SCHUMER SILENT ON ENRON GOOF AS WIFE BUILDS FENCES In August 2000, 16 months before the Enron/Arthur Andersen scandal broke, Park Slope investor Ian Yankwitt wrote to his neighbor, Senator Chuck Schumer, about a curious position Schumer had taken. According to Barron's, the senator was opposing an SEC proposal to restrict accounting firms from cross-selling consulting services to their audit clients. The merits of that proposal have since become obvious: Andersen was selling $27 million in consulting services to Enron annually while its audits somehow "missed" Enron's financial fraud.

There is now a clear consensus that such conflicts of interest taint allegedly independent audits. But that was obvious well before Enron. Barron's also noted that Schumer received lots of campaign contributions from the accounting industry, which (like Schumer) opposed the SEC proposal. So how does Schumer defend his position? He doesn't. Schumer did not respond to our two phone calls over the last month. Nor did he reply to Yankwitt's letter. (Schumer must be slipping. When he was in the House, his staff conscientiously replied to every letter he received, no matter how inane, according to this columnist's brother, who helped answer the mail as a summer intern for Schumer.)

Meanwhile, the senator's wife, Iris Weinshall, is having her own difficulties as New York City's transportation commissioner. Her agency has been marring the views from city bridges by installing heinous chain-link fencing-without even seeking the required approval of the city's Art Commission. Perhaps some of the impetuous unilateralism of Weinshall's previous boss, Rudy Giuliani, has rubbed off on her.

Memo to Weinshall: Not only does chain-link fencing prevent tourists from taking decent photographs, but the very notion of shackling the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian and bicycle path with chain-link is enough to turn the stomach.

ROGER GREEN'S BAD HAKEEM DREAM Observers of Fort Greene/Prospect Height politics are still scratching their heads over the redrawing of Assemblyman Roger Green's district. Why did he trade the northern Park Slope section of the 57th A.D. for the Fort Greene projects and additional Bedford-Stuyvesant blocks? Officially, a redistricting committee controlled by Assembly Democrats, not Green himself, redrew the district, but it's common knowledge that incumbents' requests are generally granted when new lines are drawn every decade.

Thus, despite Green's denials, we can conclude it was not a coincidence that the Prospect Heights house of Green's opponent in 2000 and again this year, Hakeem Jeffries, was drawn one block outside of the district. Green might have been hoping that Jeffries would refrain from running rather than move with his wife and year-old son to a new address in the event that he wins. Jeffries chose to run. On its face, removing from the district the white residents of Park Slope, who voted for Green in stronger numbers in 2000 than did blacks elsewhere in the district, would seem to hurt Green's chances in this year's Democratic primary.

But factors that helped Green in Park Slope last election won't be present this time around. Rep. Major Owens was facing a tough primary against Una Clarke in 2000, which brought pro-Owens Park Slope voters to the polls, where they were handed palm cards with Owens and Green together. Green also distributed photos of himself shaking hands with Hillary Clinton, so he may have picked up some votes from her supporters as well.

The big primary this year is Carl McCall versus Andrew Cuomo for governor, so Green will try to piggyback on McCall's success in black neighborhoods. That may be why he replaced whites from Park Slope with blacks from the Fort Greene, Ingersoll, and Farragut housing projects and University Towers. The political column Throop's Scoop suggested Green's redistricting was a clumsy attempt to position himself for a run for Congress whenever Rep. Ed Towns retires, since it brought more Towns constituents into Green's domain. But if Green loses to Jeffries, who got 41 percent of the vote last time, redrawing the 57th A.D. will go down as a political blunder of the first magnitude.

Besides, Assemblyman Darryl Towns would have a better chance to succeed his father Ed than Green ever would. In fact, there continues to be suspicion that, one of these years, Ed Towns will withdraw just before petitioning ends and have his campaign's committee on vacancies nominate his son to replace him as the Democratic nominee.

CAR-FREE PROSPECT PARK AT HAND? Five Brooklyn Councilmembers with districts adjacent to Prospect Park have signed on to a proposal to ban cars from the park for a three-month trial. Bill deBlasio, David Yassky, James Davis, Yvette Clark, and Angel Rodriguez want to try the temporary ban, during which traffic patterns would be studied. The feeling here is it wouldn't make a noticeable difference outside the park but would do wonders inside. Former Transportation Commissioners Lou Riccio and Elliot Sander both support a car-free park, but it's Iris Weinshall's agency now. It just so happens that Weinshall lives on Prospect Park West, right across the street from the park, so she should well know how the park's atmosphere suffers when vehicles are racing through it.

Car-free advocates are sponsoring a town hall on the issue Wednesday, July 17 at 6:30 p.m. at Union Temple, 17 Eastern Parkway, which they hope will win over Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.

