POLS WOULD DENY RAPE VICTIMS Two Brooklyn councilmen voted against three bills to help victims of rape, and other women, get emergency contraception. The most surprising of the votes cast by Simcha Felder and Jim Oddo came against a bill requiring hospitals that contract with the city to inform rape victims that emergency contraception is available and to offer it if requested.

On its face, the vote appears to indicate Felder and Oddo believe fate alone should determine whether a rape causes a pregnancy. It's a position most politicians would quickly abandon if, heaven forbid, their own teenage daughters were raped by some depraved sicko. Emergency contraception-a cocktail of birth control pills that can prevent pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of intercourse-has nothing to do with abortion, its advocates contend. Yet some ultra-conservative politicians treat it similarly.

Only two other councilmembers joined Felder (whose district includes Borough Park) and Oddo (who represents Bensonhurst) in voting no. Forty voted yes. For good measure, Felder and Oddo voted against bills requiring pharmacies that refuse to carry emergency contraception to post signs indicating as much, and to require Health Department clinics to offer it. Felder declined to comment on his vote. Oddo didn't call us back.

POLITICS IS "BOONE" FOR WILLIAM Sources tell us William H. Boone III tends to be retained as a paid consultant by campaigns supported by the Brooklyn Democratic organization, a/k/a County. For example, we're told he got $9,000 from losing Civil Court candidates Karen Yellen and Marcia Sikowitz. "I heard that to get the endorsements of County, both of them had to pay up," our source said. "Boone is taking the role that (State Senator) Carl Andrews used to have-the bag man role."

Boone also received a total of $4,750 from the campaigns of Ruth Messinger, Alan Hevesi, and Jeannette Gadson. Boone made out better than the five candidates he worked for. They all lost.

WHEN A VOLUNTEER ISN'T Perhaps we shouldn't have singled out Sharon Sanders for "voluntarily" doing campaign work for Assemblyman Roger Green. This business of elected officials' employees "volunteering" for their bosses' campaigns may be more prevalent than we thought.

In the course of skimming over State Senator Seymour Lachman's campaign expenditures, we noticed that his campaign spokeswoman Tamara Boorstein received a few reimbursements but no wages. Since elected officials can't assign campaign work to staff members, we asked Boorstein about her arrangement. She replied, "In my case, as in others who work for an elected official, I also volunteered for my senator's campaign. Employees of elected officials often do this, for obvious reasons." (Side note: the obvious reason is to help them get reelected, thus saving the staffers' jobs.) Boorstein continued, "As a communications person working for an elected official, I am sensitive to differentiating between time worked on senate-related matters and volunteering for the campaign. As long as I am on my own time, volunteering (despite my Senate staff status) is perfectly appropriate."

Well, there's nothing illegal about it. But what's troubling is the possibility that some elected officials expect their employees to "volunteer" for their campaigns, and somehow make that known to them. To eliminate the appearance of that, politicians should not allow their taxpayer-funded staffers to simultaneously do unpaid campaign work. Employees who want to work on their bosses' campaigns should take a leave of absence from their jobs.

Many do, in fact. But obviously not all.

MILLMAN LONELY AT LUNCHEON The annual luncheon honoring Prospect Park volunteers generally attracts a bevy of politicians. But this year's event drew just one, Assemblywoman Joan Millman. Borough President Marty Markowitz had a conflict and sent a representative. Perhaps more elected officials would have turned out had luncheon organizers leased a minivan and offered them free rides.

NYDIA 'N' NELLIE An item in Crain's Insider about a possible challenge of Councilman Erik Dilan by former State Senator Nellie Santiago noted that Dilan is backed by Assemblyman Vito Lopez while Santiago is supported by Rep. Nydia Velazquez.

We asked Velazquez's press secretary if the congresswoman really does support Santiago. "The (only) person Congresswoman Velazquez campaigned (for) and supported last election cycle was Judge Margarita Lopez Torres," came the reply. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of Santiago, eh?

LOOK FOR THE UNION LABEL Remember the old jingle for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union? Rep. Ed Towns didn't, at least when invitations for his March 7 event at Gage & Tollner restaurant were printed. The absence of a union label indicated a non-union outfit handled the job. "Most elected officials make sure that their political mailings are printed at companies with union contracts-especially if they want support from unions," commented the astute observer who brought this to our attention.

Towns's people were surprised at the news. "Thanks for letting us know," chief of staff Karen Johnson e-mailed us. "This particular breakfast was arranged by one dozen local residents who were not aware of the political sensitivity of the subject. Once again, thank you for notifying us." Glad to be of service.

GENTILE LIVID AS VOTES ARE COUNTED At press time, the winner of the council race in Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, and Dyker Heights was undetermined. But we know for sure that former State Senator Vinny Gentile's people were livid that fellow Democrats Steve Harrison and Carlo Scissura stayed in the race, since the only possible effect of their candidacies was to win the election for Rosemarie O'Keefe, the lone Republican running.

Gentile's campaign didn't blame Democrat Joanne Seminara for running, since she got a respectable 26 percent of the vote, not far behind the 30 percent gained by Gentile and O'Keefe. But Harrison and Scissura combined for a pathetic 14 percent, proof that they never had a chance, as most observers suspected from the beginning. Had either one bowed out, Gentile would have won handily.

Of Scissura, who finished last, Gentile campaign aide Elnatan Rudolph said, "The only reason he was in the race was to hurt Vinny Gentile." Scissura's and Harrison's exercise in ego enhancement also cost city taxpayers more than $140,000 in public financing of their campaigns. That means we all paid about $100 for each vote they received. Can you think of better ways to spend $140,000?

A cynic would say it's hypocrisy for no-hope candidates to accept $140,000 in taxpayer money to finance their fantasies while they campaign against a property tax increase. But we won't say that. We certainly don't want to be considered cynical.

