Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
CITYTIME GATE-MARK PAGE'S WATERLOO ?
Behind Troubled City Payroll Project, Lax Oversight and One Powerful Insider
By DAVID W. CHEN, SERGE F. KOVALESKI and JOHN ELIGON
Published: March 27, 2011 NY TIMES
It was supposed to create an efficient system that would be the envy of mayors everywhere, bringing new accountability to city government and cracking down on public workers who tried to pad their paychecks with undeserved overtime.But the payroll automation project, known as CityTime, has instead become a major embarrassment for the Bloomberg administration, first ballooning to $700 million and then resulting in federal criminal charges and multiple investigations that could dog the mayor for years.Last week, Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith declared what had become obvious: the city cannot rely on outside consultants to monitor multimillion-dollar technology contracts, which it had done with CityTime. He added that the city would create a new office inside City Hall to do so.An examination of the events that led to the CityTime scandal reveals lax oversight, mismanagement and a basic failure to control costs.It also showed that much of the fervent drive to install the system could be traced to the determination of one powerful administration insider: the budget director, Mark Page.Mr. Page, 62, a numbers cruncher who had become frustrated and distrustful of city workers, saw the new system as a way to address the chronic and costly problem of police officers’ and firefighters’ receiving more overtime at the end of their careers to increase their pensions.He also wanted to limit litigation, now estimated at several million dollars a year, from employees who claimed, under the Fair Labor Standards Act, that they were being shortchanged in their paychecks.Mr. Page, a lawyer, had little familiarity with technology, but he believed CityTime would curb timekeeping abuses and save the city tens of millions annually. So, wielding his power over agency budgets, he persuaded reluctant commissioners to adopt CityTime. And, brushing aside criticism, he insisted year after year that the project was inching closer to completion.“Nobody was enthusiastic about CityTime,” said one former high-ranking Bloomberg administration official who, like most people interviewed, insisted on anonymity because the investigation was continuing. “Our take was that CityTime was long and troubled, but that it had a champion, and that champion was Mark Page.”===============================================Or how Mark Page blew 700 million dollars plus and still has a job.Before there was the "Oracle at Delphi" there was Count Vampire J. MachiavelliVJ Machiavelli
Sunday, March 20, 2011
NYC COUNCILGATE - HERE WE COME
Dirty little secrets: City Council members have skirted laws, bent rules and abused their power
Sunday, March 20th 2011, 4:00 AM
More than a dozen City Council members have skirted laws, bent rules or used their positions to benefit themselves, a Daily News probe has found.
A three-month investigation found Council members who dodged taxes, violated the city's housing and building code, circumvented regulations to get cheap housing and, in one case, even ignored criminal bench warrants.
As part of the probe, The News reviewed thousands of pages of records regarding judgments, liens, tax history, property ownership, building and housing code violations, campaign finance and financial disclosure.
And while the Council's 51 members - one of whom is under indictment - routinely make laws on everything from smoking in public to recycling trash, The News found many have a history of ignoring the letter of the law.
Confronted by the News, several Council members admitted they'd made mistakes in judgment and promised to rectify them.
"There is no excuse," said one.
"To me, my integrity means a lot," said another.
Among the findings, to be detailed in The News over three days:
(MORE)===============================================================================
Queens city councilman Ruben Wills acknowledges outstanding arrest warrants
Sunday, March 20th 2011, 4:00 AM
City councilman Ruben Wills boasts an impressive do-gooder resume: founding a basketball league for neighborhood youth, running a nonprofit group to help single mothers.
What he doesn't mention is that he has two outstanding arrest warrants for pending criminal cases, a Daily News investigation has found.
Or that he's a deadbeat dad who faces a civil warrant for nonpayment of child support. State tax officials said as of Feb.7, he owed $27,493.
Saturday, Wills admitted he was aware of the two outstanding criminal bench warrants on cases in Manhattan and Long Island that date back several years, and apologized for not addressing them before being elected to serve his district.
"There is no excuse," he wrote in an email response to the News. "While these events are more than 10 years old, I take full responsibility and I have taken steps to remedy the situation."
Last fall, Wills, 39, beat out a crowded field to win the office held by the late Thomas White, which represents a large working-class swath of Jamaica, Queens.
On his Council website biography, he says he became an "entrepreneur" at 21, starting "a home contracting business which became a center of opportunity for young adults, the formerly incarcerated, and other at-risk residents of the community to acquire the job skills necessary to escape the vicious cycle of poverty and prison."
(MORE)==============================================================================Rushing to the rescue when the mayor failed to convene a commission on politicians' pay
Sunday, March 20th 2011, 4:00 AM
It just so happened that the Daily News was digging into unsavory doings on the City Council just as Mayor Bloomberg was supposed to be reviewing whether to support raises for the city's elected officials.
The first installment of The News' investigative report appears in today's paper with the revelation that, with remarkable brass and ingenuity, more than a dozen Council members have enjoyed both writing laws and skirting them.
