Results tagged “speakergiffordmiller”

It was finally Mayor Bloomberg, however, that gave him the boot this April. Only recently was he allowed back inside the press room, but as an uncredentialed observer. Martinez Alequin's publication has slimmed down to an online-only format and operates from Blogspot.com as "Your Free Press." He has been questioning––some might say heckling––public officials for 20 years. This spurs a broader look by the Times at what it takes to be a credentialed press member.

They say New York is home to a million stories, and so far this year, we've published 7021 of them here on Gothamist. So in case you missed any of those, let's take a little stroll back in time, and review the most significant stories the past 12 months, shall we? Here's part one of a semi-chronological look at 2006; part two will go up tomorrow:

A business card may be a reminder for others about how to contact you, but when you're a City Council staffer, watch out! According to the Daily News, back in 2004, when he was deputy chief of staff to City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, Michael Nieves gave his card with "his cell phone number and the name and city phone number of another Council employee" to a tenant that a landlord had a dispute with. And apparently Nieves had a "prior business relationship" with the landlord. The city's Conflict of Interest Board said that Nieves did violate "the City Charter for employees to use city resources for private reasons," yet that was the extent of the reprimand.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn continued to show how different she is from former Speaker Gifford Miller by backing part of the Mayor's garbage plan. The plan includes creating a recycling plant at pier 52 (near Gansevoort - and right in Hudson River Park, where the trucks are parked), converting the recycling plant at 59th Street and Hudson into a commercial waster station, and then putting a residential waste station at East 91st and the East River.

It was the Democratic mayoral hopefuls' second-to-last-debate-gasp to get in some good punches, but it was actually kind of boring because the answers were 25 seconds. Former Bronx Borough President and frontrunner Fernando Ferrer, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, City Council Speaker Gifford Miller and Congressman Anthony Weiner mainly tried to attack the Mayor whose popularity with Democrats is confounding their campaigns. And with Hurricane Katrina very much the top story of the news, they all said the Mayor's plans in the event of a disaster woudl be "muddled". The NY Times noted that the candidates "in many cases they either overstated their own accomplishments, exaggerated problems facing the city or did not have sufficient backup for their claims about the state of the city." Read the transcripts here and here's Gotham Gazette's handy primer on the Mayoral race.

The first official Democratic candidate mayoral debate took place last night with all four candidates, including Congressman Anthony Weiner who had been passed a kidney stone earlier in the day. After that, we can only imagine the debate was a walk in the park! The NY Times has a transcript of the debate, but there's nothing like seeing City Council Speaker Gifford Miller get all pissy when asked if he would send his kids to public school (they attend private pre-K now). Former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer tried to redirect criticism from himself to the Mayor, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields was the only candidate to eagerly say she wanted the Reverend Al Sharpton's endorsement, and Weiner came away with the best one-liners. All in the all, the debate was kind of boring, like the candidates themselves; the Observer's Ben Smith and Lizzy Ratner explain the problems with all the candiates, including Mayor B, in an article today called the "Aristo-Democrats," with the most frightening cartoon EVER.

Gothamist loves stories about the eating habits of political candidates, because even if we disagree about the issues, at least we know we all like food. But the NY Times published a somewhat controversial story over the weekend about Mayor Bloomberg's new election year diet. He has cut out the following: Wine; bacon and eggs (or is he trying to woo more Orthodox Jewish votes?); saltines with cream cheese and salt; and his "favorite lunchtime fare," Chinese food. Cutting out Chinese food? Perhaps the most popular take-out in the city, this side of pizza? While the Chinese vote won't make or break his candidacy, perception is everything, especially when you think about how many Chinese people there are on this Earth and how many Chinese investors are looking to make their mark in New York; news like this would be like gold to the Asian tabloids. The NY Times followed up with some Chinese restaurant owners and diners. The owner of Joe Shanghai's said, "He is making big mistake," and added that Chinese people are always skinny. Perhaps "usually skinny" is a better term, Gothamist wonders if the Mayor is not drinking tea with his Chinese lunches, because one adage says the tea helps flush out the fats. Anyway, the Mayor's spokesman, Ed Skyler, tried to calm Chinese food enthusiasts by noting the Mayor is eating tofu and broccoli with oyster sauce for lunch and saying, "Having shared a lot of meals with him over the years, I can assure owners of Chinese restaurants across the city that this is a mayor who has and will continue to deeply love Chinese food." We should hope the Mayor's advance team is scheduling a trip to a Chinese restaurant stat!

