TOP BLUNDERS OF ALL TIME

[TAXTOTHEMAX]

I think it would have to be a tie between the Mitchel Field 99 year leases and BPA Insurance scam.
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[Peanuts....]

pat williams to the OTB

[JJD]

And it doesn't wash. The 99 year leases are so much more significant, and will remain so unless and until somebody actually ties Botwin in to the receipt of cash.

The poor bastard who was IG for the Parking Violations Bureau got his head handed to him, and rightfully so. But even as he was being fired, it was made clear that he was an honest guy, just not a great sleuth, and that was his job. I don't believe I've ever read anything that even suggested that Botwin had direct responsibility as an IG over the assessors. Absent that, your point doesn't make all that much sense.

This, of course, is not to say that a competent manager would not have told her that, after a decent interval she would be expected to move on from County government, under the theory (as we had hoped when Suozzi was elected) that only the best and the brightest need apply.
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[Q]

Don't forget about the Nassau Reassessment...
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[jones]

How about his tenure as CE?
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[Parks Are Not Safe]

The Park Rangers were done away with because of Denis Monet. This is a man you went out on a questionable disability retirement from the Nassau County Police Department, supposedly made a $10,000 donation to Suozzi's run for County Executive. In turn Mr. Monet was made a Deputy Police Commissioner at over $60,000 a year, plus kept his questionable disability retirement. This man did away with the Park Rangers & created the Office of Public Safety, moved the majority of the Park Rangers out of parks into the Mineola office buildings to impress Mr. Suozzi, so now there is now only 2 or 3 officers to patrol all of the parks, preserves & museums (over 70 locations) at any given time. So the next time you visit any park, preserve or museum & have a problem, don't expect any help. This is what my 19% tax increase gives us? Welcome to a New York City Park System.

[JJD?]

hiring/firing Tom Williams

[Tom Williams]

Top Blunder, a real no brainer. Suozzi winning the primary and County Executive

[maybe muckraker]

The Mitchell Field leases and BPA definitely win hands down. Previous assessment comes in second.

Speaking of Mitchell Field, does anybody know if that lawyer Burk who badly bungled renegotiations of some of those leases and then lied about her bungling is still at the County? I remember Newsday wrote about the incident a lot but I wonder if the City folks who now hold the top positions at the County ever read about it.

[corpse counter]

Maybe the other f ups have more legs
but the low park security caused the death by stabbing
of the homeless man. A bum's life is worth more than
dollars
Park rangers used to "move the bums on", especially on
weekends, when families were around
Blame Doreen banks. She has this murder at her door
because she hated the Rangers
There's lots of other dirty stuff in the parks, and some of
you know it and need to tell it

[JJD]

I was making a point. It is one thing to have dishonest people get caught when you have some involvement with them (in their presumptively honest work) and quite another when it is your job to find out if anybody is stealing and then to catch them.

I don't think Botwin was an IG over there. That was my point.
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[JJD --She was Chief of Re]

Let's not forget the spin-off of the hospital ... an insider's deal with questionable agreements and the County still guaranteeing the hospital's debt. May turn out to be VERY costly.

How about the infamous MTA deal? Give us some $$$ now and we'll pay you back TWICE that amount plus interest. So foul-smelling, Parola filed a lawsuit challenging the deal, and Weitzman has continued the suit.

Hiring Craig Love as Budget Director, transferring him to head Departments of Investigation, Purchasing and Contracts, and keeping him as head of IT after he was forced out of the 3 previous jobs!

Endorsing Joe Lieberman for President.

Hiring and retaining Peter Sylver without close supervision of him both financially and interpersonally.

[Off The Mark]

The things you are discussing were not blunders. Blunders are mistakes. The actions you describe were acts of pure corruption in Nassau County Government. The people who committed then should be in jail. Period.

[lbguy]

Letting Spirits back intoLong Beach !!!!!!!

[JJD]

But you don't necessarily learn that they are stealing. Some years ago, several high-ranking officials in the NYC Department of Real Estate got nailed by the Department of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney's Office for taking bribes. (As it happened, I played a role in catching some of them.) Their activities were sophisticated, predatory and ongoing for a considerable period of time.

