Brad Lander

Former Exec VP Joe Lhota Has Deep Ties To Madison Square Garden's Thirty-Year Tax Break

In between his roles as Giuliani's "Rat Czar" and the MTA's Chairman, mayoral aspiration and Republican frontrunner Joe Lhota spent his days at 4 Pennsylvania Plaza. For five years, he was an executive vice president of Cablevision; then, in 2010, he was named the chief administrative officer at Mad ... More >>

City Council Will File a "Motion to Discharge" to Vote on Historic NYPD Bills Today

They're two bills birthed from latest NYPD controversy. One would establish an inspector general to oversee the department, and another would allow citizens to sue the police over claims of racial profiling. The two parts of the overarching Community Safety Act have divided the city's most powerful, ... More >>

Should We Be Following Hurricane Sandy Relief Money Online?

Two weeks ago, the federal government gave New York City's Hurricane Sandy recovery plan the green light. With some $1.77 billion of federal funds, the city would spend more than a third on housing, invest in small businesses in areas destroyed by the storm, and rebuild infrastructure. One teensy fo ... More >>

Day Before Deadline, Court Blocks Eviction Date for Sandy Victims

On Monday night, a state supreme court ordered that the city temporarily halt its eviction of Hurricane Sandy victims from hotels. Slightly less than 200 households were to face their move-out deadline today, including 125 families that had nowhere to go, and 71 that the Department of Homeless Serv ... More >>

Alan Dershowitz to Brooklyn College: Academic Freedom For Me But Not For Thee

It has become a safe assumption that otherwise liberal and open-minded New York politicians will make an exception for Israel. Case in point: 10 members of the New York City Council have declared that they support academic freedom, just not the freedom of public universities to host events that do n ... More >>

*UPDATE* Brooklyn Councilman Brad Lander Warns Real Estate Group to Halt Development Project Along Gowanus Canal

[UPDATE]: The Lightstone Group will continue its bid to build a 700-unit housing development on Bond Street along the Gowanus Canal despite concerns raised in a letter from Councilman Brad Lander yesterday, the company said in a statement released to the Voice. "The Lightstone Group is fully commi ... More >>

Brooklyn Councilman Brad Lander Warns Real Estate Group to Halt Development Project Along Gowanus Canal

City Councilman Brad Lander let national realty firm, The Lightstone Group, in on a little secret yesterday: it's not a great time to build along waterfront neighborhoods in the city right now! Lander sent a letter to Lightstone Group chairman and CEO David Lichtenstein urging the company to withdr ... More >>

City Council Drills Mayor's Lawyer On NYPD Reform

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly didn't attend Wednesday's City Council hearing to discuss a raft of bills aimed at reining his department. In fact, no one from the NYPD showed up to the meeting. The only person the Bloomberg administration did send to testify on the bills was mayoral counsel Michael ... More >>

City Council to Mayor's Administration: Stop Blaming Homelessness Epidemic on State Legislature and the Economy

At a committee meeting held yesterday, City Council members told the Department of Homeless Services to start coming up with better solutions, not temporary fixes and excuses, to combat the rapid rise of homelessness in the city."We're in crisis mode, and if we don't do something over the next 16 mo ... More >>

Brooklyn Pols Ask Andrew Cuomo For SUNY Downstate Loan

As SUNY Downstate Medical Center reels from recent management changes and layoffs, area pols are demanding that Gov. Andrew Cuomo help the hospital. Today, a group of Brooklyn electeds sent a letter to Cuomo asking for immediate assistance so that critical services and medical training could conti ... More >>

City Council Members Slam NYPD's Traffic Accident Policy, Call for Investigative Taskforce

Some months after the City Council grilled the New York Police Department's policy on of traffic crashes -- and ongoing criticism of its handling of the Mathieu Lefevre case -- several members want to establish a taskforce to investigate the Department's accident policy, which has long come under f ... More >>

The Windsor Terrace Key Food Is Closing

The Key Food on Prospect Avenue, in Brooklyn's Windsor Terrace, will close at the end of the month. One Wendy A had a bad experience there in March and went on to review it on Yelp, writing "i literally hate this grocery store, and i wish it would go out of business and get replaced by something bet ... More >>

Scott Stringer Goes After Stop-and-Frisk, Does Not Criticize Ray Kelly In The Process

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who is expected to run for mayor, pushed forward his campaign against the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk policy with a press event this afternoon featuring Martin Luther King III. But as he continues his public appearances on the matter, Stringer see ... More >>

At Mathieu Lefevre Hearing, Arguments About Transparency and Bike Safety

As the mother of slain cyclist Mathieu Lefevre sat stoically in the second row of the gallery, lawyers for the New York Police Department tried to explain to a judge why it has taken more than five months to comply with her Freedom of Information request information about how he died. Questioned by ... More >>

Oral Arguments in Mathieu Lefevre Case This Afternoon

Six months to the day after Mathieu Lefevre was killed by a truck driver who ran over his bicycle in an East Williamsburg intersection, his family's lawsuit against the NYPD will be argued in New York Supreme Court this afternoon. Judge Peter Moulton has denied a motion to allow Lefevre's mother, E ... More >>

Governor Cuomo Joins the Lawless Kelly-Bloomberg Gang

Isn’t it time the NYPD had some real oversight?

