NEW YORK — Eateries could face fewer fines under reforms to the restaurant letter-grading system approved by the City Council on Wednesday.

While the five bills passed by a vote of 46-to-0 would not alter the standards for inspections — or how inspectors grade restaurants — they do aim to create new layers of accountability and transparency. For instance, not only would owners be able to request a dry-run inspection before the real one, they could also take complaints to a newly established city office. Owners would also be provided additional information on inspections.

The bills come as a response to criticism that the letter-grading system has been arbitrary and unnecessarily punitive to restaurant owners.

“As restaurants are given more guidance, they should be able to perform better,” Quinn said. “This should keep them in business, keep New Yorkers dining safely and keep money in the restaurant’s cash register — not going to the Department of Health.”

Hours before the vote, Quinn stood with a number of her fellow Council members to celebrate the package of bills. Quinn argued that the current letter-grading system, administered by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, was unnecessarily fining businesses and taking money away from owners. “What we didn’t want is to have a lot of A’s hanging right next to signs that said, ‘out of business,’” Quinn said.

If approved by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the bills would create an office under the Department of Health to handle any complaints and comments about the inspection process. The office would investigate cases and offer recommendations to the department’s commissioner.

A separate bill would create an advisory board of 20 members — appointed by the mayor, Council speaker and health commissioner — and would include industry members as well as food safety experts.

Launched in July 2010 by the Bloomberg administration, the letter-grading system has been praised for giving customers key information about sanitary conditions and holding restaurant owners to stringent health standards. The Department of Health argues that most foodborne illnesses are transmitted because of poorly stored food and inadequate personal hygiene. But the letter-grading system has also been criticized for leading to burdensome fines that some restaurant owners say have pushed them nearly out of business.

The mayor’s office said it was reviewing the Council’s bills. The Department of Health did not object to the bills in a statement released shortly after the vote.

“We began restaurant letter-grading to give customers information they wanted and to provide an added incentive to restaurants to have the best food safety practices,” the DOH statement said. “The package of bills that passed today will address complaints of the restaurant industry and continue to encourage restaurant managers to prepare food safely.

Advocates said they were confident that the new bills would soon become law.

Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, called the bills a move in the right direction for small business owners and diners alike. Created in 2012, the alliance has made it its mission to bring about reform to the inspection system.

“We’re thrilled,” said Rigie, who called it a win for both customers and restaurant owners. “This was a push for reform in a way that maintains food standards for New Yorkers but reduces burdensome fines. It’s a huge step for small businesses.”

This is a corrected version. See note at the bottom of the story.

NEW YORK — Letitia James is on her way to becoming the next public advocate. The first woman of color likely to win citywide office, James’ win is already opening a door: for a white man to become the next City Council speaker.

Between Bill de Blasio and Joe Lhota fighting for Gracie Mansion and Scott Stringer being the overwhelming favorite in the comptroller’s race, James’ win led some political onlookers to give carte blanche for a straight, white male candidate to potentially replace outgoing Council Speaker Christine Quinn come January 1.

“Nobody’s off the hook because Tish won the race,” said political consultant and Brooklyn Democratic district leader Chris Owens. “The question should be who are the people best equipped to be speaker and, if one of them is a person of color, why not elevate them to the role of speaker?”

Owens recognized that the overriding need for the city and party is for its leaders to deliver results, whatever race, gender or sexual orientation they are. And yet for some, the progressive movement’s call for diversity remains relevant — if not more so — to how the new Council picks its newest leader.

Barring any movement to decentralize the speaker's powers, the speaker acts as the legislative gatekeeper for the Council, controlling which bills get to the floor for a vote. The speaker also has a heavy hand in how the body allocates almost $50 million in member items and in which members get which committee seats.

In recent years, the Council has been more demographically representative of the city than the top of the ballot. Non-Hispanic whites make up 49.6 percent of the city’s population, according to the 2010 Census. Not unlike New York City at large, women, black, Asian, Latino and LGBT legislators make up more than half of the 51-member Council.

James, who is black, served two terms in the Council before becoming the Democratic nominee for public advocate. Her win last week was hailed as a game-changing development for the next administration.

“The power center of government should not be all white and all male,” wrote Sonia Ossorio, president of the National Organization for Women in New York City, on the night of the runoff. “The voters saw to that tonight.”

Describing the election of the speaker as inside baseball, James said yesterday that she won’t speculate as to who might take over the office next year. Asked if she believed the next speaker should be representative of the Council and city’s overall diversity, James was diplomatic.

“I don’t believe in the quota system,” she said on Tuesday.

James is on her way to join Betsy Gotbaum as the second woman to serve as public advocate. The comptroller’s seat has been held by one woman, Elizabeth Holtzmen; two men of color have also held the office. In 2002, Bill Thompson was the city’s first black comptroller; outgoing comptroller John Liu was the first Asian New Yorker to hold the office.

David Dinkins is the only non-white to have ever served as mayor. There have been no women or openly LGBT mayors. However, New York did see its first openly gay woman as Council speaker with Christine Quinn.

But diversity is about more than just who is elected to power in the primary.

Beyond the ballot, the top contenders for the mayoral ticket have each promised diversity within the administration. At a City & State forum in 2012, before he formally announced his candidacy, de Blasio attacked Mayor Bloomberg’s administration for a lackluster hiring record.

“We certainly don't see an administration that, in its composition, looks like New York City,” Bill de Blasio said. “I think we see the results of that.”

Asked about diversity within mayoral appointments during the last debate before the primary, Republican candidate Joe Lhota praised the idea of working with former Democratic mayoral nominee Fernando Ferrer. Earlier in the debate, Lhota argued that New York City’s “diversity is our greatest strength.”

Neither is the first mayoral candidate to commit to diversity. Bloomberg vowed in 2002 to be more inclusive in his hiring practices. But in 2010, the New York Times ran a Page One story that found more than 70 percent of top appointments within the Bloomberg administration went to white candidates. Of the 10 appointments he made coming into this final term, nine were white and only one was a woman.

{pullquote}I don’t believe in the quota system — Letitia James{/pullquote}

The Bloomberg administration declined to comment at the time.

“When you look at executive management, this administration was not diverse,” Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito told the Gotham Gazette at City Hall last week. “And that’s something that we’ll be working with the next mayor to change.”

Mark-Viverito’s name has been bandied about for weeks as a potential candidate for speaker next year. She along with fellow Manhattan Council members Dan Garodnick and Inez Dickens, Annabel Palma and James Vacca of the Bronx, Mark Weprin of Queens, and Jumaane William of Brooklyn are all in the running to replace Quinn.

The council speaker came to be in 1994 with the City Charter revision, which did away with the Council president and created the public advocate’s office. There have only been three speakers: Peter Vallone, Sr., held the seat for 16 years, Gifford Miller for four and Quinn for seven.

Quinn wasn’t the first woman to lead the Council either; Carol Bellamy was the first woman City Council president in 1977. There have been no non-white Council chiefs.

Of those names being floated for speaker, four are members of the Council’s Black, Latino and Asian caucus.  Only Mark-Viverito, who was born in Puerto Rico, and Williams, who is black, belong to the Council’s 12-member Progressive Caucus, which is mostly comprised of nonwhite or LGBT lawmakers.

Both Mark-Viverito and Weprin were also at James’ primary night party and equally demurred when asked about who might take over the Council’s helm next year.

Still, Mark-Viverito said she recognizes the delicate balance between the progressive message and diversity within the movement. She argued that the ideas that pushed de Blasio — who she endorsed early in the race —  through to the general election only reinforces the caucus’ goals.

