Results tagged “statesenatemajorityleaderjosephbruno”

In spite of the presence of a new governor, Albany politics has been as insanely frustrating as usual. And the NY Sun's year-end interviews with the top three lawmakers - Governor Eliot Spitzer, State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, and Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver - demonstrate why pretty much everyone sighs when they think of the capitol and state politicians.

Governor Spitzer may have been proud of not doing things the usual Albany way at the beginning of his term, but in the wake of Troopergate and other missteps, he's apparently desperate for support. So desperate that he's turned to lobbyists.

Well if it's not the driver's license issue that's plaguing Governor Spitzer, it's Troopergate and its fallout. Spitzer's former communications director Darren Dopp (pictured), who was faulted for at least co-devising a plan to smear Spitzer rival State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, may have perjured himself during an investigation and now the Albany County DA's office has opened an inquiry. Back in July, Dopp gave a sworn written statement to Attorney General Cuomo. But...

The NY Post has been claiming that Mayor Bloomberg is flirting with the idea of a gubernatorial run in 2010, and the Mayor keeps on denying it. After the latest "Governor Bloomberg" rumor offered by the Post, Mayor Bloomberg told reporters that the Post never contacted his office to confirm whether reports of him discussing plans with a GOP strategist were true: "I categorically will not run for governor." The Post, however, has an article...

Even though he has amended his plan to give illegal immigrants the opportunity to get driver's licenses, Governor Spitzer can't make everyone happy.

Yeah, it was too much to hope that the two of the most powerful men in Albany could put aside their differences and, uh, govern. Now, Governor Spitzer's aides are suggesting that State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno should pay income taxes on his many flights on state aircraft.

Governor Spitzer's campaign slogan was "Day 1, Everything Changes" but from the looks from this photo op at a memorial service for fallen NY State firefighters, things are politics as usual in Albany. The Post said this was the first time that Governor Spitzer and State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno have appeared together since the Troopergate incident where Spitzer aides were planning to smear Bruno by distributing information about his travel plans to the press. The Post says the event was "no love-fest...They did not directly interact beyond exchanging a brief handshake and 'good mornings' when they arrived."

It's turns out that a dirty tricks campaign - even if it's not quite criminal - can be pretty damaging. A new Quinnipiac poll shows that Governor Spitzer's approval rating has dropped to a new low of 47%. Of course, that's the low after nine months in office, so there's still room for improvement - or to find a new low.

Governor Spitzer can rest a bit easier now: The Albany County DA found that the governor's aides broke no laws when they tried to use the state police to discredit a rival, State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. DA David Soares will release a report today, but in the meantime, his spokeswoman's statement said, "This office found no illegal conduct. To the contrary, we found that the governor, his staff, and the New York State Police were acting within their authority in compiling and releasing documents to the media concerning the use of state aircraft."

Darren Dopp, Governor Spitzer's communications director who was faulted for at least co-devising a plan to smear State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno by way of State Police records, is planning on fighting a subpoena from the State Ethics Commission. The subpoena, which asks for Dopp's email that relates to the scandal (beginning January 1, 2007, Spitzer's first day, until a few days ago), is described as "very broad" by Dopp's lawyer Terrence Kindlon who told the NY Times, "It asks for a lot of information that isn’t really mine to give, including correspondence with ink-stained wretches [as in reporters!]. Prudence dictates that we ask a court to look at this and determine what is being legitimately requested.”

Reach out and touch someone - and get fired for it, possibly even if you didn't do the reaching out and touching. The nutty voicemail message left for Bernard Spitzer, father of Governor Spitzer, is reassuring everyone that it's just politics as usual in Albany. The elder Spitzer's lawyers believe that the call was made by GOP consultant Roger Stone, who was recently hired at $20,000/month by NY State Republican (he was consulting with Spitzer's rival, State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno).

Okay, we give up. The whole Governor Spitzer-Senate Republican animosity thing has become totally and utterly insane. Someone left a crazy message for Spitzer's father, the wealthy (and 83-year-old) real estate developer Bernard Spitzer. And call has been traced to the apartment of a GOP adviser to State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno!

This is a message for Bernard Spitzer. You will be subpoenaed to testify in front of the Senate committee on investigation on your shady campaign loans. You will be compelled by the Senate sergeant at arms, if you resist, you will be arrested and brought to Albany - and there's not a goddamn thing your phony, psycho piece of s--- son can do about it. Bernie, your phony loans are about to catch up with you. You will be forced to tell the truth. The fact that your son is a pathological liar will be known to all.

