THE NEW YORK POST  

 By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

February 7, 2008 — Egypt, Kuwait and Nigeria sit atop the heap of the city’s diplomatic scofflaws, which have racked up millions of dollars in unpaid parking tickets.

Egypt, which tops the list, still owes the Big Apple $1.9 million on 17,000 tickets - despite having added only nine tickets for $1,345 since the city reached a deal with the State Department in 2002 to collect the outstanding fines.

Under the agreement, the city gave extra parking spots to missions and consulates, while the State Department agreed to withhold aid from countries with tickets that have gone unpaid for more than 100 days.

Most nations began to cough up the dough, but the city is still owed $18 million for 161,683 tickets, including $1.2 million from Kuwait and $975,000 from Nigeria.

“It is our hope that countries that have not resolved their debt will pay the city what they owe, instead of losing US foreign aid,” said Marjorie Tiven, Mayor Bloomberg’s liaison to the United Nations.

  

The New York Post  

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

February 4, 2008 — Pairing experienced nurses with first-time mothers in very low income communities has been so successful in reducing infant mortality that Mayor Bloomberg has decided to pump another $22 million to expand the program.

The Nurse Family Partnership (NFP) program places seasoned nurses with new mothers in Jamaica, Harlem, the South Bronx and parts of Brooklyn. The nurses begin working with pregnant moms, helping them until their child is 2. So far, 1,000 mothers have been served.

Officials are “going to help some of our youngest residents by expanding the successful Nurse Family Partnership,” Bloomberg said yesterday on his weekly 1010 WINS radio address.

“Now, we’re taking the Nurse Family Partnership to the next level by extending its reach to all five boroughs.”

The program’s nurses visit moms either weekly or every other week, and offer them guidance on breast feeding, parenting skills, preventive health practices, and even helping the moms make economic decisions.

The new money over the next three years will allow for up to 2,600 families to be served. Expectant women can simply call 311 to enroll.

The New York Post

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

City Comptroller Bill Thompson said yesterday the city’s five pension funds have issued resolutions to 24 Fortune 500 companies, calling on them to revise anti-discrimination policies to include sexual orientation and gender identity. “A company can’t reach its full potential if it fails to protect its workforce,” Thompson said. “Equal treatment in the work place is a right, it is not a privilege,” added Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum. They made their comments at the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community center, which is celebrating 25 years of service in

New York. Thompson had harsh words for oil giant ExxonMobil, with whom his office has been locked in a battle of wills on the issue. “Exxon Mobil should be ashamed of itself. It has rejected efforts for eight years to ensure that LGBT workers are protected from bias and discrimination.” The city’s pension funds hold 30 million shares worth $2.2 billion of the targeted companies and $110 billion in all. Six companies immediately amended their policies. By forcing resolutions at shareholder meetings during his tenure as comptroller, Thompson has gotten 50 companies to change or expand their policies on discrimination.

The New York Post  

  By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

December 3, 2007 — City officials for the first time are specifically targeting gay and lesbian travelers, to help meet Mayor Bloomberg’s goal of drawing 50 million visitors to the Big Apple by 2015, The Post has learned.

NYC & Company, the city’s tourism arm, took out a three-page ad in the December/January issue of Out, a popular gay- and lesbian-interest magazine.

The agency also has launched a $30 million, 19-country campaign called “This is New York City.”

Commercials have also been placed on LOGO, a national cable network that tailors its programming to gay viewers. They will be aired over the coming weeks.

There will also be ads on similarly themed gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Web sites - and advertising will be stepped up next year around Valentine’s Day.

NYC & Company said it is reaching out to the demographic because it contains a large number of big spenders, usually with two incomes and no children. They are “highly desirable and considered a dream market due to high incidence of travel and discretionary income,” said one Bloomberg administration official.

“What we’re saying is, ‘This is New York, and it’s for everyone, whether you are a family or you’re just here with your lover.’ ”

Similar campaigns have been successful in Philadelphia, Chicago and Phoenix. Airlines and hotel chains have used advertising targeted at same-sex couples.

That the Big Apple had not previously advertised to gays and lesbians “is obviously an omission that has hurt the city,” Christine Quinn, the City Council’s first openly gay speaker, told the networking group Out Professionals last week.

“Tourism is money, and that’s a good thing so were working right now with NYC & Company to fix that omission and come up with a good . . . outreach plan, and we’d love for folks input and advice on that.”