City Councilor Files Amicus Brief in Mathieu Lefevre Case

Mathieu Lefevre was hardly the first cyclist killed on the streets of New York City, nor was the driver who ran him over the first to get a pass from the NYPD. Lefevre's family members weren't the first ones to be stonewalled as they tried to get details on how the police investigate fatal bike cras ... More >>

Peter Vallone, City Council Public Safety Chair, on Making New York's Roads Safer

Yesterday, Runnin' Scared reported that Transportation Alternatives wants the NYPD to give out more speeding tickets, telling City Council that hurried, harried drivers cause unnecessary deaths. By the group's calculations, more New Yorkers were killed in traffic -- 3,647 -- than murdered by guns ... More >>

Brad Lander, Jumaane Williams to Ray Kelly: NYPD Must Have Oversight

Councilmembers Brad Lander and Jumaane Williams want answers. At a City Council budget oversight hearing today, they grilled NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly about how the department spends money -- specifically when it comes to surveillance and terrorism. But Kelly couldn't really say. Lander and Wi ... More >>

Council Grills NYPD About Cycling Death

The police department is called on the carpet for its dismissive approach to bike deaths

In Light of Brooklyn Sexual Assaults, Activists Petition NYPD For 'Sensitivity Training'

It's been about seven months since the now-infamous south Brooklyn sex attacks began, and the NYPD still hasn't been able to finger a suspect. The police have ramped up their response after 11 crimes, but not without problems; women in the neighborhoods affected have begun to accuse police of handli ... More >>

'Take Back Our Streets' Rally in Park Slope Attracts Hundreds

​Last night, Park Slope and the surrounding areas responded to the recent string of sexual attacks with a good old-fashioned rally. Newly-formed local group Safe Slope organized the march, which in our estimate attracted about 300-400 people -- definitely more than the "Rape Cops" protest earl ... More >>

Levi Aron Home Dismantled For Evidence in Murder of Leiby Kletzky

​The Kensington home of 35-year-old Levi Aron was again the focus of investigators in the case of 8-year-old Brooklyn boy Leiby Kletzky, who Aron admitted to killing last week. The circumstances of the boy's smothering and the disposal of his body are still mysterious, with no evidence yet pub ... More >>

Park Slope Councilman Proposes Bill to Give You a Parking Spot When You Move

​One of the special challenges of living in New York, aside from all the time spent dreaming of someday having your very own washer and dryer, is moving. Something that is not fun no matter where you live becomes even worse with the addition of a broker's fee, walk-up apartments, and, of cours ... More >>

Eric Schneiderman Hoodwinks the New York Times (UPDATED)

​Campaigns test and reveal character, and we've learned a lot about Eric Schneiderman's character that we didn't know when he launched his "reform" candidacy for attorney general. The lessons of the last few days include: --Hoodwinking the New York Times into thinking he was the anti-Cuomo ca ... More >>

Mayor Bloomberg's Carbon Omissions

He starts his third term backpedaling

A Thanksgiving Honor Roll: NYC's Unsung Heroes

Lauding the oft-overlooked people in a city of celebrity

Quick Hits

Hiram Monserrate with Citizen Action protesters WTF? Twitpic by citizenactionny. Governor Paterson doesn't acknowledge Pedro Espada as the new president of the state senate, but he's not taking any chances: he says he won't leave the state, which conceivably would put us all at the mercy of Espa ... More >>

DiBrienza Quits Council Race Under a Cloud

Steve DiBrienza had been running to retrieve his old Brooklyn council seat when people began questioning his involvement with the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation, a non-profit which some reporters said did not seem to do much except collect city funding and pay salaries, including DiBrienza's. D ... More >>

Protesters Tell Gristede's King Catsimatidis: Give Us Back Our Supermarket

Why Are There 1,723 Vacant Buildings in Manhattan?

Bloomberg's Coney Gambit Leaves Thor Up Sitt Creek

The City Is Their Laboratory

Pratt students invent the next New York—for real.

On the Outs in Brooklyn

The city's complicity behind the borough's soaring eviction rate

A New Colony

Williamsburg deal great for Manhattan developers, but not everyone will be priced out

Ratner Rules

Brooklyn Nets Plan Spares Developer Shaya Boymelgreen's Project

Letters

Which Third Way?

Greens and the Working Families Party Try to Make Progressive Votes Count