayor's chief of staff and long time lawyer pal quits the team

New York Times

One of Mayor Eric Adams’s closest advisers, who has helped formulate and work out some of the mayor’s thorniest policy challenges, has informed administration officials that he will resign at the end of the year.

The adviser, Frank Carone, a former power broker in the Brooklyn Democratic Party who helped fuel Mr. Adams’s rise in politics, had served as his chief of staff since January.

His exit is the first major departure of the Adams administration. Emma Wolfe, the last chief of staff for Mayor Bill de Blasio, stayed in that role for nearly all of his second term and worked in his administration for eight years.

Mr. Carone served as a gatekeeper and a negotiator for Mr. Adams, meeting with business leaders and working on projects like vetting casino operators vying for casino licenses in New York City and examining whether to use cruise ships to house migrants.

Mr. Carone said in an interview that he had always intended to stay in government for only one year and that he planned to serve as a chairman on Mr. Adams’s re-election campaign in 2025.

“I wanted to recruit the team, take a deep dive into agencies and build a culture for that team of no drama and getting things done,” Mr. Carone said.

Some of Mr. Carone’s past business dealings have drawn scrutiny, including his representation of landlords involved in an affordable housing deal and his involvement with a group of doctors accused of insurance fraud. Mr. Carone was also criticized for having a financial stake in a police tool that Mr. Adams promoted as Brooklyn borough president, and for failing to disclose his legal work for a homeless shelter provider.

As the mayor’s chief of staff, Mr. Carone has largely avoided controversy, helping Mr. Adams behind the scenes to respond to one crisis after another: the pandemic, the killing of two police officers in January, high crime rates, an influx of asylum seekers from Latin America, a staffing crisis in city government and concerns over the city’s economic recovery.

City resorts to hotels and the Podolskys again to shelter the homeless

 City Limits

With the number of families in homeless shelters on the rise, New York City officials have once again turned to a pair of notorious landlords closely aligned with Mayor Eric Adams’ top aide to secure extra bed space.

Brothers Stuart and Jay Podolsky—known for profiting off of poorly-maintained housing, and recent clients of Adams’ Chief of Staff Frank Carone—are leasing at least three of their hotels to the city for use as shelters for homeless families. The sites include the Marcel in Gramercy, which reopened to homeless families earlier this month; the Apollo in Harlem, where staff said families began staying July 2; and the Ellington in Morningside Heights, where work crews began prepping for the return of homeless residents in June after the city moved families out a year earlier.

Despite the Podolskys’ sordid pasts, city officials have long leased hotels and tenement buildings from the brothers for use as temporary homeless shelters. In 2017, the property owners retained Carone, then a partner in the law firm Abrams Fensterman, to represent them in negotiations with the de Blasio administration that led to the sale two years later of 17 buildings housing homeless families in the city’s scandal-scarred “cluster site” program. Under that scheme, the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) placed families on a temporary basis in privately-owned apartments they leased at exorbitant prices. The Podolskys managed to extract $173 million from the city in the portfolio sale—$30 million more than the value assessed by an independent appraiser—after raking in millions from the cluster rentals.

Among advocates for the rights of homeless New Yorkers, the deal was seen as a key step toward finally eliminating the cluster site program that stuck families in miserable—at times fatal—conditions overseen by notoriously neglectful landlords. In the case of the Podolskys, the problems extended beyond neglect: the brothers have been convicted of harassing low-income renters in a campaign of “terror,” prosecutors said, and accused in 2019 of cheating on their taxes while renting apartments to the city.

Still, they managed to cash out with Carone—at the time, attorney for the Brooklyn Democratic Party and a key bundler for then-Mayor Bill de Blasio—at the center of the agreement.

In his first six months as Adams’ gatekeeper, Carone has faced several accusations of influence-peddling and scrutiny of his business ties. But City Hall spokesperson Fabien Levy said Carone had no hand in the latest Podolsky deals and that he sought to avoid conflicts of interest with the Department of Social Services (DSS) when he was appointed to the government post.

“He was not a part of the decision-making process of choosing this site as a shelter,” Levy said. “In fact, months ago, he proactively asked DSS’s general counsel to create a list of matters that he may have worked on or touched on in his capacity as an attorney prior to his joining this administration so that we could properly note and recuse himself from participation in any decision-making or discussion. As such, this matter was never even brought to Frank.”

City Limits submitted a Freedom of Information Law request for the shelter contracts to see how much the Podolskys are getting paid and how many Podolsky hotels are used to house homeless New Yorkers. City-contracted nonprofits rent rooms in at least two others, the Longacre and the ParkView, for homeless adults.

