Election Time Disappointment

By MICHAEL SCHENKLER  

I sat in my office on Friday with Angela Montefinise. Ang is our political editor. Like me, she loves the political action.

She was initiated two years ago when the entire Queens City Council delegation was term limited and we had healthy races for almost all of the 14 vacant seats. As I conducted group interviews with the candidates for each seat — as well as individual interviews with all of the Citywide candidates — she sat with me for most of it. It was exhilarating for any political junkie. It was informative for us and, we believe, for our readers.

Presenting the candidates, evaluating them and serving as a meaningful filter during the election season keeps political journalists fit and happy.

Angela and I sat in my office on Friday and commiserated.

We were both saddened that the four-to-one NYC Campaign Finance match had proved to be ineffective to bring serious challenges to most of the incumbents.

These 14 have been in office for less than two years. They have passed the largest tax increase for City residents in memory — if not ever. They have served during an economic downturn requiring cuts in services and costing the Mayor, who was elected at the same time, to fall so low in the polls that some have foolishly started counting him out.

Now, incumbents are always super odds-on favorites. But we always expect to see them challenged during their first reelection campaign. The economic and tax circumstances play against them. A four-to-one funding match goes to some degree to level the playing field.

It just didn’t work.

Angela and I sat there bemoaning our lackluster election season ahead. We each had reviewed the petition and campaign finance filings and agreed we’d have to reach pretty far to come up with a small handful of races worth covering.

Really competitive races?

Perhaps one.

Shamefully, the Republican Party has folded its not-so-large Queens tent and has failed to mount a serious challenge to all but one of the 13 incumbent Democratic Councilmembers. The Dems, shamefully, are not fielding a candidate against the lone Republican incumbent, Dennis Gallagher. The Dems could have been competitive, but have either taken the easy way out or decided that Gallagher can be relied on for the Dem’s party needs.

I should point out that lone Republican Dennis Gallagher from that Western Conservative area which boarders Brooklyn is a Council superstar. He is as knowledgeable as any member and in our judgment deserves reelection.

But a free ride?

Not in his first reelection campaign.

Shame on you, Manton and company.

The Republicans’ only attempt to find a candidate, I guess, is in the 19th, where old-time frequent candidate Phil Ragusa is being touted as a strong challenger to incumbent Dem Tony Avella.

We just don’t see it. Avella has done the job, been independent and continues to work the street fighting for his community’s quality of life, anti-graffiti brush in hand.

Tony, thanx for cleaning up the Trib box.

We will in weeks to come spend some time reviewing each seat, but for the moment, we’ll point out the four Democratic Primaries where there is a more than a nominal race — that doesn’t necessarily mean competitive.

In the 24th, Jim Gennaro faces David Reich – whom he beat last time out – and Florence Fisher. With Gennaro, who has not always charmed, the ethnicity of this district could have made it interesting. But two Jews will void any real challenge to the hardworking incumbent.

In the 27th, everyone’s favorite, Leroy Comrie, faces two opponents from last time – Helen Cooper-Gregory and Stephen Jackson. Although Cooper G made it a race last time, Comrie’s performance in the Council has elevated him to the position of frontrunner as the next Speaker. He’s alienated none and won over many. Leroy walks away with this one.

In the 28th, five Dems filed to run against the Council oddball, Allan Jennings. Yvonne Reddick, backed by the County Dem Organization – will be well funded and professionally managed. Jennings, despite his apparent lunacy, is extremely hard working and has taken on the Organization previously. If several challengers stay on the ballot, the incumbent’s position is improved. We assume County is moving to challenge the other challengers’ petitions. This one is worth watching.

In the 29th, where incumbent James Sanders claims to have not filed for matching funds as a protest against the Campaign Finance Board’s conduct. It took weeks for his staff to return a phone call to reschedule his presentation on the matter. Judging by his efficiency, the incumbent could have trouble. He faces a previous foe, community activist James Blake, a bright hard worker who toppled the long-time incumbent district leader last time out. Sanders seems to have all the moves; however, we are amazed that his staff can’t seem to get the job done. He should be an easy winner, but we’re keeping our eyes on this one.

