NYC's new voting machines // Source: Vote-NY.com
State Senator Carl Kruger is up in arms over a Board of Elections oversight that omitted Russian-language translations for online voter education materials.
Kruger has fired off a letter to the board after he learned that it failed to include either written or audio instructions for Russian-speaking voters on how to use the new voting machines. The senator was the lead sponsor of a state law passed recently that requires large municipalities to translate all voting materials into Russian.
The Board of Election’s failure to “comply with the law’s specifications and its intent is a grievous insult to the Russian-speaking community that must be corrected at once,” said Kruger.
The board’s voter education website, Vote-NY.com, has posted videos about the operation of new optical scanner ballot machines rolling out this year. In line with other state voter laws, the site offers translation options for Spanish, Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin) and Korean. But there’s no option for Russian.
Kruger’s office said he has received “assurances” from the board that the mistake will be corrected.
However, none of the site’s other translation options for the videos work, with the exception of the Cantonese version. No mention has been made of whether the city will fix those glitches.
I’ve written before about the controversial method of “hydrofraking” near New York City’s watershed, and the State Legislature has finally put the brakes on business proposals until it’s been thoroughly studied. Absent from the discussion, though, were Sheepshead Bay’s two state senators – Marty Golden and Carl Kruger. Here’s a report from the Bay Ridge Journal, with information drawn from Brooklyn Eagle.
The New York State Senate, in what has been called a historic move, has passed a bill, S8129B, temporarily halting natural gas drilling permits in the state’s watershed until May 15, 2011.
The moratorium is believed to be the first in the country.
The moratorium buys the state time to assess the risks involved in the controversial natural gas drilling technique called “hydrofracking” or “fracking”.
The state assembly is expected to approve its version of the bill, A11443, in September, officially enacting the moratorium.
State Senate Majority Leader John Sampson, a Democrat representing Brownsville, Canarsie and East New York, co-sponsored the bill, joined by Brooklyn Democratic Senators Eric Adams, Velmanette Montgomery, Kevin Parker, Diane Savino and Dan Squadron.
According to a poll taken by Senator Sampson, the majority of New Yorkers favor a ban on hydrofracking.
Democrat Carl Kruger abstained from the vote. Republican Marty Golden was MIA.
Brooklyn Assembly Members Jim Brennan, Alan Maisel and Janele Hyer-Spencer support the Assembly version of the bill.
Looks like State Senator Carl Kruger is taking the offensive against a scam that, for once, he’s not responsible for (Ed. – oooh, sorry, too low of a blow?).
In all seriousness, the issue is a real one and the senator is looking to do something good here. If you’ve been a victim of the scam described below, get in touch with Kruger’s office.
Here’s the press release:
Senator Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn), Chair of the Finance Committee, is seeking additional victims of a mystery shopping scam after a constituent sought his help with a lucrative job offer that went bust.
Keep reading the press release.
Oberman
We wanted to check in with Igor Oberman, the Russian-American attorney who announced in April that he’d be running against State Senator Carl Kruger. So when we reached out to him late last week, we were disappointed to receive a note over the weekend saying, “I have dropped out of the race. It was a hard decision but I felt a primary with Sen. Kruger would be too disruptive to the thin democratic majority in the Senate.”
We didn’t get anything else out of him, but hopefully we can pick his mind soon.
In the meantime, New York Observer has got our Oberman fill. And what we see is that Oberman appears to be getting the swing of Albany politics without even being there. How else do you explain an outsider candidate who railed against the incumbent’s unwillingness to respond to his constituent’s needs suddenly drop out by citing party allegiance and then backing the incumbent?
Oh, you didn’t know? He’s backing Kruger now:
“It wasn’t the right time to do a challenge. There is too thin of a Democratic majority right now, and with the budget the way it is it wasn’t time to go forward,” Oberman said.
Oberman insisted that no one pressured him to drop out of the race–”People always think there was some kind of backroom deal,” he said. “That wasn’t the case–” and he said he now supported Kruger’s re-election.
“I believe he is someone important to Brooklyn and the Democratic majority,” he said. “There was room at the table for another person, but at this point I would say that we need someone like him representing Brooklyn.”
Oberman told the Observer that he’s planning another political foray in the future, and that redistricting following the census results would mean more opportunities for Russian-Americans in the area. But it remains to be seen if his sudden commitment to Kruger and the “thin Democratic majority” will hurt or help him in a district where residents clamor for a choice.
From the Village Voice:
The latest state campaign filings show that Brooklyn state senator Carl Kruger — who hasn’t had a tough race in 15 years — took in another half-million bucks from his many supporters. The haul keeps Kruger, who represents a swath of south Brooklyn, at the top of the state senate’s political money mountain, with a new total of $2.55 million in his war chest. That’s two and a half times the $989,000 that senate leader John Sampson has in his own campaign bank. Only Assembly boss Sheldon Silver has more, with $2.7 million.
