NYTimes Editorial Board bemoans corruption as Brooklyn Beep Eric Adams cleared to funnel money through shady nonprofit

PUBLISHED : SUN, 06 JUL 2014, 02:10 PM
UPDATED : MON, 07 JUL 2014, 09:30 AM

Adams' shady nonprofit, the One Brooklyn Fund, is set to pattern itself after the mayor's own shady nonprofit, the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City

Across New York State, many corrupt politicians get indicted for misusing monies from nonprofits for illegal personal or political activities

Before he was elected Brooklyn Borough President, former State Sen. Eric Adams endorsed the failed reelection bid of ex-Brooklyn D.A. Charles Hynes. Brooklyn Beep Adams now wants to use a nonprofit charity to serve as his political arm in Brooklyn nonprofit circles. In its house editorial yesterday, the board of editors that oversee the Opinion pages of The New York Times reminded its readers that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has failed to make good on his campaign promise to clean up the corruption in Albany. The editors point to the sad statistic that 26 state legislators have left office due to political scandal. But the editorial overlooks the role that funneling donations or tax dollars through nonprofit groups plays in the corruption charges against several notable politicians. Despite this, the editors of The New York Times see no need to worry that more and more politicians are creating nonprofit groups that operate as the political arms of politicians. The One Brooklyn Fund, a nonprofit that Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is running out of his own office, had not yet received approval from the city's corrupt Conflicts of Interest Board before Brooklyn Beep Adams began soliciting donations for his controversial nonprofit with admitted political motivations. Another violation, failing to register the nonprofit with the New York Department of State, came to the fore after The New York Post reported that the city’s Department of Investigation was probing Mr. Adams' new nonprofit. Two of the directors of the controversial One Brooklyn Fund have previously run afoul of ethics regulations, and one of the directors has become the target of journalism investigations over her role in using still yet another nonprofit group to fund an 11-day vacation to China for Mr. Adams and Diana Reyna, a top female deputy, The New York Post reported. Whenever Brooklyn Beep Adams appears at public forums, Ms. Reyna is at his close side, clutching her pearls. Ms. Reyna, a former City Councilmember from Brooklyn, had previously served as chief of staff to embattled Brooklyn political boss Vito Lopez, who, himself, is a former New York State Assemblyman. The objective of the One Brooklyn Fund is to provide or support public services to the residents of Brooklyn, not too dissimilar to the objective of a larger fund overseen by the mayor's wife. The Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, which facilitates innovative public-private partnerships throughout NYC. It is headed by First Lady Chirlane McCray, and its goals are to support the mayor's political ambitions. Parallel to the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City is The Campaign for One New York, the group formerly known as UPKNYC, the 501(c)(4) not-for-profit organization that the mayor has used to funnel money into his political agenda, ranging from paying for a million-dollar political TV ad featuring the First Lady and deceptive astroturf mailers supporting the closure of Long Island College Hospital. Now that First Lady McCray has benefitted from the million-dollar TV ad blitz to fluff her name recognition at the expense of a nonprofit, she has reportedly began shopping around a political memoir, with political bloggers gossiping that she is seeking a seven-figure book deal. At every turn, the repeated pattern of political activities involving charity nonprofit organizations is that politicians use these tax-free vehicles for personal gain -- whether for 11-day trips to China or to build up one's name recognition -- not for public service, contrary to the very purpose of nonprofit objectives. First Lady Chirlane McCray picked gentrification king developer Bruce Ratner to serve on the board of the Mayor's Fund to Advance NYC, which is Mayor Bill de Blasio's political arm in the charity world. State Sen. Malcolm Smith faces corruption charges involving the possible use of City Council nonprofit slush funds allocated to Councilmember Dan Halloran to buy the GOP nomination for Sen. Smith's doomed mayoral campaign. After former State Sen. Shirley Huntley was sentenced to jail for allegedly misusing tax money funneled to a nonprofit organization, her former Chief of Staff, who is not a New York City Councilmember, Ruben Wills, faces his own investigation into the possible misuse of nonprofit for personal gain. State Sen. Jose Peralta has also been being scrutinized over $500,000 directed to a nonprofit he helped to organize. After nonprofit don William Rapfogel was arrested, it was revealed that there was a scheme to use tax money funneled through the Metropolitan Council to pass through inflated insurance premiums as a way to fund illegal straw donations to political candidates. On the day when the Metropolitan Council-straw donations scam was announced, former Council Speaker Christine Quinn's doomed mayoral campaign immediately announced that they were returning $25,000 in tainted donations. Since the New York City mayoral race of last year, political bloggers and government reform activists have continued to demonstrate how the corruptive role of money and lobbyists in politics work to move shady campaign financing from official campaign committees, to Super PAC's, to political party committee accounts, to 501(c)(3) nonprofit groups, to 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups, etc. -- through any entity that can act as a "pass through" for illegal personal or political gain. Whenever a nonprofit appears in the political landscape around elected officials, the lobbyists, campaign consultants, other political operatives, and the elected officials themselves aim to exploit that nonprofit for short-term political gain at every point possible instead of serving the greater public good. One of the largest sources of tainted nonprofit funding in New York City is the annual Council Speaker's slush fund. There is a long history of corruption tied to the misuse of this nonprofit funding source. Former New York City Councilmembers Hiram Monserrate, Larry Seabrook, and Miguel Martinez were convicted for their role in the slush fund scandal and political aides to former Councilmember Kendall Stewart also pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the nonprofit funding-related scandal. Continuing former Council Speaker Quinn's pattern of funding nonprofit groups that do the speaker's bidding, the new Council speaker, Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito has allocated over $830,000 to a nonprofit group tied to one of her chief campaign consultants. And the City Council, under Speaker Mark-Viverito, has allocated over $7 million from this slush fund to nonprofit groups, including VOCAL-New York, that are deliberately deescalating political pressure for police reforms in exchange for receiving City Council funding. If the editors of The New York Times are serious about reforming the broken political system, then they should mount a public campaign that ends the misuse of nonprofit organizations for personal and political gain. And this proposed campaign should begin with investigating why the city's ethics board can continue to clear politicians to operate nonprofit groups in parallel to their political offices. If voters reviewed the list of corrupt politicians, who have had to leave office due to criminal charges involving nonprofit funding, there is never any accountability for the big name politicians, who control the large pools of slush funds that enable this kind of nonprofit corruption. It's as if the big-name corrupt politicians know that cases consisting of violations of local or state law and involving the possible prosecution of significant political or government individuals pose special problems for the local prosecutor. If voters are to take The New York Times seriously, then the editors must address this paradox, too -- not just bemoan the on-going corruption by elected officials.

