Dirty Politics
NY1 News
“NY1 obtained a copy of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s 2011 schedule, of which 600 hours are blacked out . . . ‘It seems that there might have been names, names of staff members for example, public employees, other people that Ms. Quinn might have met that did involve the performance of her duties,’ said Robert Freeman of the State Committee on Open Government. ‘It would be difficult to understand why those names would be redacted.'”
NY Post
“Agency oversight has rarely been strong in the council, but under Quinn, it is an oxymoron.”
Queens Courier
“Councilmember Vallone has a much better chance of becoming Queens Borough President in 2013 then Speaker Quinn does of becoming Mayor. Vallone answers to a higher authority – the voters rather than special interest groups like Speaker Quinn.”
NY Daily News
“Those who live in districts represented by Quinn’s allies bring home far more money than do members who have broken ranks with the speaker. And the needs of any particular community are irrelevant as the speaker divides a $50 million annual pie.”
NY Daily News
“After the criminal scandals, Quinn and this Council announced that not-for-profit groups would be welcome to seek grants by using a simple electronic application system. The message was that all (charities) . . . were on the same footing and would be considered on the merits. Not so at all . . . Some of the districts with the city’s lowest household incomes got much less than more affluent areas.”
Wall Street Journal
“Each council member gets a different amount of money to spend. The speaker always gets the most. According to council members, those members who curry favor with the speaker get the most money.”
NY Daily News
“The City Council celebrated Lulu Day on Friday as Speaker Christine Quinn dispensed the checks she issues twice yearly to fatten the wallets of favored members. The payments are called lulus because once upon a time the stipends were deemed “payments in lieu of expenses.” No more. Now they are paid on top of a $112,500 salary as rewards for faithful allegiance to Quinn’s agenda.”
NY Times
In a NY Times article entitled Quinn’s Friendship with Lobbyist May Pose Test in Mayor Bid,” Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, a government watchdog group, said, “When someone who is a close associate (lobbyist Emily Giske) is making their living and improving their financial status because of their ongoing personal relationship with an elected official (Christine Quinn), that makes you a lobbyist on steroids.”
NY Post
In an editorial about Quinn’s use of discretionary funds to reward and penalize local politicians, the NY Post states, “(Vito) Lopez, a state assemblyman and the subject of a federal corruption investigation, needed a front-end loader to haul away the so-called member-item cash lavished on him in the new city budget by Quinn.”
NY Daily News
“Quinn was primary sponsor for just two of the 827 bills that have been submitted to the City Council since 2010, a Daily News analysis found. . .Quinn frequently asks colleagues to introduce measures on her behalf, which allows her to curry favor and to avoid angering important voting blocs, insiders say. ‘She’s trying to be all things to all people,’ said Doug Forand, a political consultant who is not working for any of the 2013 mayoral contenders.”
NY Observer
“On any number of occasions over the last two years, Ms. Quinn has made it clear that political calculation, not the common good, is at the heart of her decision-making.”
Joe My God Blog
“Twenty-four hour local news channel NY1 filed a Freedom Of Information request to obtain the 2011 schedule of NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the presumptive leader in the 2013 mayoral election. What they got back was a list that included over 600 hours of blackened appointments.”
New York Post
“Had Speaker Quinn not even entertained the suspicious map in the first place, she could have saved herself the embarrassment of a seeming quid pro quo arrangement with the odious Lopez. She didn’t, and now she’ll have to live with the consequences of having ‘done the right thing’ — only after being caught with her fingers in the redistricting jar.”
East Harlem Focus Blog
Discontent with Quinn’s greed is brewing in East Harlem:
“I am appalled that you would jeopardize our constitutional right to have equitable representation at the City Council level for what some say is straight-up political retribution.”
Free Assembly
James Wagner Blog
“Why did these homosexuals interrupt the homosexual Speaker while she was addressing her core homosexual constituency? Because Quinn was the civilian agent for a secretly-negotiated agreement (there were no public hearings) with the NYPD which gives the police full authority to restrict public assembly and public speech. . . This policy was never submitted to the Council for consideration; no statute supports this agreement and practice; it is the creation of the Speaker herself.”
RHA blog
“Multiple courts have ruled that the City’s assembly rules were unconstitutional. But instead of conducting public hearings and placing the matter into the hands of the City Council, Speaker Quinn allowed the NYPC to write these rules behind closed doors and then proceeded to rubber stamp them.”
RHA
Christine Quinn rubber stamped an NYPD rule (with no public debate) making it illegal for groups of 50 or more to assemble in public without a permit. Freedom of assembly is vitally important to the LGBT community and is a constitutional right that helped put her into power in the first place.
Real Estate
NY Observer
“Real estate donations are nothing novel in campaigns, but this fundraiser (for Quinn) happened at the very time that Extell is seeking zoning approval from the City Council for its mega-Riverside Center residential development, which is envisioned to hold 2,500 apartments . . . [This fundraiser for Quinn is] notable given that the speaker . . . has made a priority of campaign finance reform.”
Capital New York
“Christine Quinn appears to have created a loophole in a draft “living wage” bill that would benefit the developers working on a portion of the Hudson Yards project on Manhattan’s far west side. . . This doesn’t look great for the Quinn, obviously.”
Noticing New York
“We have plenty of reason to be alarmed by the conduct of city administration officials and the kind of backroom dealing they are apparently willing to engage in to manipulate favored real estate deals through the approval process.”