City Hall’s assurances have yet to assuage good government experts, who raised concerns about the latest deal with the Podolskys when contacted by City Limits. Reinvent Albany Executive Director John Kaehny said the agreements illustrate deeper problems with the way social service business gets done in New York City.

“It’s such a rich broth of conflicts of interest with all these powerful people in the city,” Kaehny said. He also criticized the Podolskys’ history of past criminal activity and allegations of tenant harassment.

“The Podolskys are a concern because of more than just their connection with Frank Carone. They seem to be not very good landlords or to be not very good vendors,” Kaehny said. “This far into being a social welfare state, we don’t have better options?”

Mayor Adams benefited from his chief of staff's LLC dirty money

 

 THE CITY

In 2018, seven employees of two medical companies in New Jersey began donating thousands of dollars to the campaign treasury of then-Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams.

They worked for two companies — Ridgewood Diagnostic Lab and Interstate Multi-Specialty Group, both in Hackensack, and owned by Dr. Alexandr Zaitsev, who was among the Adams donors.

They each gave what was then the maximum amount, $5,100, or close to it, to the campaign account for Adams between April 19 and Nov. 29, 2018, Campaign Finance Board records show.

At the time, Adams had not officially declared he was running for mayor.

Ridgewood, Zaitsev and two other of the Adams donors are now defendants in a lawsuit filed by GEICO in September 2020, with the insurance company alleging they and other medical groups billed GEICO for more than $4.5 million in fraudulent claims.

The lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court and first reported by Bloomberg News, also lays out the two medical companies’ connection to Adams chief of staff Frank Carone, who was a part owner of two limited liability corporations that helped finance their launch.

The employees donated $40,600 to the campaign by the end of 2018.

They were all later refunded more than half of the money after the Campaign Finance Board made changes to the maximum amount for donations when a candidate takes part in a matching-funds program.

GEICO’s lawsuit alleges that Carone, along with his former law partners, father and son Howard and Jordan Fensterman of the firm Abrams Fensterman LLP, used limited-liability companies to advance money to Zaitsev and other medical companies as they waited for insurance claims to process.

After fronting the money, the LLCs would be paid back with interest when GEICO paid the no-fault claims, the company alleged in its suit.

The companies that fronted the cash to the medical groups, Financial Vision Group LLC and others with similar names, are owned by Zaitsev and Daniel Kandhorov, according to court documents.

Kandhorov, who lives in Queens, could not be reached for comment.

During his mayoral campaign, Adams opted to take part in the new 8-to-1 matching-funds program — which allows $2,000 per person, with city-funded matching dollars for New York City-based donors.

A spokesperson for Adams, Max Young, said that Carone had nothing to do with the contributions from the mostly Jersey-based donors.

“Mr. Carone was a passive investor in these LLCs, didn’t solicit these donations, never met the donors in question, and had no knowledge that they donated, then or now,” said Young in a statement.

 

Eric Adams got a pile of cash to save his non-profit org's concert promotion from his lawyer and chosen chief of staff

NY Daily News 

A Brooklyn power broker in the running for a job in Eric Adams’ new administration had his law firm make a $50,000 no-interest loan to save a summer concert series closely tied to the mayor-elect, emails obtained by the Daily News reveal.

Frank Carone, a lawyer for the Brooklyn Democratic Party and partner at the politically connected Abrams Fensterman law firm, has served as both Adams’ lawyer and fund-raiser. Emails obtained by The News through a Freedom of Information request shed new light on Carone’s close ties to the Brooklyn borough president and future mayor.

In the summer of 2019, Carone and his law firm came to the rescue of the Wingate Concert Series, which serves as an Adams showcase, after it ran into financial trouble. Adams regularly appeared onstage at the popular annual shows, which have featured the likes of Slick Rick and R&B star Monica. Promotional flyers prominently credited Adams for organizing the free event.

Adams sponsored the series through the borough president’s office and his nonprofit, One Brooklyn. In 2017, he tapped the nonprofit Make Music New York to run the concerts.

Over the next three years, Make Music’s budget ballooned from less than $200,000 to nearly $1 million, and Borough Hall’s annual contribution doubled — from $100,000 to $200,000 — making Adams’ office the group’s top government benefactor, records show.

But in 2019, Make Music’s expenses shot up by $300,000, according to public records.

For the show to go on, the nonprofit needed money fast.

Enter Carone and his politically plugged-in law partner Howard Fensterman. Adams’ deputy, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, introduced them to the head of Make Music New York, James Burke.

“They understand the urgency,” Lewis-Martin wrote to the three men in an introductory email on June 20, 2019. “When others fail, Howard and Frank deliver.”

