Bronx City Council

The Yankees are planning to make a big announcement next Wednesday about what they are doing for their Bronx neighbors, just as some of those neighbors are wondering what happened to the goodies promised six months ago.

More than six months after the agreement was signed and two months after the groundbreaking, is it too early to complain about lack of progress?  read more »

The Mayor has now begun calling community benefits agreements "ransom." How much was that ransom, in the case of the Yankee Stadium deal? $54.75 million.  read more »

Mike's spending, at $103 a vote -- compared to Freddy's $19 votes -- got a lot of attention today.

But the Mayor was not, it turns out, the least efficient politician this year.

That honor goes to Manhattan Borough President candidate Carlos Manzano who -- with the taxpayers' generous help -- spent $171 per vote in the Democratic Primary, which he did not win.

That was an expensive race. Two others among the losers also ran up impressive inefficiencies: Adriano Espaillat spent $75 per vote, and Brian Ellner $64 per vote.  read more »

The City Council, with its lower caps and less competition, produced less egregious results. The general election inefficiency champ appears to be Melinda Katz of Queens, who spent $26 on each vote without public financing.

Back in the primary, though, the inefficiency prize goes to Bronx City Council candidate Steve Kaufman, who spent $78 on each vote. But he was spending Mike Bloomberg's money, so who's counting?

If you're following Gifford Miller's dance with the campaign finance law on what qualifies as a "petitioning expense," this ruling from the Campaign Finance Board this morning can't be good news for the Speaker:

"September 2, 2005 — The New York City Campaign Finance Board yesterday determined that expenditures for petition-gathers who also distributed campaign literature for the Bronx City Council campaign of Stephen B. Kaufman were not wholly exempt from the expenditure limit." On the other hand, Gifford's campaign finance lawyer, Larry Laufer, is a longtime CFB counsel who knows more about this stuff than anyone. And if Gifford does turn out to be within the letter of the law, Mike Bloomberg's presence in the race makes it hard to criticize him.  read more »

NOTE: The original version of this posting repeated an error in the CFB press release, which has been corrected.