Como flub justifies elections board snub

From City Hall:

Apparently, even a former commissioner of the Board of Elections and one-time hopeful for the executive director job can make mistakes on his elections paperwork.

That is what Anthony Como, the Republican running against State Sen. Joe Addabbo discovered some time late Tuesday, hours after submitting 4,900 petition signatures to create a third party line for his candidacy.

The problem was that Como filed the petitions for the wrong election.

At 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Como submitted petitions for the “Tax Cuts Now” line that were designated for the Sept. 14 primary, not the Nov. 2 general election, when he will face Addabbo. As a result, the Board has taken initial actions to invalidate Como’s signatures, according to Steve Richman, its general counsel. The 10-member Board as a whole will now get the case.

Como already lost out on the Independence Party line after a dispute over his campaign’s use of signature gatherers from the party’s rival New York City faction. The “Tax Cuts Now” line was conceived of as a replacement.

Instead, it seems it will be the party line itself which may be cut now.

From the Queens Courier:

Addabbo questioned whether all of the petition signers were legit saying he has heard stories of confusion.

“A number of people I spoke to said they were approached to sign petitions for Como and some of them thought it was for Andrew Cuomo, and they didn’t know what they were signing,” Addabbo said.

[Where did I hear this before? Oh yeah...]

Meanwhile, Addabbo is still dealing with his own ballot issue, whether or not to appeal the court’s decision to boot him from the Working Families Party Line.

“I normally like to exhaust all legal remedies before closing a case or a matter,” Addabbo said.

Council member gambles on lawsuits

From the NY Post:

City Councilman Lewis Fidler gets a $60,000-plus salary from a company that helped finance the lawsuit by police gunshot victim Sean Bell and other major cases against the NYPD.

The Brooklyn Democrat moonlights as the chief lawyer for LawCash, a company that gambles on the outcome of court cases -- including headline-grabbing police-brutality suits -- by giving money to cash-strapped plaintiffs who could hit legal pay dirt.

The company quietly gave money to Joseph Guzman -- who was shot 16 times in the 50-bullet barrage that killed Sean Bell, a source said. It was a savvy business investment: Guzman won a $3 million settlement from the city last month.

LawCash is "involved in many police-brutality cases filed against the city," said Bell family lawyer Sandy Rubenstein, who represents victims in the 2006 shooting case, as well as the woman Bell was to marry the day he died, Nicole Paultré-Bell.

Another LawCash client was NYPD torture victim Abner Louima, who won an $8.7 million settlement in 2001 against the city.

Fidler said he makes somewhere between $60,000 and $80,000 as LawCash's general counsel -- on top of the $127,500 he makes as a council member.

The firm generally advances a few thousand dollars to plaintiffs at interest rates of 2 to 4 percent a month. If the case loses, they get nothing back. If the case wins, they get principal plus interest, which can exceed 25 percent.

Fidler says there is no conflict of interest in his firm's going against the city in court.

"There is no contact with the city of New York," Fidler said of his part-time job. "What possible conflict would there be, as I do no business with the city?"

But the City Council sometimes sits in judgment of the same cases that LawCash invests in.

Good question!

From NBC:

The Commission has labored long and brought forth a mouse. If the voters say they don’t want the change, then three terms presumably will be enshrined for the future. If they vote for this wishy-washy version of term limits, it won’t happen until years from now. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

It’s a compromise, they say, but at whose expense? They want to be fair, the commission members say, to the incumbents. But what about being fair to the people of New York? Somehow, that has escaped them.

From NY Civic:

The bottom line here is that some people wanted to take care of some other people they know. And they were able to convince enough naive colleagues so that they could do it.

The remedy here is relatively simple: another referendum, with an effective date written into it so no Commission can substitute its wishes for the voters' decision by fiddling with implementation and postponing a simple reform for over a decade.

The unanswered question is Rule 17-C. Who will bell the cat? Who will step forward and take the initiative to see that the will of the people is implemented, whatever it may be. Now is the time to begin consideration of that question. It has been attributed to Edmund Burke in 1795. No one, however, really knows who said it first: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing."

To those of you who think, what difference does this make, two terms or three, you have a point. The issue, however, is not two or three terms. The issue is fairness; first the Mayor and Council circumventing the Charter in 2008 for their own benefit, and now the Commission trying to circumvent the referendum of 2010, whether they know it or not.

Americans, and New Yorkers are Americans, like to play fair, and don't like to be disregarded or manipulated. That is what underlies this controversy. It is the same nagging issue that sharply reduced the majority the competent mayor should have received after two successful terms. Our recommendation: respect the will of the people.

From Room Eight:

The need for a referendum to change the charter, or at least portions of the charter for which the politicians have a conflict of interest, is one thing I thought any decent group of people would propose. But they haven't, and there is no explanation as to why, although the report does mention that having he Council overturn a referendum without another one is something many objected to. Not only could the City Council eliminate term limits, but it could also eliminate initiative and referendum. This stunning omission has gone without comment. BTW, to change the NY state constitution requires the assent of two consecutive state legislative terms AND a referendum. If the City Council can just change the charter, why does it exist, since it is no more difficult to change than any ordinance?

"Queens" ferry in 1910

Click photo for larger version.

Fix the curbs!

These photos show DOT prep for the repaving of 42nd Avenue (malls and curbs deterioration for forty years) and leaving the curb replacement undone.





The community has requested the curbs to be raised so that trucks and inconsiderate motorists would stop parking and destroying this green space from Francis Lewis Blvd. to Bell Blvd.