- And in a style update, Newsday's political blog, Politarazzi, learns that Mayor Bloomberg has been wearing a worn, leather jacket for over a year. Politarazzi first thought the leather jacket was the brainchild of a stylist for the Mayor's campaign brochure, to have the Mayor fit in with blue collared types. Gothamist guarantees that leather jacket was artfully distressed by only the most expensive jacket distressers...there's no way Bloomberg's staff went to Sears to pick up a jacket for him.

Democratic front runner and former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer will start his advertising campaign tomorrow, according to the NY Times. This would make Ferrer the first of the Democratic hopefuls to compete with TV and radio, with what his campaign calls a "substantial" ad buy while his rivals' campaigns say the ad buy is "modest" (tens of thousands of dollars). Well, everything is modest compared to what Mayor Bloomberg is spending! But the Daily News points out that City Council Speaker Gifford Miller has purchased $1 million of advertising in the week before the September 13 primary; Miller has also raised the most money of the Democratic contenders. It sounds like Ferrer is attempting to develop name recognition with a steady media presence for a longer period whereas Miller may simply try to blanket the area with his message in the final moments, though Ferrer is probably going to increase his media by the primary. Gothamist gives the edge to Ferrer with this decision, because we suspect Bloomberg has helped his approval ratings with his seemingly constant advertising in the past few months. And we doubt C. Virginia Fields and Anthony Weiner will advertise much to make a blip.

The MTA's newfound riches of $833 million (from unexpected tax revenues) met a chorus of different ideas, from no fare hike in 2007, more security, improving reliability. The Daily News say Mayor Bloomberg would like the MTA not to hike fares in 2007, however Newsday says that City Council Speaker Gifford Miller explicitly said 2007 fare hikes should be avoided and Mayor Bloomberg "stopped short" of saying the MTA shouldn't raise 2007 fares. Okay, we get it - the pols want to earn voters' good will by keeping fares down. Gothamist wondered why the money couldn't defray the planned 2006 fare hike as well (and the NY Times says the MTA could do that "if it chose to" even with its plans to spend money on other areas), but given that the MTA has serious fiscal problems, we'd just be getting higher fares in a couple years. If only they could sell railyards for cash every year!

The housing rights group Housing Here and Now just announced a list of the city's top ten worst landlords, as well as the corresponding website, NYC's Worst Landlords. You can read a PDF of the report which details how the apartments are rife with vermin, building problems, and more, as well as let Housing Here and Now know if your landlord is a slumlord. While many people have landlord horror stories, the ones in the PDF are really insane: "leaks, broken windows, defective plumbing, mildew, broken and defective plaster, gaping holes in ceilings and floors, insect infestation," cats roaming the halls, attacking tenants, ceilings collapsing... you name it.

Last night, Gothamist headed to the mayoral forum held by Parks 1, the non-profit that is working to make NYC's parks the number one in the nation by trying to get the city goverment to commit 1% of the city's budget to the parks. (You can sign the pledge here.) Four of the potential candidates appeared: Former Bronx Borough President Ferando Ferrer, City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, and former Queens City Councilman Thomas Ognibene. Congressman Anthony Weiner had agreed to come, but he was stuck in D.C. (legislation!), and Mayor Bloomberg was invited but did not attend. The discussion covered topics like how the candidates would deal with poorly maintained parks, vehicles in parks, and community gardens. Also, the candidates had other ideas about revenue to support and maintain the parks besides the 1% idea, because 1% of the city's budget is a huge chunk of change (we think it's about $500 million, based on the 2006, but we're still trying to figure out how the parks line item works). While the candidates tried to emphasize their commitment to New York and the parks, Gothamist began to think about who might be left standing this fall.

The nomination of Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court has struck a sour note with New Yorkers who are not David Brooks, especially New York politicians in search of female voters. Mayor Bloomberg received an endorsement from Naral Pro-Choice in New York. Bloomberg, who has consistently been pro-choice, in spite of his inconsistent political party sides, even made remarks saying that he'd only support Roberts if Roberts didn't overturn Roe v. Wade. Bloomberg's challengers have come out against Roberts as well, and they take the Mayor to task for not being aggressive enough in pro-choice efforts; City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, for instance, points out that Bloomberg vetoed a bill giving emergency contraception to rape victims. But, as others point out, it's not surprising Hizzoner is pro-choice, given his advice to female employees at Bloomberg.

Much to the delight of gay and straight New Yorkers, yesterday's steamy weather meant that there was more reason for marchers in the Gay Pride Parade to go shirtless. If you were downtown, everywhere people would turn there was bound to be a fairly naked, glistening body. New Yorkers enjoyed themselves, and some noted how the parade has become "mainstreamed." The parade was started as to mark the Stonewall uprising in 1969, and some who marched in the first pride parade 36 years ago marched again yesterday.

