Christine Quinn

It seems that Christine Quinn has two important factions to please. On one side are the 50 other members of the City Council. On the other are good-government groups and, particularly, The New York Times editorial board.

When Quinn began discussing the slush fund scandal at the City Council, The Times editorial board--a big voice in Democratic primaries for offices like, say, mayor--held out hope that Quinn could set things straight, writing, "[her] reformist zeal is still needed."

The first package of reforms Quinn announced, on April 11, would have stripped the City Council of the ability to determine how $20 million in discretionary money from the council speaker's office is spent, giving that power instead to the mayor's agencies. The Times called it "sensible" but added, "[S]he must do a lot more."

Then, council members objected. Loudly. Strongly.

So this week, Quinn unveiled another set of reforms that are more palatable to her members.

The major difference between Quinn's old plan and new plan is that the new plan leaves a majority of decision-making power with council members. The Times was not pleased:  read more »

Representative Anthony Weiner, a devout Hillary Clinton supporter, recalls for News Forum host Jay DeDapper what it was like meeting Barack Obama on the floor of Congress the other day:

From a transcript sent over by the studio:  read more »

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Christine Quinn just unveiled her new proposal to reform the way the City Council allocates money to community groups.

Under the old plan, which Quinn announced shortly after news broke about the speaker's slush fund, any nonprofit that wanted money from the speaker's fund would have had to go through a "request for proposal" (R.F.P.) process, which would have been awarded by agencies controlled by the mayor's administration. Many Council members felt it took a great deal of power out of their hands.  read more »

Christine Quinn will unveil her new proposal for reforming the City Council's budget practices, at a 1 p.m. press conference in City Hall.  read more »

Despite the recent acquittal of the three police officers on trial for the death of Sean Bell, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly still leads the pack of potential mayoral contenders, according to a new Quinnipiac poll.

That seems in part due to his name recognition and in part because most voters probably aren't thinking about a race that's still a year and a half away. Considering also that most candidates haven't even declared, the significance of the results are limited.  read more »

“Sometimes government moves slow, but we run sure,” said Hiram Monserrate, councilman from Queens, on Monday afternoon. The Veteran’s Committee, which he chairs, was passing a Berkeley-esque resolution calling (again) for the federal government to repeal the “Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue” policy and replace it with a policy of equal rights for homosexuals in the military.

Now government is moving slower than ever.

This resolution was introduced by Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who was, except for maybe U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner, the city’s only solid candidate for mayor next year.  read more »

Two City Council members leaving a meeting in Christine Quinn's office just confirmed that she will drop the proposal from her reform package that would have required groups seeking funding from the city to complete a competitive "request for proposal" process.

According the Council members, under Quinn's new plan, the City Council will get to decide how much money community groups will get, but the vetting and auditing of the groups will be done by mayoral agencies.  read more »

At a press conference in Brooklyn yesterday, I asked Christine Quinn about the Daily News story saying the City Council improperly funneled money to illegitimate charities using “conduit groups.”

At the time, Quinn said the practice was legal, practical, and ongoing for a number of years.

Quinn also said there were a number of inaccuracies in that story. So, after the event I emailed her spokeswoman, Maria Alvarado, to ask specifically what they thought the inaccuracies were.

Alvarado emailed me a point-by-point response later, which rests on the notion the council wasn't trying to hide the practice. Also, they say that city law doesn't require groups receiving taxpayer money to be registered as 501(c)(3) nonprofits.

Here's the email, with the News passages in quotes:  read more »

Unlike Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s reaction to the initial revelation of the Council’s secret discretionary fund -- she denied knowledge that that practice was still going on and then proposed a series of dramatic reforms to the process – she is making no apologies in connection to the latest story accusing the Council of bad financial practices.  read more »

Protesters and politicans plan to rally in Chelsea on Saturday against the displacement of a handful of small businesses on Ninth Avenue by landlord Morris Monian.

Eight stores along what organizers are calling “the last ungentrified block in Chelsea” —including Chelsea Liquors, the Ninth Avenue Gift Shop, Sweet Banana Candy Store, New Barber Shop and Famous Deli—have between three months and two years before their lease expires.

