Politics on the Hudson

The campaign of Yonkers Republican candidate Mike Ramondelli, who is challenging Assemblyman Mike Spano, D-Yonkers, filed a criminal complaint with police on Wednesday alleging that one of its workers was robbed while collecting petition signatures.

Yonkers police said they received a complaint from Joseph Dalli, which they are investigating as a grand larceny and possibly a robbery because a white, six-foot-two man weighing about 250 pounds tussled with a clipboard that contained more than 275 signature at a Tuckahoe Road supermarket.

The unidentified man took the clipboard and ran away, Dalli told police. No one was arrested.

Dalli is the deputy executive director of the Yonkers Parking Authority, where Ramondelli is on the board of directors.

Earlier today Ramondelli said Dalli identified the man who allegedly took the clipboard by scanning Spano’s Facebook friends list. Police did not identify the suspect.

Ramondelli said the Wednesday incident is the second time in the past two weeks that one of his campaign workers has been targeted by a hostile individual. Two weeks ago Ramondelli said a 19-year-old male was verbally assaulted at the supermarket in the Highridge Plaza.

“We believe it was a civil right violation,” Ramondelli said of the stolen clipboard and signatures.

Ramondelli also lamented that the incident with Dalli is distracting both campaigns from the issues he wants to discuss, such as the state budget that was passed more than four months late.

Spano responded to Ramondelli’s accusation with a press release.

“Why I was informed of these allegations, I immediately brought my entire campaign staff together and read them the riot act. I expect everyone in my campaign to have a code of conduct that they must abide by. Anyone, no matter who they are, that is found not to have held themselves to the highest standards, will be fired from this campaign. Having said that, it is clear that neither my opponent nor I were there personally and do not know what the facts are. However, I have full faith that the appropriate authorities will thoroughly investigate the matter and trust that they will handle it according,” Spano stated.

Former Yonkers Corporation Counsel Frank Rubino’s new gig at Harris Beach comes at a fortuitous time for the law firm because it filed papers on July 7 in the federal court in White Plains indicating that it will now represent the defendants in the case of Irma Marquez against police officer Wayne Simoes, the Yonkers Police, the City of Yonkers and other Yonkers cops.

Rubino was corporation counsel at the time Marquez was picked up by Simoes and thrown to the ground in a Palisade Avenue restaurant, an act caught on video and replayed often on television.

Harris Beach’s July 7 filing does not state whether Rubino, who joined the firm in May, will be involved in the defense of the firm’s new clients.

The Yonkers City Charter has a number of sections addressing  former city employees’ subsequent employment. Here’s one of them:

§C1A-10(B) imposes a lifetime ban with regard to any matter the employee worked on while with the City, defining “works on” as, “substantially involved with the matter or personally supervises or directs how the matter is to be handled.”

The issue of Rubino’s post-Yonkers work was recently raised by Hezi Aris, the author of the Yonkers Tribune.

Aris thought Rubino’s employment by Harris Beach is a conflict of interest because of Harris Beach’s work for the Yonkers Industrial Development Agency, so he wrote to the Yonkers Ethics Board.

The Ethics Board wrote back indicating that it found no ethics violations, but the board’s July 19 letter did not make any reference to Harris Beach’s new status as the city’s representative in the Marquez case.

Here is Harris Beach’s court filing:

Harris Beach takes over body slam brutality suit

The Yonkers City Council’s four Democrats called on Mayor Phil Amicone to give them a detailed breakdown of police overtime work for entities like Con Edison in light of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s announcement that he will launch a pension-padding probe focusing on Yonkers and other municipalities.

“While we support the good work that all of our city’s first responders perform day in and day out, the City Council has a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that all City of Yonkers employees receive pensions based only on what employees are legally entitled to receive and have rightfully earned,” reads the statement issued today by City Council President Chuck Lesnick.

Here’s the full release: (more…)

Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone spoke to The Journal News yesterday about his meeting last week with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY.

Last month the Republican mayor traded press releases with Gillibrand and state Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins over a crime forum the senators held in Yonkers. At the time, Amicone accused Gillibrand of “grandstanding” and complained that she had never met with him or even spoken to him since her appointment in January of 2009.

Amicone said much of last week’s discussion was about helping Yonkers find money to overcome a $109.5 million gap that will lead to massive city and school layoffs and service cuts at the beginning of the city’s 2011 fiscal year on July 1.

Yesterday Amicone described his meeting, which occurred in Yonkers.

It was interesting. I expressed to her my concern about what had happened down here and she apologized for the fact that we got such late notice, that it wasn’t intended to be an upstaging of anybody.

I explained to her that if she can deliver money for our police department and enable us to keep many of the police officers here, it would not only be appreciated, but critical to continuing with the good safety record that we have in the city of Yonkers.

I’m not sure that’s going to be the case because of the way budgets run. The federal budget doesn’t really start until the end of September, so what might be is additional monies we could conceivably get between the beginning of our fiscal year and theirs, and that will allow us to bring people back. What I’m hoping is that she can at least give us the confidence that we’re going to be getting some monies for our police department that we can at least put in our budget and argue to keep in our budget with state comptroller even though it hasn’t arrived yet.

