After 11 days of deliberation, a jury announced today that it found former Bronx state Senator Pedro Espada, Jr. guilty of embezzling more than $600,000 from the Soundview Healthcare Center, which he founded and ran. He could receive up to 10 years in prison when sentenced. The jury was deadlocked on a verdict for Espada’s son, Pedro Gautier Espada, but was sent back by the judge to continue deliberating.
Archive | Bronx Politics RSS feed for this section
Kappy’s Back!
11 MayBob Kappstatter, the veteran Daily News bureau chief and gossip-loving political columnist, is back in the game after being downsized last year after 40+ years at the tabloid. Now the editor of the Bronx Times (owned by Rupert Murdoch like so many other outer-borough weeklies these days), here’s the second edition of his revived Boro Beat column (couldn’t locate the first one — maybe Rupert can help upgrade the site:-) Kappy was good enough to cool his heels in between gigs on Bronx Matters contributing a couple of juicy, exclusive items (here and here). We’re glad he’s back on the weekly hunt and shining his unique spotlight in Boogie Down’s back rooms.
Adolfo the Republican?
9 May
While running for Bronx borough president in 2001, Adolfo Carrion, Jr. joined a protest against the U.S. Navy bombing of Vieques Puerto Rico and landed in Brooklyn federal prison. It wasn’t a reliable indicator of his actions once he took office. (Photo: Jordan Moss/Norwood News)
By Jordan Moss
Is former Bronx Borough President Adolfo a Republican?
Seems absurd on the face of it, but Carrion invited speculation when choosing to not deny the possibility when asked by The New York Times last week if he would consider running for mayor as a Republican as some city bigshots are recommending. The Post had some more to say about it yesterday.
Carrion rose as a loyal member of the Bronx Democratic machine (who eventually tussled behind the scenes with party boss Jose Rivera after ascending to the borough’s top job).
He left in the midst of a second term to work for Democrat-in-Chief Barack Obama as the first director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs. He left in May 2010 to become a HUD regional director.
Hardly a typical Republican pedigree.
But some Carrion comments in February to Capital New York reporter Azi Paybarah sounded a bit like a Dem trying on some GOP training wheels.
On public housing:
Carrion, the former Bronx borough president who is eying a run for Congress or citywide office, also sought to distinguish himself from “the noise on the left” when it came to public housing.
In the same interview last week, he told me, “The whole notion of subsidy is that you’re in a financial difficulty, and the intent was never that you create permanency.”
Carrion stressed that he was committed to helping the elderly, veterans and families that “have a set of circumstances that will require them to stay” in subsidized housing.
“But the notion that able-bodied people who ultimately can go to work are being fully subsidized for their entire lives, I just think it kills the spirit of reaching for opportunities that we want in every single American,” Carrion said. “And you know, that sort of lifts me out of the noise of the left.”
On paying retail workers more:
“When I left the borough presidency, the project was ready to go,” Carrion said, speaking about [the] Kingsbridge [Armory]. “And my successor, who I think is doing a good job representing the Bronx, decided that this was an important issue, that he should try to carve out a deal for the workers. The problem with that was always that there is no precedent that I know of, of national retailers carving out special wages for markets around the country.”
Carrion, who is an urban planner by training, said it’s not realistic to demand retail stores pay workers salaries that enable them to lead their household.
“I think what they do generally is they pay a rate that is whatever the market will absorb and with the understanding that retail jobs go to relatively young people, semi-retired people, students; that they are not really career positions,” said Carrion. “You don’t grow up in Kingsbridge and aspire to be a retail worker at, you know, Modell’s. You just, you know, you don’t.”
He said, “You do it as a way to complement your family’s income as a participant in that household, as a student, as a young person, or because you’re transitioning out of a difficult situation. Temporary, in a bigger sense of the word.”