READER'S IRE RAISED Our item about Bay Ridge council candidate Rosemarie O'Keefe's special election party name, No New Taxes, drew a complaint from reader Bill McCabe. "I've longtime been a fan of your column, although I really was quite disgusted about how you got on Rosemarie O'Keefe's case," McCabe said on our answering machine. "I understand you can be a little snippy, but to suggest that she rename her party 'No New Taxes, Even if it Means You Might Be Mugged, Raped, or Killed,' I think it's a little bit overboard." He added, "Why are you picking on Rosemarie? It doesn't seem fair." Duly noted.

To clarify, our issue was with O'Keefe choosing a party name that seems more a simplistic appeal for votes than a sensible policy agenda, given that new taxes likely played a role in increasing public safety during the administration of O'Keefe's former boss, Rudy Giuliani.

Also, while that item focused on O'Keefe, to suggest that we are "picking on" her is to ignore our coverage of her two main competitors in the race, Vinny Gentile and Joanne Seminara, who don't figure to be sending us flowers and chocolates any time soon.

BIKE RACK 146 YEARS IN THE WORKS Two men who biked to a recent meeting at Litchfield Villa, the Brooklyn headquarters of the Department of Parks and Recreation, looked in vain for a bicycle rack before shackling their rides to a wooden railing. It turns out that the mansion doesn't have a bike rack-an ironic oversight by a department with "recreation" in its name. Even when the Department of Transportation was promoting its CityRacks program and practically begging for bike rack requests, no one at Litchfield Villa arranged for one. (Bikes can be lugged into the building without objection.)

Fortunately, visitors to the villa, built in 1857, won't have to wait 146 more years for a bike rack. The department expects to install one after renovation of the building is complete. Bike racks, long an afterthought of planners, are becoming common, but only very slowly. For example, the downtown Brooklyn shopping complex Atlantic Center, built despite criticism that it would attract too many cars, was inexplicably without a bike rack for the better part of a decade. One was finally installed late last year.

The tennis courts in Fort Greene Park, reconstructed about 10 years ago, also recently got their first bike racks. So did the Parade Grounds courts. Strangely, while obvious locations for bike racks go ignored, racks have been turning up where they're least needed-on city sidewalks alongside parking meters, which serve the same purpose.

LACHMAN TO TAKE ON ALBANY We hear that State Senator Seymour Lachman is planning to push for reform of one of Albany's more shameful practices: the chummy, undemocratic way that discretionary money is distributed. The spigot for discretionary money is controlled by Republicans in the Senate and Democrats in the Assembly, so districts with Republican senators and Democratic assemblymembers get more cash. The powers that be see no problem with allocating taxpayers' money based on politics rather than need. Why? It helps keep them in power.

Lachman can't be happy that his neighboring senator, Republican Marty Golden, gets bags full of greenbacks to hand out while the Democrat Lachman pitches nickels, relatively speaking. But the issue Lachman will raise concerns the secrecy of the money trail. Information about the discretionary money (also called member items) each legislator gets is nearly impossible to come by. It's all buried in state budget documents, untraceable to the legislators who disbursed it. "Senator Lachman feels very strongly about the lack of transparency with discretionary funding in state government," the senator's press person e-mailed us. "He intends to make this position a focus for reform in the legislature this year."

Good luck to him. He will certainly need it.

CATCHING UP WITH DAN FELDMAN Given the madness that ensues every time a political seat opens up, with candidates emerging from every nook and cranny, it's always surprising when someone voluntarily leaves office. But that's just what Dan Feldman did in 1998 after 18 years representing Sheepshead Bay in the Assembly.

Technically, he quit to run for the congressional seat Chuck Schumer forsook to run for Senate, but Feldman likely knew he was a heavy underdog in that race. It was clear that Feldman, who lost the Democratic primary to Anthony Weiner, had had enough of Albany. "I'd been in for 18 years," Feldman told us, referring to the Legislature the way ex-cons refer to the pen.

"It was a long time. I needed a change of some sort." Feldman said of his Assembly position, "At the time, I liked it a lot." But he added, "Now, I realize what I'd been missing all those years."

Which was what? "Well, having a life." Nearly two decades of running from meeting to meeting-days, nights, and weekends-had taken its toll. "You're always on call," he said. "Any moment that you're not devoting to it, you're sort of falling down on the job. When you're free of that, it's amazingly liberating."

Feldman is 53 now, a higher-up in the Manhattan office of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Also in his unit (called Legal Policy and Program Development) is Mindy Bockstein, his chief legislative aide for 14 years in the Assembly. In his new job, Feldman helped stop a scandal at Andrew Cuomo's Department of Housing and Urban Development in which HUD guaranteed bad building-improvement loans, only to see crooked non-profits steal the money instead of spending it for repairs. A good deal of restitution was paid after Spitzer intervened.

Feldman also spent a couple of years pursuing litigation against handgun manufacturers. He's now fighting online gambling operations by going after the banks and credit card companies that facilitate them. The only sad part of this story, for us anyway, is that Feldman has left Brooklyn. Needing a larger place for their growing family, Feldman and his wife house-shopped in Manhattan Beach but found the prices too high.

They ended up in Port Washington, Long Island, only 35 minutes from the city but worlds away from the borough Feldman had called home for so long. Feldman keeps up with Brooklyn politics by reading this column regularly and chatting with friends like Assemblymen Peter Abbate and Steve Cymbrowitz, whom he sees on trips to Albany, and former State Senator Donny Halperin.

"I miss my neighbors and friends and constituents in Brooklyn," Feldman said of his life in the 'burbs, "but other than that, it's just great."

Borough Politics Archive

2002
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2002
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2001
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2000
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1999
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