Organizers said the shops cater directly to residents of the Fulton Houses affordable housing complex across the street.  read more »

Technically, Michael Bloomberg’s $59.1 billion budget increases spending -- albeit by one tenth of one percent -- but the loudest critcism it's facing so far is from officials and interest groups that want him to spend more.  read more »

Here’s (a lot of) video from Christine Quinn’s press conference yesterday where she discussed Harlem rezoning and environmental legislation, and then took questions from reporters about the investigation of the City Council.
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Here’s a shot of Manhattan City Councilman Robert Jackson seconds before Christine Quinn ordered the balcony cleared of the boisterous protesters who were yelling about the Harlem rezoning the Council was about to pass.

“Jackson you’re a snake. Jackson, you’re a sellout to your people,” one women yelled down from the balcony. Another man yelled out, “Uncle Tom!”  read more »

In her clearest remarks to date about the slush fund scandal at the City Council, Christine Quinn told reporters today, “I am not a target of the investigation.”

The remark came during a Q&A with reporters following her announcement that legislation would be passed later today in order to rezone Harlem and create a permanent office of long-term sustainability.  read more »

Room 9 reporters have been combing through hundreds of pages of documents submitted by City Council members to the city outlining potential conflicts of interest they may have steering city money to groups in their district.

It seemed like a good opportunity to give readers a chance to go through those documents too.

I sent a Freedom of Information request to the City Council’s records access officer, who responded within minutes with a ton of information.  read more »

A couple of weeks after becoming one of the earliest and loudest critics of Council Speaker Christine Quinn over her proposed member-item reform, John Liu is publicly tweaking another one of his colleagues, this time over a more routine legislative matter.

Here’s a brief clip of Liu during a City Council hearing about biological, chemical and radiological detectors this morning, where he openly questioned the need for the legislation the committee was considering. The bill was introduced by fellow Queens Democrat Peter Vallone, Jr., whose committee meeting Liu was attending.

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I just got back from Michael Bloomberg's press conference at a job center in Jamaica, not far from where Sean Bell was killed in 2006.

Bloomberg said he doesn’t expect any violence in response to today's verdict, and added that there is room for peaceful dissent and possibly legal action.

Also there were Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Council members Leroy Comrie and Tom White, and State Senate Democratic leader Malcolm Smith.  read more »

The city will conduct an “intensive, in-depth assessment” of high-risk construction in the city, the Department of Buildings announced Wednesday, one day after commissioner Patricia Lancaster resigned.

"This year, we have seen an increase in accidents and injuries related to high-risk construction activities," acting commissioner Robert LiMandri said in a statement, "and we must make sure that as construction activity in the City continues to increase, the Department’s ability to hold the construction industry to higher safety standards keeps pace."

The department will spend $4 million to bring in outside engineers and others to oversee the review.

Full release after the jump.  read more »

There’s a new system for vetting member items this year, according to an agreement between City Comptroller Bill Thompson and Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler [clarified].

In a letter dated today, Thompson's says that going forward from now on, he will examine all member items worth at least $5,000 (previously it had to be worth $25,000). The mayor's office of contracts will review member items under $5,000.  read more »

As reported last night, Christine Quinn just hired a new finance director for the City Council, Preston Niblack.

Niblack is coming over from his job as deputy director for the Independent Budget Office.

He starts on May 5 and is arriving here amid the financial scandal that has pre-occupied much of the Council. Talks are already underway on how to overhaul major portions of the discretionary allocations, a vital part of how members shape each year’s city budget.

Niblack is taking over the position once held by Mike Keogh, who left around the time Quinn said she learned that Council staffers for years had been hiding taxpayer money behind phony organizations in order to dispense the money later.

Niblack will be paid $160,000, the same salary Keogh was making when he started.

Here’s the official statement.  read more »

I just got around to listening to the most recent episode of the Perez Notes, where the radio host asked City Councilman Jim Gennaro if he still supports Christine Quinn in her role as council speaker [25:38]. The question, of course, was prompted by questions about the recently discovered financial scandal and her handling of it.

It’s a tough question for most members, but especially so for Gennaro, who is also set to run for State Senate later this year and probably doesn’t want the financial scandal that came to light under Quinn’s watch to seep onto the campaign trail.  read more »

At his press conference in midtown yesterday Michael Bloomberg was asked why one city agency approved a funding application for the Donna Reid Fund after the same group had been denied funding by another agency.