Carrion almost never lines up in front of or alongside pushes from the grassroots, as say his successor, Ruben Diaz, Jr. did in championing the Living Wage efforts of community activists and unions or as a young assemblyman taking a lead in demanding police accountability following the killing of Amadou Diallo. Carrion did get arrested for protesting the Navy bombing of Vieques while he was first running for borough president, along with Rivera, but following that early aberration he mostly favored backing corporations taking on big controversial development projects — like Yankee Stadium and the Related Companies’ Gateway Mall — which received significant public subsidies.
But still, a Puerto Rican Bronx Democrat turned Republican? It’s happened before. The first Puerto Rican borough president, Herman Badillo, did become a Republican, but only very late in his career when he sought the Republican nomination against Mike Bloomberg. So, while not unprecedented, not too successful either.
But some political consultants see a potential opening, maybe because candidates running as Republicans have now ruled the Big Apple for almost 20 consecutive years.
“There is a space for an Hispanic to run for some citywide office,” veteran political consultant Jerry Skurnik told the New York Post. “If Bloomberg could run as a Republican, why can’t he?”
No Pork for Embattled Seabrook
4 May
Council Member Larry Seabrook
Council Member Larry Seabrook, the Wakefield lawmaker who is scheduled for a second corruption trialfollowing a hung jury in the first one last fall, won’t be getting his hands on the usual discretionary dough that local legislators dole out to nonprofits of their choice.
The New York Post reports that, in light of the charges that Seabrook funneled $1 million to nonprofits he controlled and siphoned some of it for himself and family members, he and Council Speaker Christine Quinn came to an agreement that she and the Bronx delegation delegation chair Annabel Palma would decide which nonprofits in Seabrook’s district to allocate the money to.
‘Best’ Living Wage Law Is in San Jose
30 AprThe long debated and delayed living wage legislation, emanating from an epic land use battle at the Kingsbridge Armory, is coming to a vote today.
A press release drafted by the retail workers union and the Living Wage NYC Coalition, which we received from Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr.’s office yesterday, states: “Culminating an historic two-year campaign that created a citywide living wage movement that sets the standards for nationwide policies, the final Living Wage Bill will be voted on by the New York City Council at the stated meeting this coming Monday.”
The ” sets-the-standards” language is consistent with Diaz and his staff repeatedly reffering to the legislation as the “best” in the country.
The Council legislation here initially affected retailers in developments receiving taxpayer subsidies. But it was eventually gutted to only include employees of the developer and then further whittled down by Council Speaker Christine Quinn exempting workers at a massive development on the west side of Manhattan. Estimates now indicate that about 400 workers will benefit from the NYC legislation and only if the Council can override the mayor’s vowed veto.
As far as we know, only Riverdale Press reporter Adam Wisnieski has bothered to check out the claim that this bill is the “best” in the land. He found that through a 1998 law in San Jose, more workers receive higher pay in a city about an eighth the size of NYC.
Approximately 600 workers were affected in San Jose, a city with less than 1 million people when a living wage law was passed in 1998, according to a study on living wage by the University of Washington. The subsidy threshold is lower than what will be required to trigger the law New York. The definition of “living wage” also changes with the cost of living.
Right now, any developer receiving $100,000 or more in taxpayer subsides in San Jose is required to pay $13.59 per hour with health benefits or $14.84 per hour without benefits, according to the city’s website.
Compare that to New York’s $1 million subsidy threshold and requirement to pay $10 per hour with benefits and $11.50 without, and San Jose has a stronger living wage bill than New York.
And, arguably, a measure in Los Angeles bests the bill here as well, Wisnieski reports.
Is Living Wage Measure a Soviet Plot?
20 AprCommenting on the living wage legislation he vociferously opposes — even the ultra-watered-down kind now making it through the City Council — Mayor Bloomberg said on his radio show recently: “The last time we really had a big managed economy was the USSR, and that didn’t work out so well.”
So, is that a worthy comparison in any way? City Limits wondered about this, talked to some actual Soviet experts, and filed this report.
