A group of construction unions, community groups, and elected officials, including two Brooklyn politicians, City Councilwoman Letitia James and Assemblyman Walter Mosley, filed an Article 78 lawsuit against the Bloomberg administration and developer Acadia Realty Trust calling for the City Point real estate project to be shut down and to commission a new environmental impact statement for the construction site. The suit alleges that the wage rate allowed in the City Point lease would force construction workers to earn substandard… [More]

New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn officially announced her campaign for mayor yesterday by touring one neighborhood in each of the five boroughs, an Ed Koch-esque attempt to introduce herself to voters and highlight some of her accomplishments, as well as showcase her outsized personality. Quinn’s campaign was officially announced a couple of hours before the five borough “Walk and Talk” tour began with a five-minute video posted on her campaign website of Quinn sitting in Moonstruck Diner in… [More]

Four of New York City’s Republican candidates for mayor and one Independence Party candidate touched on a wide range of issues Wednesday morning at a breakfast forum hosted by Crain’s New York Business, the first panel this election cycle to not include a single Democratic candidate. The candidates began the debate by assigning Mayor Michael Bloomberg a numeric grade, on a scale of 1 to 10, and despite Bloomberg’s moderate politics, most gave the mayor high marks, with Independence Party… [More]

Mayor Michael Bloomberg fired a subliminal shot at Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, a Democratic candidate for mayor, for releasing a report that accused the mayor and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn for systematically targeting small businesses in the outer boroughs and levying onerous fines against them. “The world is not as simple as a campaign, and it’s not true just to this campaign, it’s all campaigns,” Bloomberg said on his weekly radio appearance this morning on the John Gambling Show.… [More]

During his State of the City speech on Thursday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg provided ample evidence to disprove critics who said that his third term failed to live up to the promise of his previous two, and for good measure, he hung it from the ceiling of the lobby in the Barclays Center. The mayor’s office teased Bloomberg’s various third-term accomplishments in an email leading up to his speech, from the record low in homicides in 2012 to the record number… [More]

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn laid out the parameters of an affordable housing plan and committed to supporting and elevating New York City’s middle class in a lofty State of the City speech on Monday. While Quinn delivered the speech at City Hall wearing her hat as Council speaker, her elevated rhetoric and vision for the city that would outlast her term in the Council was clearly that of a politician who plans on shepherding these ideas through as the next… [More]

Growing tired of the inertia in collective bargaining talks between Cablevision and the company’s Brooklyn employees, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer stood with workers outside of Madison Square Garden to demand that Cablevision negotiate in good faith and reinstate a group of workers who were dismissed a week ago. Last week,  Quinn and de Blasio–both Democratic candidates for mayor–ventured deep into Brooklyn to stand with 23 Brooklyn Cablevision workers… [More]

Mayor Michael Bloomberg outlined his preliminary budget for fiscal year 2014 on Tuesday, emphasizing that the budget will be balanced without any tax increases. But what stood out was the glaring loss of $724 million in state education funding over the next two years, a consequence of the lack of progress over negotiating a teacher evaluation plan with the United Federation of Teachers. The $250 million loss this year will be reflected in immediate cuts to child care and after… [More]

In front of his Park Slope row home, with a solid crowd of supporters braving the sub-freezing weather and waving newly printed red “de Blasio for Mayor” signs, New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio officially announced his intention to run for mayor. He joins former City Comptroller Bill Thompson and former City Councilman Sal Albanese as the only Democrats to declare their candidacy thus far. De Blasio has not been shy about making his family the public face… [More]

In what was dubbed the first real “debate” of the 2013 election cycle, six New York City mayoral candidates squared off at St. Paul Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn last night on the topic of housing. The event was hosted by the Daily News in conjunction with Metro IAF, and drew a packed house, with audience participation a hallmark of the forum. The candidates–City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, former comptroller Bill Thompson, Comptroller John Liu,… [More]