How did we miss this? Last week, City Hall News had an interview with State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and it included this photograph of Bruno boxing! Bruno is, of course, riding relatively high as Governor Spitzer's reputation is tainted in the wake of Troopergate, and Bruno can play the unwitting victim of Spitzer's aides dirty tricks plotting.

Something we did not realized happened on Sunday: Governor Eliot Spitzer attended a Nascar race in Watkins Glen, NY (the only NY State town that has a Nascar track, same town where the Farm Sanctuary is located) and was called "the best Jewish Nascar fan" by cable executive and race car driver Leo Hindery. The NY Times explains that his brother-in-law is an engineer at Hendrick Motorsports and that Hendrick driver Jeff Gordon is Spitzer's favorite.

The city and state have worked out their differences and will move forward on overhauling the 421-a tax abatement program for new development. The City Council had passed a version last year that would have increased the amount of affordable housing and limited how much of the subsidy could go towards luxury housing, but then the Legislature's version, passed in June, included more neighborhoods, more units available to people with even lower incomes, and $300 million in breaks to Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner Companies. The city wasn't sure about those additions and wanted changes.

Governor Spitzer's ethics woes went to the national stage yesterday when the Today show ran a segment (see it here) about the mess that included the on-screen caption "Spitzer Scandal." Sure, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office did not find any law-breaking by Spitzer's aides, just dirty tricks-ing by way of using the state police to discredit Spitzer's main Albany rival, State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.

Taking the offensive, Governor Eliot Spitzer said high and low that he's "happy to, going to, look forward to" testify to the State Ethics Commission's investigation, should they want his testimony. The Subdued Steamroller said, "If they call me, I'd love to, and even if they don't, I'd love to send them my statement just because this needs to be clarified and made perfectly clear." Is he taking Ed Koch's advice?

Earlier this month, the NY Times had an article about how Governor Spitzer seemed "defiant and chastened" about the battles he was having with State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. Now, after the Attorney General's office found that Spitzer's aides had been involved in a dirty-tricks attempt to smear Bruno by using State Police records, the NY Times reports the Spitzer is "at a loss for words" and that he will try to rebuild his image.

“This is going to be seen — and I understand it very clearly — it is going to be seen as more than a blemish,” Mr. Spitzer said in the interview, conducted in his Manhattan office. “My feeling is real loss, both substantively and from a perception perspective, about what we’re trying to do. The perception matters, not just because I’m worried about what’s the public perception of me, but because the perception about what we’re doing affects our capacity to do it.

Continue reading "Spitzer Rethinks the Whole Steamroller Thing"

Governor Eliot Spitzer's "ChopperGate" has more of a stink today: It turns out that two of his senior aides refused to speak with the Attorney General's office during the investigation. While the investigation ultimately found that Spitzer aides didn't technically break the law when they were trying to use State Police records to discredit State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, it makes it hard to believe Spitzer's assertion that his aides had cooperated fully with the AG's office.

Yesterday, Albany lawmakers failed to decide on the proposed congestion pricing program for New York City, missing the deadline for NYC to qualify for $537 million in federal funding. Congestion pricing revenue, as well as federal funding to enact the plan, would go towards mass transit and road improvements.

It's time for more fighting fun with Governor Eliot Spitzer and State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno! Last week, Newsday reported on how Bruno, a Republican, told the International Union of Operation Engineers, "Nobody said when they did the constitution and they did all of the amendments ... that you are going to have an executive who dictates, who runs everything and who steamrolls over everybody. By his own description he is a '-- steamroller,' OK? He got the first part right."

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a slashing on East 156th St. and Union Ave. in the Bronx, a missing patient on East 135th St. and Lenox Ave. in Manhattan, and a person under a subway train at Lenox Ave. and Central Park North in Manhattan.
• Being a Jew-hating Nazi in Brooklyn must be neverending work. One miserable person in Park Slope keeps slogging away though.
• The New York Public Library is opening its first new branch since 1989 and it's in an old candy factory in NoLiTa. We expect Roald Dahl will be forever on reserve.
• State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno is infatuated with the idea of Mayor Bloomberg assuming higher office. This week it's the Governor's office.
• The Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem is celebrating its 200th birthday with a pilgrimage to Ethiopia to commemorate the African seamen who obviated early colonial discrimination by opening their own church.
• This should make alternative-transportation advocates very happy: the city's new transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan commutes to work on a bike (at least for a photo-op this morning). We hope she's not killed in traffic before bike-friendly measures can be enacted.
• There are eight million stories in the naked city. This one's about watching a cop movie classic with the police commissioner.
• Three Staten Island teens attacked a 125-pound cancer survivor as the 56-year-old was walking home from his bus stop Saturday evening. No robbery; just a senseless beating.
• Jerry Falwell, who posited that New Yorkers and America in general brought the 9/11 attacks on themselves by being a bunch of godless sodomite heathens, was called home to Jesus today.