“That voice of the progressive caucus is a diverse voice,” she said. “That message is thankfully being reinforced by the Democratic nominee, and the Council will play a very active role in it.”

The two-term councilwoman said she understood concerns about a lack of diversity among the citywide leadership, and that she agrees that the diversity of the city should be reflected in its leadership.

Some in the new class of Council members agree. Antonio Reynoso beat out disgraced former Assemblyman Vito Lopez to replace Councilwoman Diana Reyna.

Reynoso stopped short of saying he’d formally join the caucus, but said that he was committed to working with the Progressive Caucus on its issues.

“I want to make that I’m able to do my job as well as I possibly can so that me and other folks in the Council who look more like the city of New York can be in positions to promote change citywide,” Reynoso said. “But don’t discount the value of the people we do elect and their being representative of us all — not just a group.”

The Council itself saw some minor changes in its composition. There’s one less member of the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus, with co-chair Robert Jackson leaving the body and the other seats mostly having kept minority representation. Still, the remaining 27 members make up more than half of the Council.

Meanwhile, the Women’s Caucus shrunk by three: Inez Barron took over husband Charles’ seat, but seats formerly held by Councilwomen Jessica Lappin and Diana Reyna, as well as Council Speaker Christine Quinn, were all replaced by men. Those replacements, however, also were balanced by gains to Council’s LGBT caucus. Newcomers Corey Johnson, Carlos Menchaca and Ritchie Torres will help the group grow to six.

It’s too early to know how this new group of Council members will coalesce; New Yorkers still have a general election to vote in, and New York hasn’t seen a Democratic mayor in 20 years.

Part of selling that Democratic ticket is to show a united front, and that shared progressive message of diversity is already starting to take shape.

Hours after visiting the Rev. Al Sharpton’s uptown offices for the civil right activist’s birthday on Saturday, de Blasio joined Letitia James in Grand Army Plaza — the first time the two have come together as Democratic nominees — before attending a rally for immigration rights in Brooklyn Heights.

If de Blasio wins, along with James and Stringer, whoever takes the Council’s speaker seat not only has to lead the city’s legislative arm but also work with the impending progressive chorus.

“At the end of the day you want someone who’s going to say, ‘We speak with one voice,’” Owens said.

—

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported that Carol Bellamy was City Council president in 1997. The correct year is 1977. The version also incorrectly reported that only men had served as city comptroller. Elizabeth Holtzman served as comptroller from 1990 to 1993.

ALBANY, N.Y. — A state commission charged with investigating government corruption met tonight in Albany for the first time publically since state legislators refused requests that they disclose the names of their clients.

Throughout the hearing, Moreland Commission members posed questions that pointed to the possibility that they were seeking for ways to clean up Albany without the help of the state Legislature. A major line of discussion revolved around reforms to the campaign financing system.

Commission co-chair William Fitzpatrick, the Onondaga district attorney, asked Bill Mahoney of the New York Public Interest Research Group whether the state’s “62 DAs” could simply reverse a Board of Elections ruling that allows companies to funnel cash to candidates or committees by creating multiple front companies.

During his testimony, Brian Paul of Common Cause/New York, was quizzed by Fizpatrick on other solutions. 

Paul said he wasn’t an attorney, to which Fizpatrick replied: “Don’t apologize for that!”

Later, commissioner Richard Briffault asked whether another loophole could be closed with a simple change of language. “Is it a one-sentence solution?” he asked.

Commission members repeatedly asked where they should specifically look for corruption and how members of good government groups thought change should be enacted in the state’s campaign finance system. Some legislative staffers moaned as members of good government groups repeated familiar mantras about New York State’s broken campaign finance system.

Bill Mahoney of the New York Public Interest Research Group reminded the audience of how the BOE’s lax rules have allowed legislators to spend campaign cash on pool covers, cars and their legal defense.

“The Legislature has shown an unwillingness to act,” Mahoney said, while offering a detailed report on how the commission itself could move to address some of the state’s largest problems. But he cautioned that the commission should provide a comprehensive legislative package along with any individual action they take.

Mahoney said that existing campaign finance rules have been “abused without board oversight or legal challenge for years,” and, he concluded, “It is certainly feasible that a strong commission pronouncement and referral could deter this behavior in the future.” Mahoney was asked whether he felt the BOE had failed at policing campaign finance because of a lack of resources or a lack of will. “It’s definitely a lack of will,” he responded.

SEPARATION OF POWERS

The Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption was formed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in July, calling on state law he had previously used to investigate public utilities, after the Legislature refused to pass anti-corruption measures in response to a series of scandals involving legislative corruption.

Cuomo had held out the possibility of a Moreland Commission since taking office but many saw it as a last resort because it might risk alienating his allies in the legislative branch. With his reelection drawing near, Cuomo likely didn’t want to be seen defending the culture in Albany that he has claimed to have reformed.

The commission’s second hearing came after attorneys for the legislative majorities refused the commission’s request for more information on state lawmakers’ outside income. Specifically, the commission wanted more information on the outside income of those who make more than $20,000 in private business and lists of their clients. Legislators perceived the request as an overreach by a commission created by the executive branch.

“These demands substantially exceed what New York law authorizes. All information legally required to be disclosed and relevant to any legitimate inquiry already has been disclosed,” wrote attorneys Marc Kazowitz and Michael Garcia, who represent the Assembly and Senate, respectively.

Legislators pointed to increased disclosure requirements that were agreed to under new ethics laws that created the Joint Commission on Public Ethics and was hailed as a major step forward by Gov. Andrew Cuomo when he signed it into law.

The letter went on to question whether the commission had the right to demand anything of the Legislature, claiming the law creating the Moreland Act specifically states that the commission can only investigate departments, agencies and commissions of the executive branch, not the Legislature itself; and that the Legislature is further protected by the constitutional separation of powers.

Michelle Duffy, spokesperson for the commission, issued a sharp response: “The New York state Legislature has refused to turn over the information requested by the Moreland Commission revealing their outside clients. As the old adage goes, if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.”

Gerald Benjamin, a professor of political science at SUNY-New Paltz, said the arguments from the Legislature echoed similar ones made by state lawmakers when Gov. Mario Cuomo formed a Moreland Commission in the late 1980s.

“This is roughly the same argument,” he said. “The Legislature believes the commission inappropriately focuses on them rather than on all government practices.”

The separation of powers argument is something that Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group expects to playout for the duration of the commission’s work but he says the commission could help itself by being more open. “There is a legitimate separation of powers fight behind this whole thing,” Horner said.

Benjamin said the commission’s first hearing did nothing to allay legislators’ fears that they were the sole target. “Taking testimony from federal prosecutors who have investigated a number of legislators tends to feed those thoughts, that they are being targeted,” said Benjamin.

During that hearing last Tuesday, federal prosecutors Preet Bharara and Lorretta Lynch testified about their work fighting corruption in Albany. Bharara focused specifically on how legislators convicted of corruption continue to draw pensions from the state. Bharara said he planned to change that. “We will use federal forfeiture law to claw back an appropriate dollar amount commensurate with that pension where appropriate,” Bharara said.

Cuomo told reporters last week that he had tried to strip legislators of their pensions following corruption cases but that the state constitution does not allow it.

LOOKING TO THE PAST

At tonight’s hearing, NYPIRG’s Mahoney suggested the commission look back to the recommendations of the Feerick Commission that was the result of Gov. Mario Cuomo’s attempt to investigate legislative corruption back in the 1980s. The Legislature at the time fought back by cutting funding for the commission and negotiated the parameters of the Feerick Commission. Mahoney said that most of that commission’s recommendations had been ignored.