The mayor defended what had happened and added, "In fact, the process worked."

 

Two employees of Councilman Kendall Stewart have now been accused of skimming money off the grants the nonprofit received.

UPDATE: Councilman David Yassky's office released a letter this morning in support of the actions of the first agency to see an application from the Donna Reid Foundation--the Department for the Aging--expressing support and commending the agency for taking the right course of action. In recent days, D.F.T.A. has been blamed for not doing more to expose inconsistencies in the nonprofit's application.

Here's the letter:  read more »

 

David Weprin, the City Council Finance Chairman, emerged from the closed door meeting that members had with Christine Quinn yesterday to discuss the council's accounting problems and and the indictment of two staffers.  read more »

In a bit of interesting timing, Christine Quinn is having a fund-raiser on April 24 in Manhattan at the home of David Durst, a Hillary Clinton contributor.

Quinn, a likely mayoral candidate who shaped her public image as a reformer, has spent the last couple of weeks responding to a budgeting scandal at the City Council.

One of her likely mayoral rivals, Bill Thompson, has been critical of the Council, and by extension, Quinn. The other likely participant in the race, Anthony Weiner, has stayed notably quiet on the matter.

Here's the invitation, which was forwarded to me by a reader who received it yesterday afternoon:  read more »

At a press conference about legislative matters just now, Christine Quinn was asked if the indictment of two Kendall Stewart staffers, who allegedly pocketed taxpayer money, would affect her proposal to give the mayor’s office more authority over local funding requests.

“Obviously there is additional information everybody will get,” she said. “As we look at that, if there are more comments and questions we can answer, we will.”

Quinn is expected to meet with Council members later today behind closed doors.  read more »

Likely mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner released a summary of his tax returns just now. From his spokesman:

Weiner earned $152,996 of income in the year 2007. He made payments of $13,900 in New York City/State taxes and $24,300 in Federal taxes.

Longshot (but announced!) mayoral candidate Tony Avella already released his, while Bill Thompson and Christine Quinn have not.  read more »

When Council Speaker Christine Quinn showed up for work at City Hall on the afternoon of April 15, she was greeted by the sight of her colleague, Councilman Charles Barron, calling for her head.

“Quinn must go!” he yelled. “Quinn must go!”  read more »

So, many City Council members have strong feelings about the reforms Christine Quinn proposed last week, particularly about the notion that they would lose the ability to fund specific groups through member items. Those groups would instead have to go through a R.F.P. process and be approved by various departments that are administrated by the mayor's side of City Hall.  read more »

 

After the meeting last night between Council members and Christine Quinn, Peter Vallone, Jr. told me that he supports reforms, but not some of the specific ones that Quinn proposed last week. If she takes the advice of the council, Vallone says, “We won’t be giving up any power to the executive branch."  read more »

 

Christine Quinn angered some City Council members when she announced a package of reforms last Friday, but the reaction was reinforced by resentment that's been brewing for some time over her management of the council.  read more »

The only thing that has gotten City Council members more angry than when they found out Christine Quinn’s staff hid millions of dollars in the city budget by assigning it to phony organizations are the reforms she proposed last week to prevent the same thing from happening again.

Quinn proposed Friday to give the executive branch power over $20 million in the speaker's discretionary fund, which many Council members think gives up some of the relatively little power they have.

Today, Quinn faced an unhappy crowd of City Council members who “universally panned,” her plan, according to Peter Vallone, Jr., who spoke to reporters after leaving the nearly hour-long, closed-door meeting. “If we move forward on this, which probably is a good idea, I think we can improve things, we won’t be giving up power to the executive branch,” he said.

“Did anything that the speaker said change my mind? No,” said City Councilman Jimmy Vacca of the Bronx, who issued a critical statement as the meeting began. “I think that is a very significant consensus,” he told reporters.  read more »

Just as Christine Quinn began addressing City Council members in a closed-door meeting at City Hall about the appropriation-process reforms she proposed, another member released a statement criticizing those changes as ceding too much power to the mayor.

