Randy Mastro

Earlier this afternoon, a diverse cast of politicians gathered in front of the Brooklyn House of Detention on Atlantic Avenue to protest the Bloomberg administration's plan to reopen and expand the downtown jail. (It was the Bloomberg administration that closed it back in 2003, due to high costs).

Councilman and city comptroller candidate David Yassky, comptroller and likely mayoral candidate Bill Thompson, State Senators Marty Connor and Velmanette Montgomery, Assemblywoman Joan Millman, and Randy Mastro, a deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani, were among the rally participants. They all gave the current administration an earful for creating what they portray as a serious impediment to the goal of creating a financial hub in Brooklyn.  read more »

Mitt Romney's spokesman, Kevin Madden, is hitting Rudy Giuliani over the former mayor's claim, highlighted in a new South Carolina radio ad, that he tried to get the INS to help him fight illegal immigration.

"There is a very substantive and relevant contrast between Governor Romney and Mayor Giuliani on this,' said Madden. "It goes to the heart of the question on this which is when you talk to voters who really care about immigration, the number one priority is enforcement. They want to know that you are going to enforce existing laws."

Madden then made the case that Giuliani, whose record as a law-and-order mayor has been invaluable to him in appealing to conservative voters, failed to enforce the law of the land.

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Okay, once more on that long-running and slightly silly argument between allies of Rudy Giuliani and Mark Green over who deserves credit for removing the mob from the gabage industry. (It's worth settling, if only because the accomplishment is a central biographical selling point of Green's attorney general campaign -- and at least a tangential one in Giuliani's national marketing effort.)

Selwyn Raab, the former Times investigative reporter and author of "Five Families" - the highly authoritative book on the mafia in New York - was kind enough to give me his assessment of the situation, which is essentially that it was Giuliani who got it done, but that it couldn't necessarily have happened without Green.

"It's like anything else," he said. "There's diffuse credit."

Raab, whose reporting has been cited at various times by both sides to prove their points, essentially said that Green deserved a major amount of credit for using the "bully pulpit" while he as consumer affairs commissioner under David Dinkins to draw attention to a scary and obvious crime problem that had been completely ignored for decades by everyone from the mayor on down. And he recalled that it was Green who brought testimony from one intimidated industry witness to the attention of Robert Morgenthau, eventually leading to the massive investigation and series of indictments that set the stage for Giuliani's reforms.

But, he said, "it was a Giulaini-Randy Mastro concept" of institutionalizing licensing and background checks - and not Green's original proposals, which got Raab a front-page byline but otherwise "went nowhere" -- that finally broke the mafia's control.

And, Raab noted, "Giuliani doesn't like to take any prisoners. He doesn't like to give any credit to anyone else."

I got a similar take from former Councilmember Ken Fisher, a Democrat who acted as something of a mediator between Giuliani and Green during the passage of the original legislation to reform the carting industry.

Here's what he had to say about Randy Mastro's recent comment that Mark Green had nothing to do with the anti-mob reforms:

"I guess it's not a secret that Mark Green and Mastro didn't really get along well. But it's kind of like saying Roosevelt didn't really need Churchill's help to win World War II. I think the historical record is pretty clear."

More, if you can stand it, after the jump.  read more »

Laro Service Systems—represented by former Mayor Giuliani’s deputy Randy Mastro--won its case this afternoon against the Fulton Fish Market cooperative, Crain’s reports --meaning it will continue to unload fish even after the market moves to the Bronx. The city is appealing and the market is expected to stay where it is in the meantime. -Matthew Schuerman  read more »

On the afternoon of Feb.  read more »

Peter J.  read more »