But Jess Wisnewski of Citizen Action pointed out that there was a major difference between the late 1980s when the Feerick Commission met and now, emphasizing that there existed major public support behind this commission. The Feerick Commission was not well regarded by the public because it was the result of legislative haggling and looked like another corrupt piece of the puzzle. Wisnewski reminded commissioners that good government groups around the state were organizing citizens to support their recommendations.

The commission’s relationship with regular New Yorkers became an issue during its first hearing last week when members of the public were turned away and told that the 50-seat hearing room was full before just about anyone had entered. Many who had registered to testify were also turned away.

Tonight’s hearing was scheduled to take place at a smaller venue but on Friday the commission changed the location to a large hall in the Empire State Plaza. There were numerous protesters chanting in support of campaign finance reform but the hearing room was not nearly full to capacity. It appeared about 100 people were in attendance during the peak.

Horner, who did not attend this evening’s hearing but spoke to Gotham Gazette hours before it began, said the effectiveness of the commission will likely be affected by how open the process is, how the commission and the Cuomo administration engages the public and what kind of proposals they put forward. The commission’s first report is due in December. Both Benjamin and Horner think it will be difficult for the Legislature not to go along with any legislative package Cuomo proposes after the commission does its work.

“If this is done in public with an eye toward building public opinion and forged by the executive in an appropriate manner I think they will come up with useful solutions,” Horner said. “If the process is opaque and not really open, I think it will be more difficult to make change happen.”

Horner said Andrew Cuomo has many more advantages than his father did at the time he convened a Moreland Commission to investigate public corruption.

“Mario Cuomo’s power was waning. He was in his third term and he really had no clout with the Legislature,” Horner said. “This Cuomo is at the peak of his power heading into an election. It will be very hard for this Legislature, in an election year, to say no. It will be very hard.”

ALBANY, N.Y. — The commission established by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to investigate public corruption has not wasted any time in sending a message to state lawmakers that it means business.

Among the first people invited to testify before it are two of the most prominent and aggressive federal prosecutors of wrongdoing by elected officials. Those prosecutors, Preet Bharara and Loretta Lynch, will testify before the governor’s Moreland Commission at its initial hearing in New York City this evening.

The hearing, at Pace University, is open to the public and comments can be submitted to the commission online.

Cuomo fulfilled a threat to convene the commission in July after state lawmakers failed to pass legislation to strengthen oversight of the state’s campaign finance laws. A series of federal indictments, a sexual harassment scandal and revelations that some lawmakers were recording their colleagues for the FBI led to public outcry about the murky business in Albany.

Polls showed New Yorkers wanted something done about what appeared to be a new scourge of public corruption.

Initially, the focus of the commission seemed vague if not overly broad. But as the commission began issuing subpoenas this summer, legislators got nervous. The commission sent shockwaves through state government by subpoenaing five real estate firms that are major political players in state government. The groups have made contributions to politicians at just about every level of city and state government — including Cuomo, who had to fight off allegations that he pushed a vote on a tax-break measure after receiving a major donation from one of the groups.

Republicans who control the state Senate hired former federal prosecutor Michael Garcia to represent the legislative conference as it fields requests for information from the commission’s investigators.

Bill Mahoney of the New York Public Interest Research Group said the move is a sign the Republicans are taking the commission seriously.

“I think the fact that they retained such high-priced lawyers indicates that they have major concerns about where this is going,” he said.

But he added that he thinks most legislators most likely aren’t worried about being found out as corrupt. “What I expect from the commission is more of an exposé of the current reality that will give a picture of what legislators get away with — the kind of favors swapped for donations,” Mahoney said.

So what is the Moreland Commission, who is on it, what powers does it have and how could it actually effect change in Albany? Why is anyone afraid of another Albany commission? We have the answers.

Unprecedented Power

Cuomo announced on July 2 the creation of a panel “to probe systemic public corruption and the appearance of such corruption in state government, political campaigns and elections in New York State.” He did so under the Moreland Act, which was passed by the Legislature in 1907 and took its name from a legislator, Sherman Moreland.

Legislators have long insisted that the Moreland Act only gives the governor the ability to investigate the executive branch. However, likely such as the Board of Elections, ethics boards and other agencies that oversee or do business with the Legislature.

The commission has subpoena power and can take testimony under oath.

Giving the commission significantly expanded power, state Attorney General Schneiderman deputized a number of commission members which the Cuomo administration says will given them “broad-based authority to investigate all matters that involve public peace, public safety, and public justice.”

Unclear Scope

The last time a Moreland Commission was established, the commission burrowed into all manner of alleged corruption — it investigated fundraising issues, the influence of money, developers in Poughkeepsie and even the governor who called the commission: Gov. Mario Cuomo. The uncertainty of where and who this new Moreland Commission is going to look at has legislators spooked. Besides legislators’ ties to developers, it is clear the current commission will be looking at where the money for campaigns originates — and how it is used.

Politically Connected Commissioners

The commission is comprised of three co-chairs: Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, Onondaga District Attorney William Fizpatrick, and attorney Milton Williams. There are 22 commission members and four special advisers including New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly, former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and Joseph D’ Amico, superintendent of the state police.

It’s worth noting that many of the members are Cuomo and Schneiderman allies. A number of those allies are also elected officials who participate in the very campaign finance system they have been tasked with investigating.

Here is a look at some of the commission’s most prominent members:

Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice: Rice, ostensibly the “face” of the commission, has served as Nassau County district attorney since 2005, and is currently running for reelection. A prolific fundraiser who had over $2 million in her campaign coffers heading into the her reelection battle, she also received $300,000 in donations from the law firm that employs Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Rice is a staunch Cuomo ally who ran for Attorney General in 2010. She was seen by many as Cuomo’s choice in the race over the winner, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. In a 2009 debate, she was the only Democratic candidate for attorney general to refuse a pledge to seek higher office in the next eight years if elected to the position. Rice’s name has also been linked to aborted Congressional runs.

Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick: A 28-year Republican incumbent, Fitzpatrick was an early supporter of Cuomo’s gubernatorial bid. Fitzpatrick said during a Moreland Commission press conference that he had donated to Cuomo but Board of Elections records don’t show it.

Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson: Johnson has served as Bronx district attorney since 1989. A report by the New York Daily News found that Johnson’s campaign failed to file three required documents during his 2007 campaign. Johnson was running unopposed at the time and there was little fundraising. His record as a prosecutor has come under recent attack and there was talk that county leaders were looking at a plan to get him to step down before his term ends in 2015.

Albany County District Attorney David Soares: Soares successfully ran an outsider’s campaign — backed by the Working Families Party and George Soros — to oust the Albany machine incumbent in 2004. One of the points of his campaign was that Albany politicians had long controlled the Albany County district attorney seat because it was so powerful. The office has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Albany, including by members of the state government who commit white collar crime in the county lines. Soares has been elected twice since then but has done little to curb Albany corruption.

Soares did come to a plea deal with former Comptroller Alan Hevesi and got mixed up in the Troopergate scandal surrounding Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Soares has defended his office’s record pursuing white collar crime in Albany by saying that his office simply doesn’t “have the resources.” But Soares’ office did take part in a highly publicized lawsuit with Florida pharmaceutical companies that were charged with selling steroids. The case involved a number of high-profile athletes. Soares was criticized at the time for spending Albany taxpayer money on an out-of-state investigation.