Last week, Peter Vallone, Jr. announced he would not accept matching funds for his anticipated race against a candidate of the now defunct Green Party. Vallone clearly deserves to be reelected, but he also should be made to work for reelection.

When candidates have it so easy that they can turn matching funds away, the system is not working.

We expect a number of Councilmembers to follow Vallone’s lead.

The apparent moral of the story is that the only way to bring change to government seems to be term limits.

The entire Queens delegation, if reelected, would be term limited at the end 2009. Expect to see some incumbent — hopefully not from Queens — lead another attempt to overturn term limits in order to ride their free rides as long as possible.

Angela and I will be watching.

Smoke-Free Air Is Good For New York
And Good For Business

By DAVID GOLUB
American Cancer Society Regional Vice President, Queens

At the stroke of midnight on June 24, New York State joined New York City in adopting bold legislation to protect all workers and ultimately all residents from the deadly effects of secondhand smoke.  We applaud these laws, which represent a watershed in pubic health history.

Amid the debate over these regulations, no one should doubt that passive smoke from cigarettes is a dangerous killer.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – the nation’s top toxic watchdog – classifies secondhand smoke as a “Class A Carcinogen” along with benzene, arsenic and asbestos, poisons for which there is no safe exposure level.  

From now on, workplaces will be places for work, not smoking.

In the words of Dr. Thomas Frieden, New York City’s Health Commissioner, “The Smoke-Free Air Act is about workers.  It’s about workers not having to risk cancer and heart disease to hold a job....”

This law also means that smoky bars across New York will take their place in history – next to smoky airplanes and movie theaters – as memories.  While some may lament this change, experience across the country proves that restaurants and bars actually become more popular when they become smoke-free.

As a matter of fact, data released just this week show that New York City’s vital hospitality sector has been doing a truly “healthy” business since the smoking ban went into effect.  

According to an analysis completed by the city’s Health Department and Economic Development Corporation, employment in New York City grew by nearly 1,500 seasonally adjusted jobs in the first three months of the ban, a significant increase over last year at this time. Andrew Alper, president of the Economic Development Corporation, says, “We have not seen any evidence that the Smoke-Free Air Act, which is obviously contributing to the health of our restaurant and bar workers, is causing a decline in employment in this sector.”

This news is no surprise: smoke-free air is good for New York and good for business.  That’s because poll after poll shows that New Yorkers prefer clean air, and they also continue to take advantage of New York’s great nightlife.  To cite one striking example, a recent Zogby poll found that 79 percent of New York City residents – that’s essentially eight out of ten – favored the smoke-free workplace legislation.

Finally, we hope that many New Yorkers will see this new law as an opportunity to start fresh without cigarettes.

We also expect that many others will need a little extra help to kick their habits. New Yorkers deserve help ending their addictions, and we call on our elected leaders to ensure that there are sufficient resources in place for those who need them.

The American Cancer Society is committed to helping smokers realize their desire to quit.

We are available 24 hours a day at 1-800-ACS-2345 and www.cancer.org.

At CUNY’s Colleges In Queens,
You Can Get A First-Rate Education

By MATTHEW GOLDSTEIN
Chancellor The City University NY

As Queens Tribune readers know, colleges help New Yorkers to achieve their dreams. There has never been a better time to take advantage of the outstanding educational opportunities available at the City University of New York’s colleges in Queens: LaGuardia Community College, Queens College, Queensborough Community College, York College, and CUNY School of Law at Queens College.

CUNY colleges in Queens are well known for the high quality education available at their campuses and for the numerous achievements of their distinguished faculty and alumni. 

LaGuardia Community College, highly regarded for its education programs with the business community, has received State and federal support to establish a business incubator program with opportunities for student internships and faculty research. 

