Political Poster Fines Benefit Quinn

Is Mayor Bloomberg deliberately trying to drain the campaign funds of the competitors that are challenging Christine Quinn for the 2013 mayoral Democratic primary ?

Mayor Michael Bloomberg seems to be engaged in a public relations campaign to turn public opinion against, and to drain the campaign funds (aka clear the primaries) of, the leading primary challengers that are competing with New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to be the Democratic Party's candidate in next year's mayoral election. * "Mayor Bloomberg Friday blasted mayoral candidate John Liu as a hypocrite for grumbling about companies that owe the city money — while failing to pay his own city debts." (NY Daily News) * Now that he has finally collected $444,000 in public matching funds from his 2009 campaign, Bill Thompson should return the money to the city to help cover the fines he owes for illegal posters, Mayor Bloomberg suggested yesterday. (NYPost)

Bloomberg ECTP Fraud Investigation

What Is The Status Of The Emergency Communications Transformation Program (ECTP) Fraud Investigation ?

From the Office of the New York City Comptroller :

"ECTP is now a billion dollars over budget, from an estimated $1.3 billion, to now an estimated $2.3 billion (City Capital Commitment plan, dated February 2012.) The project was scheduled to be completed in 2008. The latest figures released by Mayor Bloomberg now peg completion in 2015 - seven years behind schedule."

Gino Menchini Technodyne Telecom Commish

Gino Menchini, Technodyne Lobbyist, and former NYC Telecom Commissioner

Agostino Cangemi's lobbying partner on the Technodyne-CityTime deal is Gino Menchini ; both men now work for National Strategies, LLC, a lobbying firm that performed recent lobbying work for Technodyne, one of the subcontractors implicated in the CityTime fraud scandal.

According to Mr. Menchini's biography, he was : "appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) and New York City’s Chief Information Officer (CIO). As the City’s CIO and DoITT Commissioner, he reported directly to Mayor Bloomberg and was responsible for the oversight and direction of IT and telecommunications activities for all of the City’s agencies."

In 2004, Mr. Menchini oversaw the motherload of IT contracts for that time : a $1 billion telecommunications and internet contract for the entire city. The amount of money tied to that telecom contract was described as a ''BONANZA'' (in all capital letters, according to The New York Daily News headline).

Naturally, Mr. Menchini is a very close and personal friend of Mayor Bloomberg. In 2005, Mr. Menchini was among those who attended the wedding of Miss Emma Bloomberg, Mr. Bloomberg's older daughter.

After he left his job as telecommunications commissioner, Mr. Menchini worked for a time with Northrop Grumman, one of the subcontractors on another controversial $2 billion Unified Call Taker-911 dispatch and emergency call system that is also known as the Emergency Communications Transformation Program (ECTP) -- a deal that has already become the subject of review by New York City Comptroller John Liu.