The Impact on Next Session

The Moreland Commission’s first report is due in December of this year, ahead of the next legislative session that begins in January. Whatever is in it could leave a fog over the Legislature.

Cuomo will likely reference the commission’s early findings in his State of the State speech.

Some advocates are quietly pushing for Cuomo to introduce a series of reforms informed by the Moreland Commission’s findings as part of his budget while other groups want Cuomo to let the package stand on its own merits and not try to ram it through with budget bills. Some groups claim Cuomo has promised not to include any reform package in the budget.

The Daily News reported on Monday that legislators feel persecuted by the commission and may not be in the mood to work with Cuomo come January.

Mahoney said he thinks such a move would be unwise for the Legislature. “The best thing for them is to work to as close to a functional body as they possibly can before the election,” Mahoney said.

NEW YORK — The City Council has approved two bills that would extend new oversight to the medical examiner’s office.

The legislation — unanimously passed by the Council yesterday by 44 votes — was created following reports that some evidence was mishandled by the office’s technicians.

The bills create a new internal oversight mechanism and makes it so the office more frequently provides City Hall with up-to-date data. The move marks a shift in how the medical examiner reports any errors it finds in its work and make its practices publicly available on the city’s website.

“At the end of the day, we want the office of the chief medical examiner to be consistent with the reputation that it has — to be a trailblazer in the science of DNA and forensic pathology,” said Bronx Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo on Thursday.

OCME spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said in a statement that the office was working to improve its practices. “This additional level of transparency will ensure the full confidence of the public,” she said.

In January, the office announced it had to review more than 800 rape cases due to concerns that a lab technician mishandled evidence. The New York Times reported that a technician “failed to detect biological evidence when some actually existed.”

The technician, Serrita Mitchell, denied any wrongdoing. She later resigned.

The office’s deputy director of quality assurance was fired around the same time. The lab’s director, Mechthild Prinz, was temporarily suspended and the lab was soon audited by outside DNA expert firm Sorenson Forensics.

In April, former Deputy Lab Director Dr. Theresa Caragine resigned — a month before the New York Daily News revealed the Sorenson Forensics’ report findings, and that her department had both been ineffective and violated lab standards and protocol. She denied those charges.

Prinz, still suspended after the 800-plus cases were reopened, resigned on May 3, the day after the audit came out. Tim Kupferschmid has since been the DNA lab’s director.

The bills came about after the Council’s committees on health and women’s issues held two hearings in June. Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo, who chairs the health committee, undersold the sometimes tense exchanges, saying, “The concerns that were raised during hearings...were very concerning to us.”

Back in June, Arroyo told acting Chief Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson that “everyone in this room thinks you're inept.”

Arroyo added: “Two hearings in a row, you sit here and you don't have a handle on what happened.”

Sampson became acting chief medical examiner in February after Charles Hirsch stepped down after almost 25 years in charge of the OCME.

At the hearings, Sampson said she agreed with the Council’s goal of increasing the office’s accountability and transparency, but resisted any movement toward making certain information publicly available, as one of two Council bills does.

Intro 1058-A will require the office to post information not about specific cases but on procedures and standards used by lab workers, as well as on data related to proficiency of the lab’s technicians.

Along with the added transparency, Intro 1051-A will make it so that any cases where a worker’s accuracy and reliability are in question are followed up with what’s called a “root cause analysis” conducted by an internal committee.

Borakove, the office’s spokeswoman, confirmed that the lab already uses the technique. However, the new law makes it so that it becomes a requirement and extends where the review method is used.

Each root cause committee will have to report its findings to the the Council and mayor’s office. If committee finds any errors that affects ongoing investigations, the results would also be forwarded to both the respective district attorney’s office and defense counsel.

Reform advocates from around the city have praised the two bills as an opportunity for systemic reform. The Legal Aid Society, whose DNA unit has long been critical of the OCME, wrote a letter in support of the legislation.

“We hope that the significant troubles at the OCME have changed the culture of the agency toward one that more aggressively roots out its own problematic practices and is sufficiently open to admit mistakes when they do occur,” wrote Legal Aid Attorney-in-Chief Steven Banks.

Even the lawmakers, however, realize that the law cannot put an end to mistakes within the lab.

“It will not eliminate error,” Arroyo said. “But it will help us structure a way that we can weed it out and minimize the opportunity for error.”

NEW YORK — A nonprofit created by a Republican candidate for mayor is one of dozens of groups slated to get a cut of pork — hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars — from the City Council for 2014.

The Doe Fund, founded by mayoral hopeful George McDonald, will receive $545,000 from over half a dozen Council members for programs aimed at helping people who are unemployed or homeless to ease back into the workforce.

Although it is not the first time the organization has received funding from Council members, data released late last week shows the Doe Fund was among the top recipients of this year’s budgeted pork barrel spending.

Organizations across the city benefit from the relatively tiny amount of the multibillion-dollar budget that Council members get to earmark for programs and projects in their districts — typically arts initiatives, parks, senior centers or other efforts that the lawmakers deem worthy of their attention.

But as beneficial as some of the funding can be, the system of determining who gets the money— and how much — has been fodder for complaints about opaque budget proceedings, government mismanagement and political patronage. Corruption of the system has led to investigations and even arrests.

With the city in the midst of an increasingly heated mayoral campaign, how discretionary funding is parceled out has come under increased scrutiny.

A map of discretionary funding totals for 2014. Click on the map to see information on each Council district.

An analysis of publicly available data by the Citizens Union Foundation, publisher of Gotham Gazette, found that $594 million of the 2014 fiscal year’s $70 billion budget approved on Thursday will go toward Council member items. The total analyzed by CUF does not include $57 million identified separately by the Council as “Discretionary Child Care Allocations.”

Of course, some Council members get more of the hog than others. The top three recipients of pork in fiscal year 2014 are:

• Brooklyn Councilman and Finance Committee Chair Domenic Recchia, whose $10.3 million went toward athletic programs, 23 schools and medical services;

• Manhattan Councilman Robert Jackson, whose $10.3 million will support among things housing services and local senior programs, as well as a sizable $4.4 million commitment to the City University of New York;

• And Speaker Christine Quinn, who got $10.2 million to support parks in her district, housing developments and a local business improvement district, among other initiatives.

The clear losers were Brooklyn Councilman Vincent Gentile ($3 million), disgraced Councilman Daniel Halloran ($2.2 million) and Brooklyn Councilwoman Diana Reyna ($912,464). Malcolm Sanborn-Hum, a spokesman for Reyna’s office, said the Councilwoman had contributed a little more than $4 million in infrastructure projects that were filed jointly with other Council members. Halloran was arrested earlier this year on allegations he tried to use his discretionary funding for personal gain.

Member items are split among separate accountings that are difficult to parse even for experts. But, essentially, there are two main pots of funding: Expense and capital.

This year, Council members allocated about $46 million in expense spending — down from last year’s $49 million, according to the CUF analysis. These funds usually go to arts and social programs. A pilot legal program named the New York Immigrant Family Unity Program ($500,000), youth and senior service provider Bergen Basin Community Development Corporation ($462,064), Catholic Charities ($460,00) and the Brooklyn Chambers of Commerce ($325,000) received the most expense funds this year.

Capital spending is used for long-term infrastructure projects that include building and maintaining schools, hospitals, parks and other local organizations. The Council allocated almost $548 million in capital projects for the upcoming fiscal year — an increase over last year’s $489 million.

Top projects funded by this year’s capital expenses include the proposed Coney Island amphitheater ($17 million), the New York City Housing Authority ($10 million) and the City University of New York system ($10 million).