Today the special focus is on Councilman Ruben Wills. Elected last fall to represent southeast Queens, Wills is the subject of two misdemeanor bench warrants and listed by state tax authorities as a $27,493 deadbeat dad.
More shmutz, and perhaps handcuffs, to come.
(MORE)===============================================================================
You wanted more scandals and "GATES" you got it.
Before there was the "Oracle at Delphi" there was Count Vampire J. Machiavelli
VJ Machiavelli
HAGGERTYGATE EATS ON BLOOMBERG'S DIME
'Fraudster' dines on Mike dime
Last Updated: 8:04 AM, March 19, 2011
Posted: 12:12 AM, March 19, 2011
Before one of his trusted political aides was accused of being a crook, Mayor Bloomberg gave him $120,000 to open his own political committee -- which he's now using to dine out at the mayor's expense while under indictment.
Filings at the state Board of Elections show that political operative John Haggerty Jr. tapped funds from the 28th Assembly District Republican Committee to chow down 13 times between last Nov. 23 and Jan. 10.
The meals weren't lavish. Together, the bills came to $636.97.
A couple of weeks after narrowly being re-elected to a third term in 2009, the mayor donated $120,000 to a political committee Haggerty set up out of his home in Forest Hills, Queens.
=======================================================
Bloomy's 'swindler' slammedNew York Post - Laura Italiano - 4 days ago Accused campaign-cash crook John Haggerty failed yesterday to convince a judge to toss his charges, instead earning a judicial scolding ...
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WELCOME TO HUNTLEYGATE
The AG shows sense
New York Post - EDITORIAL
Is Attorney General Eric Schneiderman taking tips from The Post? Sure seems like it — and kudos to him.
The AG has issued subpoenas to two dubious Queens nonprofits — both tied to state Sen. Shirley Huntley — that were the subject of recent stories in the Sunday Post.
Neither group managed to give a clear accounting of its spending.
Huntley founded one group, The Parent Workshop — meant, ostensibly, to help parents navigate school bureaucracy — just months before she was first elected in 2006. Its ex-president now has an $85,000 job as her “confidential assistant.”
Once in office, as The Post reported, Huntley promptly snared a legislative “member item” to funnel $30,000 to the group, which went to two consultants — one of whom resided in a Huntley home.
Watchdogs in the Senate fortunately managed to red-flag another $125,000 before any of that cash made it out the door.
The AG also subpoenaed a similar nonprofit, the Parent Information Network. That one’s run by Huntley’s daughter Pamela Corley (natch!) and got more than $400,000 in state funds between 1996 and 2008 — thanks notably to Huntley and her pal, Assemblywoman Vivian Cook.
MEET THE KRUGERGATE FAMILY ?
A Senator’s Shadow Family
NY Times By MICHAEL BARBARO, ALISON LEIGH COWAN and ASHLEY PARKER
Published: March 19, 2011
EVEN in a city that celebrates unbridled ostentation, the sprawling estate at 139 Bassett Avenue in the seaside enclave of Mill Basin, Brooklyn, seems to redefine conspicuous consumption.
The front yard is a gaudy stab at Versailles, with four-foot obelisks at each corner of the driveway, intricately tiled fountains and a series of steel sculptures that depict dolphins mid-dive, children at play and birds in flight. The 7,000-square-foot home, whose aesthetic is cruise-ship-meets-mob-mansion, has five terraces, a curved-glass elevator and an arcade room outfitted with gumball machines. On the second floor, there is what the residents call their “ice cream room,” furnished with an old-fashioned counter and soda fountain.Creating this eclectic palace was a huge mess. There were bitter legal disputes with contractors. Neighbors filed numerous complaints with the city’s Buildings Departmentquestioning whether there were proper permits. At one point, a police officer moonlighting as a steeplejack fell and injured his spine when the flagpole he had been hired to fix cracked. The house is owned by two never-married middle-aged brothers, Drs. Michael S. and Gerard I. Turano, gynecologists whose 39-foot yacht, Special Delivery, is often docked out back. They live there with their mother, Dorothy, 73, a Brooklyn native who manages the local community board.But the person who oversaw the construction — and browbeat the contractors — is State Senator Carl Kruger, an Albany power broker and Democratic moneyman whose official residence is at his sister’s, two miles away.The tangled ties among Mr. Kruger, the doctors and their mother — long a topic of gossip and speculation in the insular neighborhood and nearby political precincts — were thrust into view this month when the senator and the older Turano brother were among eight men charged in what the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York described as “a broad-based bribery racket.”For more than 25 years, Mr. Kruger and the Turanos of Mill Basin have forged the most unconventional of domestic arrangements — at once public and opaque, widely whispered about and poorly understood.The Turanos are variously described by friends, neighbors and colleagues as the senator’s social acquaintances, lovers or surrogate relatives. In 2002, Michael Turano testified that Mr. Kruger was his “best friend.” Benjamin Brafman, Mr. Kruger’s lawyer, says the senator “often describes the Turanos as his family,” though in depositions Mr. Kruger has understated how long he has known them and how frequently he visited their home.