GREEN GUILTY The guilty plea of Assemblyman Roger Green to petit larceny charges ends his legal troubles, but not his political ones. Given his admission that he claimed reimbursements from taxpayers for expenses he never incurred, the question being asked in political circles is no longer when Green will run for Congress. It's whether he'll even run for reelection this year. Technically he can, since he pleaded to only a misdemeanor. A felony would have forced him from office. Did he take the plea for that reason-so he could run again? Perhaps, but there were other reasons for him to want to stay at least through the end of his current term.

First, his pension vests when he turns 55 years old this summer. And second, he might want to get his son a job with the New Jersey Nets when Bruce Ratner assumes ownership of the team, insiders say. That should happen in a few months. Green is in a position to place people in jobs with Ratner because he supports the developer's $2.5 billion plan for an arena, housing, and office space in Prospect Heights. If Green doesn't run, who would? Probably a bunch of people. One certain candidate would be Hakeem Jeffries, who lost Democratic primaries to Green in 2000 and 2002.

"Green's admission of guilt is further evidence that Albany's a cesspool of corruption," Jeffries said. "The only way to change the government is to change the people who are governing." Jeffries said last year he was finished running against incumbents. But Green is now an incumbent with an asterisk, and the fine print says, "Pension about to vest. Tired of Albany, but ambitions for higher office dashed. May resign without warning." So we suspect Jeffries will gather petitions to make the 2004 ballot, just in case.

ARENA ANALYSIS: Opponents of Bruce Ratner's proposed Atlantic Yards basketball arena project distributed some propaganda in September countering the notion that sports facilities boost the local economy.

Among the quotes they cited was this one from a study co-authored by Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economics professor: "We and 15 collaborators examined the local economic development argument from all angles. In every case, the conclusions are the same. A new sports facility has an extremely small (perhaps even negative) effect on overall economic activity and employment. No recent facility appears to have earned anything approaching a reasonable return on investment."

The naysayers must have been shocked to learn that Zimbalist actually supports the project, and did so even before he had any inkling Ratner would hire him in early December to do some economic analysis of it.

"The main reason I've been supportive of this project-and I was supportive before Forest City Ratner asked me to help them with some economic projections-is not because of its potential to raise per-capita income or employment, but because it's wonderful for Brooklyn, for cultural enrichment, cultural identity, to restore something that has been robbed from Brooklyn. I think Brooklyn lost an important part of its heritage when [Walter] O'Malley moved the Dodgers.

"The idea of supporting a sports arena is similar to supporting a public park. You don't do it because it's going to raise per-capita income."

That said, Zimbalist believes the project (a 19,000-seat arena, 4,500 units of housing, 2.1 million square feet of office space, and 300,000 square feet of retail) would add a little money to the city treasury, unlike municipally financed sports facilities he's criticized in the past.

"The typical case is the public is spending hundreds of millions on a new arena and it's a net drain on the public coffers. Here there's a net plus," Zimbalist said. "Most new stadiums or new arenas create a hole in the budget. This is not going to do that." He added, "Whether the net plus is $2 million or $20 million (per year), it's still a small number. One would not say, 'Let's move the Nets to Brooklyn to help the local economy.'" Of course, many supporters are saying exactly that. They'd probably enhance their credibility by adopting Zimablist's more realistic point of view.

BANNEKER KIDS NOT PAWNS, RATNER SAYS The press event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music announcing the purchase of the Nets by Bruce Ratner was attended by children from Benjamin Banneker High School, which Assemblyman Roger Green loves to remind people he helped create. Because Green supports the Nets arena proposal for Brooklyn and also attended the press event, project opponents assumed the assemblyman orchestrated the Banneker kids' participation. "I have been really crushed by what he's doing, but that's the lowest of the low. He lent children to Bruce Ratner," one opponent said.

"Absolutely not," responded Barry Baum, a spokesman for the project. "That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. We reached out to kids at schools all over Brooklyn. Several students from Banneker High School came to this exciting event at BAM and we were thrilled to have them."

ORTIZ CUTS THE FAT Usually when politicians talk about cutting the fat, they're speaking of budgets. But Assemblyman Felix Ortiz means it literally. He knows Americans are too fat, and that the problem is best addressed in children, 20 percent of whom are overweight in New York. The problem is even more acute among Latinos, who make up 55 percent of his Sunset Park-Red Hook district. Ortiz's latest effort is a bill to require chain restaurants in New York to post nutrition information next to each menu item. Labeling is already required of foods sold in stores, so why not at restaurants? "Consumers should be informed about what they are going to eat," Ortiz told the Albany Times-Union.

His colleagues on the Assembly Health Committee agreed, approving his bill with one objection-by a Republican who felt it unfair to require some restaurants but not all to disclose what's in their food. Ortiz's bill applies only to eateries with five or more locations in New York.

NELSON IN LULU LAND Councilman Mike Nelson gets a $10,000 annual lulu for chairing the council's Revenue Forecasting Subcommittee, while Councilman Lew Fidler gets just $8,250 for chairing the Youth Services Committee. Why does a subcommittee chairman get more than a committee chairman? And why is Nelson's lulu $2,000 more than that of other subcommittee chairmen?

The answers: Fidler gets less because he asked for less when the city's fiscal crisis hit two years ago (he borrowed the idea from Speaker Gifford Miller, who allotted himself a lulu 25 percent smaller than that of the previous speaker, Peter Vallone). Nelson gets more because he has seniority, having joined the council in early 1999, while most of his colleagues took office in 2001. The same is true for Tracy Boyland, whose lulu as Women's Issues chairwoman is $15,000.

You might be wondering why Nelson, despite his seniority, doesn't chair a full committee. The reason is he's never been especially driven to do so. He might well not have even inherited his subcommittee chairmanship from the convicted Angel Rodriguez had Fidler not lobbied for his appointment (a favor that won't be repeated, since Nelson voted to oust Fidler as Brooklyn delegation chairman).

POLITICAL TIDBITS More than a year ago, the vending machine in the post office on 7th Avenue in Park Slope stole $14.40 from us. We filed a report. No response. We filed another report. No response. We filed a third report. No response. Detect a pattern here? And the U.S.P.S. wonders where the phrase "go postal" comes from…

A New York Post item about Republicans wooing black churches in Brooklyn suggested that former City Council candidate Tony Herbert is a Republican "leader." But the next sentence, introducing an opposing viewpoint from Councilman Charles Barron, read, "Other black leaders-some of whom have even won elections-disagreed." Ouch…

Rep. Anthony Weiner hasn't decided yet whether to run for mayor, but he's already ratcheting up the campaign rhetoric against Mike Bloomberg. "He's going to lose in '05," Weiner told the Daily News. "All of the visits to the boroughs in the world are not going to change the fact that there is almost a spiritual divide between [Bloomberg] and those that he's governing."

Brooklyn high schools on Mayor Mike Bloomberg's Dirty Dozen list of the most dangerous: Canarsie, South Shore, Franklin K. Lane, Sheepshead Bay, and Thomas Jefferson…

Brooklyn Democratic Party spokesman Bob Liff has been rumored to be advancing the potential candidacy of lawyer Arnie Kriss for Brooklyn D.A. But Liff told us he is not. He is simply friends with Kriss, whose law practice is in the same office suite as Liff's employer, George Arzt Communications…

A former parent leader from a brownstone-area school e-mailed us, "Unfortunately I am no longer involved with any parent organization for Region 8/District 15. The politics there was more influential than the desire to empower parents." Politics in a school district? Say it ain't so.

Contact Brooklyn Politics at (718) 399-3693.

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