Maria Doulis, director of city studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, said of the line items supporting schools, cultural affairs and green spaces: “It looks very similar to past years in terms of the areas where the members have directed the funding to.”

See the data used in the analysis

The Doe Fund, which reported $49 million in revenue in 2011, has long been a recipient of public money from the Council — as well as from the federal and state government and private donors like Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Last year, the Doe Fund received $460,000 in funds from the expense budget.

McDonald has generally run a campaign focused on his work to combat homelessness and unemployment. McDonald has been described by his campaign as “an outsider” who “sets himself apart from the corrupt and rigged election practices that infects our politics."

McDonald campaign spokesman David Catalfamo, said the candidate is generally “positive” about member items, save for some reforms to make the allocation of money more transparent. “The Doe Fund is living proof that member items can work,” he said, adding that there is a “lack of oversight” of the system for doling out the funds.

The Doe Fund declined to comment on the record.

Queens Councilman James Gennaro was the most generous toward the Doe Fund, earmarking $112,500 for the organization for fiscal year 2014. He has supported the nonprofit since at least 2010.

While a Gennaro spokesman declined to comment on the link between Doe Fund and McDonald, Gennaro did provide a statement supporting the line item, which calls for sanitation services and beautification projects paid for to the nonprofit.

"By working hard to make our neighborhoods look their best, the Doe Fund helps small businesses flourish while acting as a vehicle for people looking to overcome significant life challenges,” Gennaro wrote. “I am proud to have been a strong advocate for Council funding for the Doe Fund's much needed and most appreciated services."

According to CUF’s analysis, more than $300,000 in expense spending and $1 million in capital spending were allocated to the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Center, a nonprofit founded by disgraced former Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez. However, the center is receiving dramatically less money than in previous years, having obtained more than $870,000 in expense spending alone last year.

Lopez — currently a candidate for Councilwoman Reyna’s seat — was accused of sexually harassing staffers and resigned from his Assembly post this past spring.

Analysis of discretionary funding from 2009 to 2014 by Citizens Union Foundation.

On the cusp of a new mayoral administration and one of the biggest turnovers in Council history, advocates and some candidates have been arguing for increased transparency on discretionary spending.

“It’s certainly valid to raise questions about the discretionary nature of these funds and how they’re awarded — whether there’s a better way to do this according to need, merit or some other criteria,” Doulis said. “At this point, it remains to be seen whether the next mayor or speaker of the Council will take it up as something that they want to work on.”

Several candidates for mayor have staked out their positions on discretionary funding in recent months.

McDonald’s spokesman said the candidate was generally “positive” about member items but said there was a “lack of oversight” and some reforms might be necessary.

Rival Republican candidate Joe Lhota — a former budget director for the city — won’t call for the end of the program. Instead, he suggested that the Council pay for member items by finding savings in the budget instead of increase spending to cover the costs.

Among the Democratic candidates, former Comptroller Bill Thompson and his successor, John Liu, have said the system is “broken” and have called for it to be reformed. Former Brooklyn Councilman Sal Albanese wants it abolished altogether.

Like Albanese, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio has called for the current system to be abolished and set forth a substantive reform policy towards member items. He has suggested that the city expand participatory budgeting and create an RFP-based grant program.

In an interview with Gotham Gazette, De Blasio suggested that the member item system is indicative of a larger issue of how the city handles its budget.

“I don't even need to go into the problem of member items in the City Council, which I've called for abolition of,” de Blasio said, “ the way that the budget process keys in on the mayor offering the Council, a very small amount of the budget, and using that as a tool of political control, how the Council speaker uses that same small allotment to control the members as opposed to actually having a larger public debate on our budgetary priorities and where the real money is.”

More often than not, however, the Democratic candidates for mayor have been using questions surrounding member items to go after one of the frontrunners for their party’s nomination: Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

Quinn, who plays a key role in determining how the funding gets distributed, has been accused of using discretionary funds to punish Council members who oppose her.

De Blasio attacked Quinn last week immediately after the budget’s release, accusing her of being disingenuous about her role as speaker in doling out member items.

“When she wants to create distance she acts like she doesn’t have the power,” de Blasio said. “When she wants to bully people and take their money away she’s very good at it.”

Thompson and Albanese have also questioned her record of handling the funds.

But Quinn has defended her oversight of the money. Following a 2008 scandal involving the misuse of discretionary funding, the Council under Quinn’s leadership passed several reforms.

“We basically went from a system we inherited here that was kind of an honor system to a verification system,” Quinn said last June following the approval of the budget. “We work closely reviewing all of the different distribution.”

Rachael Fauss of Citizens Union Foundation contributed research to this report.

NEW YORK — It was 2:20 a.m. this morning when cheers and applause erupted in the City Council chambers.

Member Ruben Wills, of Queens, had cast the 34th vote to pass a police reform package that some believe could lead to an overhaul of stop-and-frisk and strengthen curbs on racial profiling by police officers.

Seconds after the vote tallies came in, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office sent out a statement blasting the vote.

"These dangerous pieces of legislation will only hurt our police officers' ability to protect New Yorkers and sustain this tremendous record of accomplishment," Bloomberg wrote, promising to veto the legislation.

The vote to pass the Community Safety Act capped a busy night at the Council as members unanimously approved a $70 billion budget, overrode the mayor's veto of paid sick leave legislation and cleared the way for sidewalk cafes to serve brunch on Sundays after 10 a.m.

Originally scheduled to begin at 9 p.m., it wasn't until about a half hour before midnight that the 51 Council members convened for a three-hour voting session.

But the vast share of attention was on the bills to create an independent inspector general for the New York Police Department and to expand the city's ban on racial profiling by police officers.

Advocates said the legislation was important to decrease what they say is a disproportionate number of young black and Latino men being stopped and frisked.

"If you have never been black, Muslim or Asian in the city of New York," Williams asked of the bill's detractors, "please listen to us."

The inspector general bill received a comfortable 40 votes, with 11 Council members opposed. The extended ban on racial profiling, which Williams previously called the more important of the two, barely secured the 34 votes necessary to override a Bloomberg veto.

The eleven members who voted against the inspector general bill included Republican Staten Island Councilmen James Oddo and Vincent Ignizio, who were joined by fellow Republican Eric Ulrich as well as Democratic Queens Council members Peter Vallone, Jr., Elizabeth Crowley, James Gennaro and Peter Koo. Brooklyn Democrats Dominic Recchia, Mike Nelson, Vincent Gentile and Lew Fidler also voted against the bills.

They, along with Bronx Democrats James Vacca and Joel Rivera, Queens Democrat Karen Koslowitz, Brooklyn Democrat David Greenfield, embattled Queens Republican Dan Halloran and Speaker Christine Quinn joined the opposition against the racial profiling bill.

Williams co-sponsored the police reform bills with fellow Brooklyn Councilman Brad Lander, who after the meeting said he was optimistic that they could hold on to last night's votes. Lander said that Mayor Bloomberg and other vocal opponents of both bills had spent the better part of the week calling members to dissuade them from supporting either bill, both of which Bloomberg and Commissioner Ray Kelly have long called dangerous for New York City.

Lander said he hoped Bloomberg was "listening" — referring not just to the vote count but also the number of personal accounts given by Council members of how stop-and-frisk had affected them personally as well as their constituents.

All but one council member voted for the budget: Brooklyn Councilman Charles Barron opposed its passage, arguing that the budget can sometimes be "more brutal than the police."

