Is It A Conflict Of Interest For Bloomberg Government To Make Money From Government Information ?

''Bloomberg Government'' is a money-making enterprise for Mayor Bloomberg's company, where he makes money from government and personal information, like contracts, employee lists, and other forms of databases.

Apparently, there is a lot of money to be made from government contracts, especially from cost over-runs, like what happened with CityTime.

So far, prosecutors can prove that $80 million has been stolen from the government payments for the CityTime payroll system, a shady black hole of an IT contract. In a separate analysis of the CityTime scandal, the newsroom of WNYC radio has estimated that, as of December 2010, New York City has spent ''more than $630 million on CityTime, which was supposed to cost just $63 million.''

If only there was a way that Mayor Bloomberg could get rid of checks and balances in New York and others could end progressive era reforms, like collective bargaining in states like Wisconsin, that way companies, which have an inside edge on government contracts and government employee lists, could go after all the cost over-runs that are possible from government contracts once there is no more government oversight ! All the more better for Bloomberg Government would be if Mayor Bloomberg could find ways to stop the City Council from checking his desire for more and more mayoral control.

Meanwhile, with all the employees that revolve between City Hall and Bloomberg L.P., how do we know if there are any safeguards on material, non-public government information ?

Bloomberg Testified Against Haggerty

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg provided secret grand jury testimony in the case against his own reëlection campaign worker, John Haggerty, Jr.

Mr. Haggerty, right, escorts 2010 GOP gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino during the Columbus Day Parade in New York City on October 11, 2010. Photo by Anonymous.

During public proceedings in the criminal trial against John Haggerty, Jr., Assistant District Attorney Eric Seidel, one of the prosecutors in the case, told Judge Ronald A. Zweibel that Mayor Bloomberg had testified before a grand jury, and that the grand jury evidence supported the state's case against Mr. Haggerty.

In June 2010, Mr. Haggerty was indicted for allegedly stealing $1.1 million in campaign related payments funneled by Mayor Bloomberg through his private banking accounts to the Independence Party of New York State.

In 2009, Mayor Bloomberg was on pace to spend over $100 million dollars in declared campaign expenses through his committee to reëlect the mayor (CREEM). Because there was a backlash at Mayor Bloomberg's outrageous reëlection campaign spending, there must have been some sensitivity within CREEM to substantially exceed $100 million in declared reëlection campaign expenses, ergo the use of millions of undeclared campaign-related expenses from Mayor Bloomberg's personal and private banking accounts.

In 2008, Mayor Bloomberg made private donations to the Independence Party of New York State totaling $1.2 million. Around this time, the New York City Council changed the term limits law without a voter referendum. Then, in 2009, Mayor Bloomberg was endorsed by the Independence Party of New York City.

Ostensibly, Mr. Haggerty was to provide ballot security operations, which is a reëlection campaign activity, for Mayor Bloomberg. Which campaign laws did Mr. Haggerty break, if CREEM knowingly used Mayor Bloomberg's private banking accounts to ''wash in'' money in order to funnel the Independence Party donations to Mr. Haggerty ? What is more, the reporter Aram Roston from PolitickerNY has raised questions about Mayor Bloomberg's pattern in using private donations for campaign-related activities.

Haggerty, Sheekey planned to hide campaign payments

''Indicted campaign aide John Haggerty points finger at Mayor Bloomberg's former deputy mayor,'' reports The New York Daily News.

In motion papers filed yesterday, lawyers for indicted campaign worker John F. Haggerty, Jr., asserted that Mayor Michael Bloomberg's 2009 reëlection campaign had structured ''donation'' payments from the mayor's private bank accounts to the Independence Party, with the participation of Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey.

"Bloomberg's money went into the party's 'housekeeping account,' which is supposed to support only general party activities," reported Adam Lisberg from The Daily News.

"...Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey convinced Bloomberg to hire the state Independence Party to do the monitoring - instead of using his own campaign team," The Daily News reported.

But how could it come to be that Deputy Mayor Sheeky was planning the mayor's reëlection campaign strategy in respect of monitoring activities ? Whatismore, was it Sheekey who proposed the use of private monies to pay for the campaign activities, or was it Mayor Bloomberg, who told Sheekey to use the mayor's personal accounts -- instead of the mayor's campaign committee accounts -- to funnel money through the Independence Party, in order to pay for Haggerty's election day operations ?

Besides the millions that Mayor Bloomberg spent from his campaign committee account, he also has spent unknown millions from his personal (private) bank accounts, as well as having made millions of dollars in ''donations'' to charitable organisations in exchange for their political support in overturning the term limits law.

The journalist Aram Roston has reported that in Mayor Michael Bloomberg's campaigns in each of 2005 and 2009, the mayor paid money out of his private accounts that were ultimately funneled to the political operative John Haggerty.

Much like President Richard Nixon, whose political campaigns had carried out a long set of activities to attack and disrupt the Democrats way before the Watergate Hotel break-in, here we have Mayor Bloomberg's political campaigns of 2005 and 2009 engaging in funneling secret payments out of the mayor's personal accounts to political parties for use in campaign activitis.