Beyond that she asked if she can work together with us on other types of money that can be used for all our departments, not only police, but our planning departments and our social-service type of issues, which of course we welcome.

I’d say it was a good meeting, a productive meeting, and now it’s a matter of seeing how things work out. If she can secure funds for our city that enable us to get through these very tough times and accomplish some of the goals we have, then it will be worthwhile having met with her.

Yonkers City Council candidate Virgina Perez announced endorsements today by the Yonkers Police Benevolent Association, the Yonkers Captains, Lieutenants and Sergeants Association and the Yonkers Uniformed Officers Association.

Perez is running on the Conservative, Independence and Working Families lines against Democrat Wilson Terrero, who only beat her in the primary by 10 votes.

The two are vying to replace outgoing Councilwoman Sanday Annabi, a Democrat.

Perez’s other endorsements include the Yonkers Federation of Teachers and SEIU’s 32BJ and Local 704.

Incumbent Yonkers City Council President Chuck Lesnick got an endorsement from the city’s two firefighter unions today.

“Having the joint endorsement of our two Yonkers firefighters unions is a seal of approval from the brave firefighters of our department who put their lives on the line everyday to ensure our safety,” said Lesnick, a Democrat. “It takes a special person to be a firefighter and I am committed to make sure that they have the best possible equipment and resources to do their job.”

The endorsements mean that Lesnick splits the city’s public safety support with his Republican challenger Jim Castro-Blanco, who received endorsements from the city’s two police unions.

The police unions are angry at Lesnick and other council members who decided to lower property taxes by cutting the police department’s overtime funding earlier this year.

Yonkers Councilwoman Sandy Annabi, D-2nd District, met with the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office’s public integrity unit on Tuesday.

She presented her list of irregularities that she claims constitute voter fraud in the Democratic primary for Westchester County’s 17th legislative district. I’ve attached a copy of her complaint below.

Annabi lost the primary by five votes to four-term incumbent Jose Alvarado, who released his own statement about Annabi’s allegations on Wednesday.

For the record, Alvarado misrepresents some of Annabi’s positions on the city budget, capital budgets for the schools and a land disposition agreement (LDC) for downtown redevelopment. Annabi voted against the LDC because she said it was a bad deal for city taxpayers; she voted against the city budget because of cuts to police; and the City Council has not yet voted on the capital improvement bonding for the schools.

Here is the text from both statements. Annabi’s is VERY long:

Two Yonkers City Council candidates announced endorsements on Tuesday and today.

Republican Jim Castro-Blanco announced Tuesday that the Yonkers Police Benevolent Association endorsed him in his race for City Council President against incumbent Democrat Chuck Lesnick.

The PBA is upset with Lesnick and other council members who voted to lower a property tax-rate increase by cutting the police’s budget. Castro-Blanco said the city has experienced double-digit increases in crime, which is only true in some precincts. Citywide, crime has only increased 1% in 2009 through Aug. 31 compared with the same period last year, according to police department statistics.

Republican John Larkin will also get the PBA’s endorsement on Thursday at a 10 a.m. press conference at the First Precinct. Larkin is a candidate in the City Council’s Sixth District against Democrat Ted Winnicki.

At a candidates forum on Tuesday held at The Journal News, Larkin noted that budget cuts have turned the police into a reactive force instead of a proactive force.

A protest by Yonkers police officers on Thursday over a lack of new bulletproof vests has Yonkers officials issuing press releases blaming each other.
Mayor Phil Amicone e-blasted his statement on Thursday supporting the cops and blaming the City Council and City Council President Chuck Lesnick for not approving his proposed budget that would have raised city residents’ property taxes by 6.6 percent, a compromise for the 7.8 percent increase the Republican initially proposed in April.
“Those on the City Council who voted for these cuts to public safety, especially Council President Lesnick, must now answer for their short-sighted and dangerous decisions. I call on the Council President to accept responsibility for these decisions and to immediately approve funding for the equipment that will keep our police officers safe,” wrote Amicone, adding that he has submitted to the City Council a $50,000 bonding ordinance to pay for the vests.
Earlier this year some City Council members said they were reluctant to embrace the mayor’s proposed tax increase during a national recession when many homeowners have either experienced salary freezes or pay cuts, so they lowered the property tax increase to 5.8 percent, or a $408.38 increase for the owner of an average home. That meant cutting expenses, especially in the police department.
Lesnick and City Council Budget Chair Liam McLaughlin shot back with their own press release Thursday accusing Amicone of playing politics with the bulletproof vests.
“The money has already been allocated by the council, bonded by the city and has been available for the purchase of the bullet proof vests – and the mayor knows it,” wrote Lesnick, a Democrat. “The most recent City Capital Projects Status Report clearly shows that the city’s bonded unspent capital funds of $2,280,897.18, including $162,067.30 for equipment – well covering the costs for the bullet proof vests – is available and awaiting usage by the police department.”
McLaughlin, a Republican, criticized Amicone’s spending.
“A shopaholic with a new credit card is more frugal than this mayor,” McLaughlin wrote.
Amicone took office in 2004 and according to his 2010 Executive Budget, the city’s gross bonded debt outstanding in fiscal year 2004 was $292.3 million compared with $447.3 million in 2010.