When Gothamist wants fluff pieces in the papers, we prefer them to involve food. So we greeted the Daily News' awesome political fluff piece with glee, as it detailed what kinds of ice creams the mayoral hopefuls like - if you can't be bothered to study the issues, then vote for the candidate whose cold dessert treat views align yours! Mayor Bloomberg like lemon ices from the Lemon Ice King of Corona, City Council Speaker Gifford Miller favors banana (B-A-N-A-N-A) ice cream from Emack and Bolio's, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields enjoys Haagen-Dazs rum raisin, former Bronx Beep Fernando Ferrer crosses boroughs for Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory's French Vanilla and Queens GOPster Thomas Ognibene loves butter pecan from his borough's Eddie's Sweet Shop. But the best explanation came from Representative Anthony Weiner:

Representative Anthony Weiner of Brooklyn frequents Uncle Louie G when he's in the mood for ice cream (the chain has multiple locations in the city), and he always gets mint chocolate chip. Weiner has warm childhood memories of eating the frosty stuff.

Continue reading "Ice Cream For Politicians"

As the Mayor vetoed the City Council's rejection of his trash plan, Gothamist is getting excited because when the political garbage flies, it's gold. City Council Speaker Gifford Miller is at the frontline of the City Council's disdain for the plan, since one of the proposed waste transfer stations is in his district on East 91st in Manhattan. Miller's staff accuse the Mayor of stonewalling, versus really wanting to negotiate, while the Mayor is accusing the City Council of putting the garbage burdens on the poor communities only. And there are more issues for Miller, this time from Democratic primary opponent C. Virginia Fields. She's filed a letter with the Conflicts of Interest Board, asking them to investigate whether a Miller mailing was really election propaganda using City Council funds. Oh, and Bloomberg's aides called Fernando Ferrer and Anthony Weiner "jealous" after they criticized the mayor's spending and record. Well, please, aides de Bloomberg, you can call Gothamist jealous, because who wouldn't want to be a billionaire?

ship the city's garbage via barges, in order to cut sanitation truck traffic, by creating/renovating marine transfer stations in the city. One was in Miller's Upper East Side district, making him primed to fight the Mayor on this. The interesting thing is that many politicians in poorer districts actually supported this trash plan (not to mention the NRDC), because many trash stations are located in their districts. The NY Times reports that many Council members were upset over the vote, with City Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn saying, "This is the most embarrassing day I've had since I've been on the Council."

Even though the four main Democratic mayoral hopefuls debated yesterday, the election big news is how Mayor Bloomberg has spent $10 million so far in his re-election campaign. A 10-day ad blitz will begin midweek, and the NY Times reports that the ads will "stress 9/11 and leadership." However, the "mindboggling" thing is millions have been spent to get demographic and psychographic information from a polling firm to delve into the pysches of New Yorkers. The Mayor's opponents had various comments about the Mayor being able to spend like a maniac since he's not privy to campaign finance laws, such as how he's buying the election, he must not be confident if he has to spend so much, that he's totally out of touch with the constituency; the Democratic hopefuls have, at most, raised $500,000 in the past two months while the Mayor put over $6 million into his campaign in the same period. Giving his positive approval numbers these days, we expect the Mayor to attempt to say the course as the frontrunner, with his staff emphasizing though the Mayor is rich, he still rides the subway!

The Mayor got good news and bad news from the City Council yesterday. Good news: The City Council approved the city's plan to revelop Brooklyn's Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront. The one lone opposing vote came from Councilman Charles Barron, who said, "There has to be a day in this City Council where we don't settle for less than 50 percent affordable housing" - the current plan has a provision requiring new apartment buildings to have one-third affordable housing.

With the election two hundred days away (or just about that, depending on how you count), the mayoral race is starting to get into get kicked into high gear. Former City Council Speaker Peter Vallone of Queens endorsed City Council Speaker Gifford Miller. NY1 points out the scary thing about the Vallone-Miller connection, aside from both having Speaker experience: "Miller finds himself in a similar position as Vallone did four years ago. In 2001, Vallone constantly trailed in the polls and eventually lost the Democratic Primary." Yikes!

The big news rocking the world of Democratic mayoral hopefuls is that Reverend Al Sharpton won't endorse a candidate this year. In other words, the Reverend Al is just like Gothamist and many other voters: Wondering if there are any strong messages in the Democratic candidates. He noted that this will be the first time in 20 years he will not be involved in a Democratic primary, but, of course, Sharpton did leave himself an escape chute, he'd reconsider if a candidate seemed to shape up. Sharpton also noted that former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer's remarks about Amadou Diallo didn't help things. Gothamist is shocked that Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields or even City Council Speaker Gifford Miller didn't try even harder to rise to the challenge of getting Sharpton's endorsement, because his support could have really helped solidify them in the race.

