Better know your District Attorney candidates

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— Betty Lugo, Esq. (@LugoTrueJustice) March 5, 2019

 

The Kings County consiglieres

NY Daily News

Brooklyn lawyers who decide who can get the crucial Democratic ballot line to run for prized judicial seats are getting jobs as legal guardians and referees from the very judges they’re charged with reviewing — and their law firms are appearing before those same judges in active cases.

Of the 25 attorneys listed as serving on the Brooklyn Democratic Party’s judicial screening panel in 2019, at least five have been given jobs as court-appointed lawyers by the judges they’re tasked with reviewing, the Daily News has learned.

Judicial screening panel members Helene Blank, Mark Longo, Betty Lugo, Melissa Bonaldes and Steven Finkelstein all took work in the last year from judges they’ve reviewed or could review in the future, an analysis of state court records shows.

Alex Camarda, a senior policy analyst at the good-government group Reinvent Albany, described that dynamic as problematic.

 “That certainly creates the perception of a conflict of interest,” he said. “The public should have confidence that judges are being selected on the merits rather than their position on cases involving party officials.”

Since 2018, Finkelstein has received 20 court-appointed referee assignments from Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Mark Partnow and six from Judge Lawrence Knipel, court records show.

From 2008 to the present, Finkelstein has raked in at least $271,000 from those and similar appointments, records show. He joined the panel in 2016.

Veteran lawyer Martin Edelman has served as the judicial panel’s chairman since 2004. He noted that several bar associations appoint its members and about one-third of the panel’s members are selected by Democratic Party district leaders.

Edelman, the former president of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, said since state Supreme Court judges serve 14-year terms, members of the panel usually only review them once.

“The idea that we get to see the same judge year after year is simply not the case,” he said, arguing that if judges were trying to sway attorneys through doling out appointments, they would have to influence more than five lawyers to secure a majority of votes on the panel.

The panel’s judicial screenings take place the same year judges run for election or re-election. Partnow was re-elected to serve in Brooklyn Supreme Court in 2016, the same year Finkelstein joined the panel. Judge Noach Dear was elected in 2015, and Knipel was re-elected in 2012.

In the last two years, the three judges have directed 28 referee appointments to Lugo, 44 to Longo and 30 to Blank, records show. Blank and Longo have both served on the panel since around 2005, about 14 years, according to Edelman.

Lugo, who’s running for Queens district attorney, served on it in 2015 and 2017. She said she’s not serving on the panel this year, despite the fact that she’s listed on its roster. She said she’s “almost positive” she didn’t review Dear or Partnow as a member of the panel.

 Longo, an ethics lawyer and former president of the Brooklyn Bar Association, acknowledged he could see how observers might perceive the potential for a conflict, but said, “In this situation, it’s not the case.”

Now Melinda Katz is accusing another candidate of being sexist for pointing out her biggest donors, this time at a woman

QNS


For the second time this week, Borough President Melinda Katz is claiming that one of her Democratic rivals in the Queens district attorney race has launched sexist ads against her — but the allegation this time is against one of her three female opponents.

On Friday, Katz decried a two-minute online ad from public defender Tiffany Cabán published that day. Cabán singles out Katz as a remnant of the Queens Democratic Party machine despite there being five other hopefuls in the June 25 primary, saying that Katz accepts campaign funds from the real estate industry.

“But the corrupt Queens political machine doesn’t want me to win because they get rich off of foreclosures, they’ve taken millions from developers and I can’t be bought and controlled. That’s why they’re going all in to elect Melinda Katz,” Cabán says in the ad. “Here’s the simple choice: Your next DA could be a career politician, a career prosecutor or a career public defender. Who would you trust?”

But Katz countered out with a Twitter thread that began with the claim that sexism had played a role in Cabán’s campaign ad.

“Let me be clear. For someone who is supposedly running a “different kind of campaign,” this ad was full of the same sexism & half-truths that the worst kind of campaigns use,” Katz said. “The truth: I first ran on a 3rd party line to challenge the men in power & have spent years supporting women doing the same. I have always been my own woman & always will be, despite the sexist refrain the Cabán campaign is pushing.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposes a renewable energy hub on Rikers Island

PIX News

 The future of Rikers Island is being debated and discussed.

A judge, reform advocates, and the City of New York have said the jail facility needs to be fixed because of its design, location and history.
 
A proposal from the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio to replace Rikers with 4 borough-based community jails is in the first phase of public hearings.
 
What will happen to the 413 acres that make up the actual island?
 
The possibilities are endless.
 
A town hall with the theme "Renewable Rikers" was held on Thursday in Jackson Heights.
Council Member Costa Constantinides, U.S  Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, State Senator Jessica Ramos, Assembly Member Catalina Cruz, and Council Member Daniel Dromm spoke about environmental and green options for the location.
 
A panel of environmental experts and criminal justice stakeholders was introduced to talk about their experiences and possible plans.
 
Professor Rebecca Bratspies, founding director at CUNY Law School’s Center for Urban Environmental Reform, moderated the panel.

This is too far gone now. The city does not want to hear from the communities of where they want to place the tower jails, which were all rejected by them over a week ago. The shutdown looks even more cynical now that Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez is using her political and viral celebrity status to advocate for and tying the green new deal to it while spouting platitudes and marketing solar paneling.

Traffic circles the city placed on intersections has not curbed speeding

PIX News

 Residents said traffic circles the city added to slow down speeding cars in their neighborhood are not working— and now they have video to prove it.

The circles along Greeley Avenue were put in to slow traffic down in 2017 after a series of bad crashes three years ago. It was done against the wishes of many community members, including the local councilman, who wanted to see stop signs instead.
 
Bill Troeller has lived on Greeley Avenue for 21 years. The incident that wrecked his car and fence was caught on video. Both drivers involved said the traffic circle both cars went though prior to the crash did nothing to slow either down.

“The guy who was hit flew into my car, knocked it back about six feet, and the other guy ended up in my front lawn,” Troeller recounted.

 Neighbor Brian Wissert said the circle effectively made turning onto the road more dangerous. 

However, most importantly, many still see cars continue to whip right around the roundabouts every day.
 
Meanwhile, the city has slowly begun using roundabout more and more to calm traffic— including in the Bronx.
 
In an open records request, the City DOT said the circles have reduced crashes by 27% along Greeley. Troeller say he hasn’t noticed a difference. He said people were out of control before the roundabouts, sometimes running into his fence then, and he said they are obviously still speeding now.

 Maybe the DOT should put stunt ramps on corners facing the intersection. Yee-haw!