Noticing New York
Two Trees accounted for at least $74,250 in donations to the two City Council members with the most power over the development, Speaker Christine C. Quinn and Melinda R. Katz, chairwoman of the Council’s Land Use Committee.
Noticing New York
“If Ms. Quinn is going to whip votes in favor of the Dock Street project she ought to have at least a comment on the smoking gun e-mails that have been in the press about the mayoral level manipulations to get the project approved.”
NY Daily News
“The biggest gifts went to Speaker Christine Quinn, who got $34,650, and Councilwoman Melinda Katz, who heads the committee that reviews development and got $29,700. Both are supporters of the project.”
NY Times
“Two Trees accounted for at least $74,250 in donations to the two City Council members with the most power over the development, Speaker Christine Quinn and Melinad R. Katz, chairwoman of the Council’s Land Use Committee.”
NY Times
“Ms. Quinn, who said she has not made up her mind about it (the Dock Street development), noted that she had championed reforms that eliminated the kinds of contributions she got from Two Trees. Why, then, did she take nine donations last year from owners, employees and family members of the company for $4,950 each, the maximum then permitted?”
Blinders blog
“Christine Quinn and NY-CLASS appear to have struck a deal: If the founder of NY-CLASS silences the anti-Quinn activists and builds support for her in our community, Quinn will protect his business interests in the City Council.”
NY Times
“Supporters of the market expansion have been generous to Ms. Quinn: her campaign has received more than $370,000 in donations from at least 120 people who are board members, or in the immediate family of board members, of the Real Estate Board of New York and Friends of the High Line according to an analysis by The New York Times. Ms. Quinn has described seven of those contributors as bundlers — fund-raisers who solicit money for her campaign — and they have pooled more than $130,000 for her.”
NY Post
“Christine Quinn has the vote locked up — in New Jersey. Some of the top benefactors to the City Council speaker’s $4 million 2013 war chest for a presumed mayoral bid are from the other side of the Hudson.”
NY Observer
“Ms. Quinn has abandoned the rabble-rousing that first gave her such a high profile, and is now the consummate real estate insider.”
Crain's
In an article about a controversial development on the West Side of Manhattan, Crain’s includes a quote from an “insider” who inadvertently sheds light on how Quinn makes decisions based on how they will help her instead of the public: “Chris has taken the temperature of the community on this,” said one insider. “There’s not enough in it for her to simply go against them.”
NY Times
“Ms. Quinn, who said she has not made up her mind about it (a real estate development), noted that she had championed reforms that eliminated the kinds of contributions she got from Two Trees (Development Company). Why, then, did she take nine donations last year from owners, employees and family members of the company for $4,950 each, the maximum then permitted?”
NY Post
“Quinn took in more than $17,000 in campaign donations connected to Hudson Yards developer Related Cos. since the start of 2012 . . . During the same six-month period, Quinn privately negotiated a deal that gave the firm a break from the recently passed law that raises to $10 an hour the pay for lower-income employees who work for companies that receive major subsidies from City Hall.”
Wall Street Journal
“She should be here to hear testimony about a project that’s going to destroy her community,” said Michael McKee, who worked with the speaker in 1989 when she was an organizer with the Housing Justice Campaign. “She was a great community organizer. She was one of the best I’ve ever met,” he added, “but I don’t know where that Chris Quinn is.”
New York Daily News
“Speaker Quinn sponsored $2 million for the Dermot Company’s plans to build open space as part of 800 mostly market-rate apartments in the Hudson Yards development. Dermot execs have donated $24,750 to Quinn in the last two years.”
New York Times
“Shortly after the vote, Ms. Quinn released a 1,000-word statement saying that deal ‘strikes the appropriate balance between the need for development and economic growth while preserving the distinct character of an iconic city building.’ But after the vote, Michael McKee, a longtime advocate for tenants’ rights, his voice rising, criticized council members as ‘sheep’ because ‘they live in fear of the speaker.'”
www.christinequinn.com
Quinn “made a strong and unequivocal promise to her then future constituents: She had not and would not take money from landlords or developers. “No I haven’t and no I won’t,” she said with emphasis…it did not take long before Quinn started to break her promise. A re-examination of her campaign contributions from 1999 shows she was lying through her teeth even during her first campaign. And today, as then, she’s in complete denial.”
New York Daily News
“Business owners and others who signed a letter urging Quinn to stop the bill have given or raised more than $250,000 for her campaign.”
The Real Deal
Quinn’s plan “prominently features a tax subsidy twice proposed and rejected by the Bloomberg administration as unacceptably generous to the real estate industry, according to the New York Times.”
The Real Deal
Yet another real estate mogul has publicly praised Christine Quinn. Over the years, real estate interests have invested millions in Quinn’s campaign b/c the ROI is extraordinary. After all, Quinn has demonstrated time and again that she will stop at nothing to pay them back, including destroying entire neighborhoods, changing zoning laws and ignoring her own constituents.
Term Limits
Gay City News
On why Quinn overturned term limits, “Four more years as speaker will give voters time to forget about that (slush fund) scandal so that Quinn can make a run for Mayor, with Bloomberg’s support, in 2013.”
Alec Baldwin
“This is a woman who stormed out of an event yesterday after lecturing a group of students who were jeering Bloomberg on the merits of democracy. Yet she single handedly worked with Bloomberg to overturn the term limits for her own personal gain.” – Alec Baldwin
New York Daily News
“She has been constantly at Bloomberg’s side in press conferences in recent months. You can’t help thinking it’s Bloomberg’s payback for her most unforgettable act: getting City Council to overturn term limits and paving the way for his third term.”