The New York Post

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is backing Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, ordered that a public hearing today on a proposed resolution be canceled because it supported a legislative effort by Barack Obama, The Post has learned.

The hearing for a council resolution on behalf of Obama’s Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act was abruptly canceled late last week after Councilwoman Darlene Mealy (D-Brooklyn) had waited months to get it on the calendar.

Legally required public notification of the hearing had already been made, and staffers from Obama’s Senate office had been invited to testify.

But Mealy and staffers on the Council Government Operations Committee were told by Quinn’s aides it had been called off.

“This legislation is great legislation but the speaker felt that we should pull this bill because with Sen. Barack Obama’s name on it, it seemed like the City Council is endorsing him,” Mealy told The Post.

She said she was disappointed because she believes in the content of the bill, which aims to curb voter intimidation, is what matters - not “whose name is on it.”

Councilman Simcha Felder (D-Brooklyn), who chairs the Governmental Operations Committee, said he was “quite surprised to find out it was taken off the agenda.”

Jamie McShane, a spokesman for Quinn, said “the hearing would be rescheduled in due time.”

Meanwhile, Obama said yesterday that Clinton’s vote to authorize the Iraq war should give voters pause.

“What’s clear when you look at her statements and her approach to the problem, she was too willing to give the president a blank check,” he told The Associated Press.

“There’s been a little bit of revisionist history since that time, where she indicates she was authorizing only inspectors or additional diplomacy.

“I think everybody in Washington and people in New Hampshire and around the country understood this was a vote for war. The question is: Does she apply different judgment today?”

The New York Post

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN Post Correspondent

 LONDON - Mayor Bloomberg wants to keep more of an eye on you.

After a demonstration here that included surveillance on his convoy, Bloomberg said he wants to follow London’s model and dramatically increase the number of closed-circuit TV cameras used in New York.

The mayor said Big Apple residents must accept that they are under constant watch by video cameras - and he called opposition to such surveillance “ridiculous.”

“In this day and age, if you think that cameras aren’t watching you all the time, you are very naive,” Bloomberg told reporters at London’s City Hall.

“We are under surveillance all the time” from cameras in shops and office buildings, “and in London, they have multiple cameras on every bus and in every subway car,” he added.

“We live in a dangerous world, and people want to have security cameras.”

London has one of the world’s highest concentrations of surveillance cameras. An estimated 4 million operate in Britain.

“It’s ridiculous, people who object to using technology,” Bloomberg said during a meeting with the London’s head of counterterrorism, Chief Superintendent Alex Robertson.

“The cameras on subways and on buses in this day and age, we are way behind and we really do have to catch up,” Bloomberg said.

“The MTA . . . just has to get us this kind of technology. Americans are too exposed and there are some people that don’t like cameras, but the alternatives are so much worse,” the mayor added, noting that he intended to discuss the matter with MTA officials.

Robertson said Londoners’ trust had to be gained first.

“You have to maintain public confidence and people believe it’s for good not for evil. We’re not spying on them and we’ll only use it for good and not for evil.”

“New Yorkers innovate a lot, but we don’t have a lock on all the great ideas,” Bloomberg said after a meeting with London Mayor Ken Livingstone.

“We will be happy to follow Ken’s footsteps or in this case bus tracks because the world’s great cities like London and New York do have to learn from one another to meet the challenges of our time.”

Meanwhile, Bloomberg also said he wants to look into a high-tech traffic-light control system - which can zero in on a busy intersection and change traffic flow by changing the pace of its lights.

The New York Post

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN Post Correspondent

PARIS - On the first stop of a European tour to discuss environmentally friendly solutions to urban traffic, Mayor Bloomberg hinted that a pick-up-and-drop-off bike rental program might be imported from the City of Lights to the City That Never Sleeps.

“It’s fascinating,” Bloomberg said of Paris’ popular bicycle program. “It seems to be a success . . . I think it’s one of those things we should look at.”

Under the program, Parisians can pick up a bike at one location, using an E-ZPass type of pay system, and then return it at a drop-off spot nearest their destination.

“You have to hand it to the people of Paris,” the mayor said. “They are willing to try new things. Some will work and some won’t. This obviously has worked, and we have to do the same thing.”

Bloomberg also toured a steel and oak pedestrian-and-bike-only crossing over the River Seine that’s helped revitalize a formerly industrial neighborhood.