During yesterday's Crain's New York sponsored forum, mayoral candidates tried to stake out their positions in the crowded field people who just wanna beat Mayor Mike. To summarize: Representative Anthony Weiner attacked former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer's plan to tax stock transactions; Ferrer attacked the Mayor's rehaul of the school system; City Council Speaker Gifford Miller talked about transit issues; Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields spoke about education and community-police relations. And all candidates attacked Wal-Mart's intentions to move into NYC. Yeah, it's sadly still sounding like Charlie Brown's teacher. The NY Times' also notes that Fields and Ferrer's jabs show that their "non-aggression pact" has fallen to the wayside, which makes sense for Fields, since she probably wants to try to beat Ferrer. In the next month, Gothamist hopes someone will step up.

Yesterday, the seven mayoral candidates for Mayor converged in Queens to speak at the Northeast Queens Jewish Community Council. Mayor Bloomberg left after giving opening remarks, giving some of the other attendees (Democrats Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, City Council Speaker Gifford Miller and Representative Anthony Weiner; Republicans investment banker Scott Shaw and Thomas Ognibene of Queens) opportunity to slam him. Weiner ragged on how Bloomberg was there for such a short period (Bloomberg says he had other activities; this ">Post picture proves he needed to be in a Greek parade with some youngin's) while others sounded the usual things against him: The West Side Stadium, education reform that hasn't quite jelled, being a billionaire, bad housing policy, and being Manhattan-centric.

- Mayor Bloomberg's reelection staff sought advice from a range of influencers and politicians on how to shed the mayor's billionaire image. It seems the number one thing to do is remind people he wasn't born a billionaire, he just worked his way to that. Both former Mayor Ed Koch and former Representative Herman Badillo say that the mayor needs to get out and meet people in the outer boroughs (Koch says, Bloomberg should be "out there on the streets 10 days a week, not 7" and Badillo notes, "If you walk up the South Bronx and see 1,000 people, then they will tell 10,000 people, 'I just saw the mayor; he was here with us.'"). Koch also had other colorful quotes for the Times article: Ferrer "slit his own throat" by his handling of his remarks about Amadou Diallo's death and Mayor Bloomberg's "problem is that he's shy." But yet not too shy to fill potholes!

And the NY Times looks at the campaign of Fields, and the state of women in NYC politics. Gothamist would like to know where the heck is Fields' campaign website - all we can find is her website as Manhattan Borough President.

An interesting look at Mayor Bloomberg's struggles with developing a good waste plan in the NY Times. One of the main complaints about the current waste plan is that the streets are congested with trucks carrying garbage. The Mayor would like garbage to be carried by barge and train, and wants to reopen certainly garbage transfer stations, but his proposed plan seems to be more expensive than initially thought. City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, whose district is targetted for one of the potential reopened transfer stations, and others are using the new cost analysis as reasons why the Mayor's plan is flawed (and why the Mayor stinks). But, wouldn't you know it, the NRDC supports Bloomberg's plan because it does get the trucks off the road.

While the Mayor and City Council Speaker Gifford Miller may seem similar - they are white...they live on the Upper East Side...uh... - they actually aren't, and the NY Times examined their extremely political spitting match. Gothamist liked how Mayor Bloomberg views Miller as unaccomplished and unambitious, because next to him, who can be (this does not bode well for prospective suitors for Emma and Georgina), but there was another quote that got us thinking:

City Councilman Eric Gioia, a close associate of Mr. Miller, says the friction stems in part from the vast age gap between the two. "I think the mayor looks at Gifford and says, 'Why don't you just listen to me?'" he said. "And Gifford looks at the mayor and says, 'Why can't you see things from a different perspective?'"

Newsday has an interesting look at the parking-meters-during-church issue, aka "pay to pray," and how it's affecting Mayor Bloomberg. To remind everyone, Ferrer said that churchgoers should not be expected to pay parking meters on Sundays, because it's a day of worship, while the Mayor pointed out that Sunday revenue has been critical...needless to say, this has galvanized churchgoers. Mayor Bloomberg has conceded that they'll look into 2-hour meters in some areas, but, of course, opponents are pulling for more. Democratic political consultant Howard Wolfson says, "Look, it does not rise to the level of citywide importance as education or the stadium. That being said, it is clearly important to many churchgoing New Yorkers...It becomes just another proof point that he's an out-of-touch billionaire." Mayor Koch says the Mayor needs to drive home the issue more (it's true, the Mayor does seem to have danced around it, while Ferrer and church leaders are sounding off to the press), and even some other politicians agree that the parking meter revenue has helped.