Bloomberg made so many donations last year he can't even keep track of them all. Something shady is allegedly going on with one of them, a $750,000 contribution to the Independence Party, prompting Manhattan DA Cy Vance to investigate how the money was handled by a top aide and what exactly it was spent on. "We handed the money over to the Independence Party, and they have the full accounting, presumably, of how the money was spent," said Bloomberg's campaign lawyer Ken Gross. "The understanding was that the money was helping go to the party to pay for Election Day expenses such as poll watchers." more ›

A former deputy chief of staff to Council Speaker Christine Quinn has been fined for soliciting campaign contributions for Quinn while working for her City Hall office. City laws bar Council staffers or anyone with "substantial policy discretion" from working on their bosses campaigns, but a board found that Maura Keaney solicited contributions from union representatives for Quinn's re-election campaign in 2007. According to the Times, Keaney—who last year took a gig with Mayor Bloomberg's re-election campaign and landed a $150,000 bonus—was fined $2,500. Just hours after the city's Conflicts of Interest Board ruled against her, Bloomberg's school's chancellor Joel Klein announced that Keaney had been appointed as the Department of Education's executive director of external affairs for $143,000 per year. more ›