Leroy Comrie

Councilman Leroy Comrie is taking a hard line against the police officers and officials involved in the Sean Bell shooting.

Speaking to reporters after a press conference in Jamaica, Comrie said the Police Department should “remove the lieutenant, the commanding officer, the head of the division. They all need to be, I think, fired."

Later, he added, “We cannot look for the commissioner to do anything less than the full intent to show that he wants to have a professional Police Department with the best tactics and the best resources available.”  read more »

I just got back from Michael Bloomberg's press conference at a job center in Jamaica, not far from where Sean Bell was killed in 2006.

Bloomberg said he doesn’t expect any violence in response to today's verdict, and added that there is room for peaceful dissent and possibly legal action.

Also there were Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Council members Leroy Comrie and Tom White, and State Senate Democratic leader Malcolm Smith.  read more »

Leroy Comrie's April 19 "Women for Comrie" fund-raiser for his bid for Queens borough president raised $10,000 from 200 attendees, according to Comrie aide Rance Huff.

Comrie will need the money to compete with better-funded rivals like Peter Vallone, Jr. (who held one of his fund-raisers in the mayor’s home).

Sharp-eyed readers will notice Assemblyman Bill Scarborough was also there [identification corrected].

 

David Weprin, the City Council Finance Chairman, emerged from the closed door meeting that members had with Christine Quinn yesterday to discuss the council's accounting problems and and the indictment of two staffers.  read more »

Here’s part of the invitation for City Councilman Leroy Comrie’s April 19 fund-raiser, geared to female supporters. Comie is considered a likely candidate for Queens borough president.  read more »

 

City Councilman Leroy Comrie thinks the media "has gone too far" with David Paterson's personal life.

“For the media to continue to ask these questions that are not related to ensuring that we have a positive government, is just, I think, taking it too far,” Comrie told me. He added later, “I understand the salaciousness of the media and the desire to have things on the front cover, but there are plenty of other targets they can go after.”

It’s a pretty crowded room upstairs in the City Council chambers, where testimony about congestion pricing is being given by city Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and the Director of Long-term Planning and Sustainability, Rohit Aggarwala.

In one exchange, Aggarwala told City Councilman Robert Jackson, “[Y]ou don’t have to get 20 percent of the people off the road to have 20 percent reduction in traffic.” She continued, “Sometimes, if you take one or two cars off, it takes a crowded, congested condition and it turns it into traffic that can flow.”  read more »

City Councilwoman Helen Sears is another council member who will be term-limited out of office in 2009 and may be running for a higher office.

Sears is seeking donations up to $3,850, the Campaign Finance Board’s contribution limit for borough president candidates, at a December 19 fund-raiser. The event takes place at 5:30 at the restaurant 17 Murray and the invitation gives top billing to Christine Quinn.

A message left for the treasurer of Sears’ campaign committee was not immediately returned.

Running in that race already are Peter Vallone, Jr., Leroy Comrie, and, possibly, Audrey Pheffer.

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A federal judge ruled just now that the City Council can move forward and fire staffer Viola Plummer if she does not sign a statement promising to behave herself. Plummer, who works for firebrand councilman Charles Barron, landed in this trouble after making outbursts during a Council meeting in May, after which she expressed the hope that someone would "assassinate" one of her opponents. After Council Speaker Christine Quinn moved to punish Plummer last week, the city employee filed a lawsuit.

 

But losing this legal round didn't prevent Plummer and Barron, from leaving the federal court house in Manhattan with their arms raised in victory. Speaking to reporters after the judge's ruling, Plummer said: "I feel this is a continuation of white supremacy that began when we were kidnapped and brought here."

When asked about the "assassination" remark attributed to her, she said, "In my heart, I believe the words that I used are the words that I said. Straight up, okay?"

Barron, not for the first time, ripped up the apology letter that Plummer had been ordered to sign by 5 p.m. today. Although Plummer's lawyer said his client will likely be fired by the end of this afternoon, Barron predicted that she would be back to work starting Monday (and joked he may even ask her to work the weekend).

Plummer may not return to City Hall, but she will get a day in court, it seems. A jury trial for her civil case is set to begin September 24th.

Gotham Gazette just released a nice analysis of individually sponsored member items from this year’s city budget.

According to the group, the king of member items is David Weprin of Queens, who got $736,500 for his district by funding 31 projects there. Councilman Leroy Comrie, also of Queens, funded 80 projects for a total of $710,857.