…
Whatever the probe’s status, the filings show that Kruger shelled out $7500 to the law firm of Meissner, Kleineck & Finkel, where partner Richard Finkel is representing Kruger chief of staff Jason Koppel who was also cited as part of the federal probe. Finkel told the Voicelast month that his client is also out of the woods with the feds.
And he doesn’t even have an opponent. How disgusting.
Courtesy of NYS Senate
From the New York Post:
Embattled Brooklyn state Sen. Carl Kruger last year tapped his campaign fund for $10,500 in payments to an obscure New Jersey company that operates out of a private home and communicates via post-office box, The Post has learned.
The payments went to Reliable Repair Inc., a Fair Lawn, NJ, firm the Democratic lawmaker said was hired to install air conditioning and heating systems at his district office.
But campaign records on four 2009 payments to Reliable gave conflicting addresses for the business, including three that list a nonexistent address in New Jersey.
The fourth address was for a New Jersey post office, where a worker said Reliable pays for a box but operates from a home a half-mile away. Neighbors were unfamiliar with any business there.
Kruger, who’s being probed by the FBI in an alleged pay-to-play scheme, said the firm came “highly recommended” by Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay constituents.
Reached by phone to answer questions about work done for Kruger, Mark Yanishevsky, named as Reliable Repair’s vice president, asked: “Why are you trying to blackmail me? How did you find me?”
Here at Sheepshead Bites, we’ve got a lot of Kruger’s Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay constituents as readers. So does anyone recommend Reliable Repair Inc.?
Keep reading to find out how much Kruger spent on possibly illegal uses, and what he has to say.
At their June 27 rally, mosque opponents targeted politicians for their silence on the issue. Now they respond.
Brooklyn Paper has a pair of updates on the mosque issue, fueled by the deluge of comments they received from their initial report.
First up, they got in touch with most of the politicians with districts located near the mosque, getting their reading of the situation. The verdict? Freedom of worship is a constitutional right, and any attempt to stop the mosque from being built is an invasion of that liberty.
Keep reading to find out what the local politicians had to say, my thoughts on it, and what other developments have emerged surrounding the planned Sheepshead Bay mosque.
Courtesy of NYPost.com
I know we already posted today about State Senator Carl Kruger, but I just came across this article in Courier-Life exposing the extravagance of that shyster, and his smugness in rebutting it.
Kruger’s been dipping into his $2.1 million campaign war chest – the largest in the State Legislature – to pay for all kinds of crud unrelated to getting reelected. Of course, it’s been a longtime tradition for state representatives to use leftovers from their reelection campaigns to fund a more comfortable living situation, but the shocking degree to which Kruger is making it rain shows just how far out of touch he is with his constituents.
Keep reading to see the breakdown of his expenses, as well as some seemingly inflated items
State Senator Carl Kruger’s claim last week that he’s been cleared of an FBI probe into pay-to-play influence peddling is “100 percent false,” a source close to the case told Courier-Life this week.
From Courier-Life:
A spokesman from the U.S. Attorney’s office said he could not confirm or deny that Kruger was off the FBI’s radar, but a source close to the case said that the powerful Senate Finance Committee chairman was still under the microscope.
“It’s 100 percent false [that Kruger’s been cleared by the FBI],” the source said. “Kruger’s attorney called up one of the investigators and asked him the status of the case, but the detective could not say. Now [Kruger] goes around saying he was cleared knowing that the U.S. Attorney isn’t allowed to respond.”
Apparently, no one’s really buying that the senator is sound, and some politicos are expecting Kruger might face a tougher campaign season than last election, in which he won with 93 percent of the vote. Rumors have it that Republicans are scrambling to find a suitable candidate to run against him, a tactic previously seen as a fool’s errand in light of his influence and $2.1 million campaign war chest.
In perhaps one of the weirder twists of the FBI probe into an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving State Senator Carl Kruger, the attorney of the restaurateur charged with lying to federal prosecutors is admitting his client is protecting the politician.
According to Brooklyn Paper:
Levitis’ attorney Jeffrey Lichtman claims the 32-year-old restaurant manager fell on his sword protecting Kruger by lying to federal investigators about their relationship.
“[Kruger’s] an ungrateful pig,” Lichtman said Friday. “You would think that when he woke up this morning and found that my client refused to cooperate, he would have been happy. Instead he acted like the typical selfish, greedy, corrupt Albany politician he is and threw Michael under the bus.”
Levitis was released from Federal custody on $500,000 bond. If convicted of lying to federal investigators, he faces five years in prison.
Michael Levitis is the manager of Rasputin night club, and a longtime supporter of Kruger. As we reported earlier, Levitis was arrested for lying to federal investigators. The manager was recorded telling another restaurant owner – who is a confidential informant – that Kruger could make his liquor license problems go away if he contributed campaign cash and held a fundraiser. Despite the recordings, Levitis denied he ever made that offer, and refused to cooperate with investigators seeking more concrete ties to Kruger.
By taking the heat and refusing to testify against the senator, Levitis stopped the case in its tracks.
But I don’t get it – why take the rap and protect the boss-man, and then implicate him by publicly announcing you’ve protected him?
I guess there’s just no honor among thieves…
