Yesterday, the NY Post revealed that the dingy Manhattan Marriage Bureau would be getting a deluxe makeover. First of all, the City Clerk's Office will move from 1 Centre Street at the Municipal Building to 80 Centre Street. Second, Mayor Bloomberg's personal decorator, Jamie Drake, will be overseeing the redesign - at a discount (we doubt the new bureau will have the touches that Mayor B's swank townhouses do), but the budget is still......

Anyone who has had to wait on line at any state or city agency will love this story. A couple went to the Bronx Supreme Court yesterday because they waned to get a marriage license. Jonathan Figueroa and Marjorie Lumbano waited on line for an hour and made it to the front by 3PM, well before the 4PM closing time. Only they were turned away because the workers were having a retirement party for a......

Mayor Bloomberg and the new City Council Speaker Christine Quinn joined forces to announce a five point plan for lobbying reform. The message is that the city government want to stop lobbying from, as the Mayor put it, "the next Jack Abramoff" (zing, zing, Republican party!). The five-point plan (1) bans gifts from lobbyist to government officials; (2) strengthens enforcement of the lobbying law and double the maximum penalties for violations; (3) mandates that lobbyist......

A City Council bill that was to outlaw the sale and installation of car alarms in New York City was vetoed yesterday by Mayor Bloomberg. The bill, approved by the City Council in late July, hoped to ban the "sale and installation of audible alarms that are motion-activated or that sound for longer than three minutes". Councilman John Liu of Flushing said that there is no proof the alarms work and that "there is an......