The district with the fewest dollars brought into it is in Brooklyn, where the Council’s newest member, Mathieu Eugene funded 10 programs for a total of $46,500. Helen Foster of the Bronx funded just one project, but it was worth $102,187.

The full report is here.

The City Council is beefing up security for two Council members who were the subject of separate (but related) death threats, Christine Quinn told reporters at a press conference earlier today.

The first threat was directed towards Leroy Comrie by Viola Plummer, who is the chief of staff to Charles Barron.

The second was directed at Barron by an anonymous commenter on a popular police chat board.

Quinn said, "We are taking both of these sets of statements incredibly serious. In both matters, we have spoken to the Council member in question. My director of security has spoken to both Council member Comrie and Council member Barron and offered them whatever additional security they believe they need. We’ve offered to do security assessments of their offices."

Quinn said she's spoken to top police officials about whether a police officer may have made the comment about Barron. As for Plummer, Quinn said they are looking into whether she, as an employee of the City Council, can be punished.

"We are researching what our legal options are as a speaker and as an institution to take action," Quinn said.

“If it takes an assassination of his ass, he will not be borough president in the borough where I live.”

That was the chief of staff to Charles Barron speaking about another City Council member, Leroy Comrie, who is black and voted to abstain today on a failed proposal today to rename a street after black nationalist Sonny Carson.

The chief of staff, Viola Plummer, was speaking outside City Hall to a group of reporters and advocates for Carson. When asked about her comments, Plummer later said, “So, to assassinate Leroy Comrie’s ass, because that’s what I said, means his whole stuff, his whole run for Queens Borough President.”

When Plummer was asked by a reporter to identify herself, she first indicated that she lived in Queens and ran a community program in Brooklyn. Later she identified herself as a Council employee.

Plummer’s “assassination” remark was very much in the tradition of the sort of militant language employed by Carson himself. (“I’m not anti-Semitic, I’m anti-white,” he once said.) Carson's supporters have said that it's unfair to judge his entire life by his most extreme comments.

Tonight, Leroy Comrie will have a fund-raiser hosted by Christine Quinn and organized by the Seto Group.

Comrie has been talked about as a candidate for Queens Borough President, a position more than one current City Council member is interested in. So this seems to suggest that Quinn’s choice in that race, however unofficially, has been made.

And in case you follow this sort of thing, the Seto Group is the same one getting John Liu’s citywide campaign (for something) off the ground.

Councilwoman Tish James of Brooklyn, seen here with Leroy Comrie, had the distinction of being one of the last City Council members not to chair a committee.

Just now, Christine Quinn officially announced that James will head the Council's Contracts Committee. The committee is charged with looking at the city's procurement agreements.

-- Azi Paybarah

Here is Councilman Leroy Comrie at a press conference on the City Hall steps today about his symbolic-but-sincerely motivated push to have a moratorium on the N-word.

When I asked him about the possibility of banning on the F-word, which has recently been put to artful use among legislators in Albany, Comrie demurred.

"One word at a time," he said.

-- Azi Paybarah

City Council members Leroy Comrie and Tony Avella took to the Daily News editorial pages on Sunday to tackle the question of whether the City Council deserves a raise. Comrie:

"The last time the city adjusted the salaries for Council members was seven years ago. Since then, the cost of living in New York City has increased 25%. At a base salary of $90,000, member are paid considerably less than the $175,000 that many New York City commissioners earn, less than many professional staff are paid at city agencies and less than some staff are paid at the Council itself."

Avella:

"Being a member of the Council is still a part-time job. Council members are allowed to have other jobs and outside income, and many do. In addition, many members receive annual bonuses, ranging from $4,000 to $29,500, for serving in leadership positions or as committee chairs. I have always refused mine."

-- Azi Paybarah

The heavyweight champion of New York City real estate spamming, Council Member John Liu, has brightened our afternoon inbox with some atypically wonderful news.

With two council allies, he is intrepidly demanding that the city use some of the $141 million profits from its yellow cab medallion sale "to expand yellow taxicab service in communities outside of Manhattan's central business district."

But how will cab drivers be lured to Brooklyn and beyond? "The new legislation will require the Taxi and Limousine Commission to establish new taxi stands at major transportation hubs currently under-served by yellow taxicabs. The TLC can then examine the success of these stands over a three-year period and use that information to make citywide taxi service permanent."

Finally, outer borough thirst for uncomfortable automotive service will be quenched. Fight on, Mr. Liu.