Every time they signed a lease, lawyers in the corp counsel's office signed off on it. They reviewed the lease. We were, naturally, interested in knowing whether they were in on it, and we posed those questions to informants who had every incentive in the world to give up the lawyers.

What we learned, both from those conversations, and from the interviews of Corp Counsel employees that followed, was that they (the lawyers) hadn't a clue about it, and would have had no occasion to. These things are done very subtly. People who steal big, from the city, tend to do so through volume--it's the rare occasion when they will go for a lot of money on one score. It's a good way of getting caught, precisely because you then run the risk that some lawyer reviewing the file will say something to the effect that this must be a mistake, only to find out that it wasn't at all. At least that's my opinion.

I think it looks bad to keep Botwin on, as I posted earlier, but it's wrong to assume that she knew or should have, or even could have, known. You can rest assured that the appraisers themselves, while brazen, were probably a good deal more sophisticated than she, and employed subtlety to get away with it for a long time.
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[sourgrapes]

Al D'Amato Al D'Amato Al D'Amato -- Mitchell Field Lease Theft and Insurance Scam. Mitchell Field Leases was the hardest to accept. Never got over that one -- it went unpunished....

[parkingjockie]

What does Suozzi's building a $2million parking lot to be used by one of these jokers get you in the ratings?

[40 Main Hempstead]

The parking lot is for the loser depatments that are being squeezed together with social services at Mitchell

There will be 1000+ people going to buildings that hold half. The $2 Mil is to help Tom Ass to save money in the building consolidation

Oops another boner. I thought we got rid of the sex acts with P Sylver

[JJD]

Exactly.

If the Republican posters to these threads are sincere, then they must surely admit that giving away the Hub, for all intents and purposes, was about as corrupt as it gets. Anything going on in other fields, though serious, has to pale by comparison.

Come on, fellas, if you're sincere, get really disgruntled, call for an investigation. Remember that the Statute of Limitations (criminal) is tolled by a corrupt public official's tenure in office.


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[buildingsowner]

The building will be a county leased building from a private owner. Wasn't the new DSS building part of the 99year scandal. i.e. the owner gets the county twice.

now its gets a parking lot too?

[interesting post jjd but]

But you don't necessarily learn that they are stealing. Some years ago, several high-ranking officials in the NYC Department of Real Estate got nailed by the Department of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney's Office for taking bribes. (As it happened, I played a role in catching some of them.) Their activities were sophisticated, predatory and ongoing for a considerable period of time.

Every time they signed a lease, lawyers in the corp counsel's office signed off on it. They reviewed the lease. We were, naturally, interested in knowing whether they were in on it, and we posed those questions to informants who had every incentive in the world to give up the lawyers.

What we learned, both from those conversations, and from the interviews of Corp Counsel employees that followed, was that they (the lawyers) hadn't a clue about it, and would have had no occasion to. These things are done very subtly. People who steal big, from the city, tend to do so through volume--it's the rare occasion when they will go for a lot of money on one score. It's a good way of getting caught, precisely because you then run the risk that some lawyer reviewing the file will say something to the effect that this must be a mistake, only to find out that it wasn't at all. At least that's my opinion.

I think it looks bad to keep Botwin on, as I posted earlier, but it's wrong to assume that she knew or should have, or even could have, known. You can rest assured that the appraisers themselves, while brazen, were probably a good deal more sophisticated than she, and employed subtlety to get away with it for a long time.


How about Glen Borin, didn't he supervise the assessors who were pinched by your investigation? And how could Botwin not know if she worked there for 17 years!

[Ms,Quinn]

I think it would have to be a tie between the Mitchel Field 99 year leases and BPA Insurance scam.

Parks
Lets see , DC calls other DC the N word and MR. G is sitting on the report.
TS wake up . Its time to hire someone who is not a tree cutter, school teacher,Tea party host to run the show. You came to a meeting a told the parks Mgr.'s that they need to bring in money. Well TS you should have said stop putting the money in your pocket and let the county collected it this year.