Adams plans to make Brooklyn Machine Head his chief of staff

  

Politico

The incoming Adams administration is considering Frank Carone, counsel to the Brooklyn Democratic Party, for a high-ranking cabinet position, multiple sources familiar with the situation told POLITICO.

Carone is a close confidant of Adams and has deep political connections in Brooklyn. He is being considered for chief of staff, a role that would put him squarely within Adams’ City Hall inner circle, should he end up joining the administration, the sources said.

Carone heads up the Brooklyn office of Abrams Fensterman, a law firm he has built up with the help of a wide network of political and legal relationships. In addition to multiple practice areas including divorce proceedings and criminal law, the firm offers strategic advice on government relations and assists clients who have business before the city in navigating byzantine agencies.

Should he join Adams’ administration, Carone would likely need to divest from the company. And even then, the government-facing work of Abrams Fensterman would carry the potential for conflicts of interest.

“Frank Carone is a trusted friend and adviser to Mayor-elect Adams and will continue to be whether or not he is part of the new administration,” campaign adviser Evan Thies said in a statement.

Adams has been known to value loyalty, and with Carone would have a close friend at his side come January. In addition to being Adams’ personal attorney, Carone bundled petitions for his mayoral campaign and provided it with office space. The two are so close, in fact, they have spent Thanksgiving together.

They also share a strong relationship with the Brooklyn Democratic Party, whose connection to City Hall would be fortified by having Carone advising Adams from within. Carone has served as counsel to the party for roughly a decade and Adams’ campaign was backed by Party Chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn.

Chiefs of staff have varying levels of importance based on the administration and the person in the role. Earlier chiefs of staff to Mayor Bill de Blasio, for example, held far less sway than Emma Wolfe, who currently has the job and is one of the mayor’s closest advisers.

Responsibilities range from vetting ideas and proposals before they reach the mayor to keeping tabs on a wide range of agencies, according to Peter Madonia, who served as chief of staff under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

 

The Brooklyn Mechanic

 

 

Politico

 When Eric Adams needed space to work on his mayoral campaign, an old friend set him up with a brightly-lit spot in his own downtown Brooklyn office, steps from Adams’ Borough Hall headquarters.

When he was setting up his campaign team, Adams hired the same confidante for legal advice and help putting together ballot petitions.

And when Adams was building a war chest to underwrite his victory in the Democratic primary last month, it was that friend, Frank Carone, who hosted fundraisers and, along with his wife, donated the maximum amount allowed under law. Their Mill Basin, Brooklyn neighbors followed suit, contributing $29,430 to Adams — the Brooklyn borough president who is now the odds-on favorite to become the city’s 110th mayor.

In fact, Carone has been such a constant in Adams’ political and personal orbit, he was summoned over a loudspeaker at an election night victory party a few weeks ago: “Frank Carone, we need you by the DJ area please.”

Carone is an attorney whose practice at Abrams Fensterman has exploded since he joined in 2011. The firm covers a bit of everything — divorce proceedings, criminal trials, medical malpractice cases.

And its more than 100 attorneys also represent real estate, nursing home and transportation companies that rely on city government for their businesses. That’s when Carone’s reputation as a well-connected litigator and man about town became a lucrative asset.

As head of the firm’s Brooklyn office, Carone offers clients strategic advice on government relations while also helping them accelerate the grind of municipal bureaucracy. He relies on a thick Rolodex built over the years, through a keen knowledge of city agencies and control over a piece of the Brooklyn Democratic political machine.

He makes himself a port in a storm, sticking by friends in tough times and inviting them for a home-cooked meal at his house in Southern Brooklyn, replete with neoclassical rooflines and a waterfront pool deck. But Carone can just as quickly exert pressure when he feels he’s been crossed, according to more than a dozen interviews with politicians and operatives who have dealt with him.

Now, after eight years of friendship with Mayor Bill de Blasio, Carone has an opportunity for an even closer connection to a government he readily does business with. Carone and Adams are so close, they’ve even spent Thanksgiving together.

“Frank is a very honest broker. He is a man of his word and he’s very public about who he supports. He’s been with Eric since day one,” Carlo Scissura, president and CEO of the New York Building Congress, said. “He’ll continue to be a confidante of Eric’s when he’s mayor — he’ll be one of his top confidantes, one of his top friends in the world — and someone he can rely on.”

The Kings County Machine in action, screwing over citizens in plain sight

True News Investigates the County Committee

Featuring Kings County Democrat leader Frank Seddio, lawyer Marty Connor and Mayor de Blasio's best buddy and Brooklyn Democrat Party Committee lawyer Frank Carone

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.