Is The City Using 9/11 Recovery Money To Fight First Responder Claims?

If true*, then this seems sort of mean spirited:

The city is using a big slice of the $1 billion it got from the feds post-9/11 to fight first responders who claim they got sick on the site, a lawyer who is suing the city charged yesterday.

David Worby, who is waging a suit on behalf of 8,000 WTC responders and their survivors, said $20 million has been “spent on city lawyers to deny the claims of cops, firefighters and others who were sickened.”

“That money should be used to help these people,” he said. “Take $100 million from the billion, Mr. Mayor, and set up a proper registry” to monitor the health of those who toiled at Ground Zero.

There was no immediate response to Worby’s accusation from Mayor Bloomberg, but the city contends it is allowed to tap funds from the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company to defend itself against claims. The federally funded entity was set up after the 9/11 attacks because no commercial insurance company would take on the risk.

Bloomberg promised to look into whether the city stiffed its 9/11 heroes after being prodded to do so by hard-hitting Daily News editorials that described the plight of 12,000 ailing Ground Zero workers.

*Can this possibly be true?

Brooke Astor Is Being Nickel And Dimed To Death

Brooke Astor’s 82-year-old son is depriving her of earthly pleasures, name-brand medicines and even her own pets, according to legal documents filed by Astor’s grandson:

Brooke Astor, the patron saint of philanthropy and society in New York, is being forced to live her remaining days in wretched, uncharitable conditions, according to court papers filed by her grandson.

Astor, now 104, is allegedly being kept inside her dilapidated Park Ave. duplex by her only child, Anthony Marshall — who controls her $45 million fortune, yet refuses to spend money for her care.

The grandson is seeking to transfer guardianship away from his father. The list of indignities is long:

• Although Astor had always used Estée Lauder cosmetics and face creams, her head maid, Mily Degernier, who has worked for Astor for 35 years, has instructed that a “cheaper brand” of makeup be used and that Vaseline be used instead of face cream.
• A prescription for Astor’s anemia, Procrit, which costs about $1,000 a month, was stopped for no medical reason.
• An enzyme supplement, CoQ10, to promote a healthy heart, and which may help in Astor’s battle against cancer, which costs $60 a bottle, was stopped at the instruction of Charlene Marshall, Anthony’s wife. She then told the aides to buy the medicine off the Internet, a diluted version that costs $26 for three bottles.
• When an aide’s request for two air purifiers — needed for the dust-filled apartment — was denied, they were bought by de la Renta.
• When a request for hair bonnets and no-skid socks was denied, Astor’s nurses bought them themselves.
• Astor apparently has not seen her beloved dogs, Boysie and Girlsie, in six months because they are kept locked in a pantry to keep them from damaging the apartment.
• Anthony Marshall, Astor’s son from her first marriage, repeatedly has refused to open up Holly Hill, her 75-acre estate in Briarcliff Manor, Westchester County, this year, even though Astor has said she wants to die there.
• While Astor has a nurse on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the staff has been cut back. She used to have two aides on duty at all times, according to an affidavit filed by one of her nurses, Minnette Christie.
• Astor’s physical therapy has been cut from three to two times a week over the protests of the therapist.
• While the apartment was once filled with art, figurines and fresh flowers, according to court papers, “which gave Mrs. Astor great pleasure,” some of the art and figurines have been removed. Floral arrangements have been replaced with one or two bouquets from the local Korean market.
• Although Astor was known for being always impeccably dressed, she is now reduced to wearing torn nightgowns and old clothes because her son won’t buy new ones.

I feel a two-hour episode of Law & Order coming on . . .

Oh But You Should Have Seen This Neighborhood Before The Condo Conversions, Or Blight, Like Obscenity, Really Turns Some People On

The big question facing proponents of the Atlantic Yards project is how to convince people that an area with million-dollar homes can be “blighted”:

Of all the real estate jargon, bureaucratic buzzwords and plain old insults exchanged over the proposed Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, no term has evoked quite such unruly passion as “blighted.”

During the last two years, the word has hung like a scythe over the 22-acre site, most of it on the northern edge of the Prospect Heights neighborhood, where the developer, Forest City Ratner Companies, hopes to build its $4.2 billion project.

For the developer, it is a fitting description of the abandoned auto-repair shops, collapsing brownstones and gloomy vacant lots that blemish the area, and of the eight-acre railyards that slice through the neighborhood just south of Atlantic Avenue. For many of the several hundred people who still live there, “blighted” is a term of abuse, one that ignores the sleek, recently renovated buildings on Pacific and Dean Streets, the bustling neighborhood bar, and other signs of revival. Even some supporters of the project, like Assemblyman Roger L. Green, disagree with the description.