York College recently welcomed as its new president Robert L. Hampton, a distinguished academic leader from the University of Maryland. The College continues to expand its collaborative programs with organizations like the Food and Drug Administration, which has its regional laboratory and office building on the York campus.

Queens College, praised by publications like the Princeton Review, Barron’s Best Buys, and Time Magazine’s Top 500 Colleges, features a remarkably diverse student population (representing 120 countries and speaking 66 different languages), many of whom go on to receive prestigious awards including Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellowships, National Hispanics Scholarships, and Harry S. Truman Scholarships. 

Queensborough Community College offers outstanding associate degree programs in 25 disciplines, including most recently Massage Therapy, Digital Art and Design, and New Media Technology, as well as a new Honors/Scholars program, on its beautiful 37-acre campus in Bayside. 

CUNY School of Law, the nation’s only law school with the mission of training law students for public service, has a clinical program that has been ranked among the top ten in the country for a decade.

These improvements have taken place despite the current economic downturn and budgetary shortfalls at the State and City levels. Last month, CUNY’s Board of Trustees approved its first tuition increase since 1995.  Rather than the $950 increase authorized by the State in its budget, we kept the increase to $800 a year for full-time resident students at our senior colleges, and $300 at our community colleges. 

AS CUNY continues to help Queens residents realize their educational goals, we have implemented a five-point program to assist students in identifying ways to pay for their college education:

• Financial Aid.  CUNY colleges offer more than 1,000 scholarships and special programs to help defray the costs of attending college, in addition to city, state and federal programs, including some that are geared specifically to moderate-income families.  More than two-thirds of CUNY’s 160,000 undergraduates receive awards, scholarships and financial aid. These opportunities, as well as information on student loans and work-study, are listed on cuny.edu/financialaid.

We are particularly encouraged that the New York City Council’s Peter F. Vallone Academic Achievement Scholarships (named after the former Council Speaker from Astoria) for high school graduates with a “B” average or better have been fully restored. The City Council has also launched a $4.5 million “Safety Net” tuition assistance program providing additional financial aid for currently enrolled and resident community college students who face economic hardship due to the tuition increase.  We are deeply grateful to the leadership of the City Council and the City administration for the priority they have placed on the need for an educated workforce in New York City. 

• Special Seminars.  CUNY holds seminars throughout the year in all five boroughs that focus on financial aid.  The public seminars – which are offered in Spanish, Chinese and Russian in addition to English – are conducted by experts from the CUNY Office of Financial Aid and include tips on filling out applications and monitoring the status of the request after it has been filed.  For a schedule of seminars and more information, see cuny.edu/financialaid.

• Interest Free Payment Plan.  To help students pay their tuition, CUNY has set up the TuitionPay Monthly Payment Plan, managed by Academic Management Services Inc., which allows students to pay their tuition interest-free in five monthly installments. The only cost is a $30 enrollment fee. Students can sign up by calling up tuitionpayenroll.com or by calling the toll-fee number 866-AMS-CUNY.

• Student Jobs.  CUNY’s comprehensive jobs site – cuny.edu/studentjobs – gives students access to hundreds of full-time and part-time listings for metro-area positions in a variety of fields and skill levels. The site, which consolidates job listings from CUNY’s 19 campuses as well as from private companies and agencies in the metro area, also includes openings that are available exclusively to CUNY students. 

• Free Online Career Guide.  This free service provides students with “Vault Guide” series of materials that include valuable tips on resumes, cover letters, industry overviews and much more.  Vault Guides also features 60 advice and guidebooks that have a retail value of $1,000 if purchased separately. Students can access the Vault Guide website by obtaining a password from their campus career counseling office, or by visiting cuny.edu/studentjobs.

In short, there has never been a better time for interested students to explore the opportunities CUNY has to offer, by visiting one of the websites listed above or calling 1-800-CUNY-YES.

Murder In The Cathedral

By HENRY STERN

The significance of the murder of Councilman James E. Davis lies both in the crime itself and the place where it was committed.