(A process server testified that he saw Mr. Kruger at the Bassett Avenue home, on several occasions, “in his pajamas coming out of a bedroom.”)Investigators, who tapped the senator’s cellphone for months, have both muddied and clarified the situation, suggesting that Mr. Kruger, 61, had his most intimate relationship with Michael, 49, picking him up at the office and fielding phone calls from him throughout the day. “Kruger spoke with Michael Turano,” court records say, “in a manner that revealed that they relied on and supported one another.”But when asked whether Mr. Kruger was a close friend of her son, Ms. Turano, through the security intercom at her front door, said: “He was my friend. That’s why I don’t understand about this. Whatever comes out is going to be so wrong.”In the days since the criminal complaint was filed on March 10, the four central characters in this drama have declined to talk extensively to reporters. But interviews with two dozen people who know them, along with previously undisclosed court and city records, reveal a strange symbiosis. Mr. Kruger vaulted the Turanos into his spheres of power and influence, prosecutors say, landing Dorothy a plum job and, later, funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars into her sons’ bank accounts to finance a $200,000 Bentley and pay down a $1.2 million mortgage.======================================================================================================
WHAT CAN ONE SAY OTHER THAN JUST KEEP FOLLOWING THE MONEY
BEFORE THERE WS THE "ORCALE AT DELPHI" THERE WAS COUNT VAMPIRE J MACHIAVELLI
VJ MACHIAVELLI
By MICHAEL BARBARO, ALISON LEIGH COWAN and ASHLEY PARKER
Published: March 19, 2011
The front yard is a gaudy stab at Versailles, with four-foot obelisks at each corner of the driveway, intricately tiled fountains and a series of steel sculptures that depict dolphins mid-dive, children at play and birds in flight. The 7,000-square-foot home, whose aesthetic is cruise-ship-meets-mob-mansion, has five terraces, a curved-glass elevator and an arcade room outfitted with gumball machines. On the second floor, there is what the residents call their “ice cream room,” furnished with an old-fashioned counter and soda fountain.
Creating this eclectic palace was a huge mess. There were bitter legal disputes with contractors. Neighbors filed numerous complaints with the city’s Buildings Departmentquestioning whether there were proper permits. At one point, a police officer moonlighting as a steeplejack fell and injured his spine when the flagpole he had been hired to fix cracked. The house is owned by two never-married middle-aged brothers, Drs. Michael S. and Gerard I. Turano, gynecologists whose 39-foot yacht, Special Delivery, is often docked out back. They live there with their mother, Dorothy, 73, a Brooklyn native who manages the local community board.
But the person who oversaw the construction — and browbeat the contractors — is State Senator Carl Kruger, an Albany power broker and Democratic moneyman whose official residence is at his sister’s, two miles away.
The tangled ties among Mr. Kruger, the doctors and their mother — long a topic of gossip and speculation in the insular neighborhood and nearby political precincts — were thrust into view this month when the senator and the older Turano brother were among eight men charged in what the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York described as “a broad-based bribery racket.”
For more than 25 years, Mr. Kruger and the Turanos of Mill Basin have forged the most unconventional of domestic arrangements — at once public and opaque, widely whispered about and poorly understood.
The Turanos are variously described by friends, neighbors and colleagues as the senator’s social acquaintances, lovers or surrogate relatives.
In 2002, Michael Turano testified that Mr. Kruger was his “best friend.” Benjamin Brafman, Mr. Kruger’s lawyer, says the senator “often describes the Turanos as his family,” though in depositions Mr. Kruger has understated how long he has known them and how frequently he visited their home.
(A process server testified that he saw Mr. Kruger at the Bassett Avenue home, on several occasions, “in his pajamas coming out of a bedroom.”)
Investigators, who tapped the senator’s cellphone for months, have both muddied and clarified the situation, suggesting that Mr. Kruger, 61, had his most intimate relationship with Michael, 49, picking him up at the office and fielding phone calls from him throughout the day. “Kruger spoke with Michael Turano,” court records say, “in a manner that revealed that they relied on and supported one another.”
But when asked whether Mr. Kruger was a close friend of her son, Ms. Turano, through the security intercom at her front door, said: “He was my friend. That’s why I don’t understand about this. Whatever comes out is going to be so wrong.”
In the days since the criminal complaint was filed on March 10, the four central characters in this drama have declined to talk extensively to reporters. But interviews with two dozen people who know them, along with previously undisclosed court and city records, reveal a strange symbiosis. Mr. Kruger vaulted the Turanos into his spheres of power and influence, prosecutors say, landing Dorothy a plum job and, later, funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars into her sons’ bank accounts to finance a $200,000 Bentley and pay down a $1.2 million mortgage.
======================================================================================================
WHAT CAN ONE SAY OTHER THAN JUST KEEP FOLLOWING THE MONEY
BEFORE THERE WS THE "ORCALE AT DELPHI" THERE WAS COUNT VAMPIRE J MACHIAVELLI
VJ MACHIAVELLI
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
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