“That neighborhood is not blighted,” Mr. Green, whose district includes the Atlantic Yards site, said at a hearing last year. “I repeat, for the record, that neighborhood is not blighted.”

The long-running blight debate took a major turn in favor of Forest City Ratner last week, when the Empire State Development Corporation, the state’s lead economic agency, formally declared the project site blighted. It was the first step in a process that could eventually allow Forest City to acquire, through eminent domain, the few remaining parcels that the company has not been able to acquire privately over the last few years.

But for all the freight the word carries around Prospect Heights these days, “blighted” is a word with no fixed definition, legal or colloquial.

It is not unlike Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous remark about pornography — “I know it when I see it” — said Joseph M. Ryan, a land-use lawyer who has consulted for the development corporation before but has no involvement with the Atlantic Yards project. “Usually it’s a high crime rate, debilitated buildings. Often you’ll have pollution, or inadequate usage of land.”

Under past court rulings, for example, an area can be declared blighted even if particular parcels within it are not. Similarly, a given plot of land can be declared “underutilized” if what is built there is smaller or shorter than zoning laws would otherwise allow, even if the building in question is not dilapidated. Moreover, it is largely up to government officials to decide how prevalent a condition must be — how much crime, for instance — in order to label an area as blighted.

“There are no hard and fast rules regarding blight,” said Jessica Copen, a spokeswoman for the development corporation. “There’s a large area of subjectivity in evaluating the indicia of blight.”

You Didn’t Have To Squeeze It But You Did And I Thank You

Hizzoner gets in hot water (or lukewarm water, if your boiler is still out) after giving thanks to Con Edision during the waning moments of the massive blackout in Western Queens:

With Queens elected officials standing behind him, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg used a City Hall news briefing yesterday to forcefully defend the performance of Consolidated Edison in handling a power failure in western Queens that stretched into its eighth day.

The mayor’s comments appeared to surprise the officials, particularly when Mr. Bloomberg said Kevin M. Burke, chairman and chief executive of Con Edison, “deserves a thanks from the city.”

The Queens politicians openly shook their heads and rolled their eyes during the mayor’s remarks. He also said Con Edison had “done a very good job” in handling the power failure, which continued to affect thousands of people.

The mayor has been criticized more and more for his reaction to the power failures as they have dragged on, and yesterday his remarks drew surprisingly candid rebukes from the politicians who represent the affected area and appeared with Mr. Bloomberg at City Hall.

“I almost walked out,” City Councilman Eric N. Gioia said later. “I was shocked and disappointed by his defense of Kevin Burke today.”

What a scene — a posse of pissed-off politicians behind the mayor sputtering, “must grandstand . . . does not compute . . . must grandstand . . . does not compute.” If nothing else, Bloomberg seems like he has a sick sense of humor.

Meanwhile, had Con Ed preemptively shut down the power instead of keeping it going, four to five times as many Western Queens residents would have been in darkness (and without air conditioning and refrigeration and television and the internet and all those things that you take for granted while you have electricity), albeit for a much shorter time:

It was around 9 p.m. a week ago, on July 18. For nearly 24 hours, Consolidated Edison had been fighting to keep the power on in Queens. Six of the 22 feeder cables that distribute electricity to a half-million people in the western portion of the borough had failed. Then, in slightly more than a half-hour, four more feeders began to fail.

At a command center near Union Square in Manhattan, top managers at the utility had to choose: keep the power running and take the risk of causing more damage to the system, or shut down the network serving western and northern Queens, guaranteeing a wide blackout but one that could likely be resolved quickly.

“We were right there on the edge, thinking about whether to do this,” said John F. Miksad, senior vice president for electric operations at Con Edison. When the load eased slightly, he said, the worst seemed to have passed. “We made the decision to hold on, realizing the impact of shutting it down.”

So they kept the power on, the trouble spread, and eventually up to 100,000 residents of Queens were plunged into as long as eight days of sweltering darkness. Far more people, four to five times as many, would have lost power had the entire local network gone down, but the misery of the more limited blackout has lasted much longer than it probably would have in a controlled shutdown.

As a resident of Western Queens with power, I say thank you to Con Ed!

Must Be Detail Oriented

From today’s Craig’s List job postings*:

English Pud Downtown Looking for Host Staff

*What’s it to you if I’m looking for a job? Know of any?