“We have terrible traffic problems, Paris and New York, and they are strangling our economic growth,” Bloomberg lamented, promising to swap New York’s transit success stories with the Parisian government.

Bloomberg also shared a fish-and-wine lunch with the popular, openly gay mayor Betrand Delanoe, declaring the wine so good that he had two glasses. The pair ate, drank and talked about environmental issues at the opulent Hotel de Ville, or City Hall.

Accompanying the mayor on the tour are Kevin Sheekey, his top political guru, and First Deputy Mayor Patti Harris, as well as his girlfriend, Diana Taylor.

The Bloomberg entourage heads tomorrow to London to try out the new hybrid double-decker buses and the mechanics of the city’s congestion pricing. The mayor returns home Tuesday.

 

The New York Post

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

The City Council overwhelmingly voted yesterday to override Mayor Bloomberg’s veto of a bill lifting the cellphone ban in public schools.

“No rule trumps my child’s safety,” said Lew Fidler (D-Brooklyn), the prime sponsor of the measure, which passed 46-2.

Fidler said his son takes two buses to school each morning and carries a mobile phone in case of an emergency.

“We want to know if he’s late, why he’s late,” he added.

Other council members argued that a cellphone that is out of sight and turned off isn’t a problem in class.

Last July, the council voted to give parents the right to send their kids to school with phones and made it illegal to interfere with that right.

The city’s 1.1-million-student school system has prohibited electronic devices like phones and pagers since the late 1980s.

But many schools chose not to confiscate phones if they were kept hidden in bags.

In recent times, metal detectors installed in schools to ferret out weapons have forced the issue to the forefront, as phones were being detected and confiscated as students entered school.

Furious parents flooded lawmakers with calls and held rallies leading to the law passed over the summer.

Aides to Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein have repeatedly said phones interrupt teaching, even if they’re used for text messaging or browsing the Web.

Yesterday, when Bloomberg was asked if he would go to court to keep from implementing the law, he said there’d be no legal action to take because the bill was essentially symbolic.

“This is a bill that doesn’t change anything. You just don’t have the right to bring it into the school, and that’s not changing. Our teachers have a tough enough job,” the mayor said.

But Fidler said the new law was for more than show.

“It’s an expression of exasperation of tens of thousands of parents,” Fidler said. “If the mayor thinks it’s symbolic, he will be very much mistaken in 90 days when the bill goes into effect.”

Oliver Koppell (D-Bronx), who joined James Sanders (D-Queens) in voting against the override, said the law is impractical and would lead to cheating.

“Now the proctor is going to have to figure out whether [a phone is] on or not on,” Koppell fumed.

“We all know that cellphones can be used for text messaging . . . to watch movies, to access the Internet.

“We don’t need to make the teacher or the proctor a policeman to make sure that the cellphone is off.”

Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Queens) said recently his daughter called him because her bus driver got lost and that another child called her parents because she got on the wrong bus.

“You do not punish the good kids and tell them you cannot be as safe as you can be because you cannot control the bad kids,” he said.

—

Class rings

Under the new cellphone law:

* Parents have right to send kids to school with cellphones.

* Phones will be stored and not used during school day.

* Teachers can confiscate any phone used to disrupt class.

* Seized phones must be returned when kids go home.

The New York Post

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

Maybe City Council members should practice what they preach. At a hearing yesterday on a resolution to discourage the use of the n-word, the racially offensive term was heard more times than on a Kanye West album.

The spewing of the slur nearly 50 times in less than two hours angered the anti-n-word measure’s sponsor, Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-Queens).

“If I had been the chair, I would have asked them not to use the word,” Comrie told The Post afterward. “I was not pleased.”

Marcia Harris, founder of the Harlem-based Ban the N-Word Movement, got the ball rolling with a passionate lecture on the word’s origins - that dropped the n-bomb a staggering 19 times.

“All of the other things will be for naught if, at the core, you see yourself and others who look like you as a n- - - - -, a word used to dehumanize a living, thinking human being,” she said during the hearing held by the council’s Civil Rights Committee.

The campaign to stop the use of the slur is aimed largely at young whites and blacks who aren’t aware of the term’s historical significance or don’t care. The measure, approved by the committee, will be taken up by the full council tomorrow.