The vote came about after Sunday's announcement between the Council and Bloomberg that the city would pass a budget before the July 1 deadline for the eight year in a row. To meet that deadline, however, the Council had to vote on it by Thursday night to give the mayor's office and comptroller two business days to look over the final package.

The Council also voted to override the mayor's veto of the long-delayed paid sick day bill, which mandates that businesses with 20 or more employees provide them with five days of paid leave as early as next summer. It passed again with 47 votes in favor and four against.

One bill did pass unanimously through the Council last night. All members approved a law that allows sidewalk cafes to open on Sundays at 10 a.m. for brunch.

"I know it is not the most important bill," Council Dan Garodnick, the sponsor of the bill, said early in the night to laughs from the chamber.

ALBANY, N.Y. — It reads like the perfect description of today’s state government: “A series of corruption scandals in New York State, involving officials at all levels of government, produced widespread cynicism and distrust of government and created a perception that unethical, if not illegal, practices were rampant throughout the state.”

But the quote doesn’t describe New York State government in 2013. It was written by the former head of the state Commission on Public Integrity empaneled by Gov. Mario Cuomo in the mid-1980s to investigate what was then described as a culture of corruption in Albany.

Now, nearly 30 years later, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, said as recently as Friday that, like his father before him, he will call together a similar commission under the powerful Moreland Act to investigate the Legislature — even though the law doesn’t give him the legal leeway to do so directly — after a series of corruption scandals rocked the state and legislators failed to implement ethics and campaign finance reform.

Cuomo’s staff is expected to start meetings with advocates on Monday about how best to proceed with an investigation. Cuomo could bolster the scope and power of any investigation by involving or referring the matter to the attorney general.

However he proceeds, the lessons of his father’s commission should serve as a warning to his son — most of all that investigating the Legislature is no easy task.

That is because the results of Mario Cuomo’s commission, also empaneled under the Moreland Act, were mixed. State legislators refused to fund the enterprise and eventually negotiated an investigation of much reduced scope that left them out of the crosshairs. The public soured on the commission knowing that the Legislature had such a hand in it. To bolster the power of the commission to investigate, Mario Cuomo brought in the attorney general.

The commission operated for 40 months and issued 20 reports. But most observers admit not much actually changed in the way money was tossed around in Albany.

John D. Feerick, who at the time was an assistant attorney general and headed the commission, describes in his reflections published in 1990 that there are many reasons why the commission’s work didn’t translate into actual change. Legislators insisted their recommendations were “too costly,” he wrote; others insisted there was no “public outcry for reform.”

“It also was said that the constituency in New York State for ethics reform was a small one,” Feerick wrote. “Therefore, why expend time and effort in areas which involved so little political return?”

The Moreland Act is a powerful tool but it does not allow Cuomo to investigate the dealings of the Legislature. Instead, a Moreland Commission can investigate branches of the executive that the Legislature interacts with.

“It just so happens people file with the Board of Elections … Some of them happen to be legislators,” Cuomo said Friday on the Capitol Pressroom radio show. “We have state agencies that administer member items they could investigate all of those.”

In particular, a commission looking into the State Board of Election might follow the example of good government groups, which have long said that fines and infractions routinely go unpunished and that candidates fail to file, fail to report who has given them money or just stop reporting the activity of campaign accounts filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars.

From there, a Moreland Commission would not have the ability to bring charges but instead to catalogue evidence, make referrals and propose reform.

The committee could also dig into legislative member items or “pork” to see if legislators have been benefiting themselves by steering state funds to groups they have connections to. Many legislators have already been caught and indicted for doing so. The Moreland Act does not give the commission the power to bring charges against anyone but it could forward findings to law enforcement agencies.

Cuomo described the way a commission could work in a separate interview on The Capitol Pressroom with Susan Arbetter on Jun 17.

“Go in, review the way we finance campaigns, review what the Board of elections is doing, review the intersection of money and politics and government in the state of New York,” Cuomo said. “Do an investigation, if you find cases send them to the DA and tell us how to make the system better.”

Gerald Benjamin, an expert in state government at the State University of New York in New Paltz, said Cuomo could face retaliation. “Investigating the Legislature invites them to go on a hunting investigation into the executive branch,” he said.. “We have to see how they take this.”

So far, the Legislature hasn’t taken kindly to Cuomo’s proposal. When asked about a Moreland Commission investigation, Republican Senate Leader Dean Skelos has brought up the Legislature’s ability to investigate the executive. Skelos and other legislators have painted the move as bullying.

Senate Republicans, who caved to Cuomo on a number of liberal issues early on in his term, have started to buck him as the governor’s approval ratings have slowly declined since he pushed the Legislature to pass The New York Safe Act. The end of session saw the Legislature refuse to address Cuomo’s top priorities in the Women’s Equality Act, campaign finance reform and anti-corruption measures.

“I think how they react depends on the communication that happens behind closed doors. If he tells them he is basically doing this to inoculate himself against all the scandal then I think the reaction could be minimal,” Benjamin said. “Who he appoints, what he sets as goals and the nature and character of the investigation will determine how others react.”

Advocates like Bill Samuels of The New Roosevelt Initiative and Bill Mahoney of the New York Public Interest Research Group said they hope the commission investigates large corporate contributors —the kind of contributors that Cuomo has done very well with.

“We’ve looked in the past and noticed a lot of small violations. Thousands of committees don’t file, it could be a mistake but I’m sure some of them walk away with the money in the bank,” Mahoney said. “A lot of things do seem sketchy and it is very hard to follow the checks and the paperwork and find out what is really going on. It will be interesting to see what a modern commission can find.”

The Moreland Act was passed in 1907 at the urging of Gov. Charles Evans Hughes and gives the governor the ability to "either in person or by one or more persons appointed by him for the purpose, to examine and investigate the management and affairs of any department, board, bureau or commission of the state." A number of Moreland Commissions have been called to investigate a wide range of topics, including: workers compensation, harness racing, welfare and even bingo. The commissions are generally staffed with politicos, investigators and government experts. Cuomo said on Friday that he expects to appoint “public policy and law enforcement types.”

This wouldn’t be the first time Cuomo has used his power under the Moreland Act. Last year, the governor called on the Act to empanel a commission to investigate allegations of ineptitude at the Long Island Power Authority following Hurricane Sandy. The commission was staffed with experts and made recommendations to reduce LIPA’s role as a power provider; the recommendations were turned into legislation and passed into law. Some groups criticized the commission for not looking into Cuomo’s role in LIPA’s dysfunction.

Benjamin noted that Cuomo has had a fairly collegial relationship with the Legislature during his time as governor and the way he has introduced the Moreland Commission seems to indicate that the governor “is trying to avoid confrontation and demonstrate a commitment to reform.”

Samuels is a bit more concerned. “I support a Moreland Commission,” Samuels said. “I think he should do it rather than threaten it, but I question whether Cuomo has the ability or desire to change the culture in Albany.”

However, Samuels believes that a Moreland Commission still is the best avenue to pursue. “They can only gather information so I’m not really sure what can come out of it. We have to sit back and hope they come up with something.”

Regardless of the mixed results from the Feerick Commission, the current Cuomo who resides in the governor’s mansion has already played a hand in the battle for ethics reform in Albany by herding legislators toward ethics reform early in his term. The resulting legislation forces legislators to reveal outside income; it also created the Joint Commission on Public Ethics.

