Winners & Losers 8/21/15

The only thing that can bring Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio together these days is topless women – and not in the way some of you might have guessed. With the “desnudas” taking over Times Square, both men have called for banishing the barely clad, bare-breasted, body-painted women. Whether they’ll win that fight has yet to be seen, so check out the week’s latest winners and losers.

 

WINNERS

Kriner Cash – The former Memphis schools superintendent now has arguably the most difficult job in Buffalo. But he is taking on the daunting task of fixing Buffalo’s long-beleaguered school system with the confidence, or at least tepid approval, of the highly divided school board, the teachers union and parents groups. And even if he can’t turn the tide on five decades of decline, his $275,000 annual salary will go a long way in the Nickel City, so he’s got that going for him.

Chris Cuomo – As far as sibling rivalries go, it’s hard to come out ahead when your big brother is the powerful governor of New York. But Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s most recognizable sibling (thanks to his job as a CNN anchor) may have won the week when he rescued a man from drowning. Top that, governor.

Jean Gutbrodt – The Legislative Correspondent Association’s longtime pressroom manager retired this week after 17 years, overlapping with the terms of four governors. A very impressive achievement, especially since she’s not a politician collecting kickbacks.

Jeffrey Immelt – General Electric is reportedly considering moving its headquarters to Atlanta from Connecticut, where over $1 billion in tax hikes are scheduled to soon take effect. But with Gov. Andrew Cuomo dangling some juicy tax incentives in front of the company in an attempt to lure it to Westchester County, it’s looking like GE is going to be better off no matter where it moves. (On a side note, Immelt has also managed to obtain a $22 million life insurance policy with the help of his company – the largest such plan for any chief executive in Standard & Poor’s 100 Index.)

Marlana Watson – The Army veteran and Binghamton native was awarded the New York State Medal of Valor, an extremely rare occurrence, after she provided emergency medical treatment to two teens wounded in a drive-by shooting outside her Syracuse home. Her award comes just as two West Point grads became the first women to graduate from Army Ranger School, making for a big week for women in the military on a state and national level.

 

LOSERS

Allie Feldman – Mayor Bill de Blasio never fulfilled his pledge to put an end to horse carriages in Central Park, which he once promised to do on “day one.” So this week he tried to put the pressure on activists, saying they need to take the reins and get the New York City Council to quit horsing around and support the ban. For leaders like Feldman, executive director of the animal rights group NYCLASS, you could say de Blasio threw them under the horse carriage. 

Joseph Morelle and Louise Slaughter – What should have been a victory lap for local politicians, a federally funded $600 million photonics center is turning into a political mess in Rochester, especially for Assembly Majority Leader Joe Morelle and Rep. Louise Slaughter. Under dispute is the location of the photonics center, with Morelle and Slaughter backing a building that the University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology support. But SUNY Polytechnic in Albany, the Department of Defense’s contract designee, picked a different location, and now the officials’ complaints can only delay a desperately needed project for the city.

David Paterson – “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to travel to Trinidad, insinuate yourself into the population and destabilize the government.” This is the only reason we can imagine why the former governor would fly to the Caribbean island and, according to local news outlets, claim Trinidadian heritage while talking smack about the prime minister. When caught (turns out his ancestors were Jamaican and Grenadian), the U.S. embassy disavowed any support for his actions. Somewhere, a cassette tape is self-destructing.

Michael Powers – The state correction officers union boss seems to be waiting on several investigations these days. Amid allegations of guard misconduct at several prisons, Powers responded to a Times story about a "Beat Up Squad" allegedly pummeling a mentally ill Fishkill Correctional Facility inmate to death by saying he would await facts before making a judgment.

Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz – The Mets are resurgent, but the team owners’ plan for the Willets Point area appear to have picked up the team’s traditional underdog mantle. The de Blasio administration did not join Wilpon and Katz’s Sterling Equities or its development partner, Related Companies, in filing an appeal seeking to overturn a ruling that bars the city from using a parking lot for development. That puts plans for a giant housing complex, a 200-store mall, a theater and a hotel in jeopardy. 

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