Tim Gaylord, a New Jersey resident who told lawmakers he was instrumental in getting a similar measure passed in Irvington, N.J., used the word 10 times in his testimony.

He said using the word makes people think about blacks in a negative way.

“Fifty-thousand black people murdered and ain’t nobody saying anything about it. Why?” he asked. “It’s because it’s just n- - - - -s.”

Even some council members didn’t bother with euphemisms to make their points while sporting pins with a slash over the letter “N.”

Mike Nelson (D-Brooklyn), who was the only white person to use the word at the hearing, described a “sickening, scary, depressing” date he had in the 1960s while serving in the Air Force in Arkansas.

When he grimaced after his date used the n-word twice, he said, she told him, “Well, obviously you don’t like what I’m saying. Well, they may be Negroes to y’all, but they’re n- - - - -s to me.”

The chair of the council committee, Larry Seabrook (D-Bronx), cited two books he’d read: “N- - - - -,” by Dick Gregory and “Die N- - - - - Die,” by Rap Brown, and complained about people who’ve used the word in print over the years and made money.

“I grew up in a segregated society, and I thought that was my first name by some people, so I think historically we have to look at this,” Seabrook said.

He said he was reminded of a news story about a cop who, in arresting an Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn, said, ” ‘We’re going to treat you like a n- - - - -.’ Then I realized that it was more than a color, it was treatment.”

Some people at the hearing carefully avoided saying the word, including Atlanta-based lawyer Roy Miller, who got the word stricken from Funk & Wagnall’s dictionary, and Queens Borough President Helen Marshall

“It’s like throwing rocks into a crowd, and some of those rocks hit little children who can never be an n-word,” Miller said, using the euphemism.

The New York Post

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is refusing to take campaign contributions from big-time lobbyists, returning checks and even asking some not to come to her fund-raisers, The Post has learned.

“Speaker Quinn has made a personal decision not to take money from third-party lobbyists,” said one of her political strategists, Josh Isay.

Her aides confirmed that at least three checks have been sent back, each for less than $2,000.

Quinn (D-Manhattan) has spent her first year as speaker focused mainly on her new job. But since January, she has been doing modest fund-raising.

One former donor got a solicitation in the mail for a fund-raising event in Battery Park City last month, but was rebuffed after turning in the RSVP.

“I got a call saying, ‘We’d rather you not come. Chris isn’t taking money from lobbyists right now,’ ” the donor said. He said that his previous donations to Quinn weren’t part of a quid pro quo, and that he and the speaker had been on opposing sides of issues before without it affecting contributions. “I gave because I liked her,” the perplexed donor said.

The speaker’s aides said that she would take money from lobbyists who have a single client, but not from those with multiple clients. George Arzt, a veteran political consultant and lobbyist, said so-called “third-party lobbyists” include almost everybody who lobbies.

“It will make it a little more difficult [to raise money], but other people will give her money based on her integrity stance,” Arzt said. “It’s a good thing.”

One lobbyist said Quinn was being “incredibly shortsighted” if she plans to raise money to run for citywide office.

Recently, the speaker’s actions have fueled buzz that she plans to run for mayor in 2009.

Last month, she took one of the first concrete steps toward entering the 2009 mayoral race by hiring a hotshot fund-raiser who previously had worked for Gov. Spitzer.

Quinn has trailed her potential mayoral opponents in fund-raising, but if the past is any guide, she won’t have much trouble piling up new contributions if she pursues the mayoralty.

As speaker, Quinn holds considerable sway over the city’s $55 billion budget, as well as all legislation that comes before the council. Her predecessor, Gifford Miller, raised and spent an astounding $7 million on the 2005 Democratic primary for mayor.

Since taking office, Quinn has made government reform a priority. Last year, she led the City Council’s push to ban gifts for lawmakers and city officials.

She plans to follow that up this year with a restriction on contributions from those who have contracts with the city and by closing a loophole that allows limited-liability companies to donate to political campaigns.

One lobbyist wondered if Quinn was just blocking potential rivals from raising money because she couldn’t match their fund-raising prowess.

Good-government groups were thrilled with Quinn’s message.

“Quinn’s powerful words today mark the beginning of the end for influence-peddling at City Hall,” declared Dick Dadey of the Citizens Union.

Others on the council quietly grumbled that Quinn was going to end up making it difficult for those who remain after she leaves office under term-limit laws.