JCOPE has already suffered a number of embarrassments. JCOPE’s failure to launch an investigation into the Assembly’s handling of the Vito Lopez sexual harassment settlement has raised deep concerns among member of the good government community. The commission is made up of representatives appointed by legislators and other statewide officials. The votes of only a few members can block an investigation. “Self-policing is not productive,” Cuomo said upon announcing his failure to reach a deal with legislators on anti-corruption measures last week.

The fact that Cuomo was unable to secure support from legislators on anti-corruption laws and campaign finance reform may be a sign that he has lost credibility with them — and that despite the numerous indictments they plan on pushing back against anything they think will reduce their power and influence.

In his reflections, Feerick writes that his commission was attacked for not working hard enough to bring about change. “I found these criticisms painful because of the enormous efforts by the Commissioners and staff over a period of 40 months to achieve, in the face of intense resistance, a more ethical government in New York State.”

When the commission issued its final reports, it found that certain legislators raised a great deal of money from corporations and that those legislators acted in the interests of those corporations. The commission made a slew of recommendations to update New York’s archaic campaign finance system and ethics laws but for the most part they were ignored.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Karen Scharff, a veteran activist with long, flowing gray hair, spent Tuesday barricading the front door of Bronx state Sen. Jeff Klein’s legislative office with nearly two dozen other advocates in an effort to pressure Klein and his breakaway faction of Democrats to bring progressive issues to a vote.

After chaining themselves together, hand-in-hand, the advocates, working under the Fair Elections For New York banner, began chanting “IDC stands for ‘I don’t care’” — in reference to Klein’s Independent Democratic Conference.

For their efforts, Scharff and 20 others were arrested, put in handcuffs, charged with disorderly conduct and led from the capitol building. Scharff, who is the executive director of the labor-linked “grassroots” organization Citizen Action New York, noted that the state trooper who arrested her was “polite.”

As the advocates were being arrested, IDC spokesman Eric Soufer posted on Twitter: “Barricading a door so that junior staffers can’t leave their office isn’t civil disobedience. It’s idiocy.” He then posted a picture of Klein with a group of school children, with the note, “As you can tell, the pressure is clearly affecting us.” Soufer didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Fairly or not, progressive advocates have singled out the IDC as the key to getting a vote on campaign finance reform. But the relationship between the groups fractured once it became clear the IDC was unwilling or unable to push a compromise bill to a vote in the Senate where their governing partners, the Senate Republicans, fiercely oppose public financing of campaigns.

“I understand why the advocates targeted us,” said Sen. Diane Savino, a member of the IDC. “As Democrats, it is one of our bread-and-butter issues and they feel we are in a position to move it. If cooler heads had prevailed I think we could have sat down and really worked out something to change the current system.”

With two days left to go in session, advocates have been inundating IDC members with mailers and knocking on lawmakers’ doors in their districts.

Advocates say their aggressive tactics in the last days of the session has gotten them results: They point to a last minute push by IDC members to bring nine points of Andrew Cuomo’s women’s equality agenda to a vote as well as legislation addressing stop-and-frisk, gender expression protections and farm workers’ rights.

“We are starting to see little pieces of bills shaking through here and there,” said Michael Kink, executive director of Strong Economy For All, a progressive group that works to implement policies to benefit middle class and low income New Yorkers. But Kink, who was also arrested yesterday, said Klein had broken his promise to bring a campaign finance bill to a vote in the Senate.

In an op-ed published in the Lower Hudson Journal on Nov. 20, 2012, Klein said he would support a “progressive Democratic agenda, including campaign finance reform, a minimum wage increase and defending a woman’s right to choose.”

But much has changed since then: In early December, the IDC and Republicans announced they would share power in the Senate — bringing together two groups with sometimes diametrically opposed views on policy matters.

While there was some initial hope that the bipartisan coalition would lead to a more democratic airing of legislation, that has not been the case. Instead, tension and disorder has reigned in a session that has been the least productive in years.

Signaling that he was growing tired of the shenanigans that were stalling the legislative process, Cuomo said in a press conference yesterday that he insisted he get all of his corruption and campaign finance package with no compromise.

The governor said he would empanel a commission to investigate corruption in the Legislature.

With all the moving pieces and players that would be involved in a deal on campaign finance reform, it would be nearly impossible to assign blame solely to the the IDC for the legislation’s failure.

Cuomo has hinted that these issues will be resolved during next year’s elections. “Campaign finance — public finance — and the choice issue are going to be significant election-day issues next year,” Cuomo said.

Savino said she thinks the outcome could have turned out differently for the campaign financing package this year if Cuomo had pushed harder a lot earlier in the year.

“The way the governor has moved his issues in the past is that he introduced his priorities and worked towards a consensus,” said Savino. “You can’t just introduce a bill with two weeks left in session and tell everyone to get on board.”

Regardless of where the blame lies, the relationship between advocates and the IDC has grown so ugly that advocates are contemplating primaries against IDC members next year. “There are major groups who are part of our coalition that are working on the electoral side of things,” Kink said.

The Daily News reported this week that Friends of Democracy, a political action committee founded by the son of billionaire George Soros, is open to funding challenges to IDC members because of the perception that the IDC blocked action on a campaign finance reform bill.

Republican state Sen. Tom Libous has said he would be more than willing to assist IDC members in any primary challenges they might face.

Interestingly enough, both sides seem to be shocked at the current circumstances. Advocates can’t believe the IDC isn’t publically pushing Senate Republicans to vote on the abortion point of Cuomo’s 10-Point Women’s Agenda and public financing of campaigns while IDC members seem absolutely shell shocked by the amount of pressure they are facing from advocates and confused as to why advocates seem laser focused on them.

"It's very strange to target people who support your issue," Klein told The Wall Street Journal in a recent interview responding to pressure from women’s groups that are angry Klein has refused to bring the abortion plank of Cuomo’s women’s agenda to a vote.

The IDC were leaders when it came to campaign finance reform and corruption measures. After their chairman, Sen. Malcolm Smith, was charged with bribery and fraud they unveiled a comprehensive reform package and held town hall meetings around the state.

Most advocates admit that the IDC’s reform package — which would introduce a New York City based public campaign finance system and close a number of fundraising loopholes — put Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Silver’s plans to shame.

So, logically, the IDC expected the support of advocates; but the IDC measure also would have done away with the Wilson Pakula law that enables third parties like the labor-backed Working Families Party to cross endorse candidates.

Regardless of the two major issues, a whole host of other progressive legislation like the altering of marijuana laws to reduce the impact of stop-and-frisk in the New York City and the state DREAM Act have also been bottled up in the Senate. IDC members have been working to push deals on farm worker rights and the Gender Expression Non Discrimination Act.

But, in general, this legislative session has been extremely slow. There is a current end-of-session blitz of legislating going on now but, after the budget was passed, the Senate dribbled out minor bills in spurts and left the capitol for a week as indictments were unveiled against sitting legislators.

“I think we have seen this coalition style of government has been a real roadblock to getting legislation passed,” Scharff said. “They seem to be surprised they are facing this much pressure but what did they expect? They asked for this power and they are the Democrats in power, so they are the point of pressure.”

So what is next? Most Albany observers believe there won’t be any deal on the women’s agenda or campaign finance reform this year. Many also believe Cuomo will either make good on his promise to invoke a commission with broad investigatory powers to scrutinize the Legislature or will call a special session later in the year.

But when the next session rolls around, advocates will be paying close attention to the IDC to see if they try to make amends.

“As they say, ‘In politics there are no permanent friends or enemies. Just permanent issues,’” Kink said.