The mayor has a track record of spending money for his political campaigns out of his private accounts, in addition to his official campaign committee accounts. Therefore, the amounts that the mayor has reported and certified as being his campaign finances cannot be neither true, accurate, nor complete.

Add to that the fact that it has been alleged that Mayor Bloomberg has paid millions to charitable organisations in exchange for their political support, and you begin to realise that we really don't know how much money he has spent on campaigning or electioneering to be mayor.

Here we begin to see clear evidence of a three-tiered campaign funding operation, where only one tier was ever meant to be disclosed or reported.

Running for the Exits

Quoted entirely from The New York Times.

Another Exit From Bloomberg’s Inner Circle

By MICHAEL BARBARO
(David W. Chen contributed reporting.)

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg so prizes stability and loyalty that he discouraged goodbye parties for employees of his media company, writing in his memoir that he could barely bring himself to wish departing workers good luck. “Why should I?” he asked.

Now he finds himself, however reluctantly, bidding farewell to his closest advisers at City Hall, who are leaving for lucrative jobs in the private sector.

In the process, they are forcing Mr. Bloomberg to remake an inner circle that has remained remarkably consistent, and free of drama, over the last eight years.

On Tuesday, Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler, who manages the city’s Police, Fire and Transportation Departments and the Office of Labor Relations, and who is arguably Mr. Bloomberg’s most powerful aide, said he would take a job at Citigroup in May.

Joining him in the exodus: Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey, the mayor’s political guru and chief of government relations, who will soon leave City Hall for a position at the mayor’s company, Bloomberg L.P., and James Anderson, Mr. Bloomberg’s communications director, who took a job with the mayor’s charitable foundation.

After Mr. Bloomberg’s improbable victory in the 2001 mayor’s race, both Mr. Skyler and Mr. Sheekey followed him from his company to City Hall. Since then, they have been a part of an enormously influential coterie of advisers.

They have advised him on everything, like his short-lived flirtation with a presidential run (spearheaded by Mr. Sheekey), the revamping of the city’s Buildings Department (a project run by Mr. Skyler) after several crane collapses and his decision to seek a third term as mayor (both advised him not to).

“They have been with the mayor the longest, and they are totally loyal to him,” said William T. Cunningham, who was communications director during the mayor’s first term.

But the changes inside Bloomberg Land do not end there. Since he decided to seek a third term last fall, Mr. Bloomberg has announced the departure of 15 high-level aides, most of them agency commissioners. It is a level of turnover without precedent during his time in office.

“He’s had a very stable crew,” said Andrew White, the director of the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School. “It was actually surprising to a number of people that there was so little change after the last election.”

Aides to the mayor said he was both fulfilling a campaign pledge to shake up his administration during his third term and allowing long-serving advisers to begin new careers outside of government, with his blessing.

That was the case with Mr. Skyler, who will become an executive vice president at Citigroup, overseeing the firm’s relationships with reporters, investors and government agencies.

Mr. Skyler, 36, is the city’s youngest deputy mayor, but he shoulders the greatest responsibilities, managing highly visible operations — like the efficiency of ambulance response times and trash pickups — by which most New Yorkers measure the effectiveness of their government.

A lanky former Ivy League fencer who grew up on the Upper East Side, he found himself at the center of grueling debates about how to identify human remains found at ground zero years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and how to handle the cleanup of the steam pipe explosion near Grand Central Terminal in 2007.

Mitchell L. Moss, an informal adviser to Mr. Bloomberg and a professor at New York University, called it “an exhausting job.”During a news conference in the Bronx on Tuesday, Mr. Bloomberg described Mr. Skyler as a “a phenomenally competent guy” who “did a masterful job for the city.” He added that he wished Mr. Skyler would remain at City Hall. “He’s got his life to lead, and he’s got to make his decisions, and he’s done that.”

Mr. Skyler is unlikely to move out of Mr. Bloomberg’s orbit entirely: the mayor’s companion, Diana L. Taylor, is a member of the Citigroup board of directors, which interacts regularly with the firm’s top managers.

Citigroup appeared intent on wooing an experienced New York figure for the job. Before Mr. Skyler began his job search, the bank had discussed the position with Mr. Sheekey; Howard Wolfson, the former communications director for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign and Mr. Bloomberg’s re-election bid; and Gary Ginsberg, the former chief of investor relations and corporate communications for News Corporation, the owner of the Fox News Channel and The New York Post, according to people told of the discussions. A spokesman for Citigroup declined to comment on other candidates for the job.

Citigroup said government affairs would be part of Mr. Skyler’s portfolio. The bank’s primary lobbying efforts are aimed at the federal government, which gave the company billions of dollars in bailout money during the financial crisis. Mr. Skyler is prohibited from lobbying city government for the next year.

Mr. Bloomberg did not announce an immediate replacement for Mr. Skyler, but aides said a broad search would reach beyond City Hall. In an interview on Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Skyler said, “I think I was just ready to do something new, and I think that’s healthy.”