RELATED Another Indictment in Albany : Charges Against Senator Thomas Libous Add One More Stain (The New York Times) Nonprofit run out of Adams’ office hit up donors before city OK (The New York Post) Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams cleared to raise money for his One Brooklyn Fund (Celeste Katz Daily Politics) Nonprofit paid for Brooklyn borough president’s trip to China (The New York Post) Bruce Ratner joins de Blasio's Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City (as he did with Bloomberg) (Atlantic Yards Report)

When is Bill de Blasio going to own the problems of New York City ?

Overcrowded public schools, more public students in homeless shelters, hospital closures : the distraught de Blasio administration desperately trying to "spin" its way out of problems with rhetoric and deceptive mailers

RELATED 38 Percent of Applicants Did Not Get a "Universal" Pre-Kinder "Offer" (WNYC) Sources : de Blasio aide pushed rent increase (Crains New York Business) For de Blasio, Deals, Drama and (Maybe) Progress (The New York Times) SHAME : de Blasio mailer praises LICH closure (Bill de Blasio Sold Out) "Mayor's Fund to Advance NYC" is full of notorious developers (Queens Crap) Public Schools in New York City Are Poorer and More Crowded, Budget Agency Finds (The New York Times)

MORE AND MORE, the political bloggers in New York City are seeing through the smoke and mirrors of the de Blasio administration. As the media awaits Mayor Bill de Blasio to address school overcrowding, conditions made worse by his expansion of pre-kinder, political bloggers are asking tougher questions. Do the stumbles by the de Blasio administration on the politically-motivated early release of Bishop Orlando Findlayter from jail, the de Blasio deal to strong-arm the Working Families Party to endorse the reelection campaign of neoliberal Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and other missteps point to a one-term mayoralty ? These are the hush-hush questions being asked amongst activists and bloggers. Autonomous police reform activists see how Mayor de Blasio implicitly approves of the arrest of over 240 subway artists and performers so far this year under controversial "shock and awe" NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton. These same autonomous police reform activists also see how the mayor's puppet in the City Council, Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, allocated over $7 million in taxpayer dollars to community groups that guard the veal pen of nonprofit police reform activism from the inside. As the summer heat bears down on New Yorkers, their patience is going to wear thin with how the mayor is dragging his feet on long, outstanding reforms for which activists have waited over 15 years. For example, instead of saving Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, a move that could have been made revenue-neutral by just entering into a hospital licensing agreement between the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation and a new operator, the mayor did nothing to save LICH. The failed opportunity to save LICH keeps in place a decades-long, state plan to keep closing community hospitals to make radical cuts to the Medicaid program by denying expensive healthcare procedures to the poor and to people of color. Now, to cover his tracks, Mayor de Blasio has asked Berlin Rosen operative Dan Levitan to fabricate deceptive community mailers, trying to sell the spiel that the luxury condo conversion of LICH is actually a community "win." New Yorkers are a bright bunch of people. They know a scam when they see one. The sad story of what happened to LICH under Mayor de Blasio's watch, as are the on-going threat of NYPD's discriminatory "broken windows theory" of policing and the unaddressed problems with public education, point to a moment of truth for the de Blasio administration. Is he going to deflect blogger's rightful questions about his duplicitous political machinations into a problem for which his teams and teams of public relations operatives plan to blame the media, or is Mayor de Blasio going to own the problems of New York City -- including the very ones he creates himself ?