Kappstatter Nabs New Gig Editing Bronx Times
20 AprFrom the Facebook page of former Daily News Bronx Bureau Chief and must-read political columnist Bob Kappstatter …
Okay, it looks like the cat’s out of the bag before the official press release.
Yes, I am now the editor of the Bronx Times and the Bronx Times-Reporter, two weekly newspapers and their website covering a major swath of the Bronx, and part of Rupert Murdoch’s group of metro area weeklies.
Basically, I’ll be doing what I did for 16 years as Daily News Bronx bureau chief, and working with a great staff to make the papers and their website dazzle and be a prime read.
Founder and Publisher John Collazzi will now focus more on the business side while I have my fun on the editorial side.
And look for the old political/gossip column fairly soon, after I get settled moving in.
Goodbye Mort Zuckerman, hello Rupert Murdoch.
Kappy wrote a couple of terrrific columns for Bronx Matters during the interlude. We’ll miss him here but glad we’ll be reading a lot more of him soon.
-Jordan Moss
Dominican Prez Candidate Resurrects Obama ‘Birther’ Issue at Bronx Hispanic Clergy Confab
18 AprBy Bob Kappstatter
Whoopsie Diaz!
The ever-controversial (and lovin’ it) Bronx state senator and Pentecostal minister Ruben (The Rev) Diaz Sr. —along with a host of city and state Dominican-American politicians — has laughed himself into the President Obama “birther” controversy.
Those electeds may have some ‘splainin’ to do over their lack of protest after the audience at a luncheon meeting of Diaz’ Hispanic clergy organization erupted in loud and long laughter after former Dominican Republic President Hipolito Mejia joked about Obama’s supposed African birthroots.
Mejia, one of two current presidential candidates courting local Dominican voters for the May 20 election , was caught on video in his opening remarks at the April 4 meeting of Diaz’ New York Hispanic Clergy Organization joking that “If Obama who came from Africa and grew up over there can become the President, why can’t any of you reach as high considering you have a more amusing [ethnic] mix than Obama’s?”
While Diaz is shown roaring with laughter along with the rest of the audience, Mejia’s comment has been roundly condemned on the island nation, with 31 of its 32 senators there sending a letter of apology to President Obama.
But as for local city and state electeds at the luncheon, they’ve so far apparently remained silent in condemning the remark – and the response from the politically powerful Diaz and the roomful of conservative Hispanic preachers – whose congregations represent a strong voting bloc.
That includes upper Manhattan state Sen. Adriano Espaillat, who’s challenging Rep. Charlie Rangel in a newly redrawn district taking in Espaillat’s district and a newly-added, heavily Dominican western swath of the Bronx.
Also among fellow elected Dominican-Americans in the audience were northern Manhattan City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez and Assemblyman Guillermo Linares, Bronx Councilmember Fernando Cabrera (who’s half Puerto Rican), Assemblymen Marcos Crespo and Nelson Castro and Castro’s female district leader Yudelka Tapia.
Mejia, who has The Rev’s endorsement, also told the group that as president he would never allow gays to marry or weaken the island’s strict anti-abortion laws. Diaz, a conservative-leaning Democrat, fought bitterly against the state legislature’s approval of same-sex marriage and has led a number of anti-abortion protests.
While the story apparently hasn’t made any ink in the English-language media, it showed up on a local blog with the video.
It also showed up in an email sent out on Monday by Bronx political player and former Obama campaign operative Haile Rivera, who called on Mejia to personally apologize to Obama.
We tried in vain all day Tuesday to connect with Diaz, who was in Albany.
If we had, we’d hoped to also bring up an interesting sidenote.
The Rev has been denying for a number of years a persistent rumor that he was really born in the Dominican Republic and not in Puerto Rico.
But we’re sure he can easily clear the issue up, by producing his birth certificate ….
Bob Kappstatter, the former long-time Bronx Bureau Chief and columnist for the Daily News, is an occasional contributor to Bronx Matters.
Bronx Matters 