Pols call for moratorium on property seizures

From PIX11:

Hundreds of homeowners throughout New York City have been defrauded out of their homes. Now, elected officials are calling for a federal investigation into the matter, including whether a city program may be partly to blame.

"There needs to be a moratorium on taking houses from these homeowners until we can make sure that somethings not unethical, illegal, or immoral," said Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams.

Adams says his office has heard dozens of similar stories over the past year: homeowners in rapidly gentrifying areas, like Bed-Stuy, forced out of their homes. He says it's usually been one of three causes:

Forced foreclosures
Deed fraud
City's third party transfer program

"We believe when you have something of this magnitude that could be a large number of black and brown homeowners losing their homes, when the dust settles we cannot look back and say wow we should have paid attention to this," Adams said.

Which is why he and City Council Member Robert Cornegy are calling for a stop on all property seizures pending federal, state, and city investigations. For it's part the city's office of Housing Preservation and Development, which runs the TPT program, says it's unfair to lump it in with other illegal activities scamming people out of their homes.

So you think you have talent? - Speaker edition

It's Friday. The City Council Speaker candidates didn't have a care in the world (except jockeying for position to kiss the king's ring) when they boogied down at Joe Crowley's holiday party. You might hit the eggnog extra hard yourself when you realize what we're in store for over the next 4 years. Go ahead and caption this photo.

Speaker race campaign finance shenanigans questioned

From Progress Queens:

Because Election Day is four (4) days away, on Tuesday, 07 November, Progress Queens is publicly releasing a civilian crime report filed by the publisher of Progress Queens with the U.S. Attorney's Office for New York's southern district.

The complaint outlined how the eight (8) candidates for New York City Council speaker have been making donations to other Councilmembers out of their committees to reëlect to win support for the speakership campaign ; have been having meetings, including with U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-Queens) ; and have been preparing for debates or holding debates before the November general election. The Council speaker candidates are: Councilmembers Robert E. Cornegy, Jr. (D-Brooklyn), Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan), Mark Levine (D-Manhattan), Donovan Richards (D-Queens), Ydanis Rodriguez (D-Manhattan), Ritchie Torres (D-The Bronx), Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Queens), and Jumaane D. Williams (D-Brooklyn).

These speakership campaign activities have been taking place in the apparent absence of dedicated campaign committees for the speakership race. Four years ago, the Municipal campaign finance regulatory authority reportedly provided advice to Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito (D-Spanish Harlem) that using a committee to reëlect for the speakership race was prohibited, forcing her to form a separate, dedicated campaign committee for the speakership race.

A review of information about campaign committees tracked online by the New York State Board of Elections did not identify which campaign committees were designated for the speakership race. For this report, attempts were made to reach the Council speaker candidates, or their representatives, but no response was received to a request made late Thursday evening. The Federal complaint alleges that Council speaker candidates, who do not presently have a dedicated campaign committee for the speakership race, are violating campaign finance laws, because the absence of a dedicated Council speakership race campaign committees implies that campaign consultants are working for free, a violation of law.

Speaker candidates will be tougher on the mayor

From Crains:

The eight city councilmen running to succeed Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito vowed to further democratize the body—and some said they would be tougher with the mayor.

The speaker candidates—Manhattan Councilmen Corey Johnson, Mark Levine and Ydanis Rodriguez, Queens Councilmen Donovan Richards and James Van Bramer, Bronx Councilman Ritchie Torres and Brooklyn Councilmen Robert Cornegy and Jumaane Williams—made the remarks at a Crain's forum in Midtown. As speaker, Mark-Viverito has instituted reforms such as distributing discretionary money based on district need, but some members have chafed that she bottles up legislation unless she has negotiated a deal for the mayor's approval.

This has spared Mayor Bill de Blasio, who helped engineer Mark-Viverito's election as speaker in late 2013, from having to veto even a single bill after nearly four years in office. Torres decried as an "embarrassing months-long spectacle" the ill-fated agreement between Mark-Viverito and de Blasio to curtail the horse carriage industry in Central Park.

"Instead of representing the weight of the members, I thought the leadership of the council was effectively doing the bidding of the mayor," said the Bronx lawmaker, viewed generally as an underdog in the speaker's race.

He asserted that bills with a veto-proof "supermajority" of 34 or more sponsors should receive a vote regardless of the mayor's or speaker's feelings, even as he argued the speaker should provide some kind of "quality control."

Several of Torres' colleagues noted that the council bucked both the mayor and the speaker on the carriage deal. Van Bramer, Johnson and Levine praised Mark-Viverito for overcoming the mayor's initial resistance to more NYPD hires, to a new legal defense fund for all undocumented immigrants fighting deportation and to closing the Rikers Island jail complex.

Still, they called for rules changes that would stop a future speaker from continuing Mark-Viverito's tack of blocking bills that she or the mayor dislikes. Johnson suggested new mechanisms that would ensure a hearing on bills with majority support (at least 26 sponsors) and a vote on bills with 34 members signed on.

Legislators refuse to allow SBJSA to be voted on

From the Village Voice:

You'd think a law that would give small businesses a fighting chance against astronomical rents and the soulless chains willing to pay them would be an easy sell for a City Council chock-full of progressives and our supposedly liberal mayor.

Yet Mayor Bill de Blasio, Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Public Advocate Letitia James, and Robert Cornegy, the chairperson of the council's Committee on Small Business, won’t even allow the legislation to go before a committee hearing, even though 27 councilmembers support it. Why?

In short, because it would supremely piss off the powerful real estate interests that all major politicians in New York City must answer to, which makes it a total nonstarter. Debating the Small Business Jobs Survival act would start a conversation about the future of the city that no ambitious politician actually wants to have.

At 9 a.m. Friday morning, a group of community advocates will hold a rally outside City Hall to protest the mayor and the council's willful inaction on the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, which would give commercial tenants a ten-year minimum lease, as well as the right to renewal, and a right to go to arbitration to settle on a new rent.

The SBJSA has been kicking around in some form or another since commercial rent control died in New York City in 1963, and with it, the ability for a small business owner to have any sort of economic stability in New York City. Instead, they became subject to the whims of landlords and speculation, larger market forces that are able to take a vibrant, locally owned business district and completely clear it out, in just a few months.

"This isn’t a silver bullet of legislation," said Jenny Dubnau, an artist based in Long Island City, who’s a member of the Artist Studio Affordability Project (ASAP), an organization that aims to unite artists and small business owners who are each being displaced by commercial speculation. "All we’re asking for is some level of negotiating power. We need something to help us stop the bleeding."

Unlike rent-stabilized units, or rent-controlled apartments, under the SBJSA, there wouldn’t be state-dictated increases or freezes. However, the all-powerful Real Estate Board of New York has viewed even a discussion of the law as an affront to good manners, and gotten City Hall to label the proposed legislation as rent control.