KNEEJERK VOTE ENDANGERS CYCLISTS Brooklyn City Councilmembers and their colleagues just voted unanimously to establish $100 fines for biking on the sidewalk, or $300 if doing so creates a danger. The two levels of fines are an admission that cyclists will have to pay $100 for an action that causes no danger. The council simply overreacted to legitimate complaints from constituents about bikes on crowded sidewalks. No one ever complained about a 15-year-old biking on an empty sidewalk in order to avoid being flattened by a cement truck barreling up a narrow street, but the council saw fit to deem that illegal anyway. Terrorizing pedestrians by biking on sidewalks should be illegal. But harmless sidewalk biking should not, especially given that more than 20 bikers are pancaked by cars in the city in an average year while less than one pedestrian on average is killed annually by a cyclist.

Cars driving on sidewalks is a much greater problem. According to Noah Budnick of Transportation Alternatives, during the month that the council pondered the new penalties for bikers, at least seven cars plowed onto sidewalks, killing three pedestrians and injuring 24. None of the drivers received a summons.

CONTROVERSIAL LAWYER VANISHES Well, attorney Ravi Batra didn't really vanish from the face of the earth-only from the list of honored guests at a fundraiser for Lori Citron Knipel's Democratic club. This column had noted what an odd choice Batra was for the dais of the Brooklyn Independent Democrats' $100-a-plate dinner on June 20 in Mill Basin. After apparently benefiting from his ties to county Democratic chairman Clarence Norman to become receiver for the Cypress Hills Cemetery, Batra fired the cemetery's two party-affiliated lawyers in 1999 and replaced them with his own firm, setting off a political firestorm that embarrassed the party organization.

A week after the story was rehashed in this space, new dinner invitations were sent out with Batra's name missing from the list of honorees. The normally responsive Knipel, who is running for state Senate in Flatbush, didn't return two e-mails seeking an explanation for Batra's vanishing act.

COUNTY FLEXES MUSCLE IN JUDICIAL RACE The Brooklyn Democratic organization, or "county" for short, put its money where its mouth was after not endorsing Civil Court Judge Margarita Lopez Torres for re-election. County commonly prints nominating petitions-the forms that a given number of registered voters must sign for a candidate to make the ballot-and sends them to elected officials for distribution to signature gatherers. County-printed petitions list multiple candidates, so one signature counts for all of them. But county wouldn't print any petitions with Lopez Torres's name, so four elected officials who endorsed her-Assemblymembers Rhoda Jacobs, Roger Green, and Felix Ortiz, plus district leader Ralph Perfetto-had a choice: accept county's petitions without Lopez Torres, or print their own with Lopez Torres, which might cost thousands of dollars.

Or they could have collectors carry a second set of petitions, using the "singles" bearing only Lopez Torres's name sent by her campaign, but that would require collectors to get a second signature. Getting one signature from a New Yorker can be tough enough, so collectors often don't bother to carry a second petition. "That's going to make it burdensome, to say the least," said Gary Tilzer, campaign manager for Lopez Torres, who needs 15,000 signatures to get on the ballot. "When county carries your petitions, it's easy to get 20,000 signatures."

LASHER, COHEN SICK OF RUMOR MILL Assembly hopeful Susan Lasher has only just begun campaigning against fellow Democrat Adele Cohen, but already she's grown frustrated at the rampant rumors surrounding her candidacy. For that matter, so is Cohen.

For one, Lasher says she has not endorsed Republican City Councilman Marty Golden in his race against state Senator Vinny Gentile. Of course, it would be great for Lasher if Golden would drum up support for her in Bay Ridge, where he's popular, but then she'd be chastised again for cavorting with Republicans. (Golden, we hear, will back the GOP candidate, not Lasher.) Lasher, noting that Gentile and Golden don't figure to have opponents in the primaries, doesn't expect them to play a big role in her primary against Cohen. "What benefit is it for them to endorse anybody?" Lasher asked. "It's rumor after rumor after rumor," Lasher pined. "I would just like to avoid all of this." Sure-and we'd like to avoid death and taxes, too.

Cohen's been fighting off rumors as well, including one tale that she tore up the inspector form of an 82-year-old prospective poll worker who complained that she was too frail to collect the 100 signatures Cohen allegedly demanded. Cohen, who as a district leader can choose the poll workers who earn $200 on Election Day, told us she called a meeting to say that the jobs would go to those who petitioned for her-which she told us was common practice. "I said, 'When you bring back your signatures, you'll get your inspector forms. I need all your help because I need to get on the ballot.' I never said 100 (signatures)." Cohen added, "I didn't rip up anyone's anything. But I did exhort them to go out and get me signatures…I said I'm going to employ the people who help me first. That's the process." District leaders do generally hire their supporters first. But most, including Cohen, generally don't have enough supporters interested in being poll workers to fill all the positions. After all, $200 for a tedious 16-hour shift ain't exactly a windfall. "The party is finding it harder and harder to find people who want these jobs," one Democrat said. "Certainly someone on Wall Street isn't taking the day off to do it."