This is from Jimmy Vacca of the Bronx, and follows last week's sharp rebuke from John Liu and criticism from Lew Fidler:  read more »

Here’s the invitation to the kick-off fund-raiser for City Council candidate John Lisyanskiy, who is among the candidates running to replace term-limited Brooklyn Councilman Domenic Recchia.  read more »

This could be another tough day for Christine Quinn.

She's going to meet with the 47 other members of the Democratic conference in the City Council today at 4 p.m., which will be the first time she speaks officially with many of her colleagues about the accounting-practices scandal that she’s now spent the good part of two weeks trying to quell.  read more »

Dan Squadron is trying to unseat fellow Democrat Marty Connor for state Senate, in the district that represents lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.

But more interesting than the people on the ballot are how Demoratic power brokers are lining up in that fight. Schumer is supporting Squardon, his former aide, against Connor, who didn’t support Schumer in his 1998 primary for Senate.

But as the invitation for Connor’s May 8th fund-raiser at the Ritz Carlton shows, he's got a good chunk of the rest of the party establishment.  read more »

Councilman Lew Fidler of Brooklyn has a number of concerns about the "historic reforms" Christine Quinn announced at a press conference earlier in the day. Fidler said he does not object to spirit of what Quinn said—aiming for greater transparency—but he thinks the mechanisms will harm too many small groups.

Quinn said all groups that want money from the approximately $20 million speaker's discretionary fund will have to go through the Request for Proposal (RFP) process.

"The RFP process is flawed, and it tends to favor the large, well-funded groups that can hire grant writers," Fidler said. "It's this ladder process for the use of discretionary funds that really funds the local CBOs [community-based organizations)] that aren't quite as fancy or ritzy. You know, if they don't win the RFPs ..." he added, before trailing off.  read more »

Spurred by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's reaction to the discovery of her office's poor accounting practices, the 16-member Brooklyn delegation has scheduled an emergency meeting to take place over the next few days, two expected attendees confirmed.

The meeting, they say, will address how Quinn handled the scandal, which some are not satisfied with, and also, how she defied their wishes and helped steer the much-coveted City Clerk position to a person from the Bronx.

The Brooklyn delegation is the largest in the City Council, but has for years had its clout diminished by internal fighting, more than one scandal, and a coalition of smaller delegations that teamed up with the more cohesive coalition of members from Queens.

The attendees would not say precisely where the meeting would be held.

UPDATE: Yet more for what should be a crowded agenda: One lawmaker from Brooklyn I spoke with said that a number of colleagues were not fully informed about Quinn's proposed changes before they were announced today, and that some members are concerned about how these changes will affect their ability to fund local groups in their districts.

UPDATE II: A reader called to say the Queens delegation is also meeting. It's taking place at City Hall on Monday at 3 p.m. and is expected to also discuss Quinn's leadership and handling of the financial scandal.

UPDATE III: A reader emailed to say the Bronx delegation is meeting tomorrow afternoon to discuss Quinn as well. The meeting, according to another source, has been scheduled for some time, but Quinn is likely to be discussed [added].  read more »

Christine Quinn just finished an hour-long press conference where she said she’ll create an independent monitor to oversee how her office allocates money, but faced an onslaught of questions about these and other changes were being made now, and not when she discovered improper financial dealings at the Council late last year. The improper practices were made public earlier this month.

Quinn told reporters today that she felt it was more important to bring the wrongdoing to the attention of the authorities, who are now looking into the matter.

“I have not done this job perfectly -- I will not do this job perfectly,” said Quinn at City Hall, where she was joined at the event by good-government activists Dick Dadey of Citizens Union and Gene Russianoff of N.Y.P.I.R.G. and several Council members.

In describing more of the “historic" financial reforms, Quinn also said she’ll create a searchable database of all funding requests made my City Council members, and the portion of the budget that deals with those requests, called Schedule C’s, will be made available 24 before they’re voted on.  read more »

We just passed the 45-minute mark at Christine Quinn's press conference, where she announced changes in the way discretionary funds from the speaker's office will be released.

She's being peppered with what-did-you-know-and-when-did-you-know-it questions.

"Something went wrong," she said, referring to her office's practice of "parking" money by designating it to go to organizations that don't actually exist.

Quinn said that although the Council is under investigation, she has not received any subpoenas.