The press release, in all its glory, after the jump.  read more »

- Max Abelson

OK, if you care, here's the official list of new City Council assignments. (Everything not mentioned stays the same.)

AGING - Maria del Carmen Arroyo CONSUMER AFFAIRS - Leroy Comrie CONTRACTS - Yvette Clarke ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT - Tom White EDUCATION - Robert Jackson FIRE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE - Miguel Martinez GOVERNMENTAL OPERATIONS - Simcha Felder HEALTH - Joel Rivera HOUSING AND BUILDINGS - Erik Martin-Dilan MENTAL HEALTH - Oliver Koppell RULES, PRIVILEGES, ELECTIONS - Diana Reyna SMALL BUSINESS - David Yassky STANDARDS AND ETHICS - Inez Dickens STATE AND FEDERAL LEGISLATION - Maria Baez WATERFRONTS - Michael Nelson WOMEN'S ISSUES - Helen Sears

Subcommittees: PLANNING, DISPOSITION, CONCESSIONS - Dan Garodnick LANDMARKS - Jessica Lappin

New Standing Committees (formerly subcommittees): CIVIL RIGHTS - Larry Seabrook JUVENILE JUSTICE - Sara Gonzalez LOWER MANHATTAN REDEVELOPMENT - Alan Gerson(continued)  read more »

MAJORITY LEADER - Joel Rivera DEPUTY MAJORITY LEADER - Leroy Comrie ASSISTANT MAJORITY LEADER - Lew Fidler ASSISTANT MAJORITY LEADER - Bill de Blasio MAJORITY WHIP - Inez Dickens

Something for (almost) everyone!

An extraordinary thing about the race for Speaker is how it's not being driven by two traditional factors in city politics: political machines and race. Sure, machine politics will play big a role, but neither of the two leading candidates, Bill de Blasio and Chris Quinn, is closely tied to a county organization. And race is part of the politics, as always, but only part.

This is all the more striking because there has been for years a strong feeling that the next Speaker should be black or Latino. One of the loudest voices in support of that notion was East New York's Charles Barron, the body's leading race politician. But now even Barron has, reluctantly, given up and allied himself with de Blasio.  read more »

"I think it should be a person of color, but it doesn't look like it's going to be," he told The Politicker. "The two persons who were running out there weren't serious," he said of Leroy Comrie and Joel Rivera.

Barron deplored the weakness of the Council's Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus. "Before we can get together and make a decision of what we can do as 25 strong, we are all in different camps," he said. "We have a tendency to be picked off by county leaders, by the mayor, by unions and other groups."

All this fresh air around the race for City Council Speaker seems to be causing a bit of discomfort around -- gasp! -- policy issues. Housing Here and Now, a coalition of tenants' groups, just announced that two of the Speaker candidates with (relatively) pro-landlord records, Leroy Comrie and Melinda Katz, pulled out of their forum tonight.

"While it's great that the leading candidates for speaker will be there, it's too bad that the other candidates chose to withdraw their support and I'm sure tenants will want to know why," Housing Here and Now spokesman Jonathan Rosen told The Politicker, adding that he hopes all the candidates participate.  read more »

Candidates are expected to be grilled on their stance on several bills, including one that would extend "421a" affordable housing to new neighborhoods. And one imagines that it would be no fun to tell the room of 1,000 tenants things they don't want to hear.

Looking over a handy list of candidates for all New York City offices (here in .pdf form, link now working), it's become clear that the hardest-fought politics this year is going to play out at the bottom of the political food chain in Queens.

There, Bloomberg aide John Haggerty has filed rare challenges to nearly 120 members of the Republican County Committee in about 60 districts; those challenged include Tom Ognibene and his wife, Margaret. These mini-races will be fought out between now and September, though one Haggerty ally said they aim to disqualify the petitions of some rivals in the meantime.

This is, in part, the latest in a complex and age-old (think: Balkans) three-way Queens Republican squabble. But it's also prelude to a coup against County Leader Serph Maltese, who is elected by the county committee. And it's a rare and refreshing instance of Mike Bloomberg engaging in an extremely traditional local political sport: revenge.

One other Queens note: When The Politicker reported yesterday that Leroy Comrie of Southeast Queens would appear on both Republican and Democratic lines, I understated the feat Comrie had pulled off. This November, he will be the candidate of no fewer than four political parties, Democrat, Republican, Working Families, and Independence. His name will appear on the ballot four times, and his will be the only name for his race.  read more »

Southeast Queens, meet Primorsk circa 1973.