The crime was the first killing of a New York City Council member in anyone’s memory. The most notorious murder of a councilmember took place in San Francisco on Nov. 27, 1978, when a former city supervisor, Dan White, crawled through a basement window to avoid metal detectors, and killed Mayor George Moscone and openly gay Councilmember Harvey Milk. White, who had resigned as supervisor in protest of the passage of a gay rights bill, was convicted on two counts of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to seven years and eight months in prison, an incredibly short prison term for such a monstrous crime. 

The failure to convict on a double murder charge and the light sentence was due in part to White’s lawyer pleading the Twinkie defense, bringing in a psychiatrist to testify that White had eaten so much junk food that he had suffered a major mood disorder and could not tell right from wrong. White was paroled after five years and one month, and committed suicide 21 months later, in the garage of his wife’s home.

In New York City, the last public official to be killed was former Brooklyn State Senator Vander Beatty, who was shot to death in his campaign office on August 30, 1990. Beatty, who had served two and a half years in prison for election fraud and stealing anti-poverty funds, was slain by a retired Corrections captain, Arthur Flournoy, who was said to be furious because Beatty had recommended a lawyer to represent him in a dispute over money with his estranged wife, which he lost.

After the murder, Flournoy’s car was found stalled in a puddle a few blocks from Beatty’s office.  Flournoy fled to Chicago, and was arrested there after a viewer recognized him on the TV show, “America’s Most Wanted.” He was tried in Brooklyn in 1993, and acquitted because the jurors found the evidence circumstantial. A Brooklyn judge had previously ruled that evidence stating other people who saw Flournoy leave the building and identified him from photographs as the killer was inadmissible because the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office had not notified the defense attorney soon enough. The New York Times, in a story by Joseph P. Fried, quoted Flournoy’s attorney as saying “The real killer is still out there.” That was a year before the O.J. Simpson murder case, where that hypocritical phrase became nationally known. The Beatty story is retold here not only because it deals with the murder of a former elected official, but because it is relevant with regard to the state of criminal justice today in New York State’s most populous county. 

The security lapse at City Hall was the result of a rational decision that elected officials and their guests can enter without being searched for weapons. No person can be blamed for a policy that made sense until yesterday. What we have learned is that murderers or terrorists can deceive elected officials and others, and, therefore, in the interest of public safety, we should take no chances, even if it means delay and inconvenience.  Lesson learned.

Since a deranged person with a gun in City Hall could have attempted a Columbine-type massacre of civilians – including the Mayor and the Councilmembers – we must reduce risks. We are all grateful to the brand new Detective Richard Burt who shot and killed the assassin, imposing immediate capital punishment in the public interest. This occurred one day after the execution of the brothers Hussein, who resisted arrest in a house in Mosul. I think that Uday should have made his 14-year-old son surrender, rather than let him die in a gun battle.  But then, having seen the Terminator series, who knows what impact his survival would have on future world events.

Back to New York . . . even if City Hall security were perfect, Askew could have killed Davis anywhere else with a better chance of escaping, as Flournoy did.  On the other hand, if security had “magged” him, and found the silver handgun, he would have been arrested and Davis would have lived. As a former police officer, Davis himself was armed.  The practice in Federal court, however, is that even people who have the right to carry guns (e.g. police officers) must check them near the building entrance, unless they are assigned to security duties in the courthouse.

This tragic incident in a historic location will briefly give us the image of Dodge City rather than New York. But this was an individual grudge-murder, not random violence or stranger-murder, which should provide some comfort.  New York is still the safest large city in America, with one-third the number of murders that we had before Mayor Giuliani took office in 1994.

We bury the two dead men, one in honor and pride and the other in pity and shame, life goes on, and, hopefully, City Hall will be off limits to those who would take the lives of others.

Henry Stern can be reached at: starquest@nycivic.org

Not4Publication.com by Dom Nunziato

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Michael Schenkler can be reached at: MSchenkler@queenspress.com