Charles Barron isn't the only member of the City Council who regards Christine Quinn's discretionary-fund shell-game as a grave offense. Barron is generally outspoken and has been critical of Quinn in the past, but another member, who has had a considerably more collegial relationship with the speaker, said on background that her conduct was pretty much indefensible.

"The story is, you know, there's like no other budget code [for setting aside money]," this member said.  read more »

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City Finance Commissioner Martha Stark isn't sure how much wrongdoing there actually was in connection with the recently discovered slush fund at the City Council.

Speaking last night on The Perez Note, an online radio show hosted at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, Stark said [around the 14:20 mark], “I can’t figure out what, if anything, went wrong. And I’m not sure when all is said and done that anything did.”

She added, “It never seemed that a check was cut to a false organization. This is discretionary money. That is exactly what our budget and our system is set up to do. We give elected officials, whether it’s a borough president, or the speaker of the Council members, a certain amount of money that they can, in their discretion, both give out to groups in their neighborhood and the like."  read more »

After a press conference today on the Lower East Side about senior services, Christine Quinn told reporters that an audit by Comptroller Bill Thompson of the Council's recently discovered slush fund "will be of the highest professional caliber," and expressed confidence that Thompson, a likely mayoral rival, will be objective about the matter. (A third likely candidate in that race, Anthony Weiner, declined to comment on the audit.)

Quinn now is in the awkward position of having to field questions in public about an issue that won't be considered fully understood until (at least) the conclusion of several ongoing investigations and audits.

From the question-and-answer session:

Reporter: Speaker Quinn, are you satisfied at this point that all of the money that was parked in these non-existent accounts has been accounted for and was not misspent, that it actually did go to bona fide non-profit groups?

CQ: You know, we are in the midst of an investigation of this with the U.S. Attorney and with the Department of Investigation so I’m not sure I can fully comment on that question, Frank, and I’ll get back to you when we check with those involved with the investigation. That’s not to indicate I’m trying to say yes or no, I just have to be careful of matters relating to the investigation, what I do or don’t say, and I’ll get back to you later, or my staff will.

A full transcript, which Quinn's office kindly provided, is after the jump.  read more »

Bill Thompson said not getting an invitation to Christine Quinn's press conference today about seniors had nothing to do with his decision to release a letter today about auditing the City Council's finances. Technically speaking, the event was organized by the city's Department for the Aging and Quinn was just an attendee [added].

(Sally Goldenberg has the story here.)

It's starting to feel like the 2009 mayoral season is underway.

Christine Quinn will announce shortly that she has reached a deal with the Bloomberg administration on a plan to restructure the Department for the Aging.

Michael Bloomberg's plan to overhaul the system of city senior centers, partly by closing many of them, and discontinuing a hot meals-on-wheels program has drawn criticism from advocates for the elderly.  read more »

City Comptroller Bill Thompson announced just now that he is gong to audit all member items from the City Council. This comes in the wake of the secret slush fund that was recently discovered to have been used by Speaker Christine Quinn to mask expenditures.

The letter, dated today, says:

As a consequence of this distortion of the City’s budgetary process, I am taking a number of actions.  First, my office will require all agency agreements that are funded by City Council discretionary monies, regardless of amount, be reviewed by the Comptroller’s office before any funds can be disbursed. Second, my office will direct the City’s auditors, Deloitte and Touche, to independently audit the Council’s discretionary fund budget process upon the conclusion of the ongoing investigations by outside entities.

Quinn is having a press conference on East 12th street about an agreement she reached with the mayor’s administration about senior services, but will probably face more questions about the Council’s finances and this audit.

Here is Thompson’s whole letter:  read more »

“I don’t see how anyone can use support of congestion pricing against somebody politically,” Christine Quinn just told reporters at a brief availability inside City Hall, where she reacted to the Assembly’s decision not to vote on the plan the City Council urged them to adopt.  read more »

Here is Christine Quinn’s statement on the death of congestion pricing, which says she is “disappointed that we missed an opportunity” and describes today as a “setback.”

Neither Quinn's statement nor the statement from Michael Bloomberg aide John Gallagher mention Sheldon Silver by name.

Here’s the full statement:  read more »

 

After rallying against congestion pricing on the City Hall steps this weekend, City Council Finance Chair David Weprin fielded some questions about how nonexistent groups were slated to get thousands of dollars from the council.  read more »