So Cohen's warning that would-be poll workers won't be hired if they don't collect signatures for her is probably a bluff, and a rather unseemly one at that. Another unfounded (but harmless) story making the rounds is that Lasher had chosen a Russian butcher to run for male district leader with her in the 46th A.D. (Brighton Beach, Coney Island, Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights).

In fact, Lasher's slate consists of Mark Davidovich, owner of Seaside Car Service and active in the Brighton Beach Business Improvement District, and Coney Island's Marietta Bowens, wife of School Board 21 member Julius Bowens and a teacher at P.S. 329. Cohen is running for re-election as both assemblywoman and female district leader with male district leader candidate Toby Russo of Bay Ridge.

COLTON, ABBATE VOTE NO ON SCHOOL BOARD ABOLITION Brooklyn's Bill Colton and Peter Abbate cast two of only five votes in the state Assembly against a bill to abolish community school boards and hand control of the system to the mayor. One observer suggested Colton voted as he did to satisfy School Board 21 President Carmine Santa Maria, who works for Colton in a public relations capacity. Santa Maria is an ardent supporter of school boards and has a political following in southwest Brooklyn that merits attention from politicians. "I think Bill Colton's afraid of Carmine," the observer noted.

But Colton said he voted against the bill because it didn't provide an immediate replacement for school boards, not because he wanted to save them. The bill called for a six-month study to decide what sort of parent council system should replace school boards. "I believe there needs to be school governance reform," including making the mayor responsible for the school system, Colton said. "But this bill did it on a piecemeal basis." The bill certainly put Colton in a tough spot. By voting against it, he defied the wishes of powerful Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver. Voting for it would have enraged Santa Maria and the School District 21 parents who back him. Colton said that while Santa Maria made his opinion known to him, in the end he simply voted his conscience.

Colton said he wants to replace school boards with "something that doesn't get used for patronage or political purposes, but that gives parents input to address grievances or concerns they have, without it being a political football." That doesn't sound like the rousing endorsement of community school boards espoused by Santa Maria, who contends that there's nothing wrong with patronage and nepotism if the schools do well. Santa Maria's children and nephew got jobs in District 21 after he was elected to the board. "They have every right to work in District 21," Santa Maria said.

There's a second story here as well. Colton's vote could indirectly hurt Susan Lasher's bid to oust Assemblywoman Adele Cohen. Here's why: Santa Maria had vowed that Cohen would suffer the consequences on election day for writing a bill to get rid of school boards; Cohen's bill ultimately became part of the reform plan approved by the legislature. Had Colton voted for the plan, perhaps a furious Santa Maria would have quit his job on Colton's staff, freeing him politically to rally the community against Cohen. But Santa Maria was gratified by Colton's vote and still works for him, and therefore can't oppose Cohen unless Colton does-and we don't think Colton will. "The [District 21] parents are opposing Adele Cohen," Santa Maria said. But when asked whether he also was, he said, "No comment."

It's certainly possible Santa Maria would have stuck with Colton no matter how Colton voted. The two go back at least to the early 1990s when they worked together to close the Southwest Brooklyn Incinerator. Colton was handling the legal work under Assemblyman Frank Barbaro, who became a judge and was succeeded by Colton.

As for Abbate, he failed to return a call for three days to explain his vote. A member of his Albany staff said he was willing to comment on the matter, but was probably too busy to call back.

DOV'S FEATHERS RUFFLED Assemblyman Dov Hikind put his fax machine on overdrive the moment Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. endorsed Andrew Cuomo for governor of New York. Hikind issued a press release calling for Cuomo to reject the endorsement because (gasp) Jackson had voted against two House resolutions expressing "solidarity" with Israel in its war on terrorism.

But Jackson's vote shouldn't render him a leper. Even many supporters of Israel acknowledge that the Sharon government's recent actions have worsened the crisis in the Middle East, jeopardized Israel's long-term security, and ceded some of the moral high ground the Jewish state had previously occupied in world opinion. President Bush himself asked Sharon to pull back on the reins.

Those who voted against the House resolutions, which passed 352-21 and 384-11, weren't saying they agree with Palestinian suicide bombings any more than supporters of the resolutions were endorsing Israel's bulldozing of a refugee camp and barring U.N. war crimes investigators from inspecting the evidence.

Borough Politics Archive

2002
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2001
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2000
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1999
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