When asked about the next session, Savino repeated the exact same line.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Actors Martin Sheen and Eva Longoria, food writer Michael Pollan, Latino state lawmakers and Gov. Andrew Cuomo's ex-wife would not seem to have anything in common.

But they do: They are all working to expand the rights of farmworkers in New York.

All three legislative conferences in the state Senate have been involved in serious negotiations over compromise legislation designed to give farmworkers the kind of basic protections most workers in the state already enjoy such as unemployment benefits, a day off a week, overtime, and collective bargaining.

Legislative staff and advocates were hashing out amendments to currently proposed legislation at the end of last week and legislators from all three Senate conferences were scheduled to meet to discuss a compromise today.

Sources say the effort was set in motion by six Senate Republicans who want to get something done on the legislation and comes with only eight days remaining in a legislative session that has been wracked by scandal, indictments and lack of agreement on legislative issues.

Groups that support the legislation plan to launch a major public relations push this week with a radio spot by actor Martin Sheen. Sheen received the Cesar Chavez award in 2000 for his work on issues relating to farmworkers, the poor and Latino issues. Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Union and was good friends with Sheen.

The farmworker legislation has been repeatedly passed by the Assembly and defeated or bottled up in the Senate for more than a decade. While amended legislation is expected to be introduced this week, sources say any deal could easily slip away in the last-minute rush of session.

Cuomo has also said he supports the legislation.

"I know the farm worker bill that’s in the state. I am supportive of it. I am working and talking to the legislative leaders," he said when asked about the legislation on the day his ex-wife, Kerry Kennedy, came to Albany to launch a major push through the Robert F. Kennedy Center For Justice and Human Rights. "So it’s one of the items that we have on our agenda towards the end of the session,” he said.

The Farm Workers Bill of Rights, as currently proposed by Sen. Adriano Espaillat, would give farmworkers the right to collective bargaining, one day off a week, overtime, unemployment benefits and disability insurance, while also creating health and safety standards workers' living arrangements. Over 70 percent of migrant farmworkers are of Hispanic descent, and they travel from state to state doing seasonal farm work as it becomes available.

Groups like the pro-business Farm Bureau that functions a lot like the AARP does for the elderly say that some of these provisions would be simply untenable for small farms.

“Collective bargaining, overtime per day are things that don’t work on a farm,” the Farm Bureau's Steve Ammerman said. “It could rain one day and there would be a need to work to make up for the missed day. Things that work in the factory don’t work in the farm.”

But both those against the bill and those who support it seem to indicate there is some common ground.

Ammerman said his group supports giving workers one day off a week if workers are not forced to take a day off. He says farmworkers have a limited number of days in a season when they can actually make money.

Politicians on both sides of the issue may also be more willing to compromise because the Legislature’s record has been so abysmal this session and major issues that are important to Hispanics and immigrants have fallen by the wayside.

The DREAM Act — which would have opened the path to higher education for some immigrant students — and the push to change the state’s marijuana possession laws to reduce the impact of New York City’s stop-and-frisk police tactics are by most accounts dead for this session.

Other high-profile legislation pushed by Cuomo — like the Women’s Equality Agenda and public campaign financing — are also unlikely to come to a vote.

The Hispanic vote is also becoming increasingly more sought after across the state but especially in Long Island where districts are becoming less conservative. The Latino vote is critical for a number of Republican legislators to hold their districts.

Espaillat said he does not see the farmworkers legislation as a consolation prize.

“I don’t see it that way but we should come away with something," he said. "Particularly in a year when we have seen movement in Washington on immigration and Connecticut has passed a law allowing undocumented immigrants to apply for driver’s licenses. It would be a shame for New York not to do anything on immigrant rights this session.”

If a compromise bill is passed in the Senate, the Assembly would have to also approve the changes.

Espaillat said this may be the year to get farmworker legislation passed because major groups have shown interest.

Last month, when Kennedy came to Albany to help push for the legislation, she said farmworkers lacked "rights that are enjoyed by every deli worker in New York, every other worker in this entire state, and it is unacceptable that this is going on" and added that workers lacked these protections because of lingering Jim Crow laws.

Besides the star-powered push to get the law passed, Espaillat said the bill legislation has 27 sponsors in the Senate. "We know that there are Republican and IDC members who are interested. They may not be interested in the bill as it is now but we are going to negotiate.”

Wade McMullen, a staff attorney for the RFK Center, said that momentum is building thanks to new political realities in the state and because of of interest in the local food movement.

“I think there has been enormous grassroots support for years around this," he said. But he also attributes the heightened interest to the star-power being lent by celebrities like Kennedy, Sheen and Eva Longoria, who has tweeted about the bill.

“We must demand dignity 4 #NY #farmworkers who harvest our food. Join us at http://t.co/brjmbse6G7 #EFNY @rfkcenter @maldef,” Longoria posted on her Twitter feed recently.

She has repeatedly brought up the cause of farmworker rights and thanked them for harvesting the nation’s food.

A number of prominent New York City chefs have also backed the farmworkers legislation, as well as former Gourmet Magazine editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl.

McMullen said that the bill has stalled in past years because farmworkers haven’t had strong allies since most don’t vote or only do so in conservative rural districts where their impact is muted.

“We all eat the food these workers pick everyday,” McMullen said. “People are gaining awareness everyday. And if you look at the purple districts in Long Island the Latino vote is becoming more important every day.”

State Sen. Neil Breslin of Albany, who carried the bill in the Senate for over a decade, said the issue is complicated because some rural legislators from both parties are completely opposed to discussing the issue for fear of alienating farmers in their district.

There is also a concern among conservative legislators that unions are pushing the legislation in order to grow their ranks. They note that city legislators are trying to legislate issues that have major impact on upstate economies. The bill last came to a vote in the Senate in 2010 but it failed to pass despite some Republican support.

“If you look at how the vote in the Assembly broke down this year it is mostly New York City lawmakers versus legislators from rural areas,” the Farm Bureau's Ammerman said. “Not all of the votes went that way but it tends to be an urban versus rural issue. And some people don’t understand some of the issues at play.”

Espaillat said downstate legislators have just as much reason to be interested in the issue as upstate legislators.

“I think we all have skin in the game. We have green markets in my district. I buy products produced in New York,” said Espaillat. “I may not have any farms in my district but I know justice should be everybody’s goal in his state. We shouldn’t partition off plight.”

Dennis Poust of the Catholic Conference of New York said he doesn’t think it will be easy to get the bill passed with only eight days remaining in session. “We do think this is an uphill battle at this point. But I do think there is room politically.”

Ammerman said he has become used to seeing the issue brought up each year, pass in the Assembly and fail in the Senate. “Obviously we are keeping a close watch but we haven’t seen any movement as of late and we hope it stays that way.” He said the legislation could hurt family farms.

But McMullen said that is simply untrue. “When the Farm Bureau says this could hurt family farms they are saying family farms in the same way as Walmart is a local business," he argued.

McMullen said most farms in New York do not use migrant laborers because they are too small. It is the agribusiness giants that would be impacted by the mandates of the legislation. In 2010, when the legislation was last voted on in the Senate, bill language was changed so that collective bargaining would only apply to the state’s largest farms.

With eight days left in session and a number of other bills listed on the top of Cuomo’s legislative agenda, advocates and opponents of the legislation both acknowledge that the bill could easily slip away.

Legislators are predicting a major rush to pass bills in the next two weeks. Some legislators are expecting to be in session through the night, and some expect to vote on up to 150 bills in one day before the end of session.

The farmworkers bill could be one of those dozens of pieces of legislation that come to a vote — or the process might start again next year.