This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

It’s looking like no dice for a casino in the Bronx. The City Council voted down a crucial land use approval that would allow Bally's Corp. to compete for a casino license in the Bronx. Absent a hail mary veto from the mayor, local Council Member Kristy Marmorato will have successfully killed the casino bid. Another winner? The City Council’s unofficial but time-honored tradition of member deference.

From Massapequa to Montauk, European settlers named Long Island towns after the indigenous people whose land they sat on. One of the few remaining L.I. tribal communities scored a land victory this week, led by Goree, the first female chair of the Shinnecock Nation. A Dept. of the Interior panel squashed the Town of Southampton’s challenge to a ruling that an 84-acre parcel is sovereign Shinnecock land. The tribe also got back its official seal from the town.

Grocery delivery workers employed by apps like Instacart will soon have their pay boosted to at least $21.44 an hour thanks to the passage of legislation sponsored by City Council Members Jennifer Gutiérrez and Sandy Nurse. These workers – a group more than 20,000 strong – were previously left out of a sweeping 2021 pay boost that applied solely to app-based food delivery workers, but the latest changes will rectify that and implement additional worker protections. Happy shopping! (And don’t forget to tip.)

Queens City Council Member Vickie Paladino is known for her unapologetic and out-of-pocket social media posts. This time, however, her rants resulted in a cease-and-desist letter from Claudia Morales, the girlfriend of murdered Brooklyn activist Ryan Carson. Paladino harassed Morales on X, claiming that she hesitated calling police at the time because of her anti-police politics. The council member later deleted the post, and the legal threats may be a signal that she finally crossed the line she's long ignored.

Things aren’t looking too good right now for Maria Perrin. She just announced that she would step down as president of Public Partnerships LLC, the beleaguered company in charge of the state’s CDPAP transition. Other top executives also left the company in a move that PPL insists is not about cleaning house. Don’t pay attention to the employee siphoning off direct deposits in the background. And since Perrin isn’t resigning immediately, she still has to deal with the shenanigans as she heads (or is forced) out the door.

When you’re running for reelection as a public safety candidate who touts his personal experience as a cop, it’s kind of a bad look to get sued by your former interim police commissioner. And what a doozy of a lawsuit it is! Former NYPD Commish (or, per City Hall, “frivolous, disgruntled employee”) Tom Donlon alleges that the NYPD leadership amounted to a “coordinated criminal conspiracy” that spied on, sidelined and threatened him – all under Mayor Eric Adams’ watch.