In the latest battle between Governor Eliot Spitzer and Assembly leader Sheldon Silver, the governor has said that legislators should disclose their outside income, something they are currently not required to do. The state Constitution classifies legislators as part-time representatives, allowing them to work outside their elective office. Silver has worked "of counsel" to the law firm of Weitz and Luxenberg for the past five years. The New York Post reports that Albany insiders believe Silver pulls in $300,000 a year from his law firm job in addition to his $121,000 salary as Assembly speaker.

We couldn't even get through Governor Spitzer's first month before a "showdown with Assembly Speaker Silver." State Democrats have been saying they feel betrayed - or, in the words of Manhattan Assemblyman Keith Wright to NY1, "totally, totally disrespected" - because the panel formed by Spitzer to select State Comptroller candidates didn't select any of their choices. State Democrats claim the panel was supposed to pick five candidates, including a Democratic Assemblyman interested in the job, but when the panel recommended three non-lawmaker candidates, all hell has broken loose. Spitzer claims the panel would choose up to five candidates, but now it looks like the Democrats will reject those Spitzer-approved candidates. We bet Alan Hevesi is smiling somewhere over this.

At any rate, it seems that Spitzer's no-nonsense, desire for ethical politics (ha!) is what most the state needs, the wake of a various revelations and scandals. At least, until the first Spitzer era screw-up. But you have to hand it to a Governor who runs a 2-mile mile in under 14 minutes to start off his term. The NY Times' Clyde Haberman looks at how Pataki's first inaugural speech 12 years ago sounded a lot like Spitzer's call for change and the Daily News' Errol Louis notices the display of diversity at the inaugural.

Here is part two of our semi-chronological look back at the top stories this past year (here is part one):

Today, the NY Post cover-stories the "sorry slide" of Rachel Bruno, the granddaughter of State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. Last week, she had been reported missing, only to turn up in Times Square with a man whose had tangled with the law over getting information about prostitution busts. While the Bruno family is keeping quiet, the Post talks to Rachel's boyfriend, Kyle Seitz. The two had been living together for about a month, until one he came home and found all of her things were gone.

She had left him before - cheated on him with men she'd met on MySpace, he said. But always locally.

Continue reading "Pol's Granddaughter Latched Onto MySpace"

There had been a few news reports about State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno's granddaughter being missing, starting last week. Yes, it's missing white girl season, but when the granddaughter of the guy who controls the State Senate goes missnig, you've got a movie plot at the very least. Earlier this week, Rachel Bruno finally emerged and called her mother, saying she was fine though the call sounded suspicious. Yesterday, the NYPD found her in Times Square, and the NYPD arrested the man they believe she was with. The NYPD didn't arrest John Savage for kidnapping Rachel Bruno, as the circumstances of their relationship were unclear, but they did arrest him for violating his probation (more on that later). It seems that the NY Post was alerted to a craigslist posting in Albany for "'Stephine,' who offered 'a pleasurable time' for '250 roses per half hour'" - and the photograph in the posting had a woman who looked like Rachel. So the Post contacted Senator Bruno's office, and the police jumped in, tracing Rachel's phone call to NYC (she used Savage's cellphone; the two left the Albany area after media attention that she was missing). She was taken back to her parents and Senator Bruno's office released a statement:

Rachel’s physical and emotional problems placed her in a dangerous and threatening situation, the outcome of which could have been much worse. This was compounded by her susceptibility to other harmful substances and dangerous influences, particularly those online, and people who use the Internet to prey on the vulnerable.

- Stephanie Adams' cabby says she's a vampire!

With the start of the 2006 calendar year weeks away, the wrangling for governor will be more earnest, but right now, the troubles are within the state's Republican party. New York magazine has a fun guide to GOP rivalries and backstabbing that helps elucidate the situation, though Ed Cox is nowhere to be seen (Cox is rumored to be another GOP choice, instead of Westchester DA Jeannine Pirro, to run against Hillary Clinton). The NY Times has a feature about Pataki's problems, with one anonymous Democrat suggesting that the state will be controlled by Democratic Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver and State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (a Republican!), which sounds scary to us.