Vito's latest payday
NY POST Editorial, July 3, 2011
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City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s incorrigible college of klepto-clowns is at it again, this time coughing up nearly $4.4 million for a politically juiced Brooklyn nonprofit that’s under federal investigation — and that can’t even be bothered to file legally required financial documents on time.

Quinn and her council colleagues glommed $386 million for themselves out of the $66 billion municipal budget they passed last week.

That’s down $9 million in so-called member items — such a tender mercy — but it’s still $386 million too much.

Member items — lump sums of tax dollars used to curry voter favor for incumbent council members — are legal, of course. But since members make the laws, that shouldn’t surprise.

Still, this particular item is gamy even by council standards.

It’s for the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council — the favored nonprofit and power base of Assemblyman Vito Lopez, longtime Brooklyn political kingpin — and it comes in two parts.

n First, there was nearly $700,000 in outright grants — the second-largest lump of council pork, even though Ridgewood’s relationship with Lopez is the subject of a federal corruption investigation and its financial documents were filed weeks after they were due.

Brooklyn council members Domenic Recchia, Erik Dilan, Stephen Levin and Elizabeth Crowley — all Lopez toadies — kicked in to make the nut.

n Separately, Recchia and Dilan squeezed out $3.75 million in capital spending for Ridgewood affordable housing — which, no doubt, will be allocated strictly on merit whenever it’s finished. (Chuckle, chuckle.)

As The Post reports today, Ridgewood paid its executive director — Chris Fisher, who’s also Lopez’s campaign treasurer — a staggering $607,000 in salary and benefits.

And Lopez’s girlfriend, Angela Battaglia, receives $282,940 as the nonprofit’s “housing director” — on top of another $54,150 she earns as a city planning commissioner.

Meanwhile, Ridgewood is in danger of losing its not-for-profit status for its late filing of required tax forms, and Mayor Bloomberg’s Office of Contracts has placed a “hold” on any city Ridgewood contracts.

Holds could be the least of Ridgewood’s problem, of course. US Attorney Preet Bharara has been probing its links to Lopez for months, and perp walks could well be in the offing.

Which makes the council’s eagerness to slather more cash on Ridgewood even more mystifying.

Actually, it’s no mystery at all.

It’s the City Council.

Vito's be$t buddies
Fat Pay Keeps Coming For His Charity Gals
By ISABEL VINCENT and MELISSA KLEIN, NY POST, July 3, 2011
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Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez's gal pals continue to rake in the cash at the scandal-scarred social-services agency he founded.

Christiana Fisher, the executive director of Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council and Lopez's campaign treasurer, made $607,024 in salary, benefits and bonuses in 2009, according to the agency's latest tax returns, which were released last week and obtained by The Post.

Her total compensation almost exactly equals the $607,000 in pork-barrel money the City Council allocated to the Brooklyn agency last week.

The money continues to flow despite an ongoing FBI and city Department of Investigation probes into the agency and the astronomical salaries of its execs.

Fisher earned $393,589 in salary and bonuses in 2009, up from $308,000 the year before. Her base salary of $260,000 at Ridgewood Bushwick remained the same as in 2008, but she also earned an extra $90,000 from one of the agency's unidentified related entities, the tax forms show.

Her total pay package included $213,435 in unspecified "other compensation" and retirement and health benefits.

Lopez's girlfriend, Angela Battaglia, made $267,697 in salary and bonuses as housing director of Ridgewood Bushwick, the documents show. Her total pay package came to $282,940.

Battaglia also earns $54,150 as a city planning commissioner.

Ridgewood Bushwick, which provides housing and other services to seniors and the poor, relies heavily on taxpayer cash. It took in $17 million in government grants in the year ending June 30, 2010. The city also forks over some $75 million through contracts to provide social services.

One Brooklyn community activist said the high pay for Lopez cronies deserves investigation.

"If that's not corruption, I don't know what is," he said.

A Ridgewood Bushwick lawyer refused to comment on the salaries or the tax forms.

The agency filed the forms more than a month past the IRS deadline of May 16, and it faces possible fines of $100 a day for the delay.

It also filed its annual registration with the state Attorney General's Office more than a month late. The nonprofit has still not submitted its required independent audit, according to a source familiar with the filings.

Lopez, the Brooklyn Democratic Party boss, uses Ridgewood Bushwick as his power base. The thousands of people served by the agency and its 2,000 employees are at the center of Lopez's political machine in north Brooklyn. He hosts some of its taxpayer-funded events, including a senior picnic.

The Department of Investigation found last summer that some Ridgewood board members were so clueless they didn't know what they were voting on. Investigators also discovered that the director of the Hope Gardens senior center was operating her own nonprofit out of the center.

melissa.klein@nypost.com

Probe finds Brooklyn Dem Vito Lopez's non-profit empire riddled with fraud
BY ERIN DURKIN AND ADAM LISBERG, DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
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A secret city report says Brooklyn Democratic boss Vito Lopez's nonprofit empire is riddled with fraud and incompetence - and it's stonewalling attempts to clean it up.

An internal Department of Investigation report obtained by the Daily News outlined at least $340,000 in fraudulent or fishy claims submitted to the city by the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council and affiliated groups - a chain of nonprofits founded by the state Assemblyman.

"A lack of oversight and internal controls enabled the fraudulent schemes to occur ... unnoticed and unchecked," the report says. "There was insufficient fiscal or management oversight."

Wealth of friends
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN, ISABEL VINCENT and CHRISTINA CARREGA, NY POST, September 12, 2010
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Doing good deeds can make you rich -- especially when you're pals with Brooklyn Democratic boss and state Assemblyman Vito Lopez.

In one year, Lopez's girlfriend and his campaign treasurer made just shy of a million bucks between them from a taxpayer-funded social-service center in Bushwick, according to tax records.

Christiana Fisher -- the center's director and Lopez's campaign treasurer -- pulled down $659,591 in "base compensation" over a 12-month period in 2008 and 2009 for working only 17.5 hours a week at Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, according to the filings.

That's an eye-popping 182 percent more than the $234,234 she made just two years earlier.

Angela Battaglia -- Lopez's longtime girlfriend and the senior center's housing director -- got $329,910 in "compensation" over the same period -- 73 percent more than the $190,609 she made two years earlier.

Fisher and Battaglia made an additional $26,384 and $13,196, respectively, at other connected but unnamed nonprofits, according to the IRS forms.

Five years ago, both had annual salaries of about $120,000 at the center, which serves thousands of residents and has 2,000 employees.

The group is the hub of Lopez's political machine, providing him with volunteers -- it's closed on Election Day so employees can do get-out-the-vote campaigns -- according to a book by sociologist Nicole Marwell.

Lopez, 69, a longtime assemblyman who became the Brooklyn Democratic boss in 2005, founded the seniors group in 1976, when he was a young city social worker.

Around that time, he met Battaglia, 57, a then-young Fordham University grad who volunteered at his center.

Battaglia is also a salaried City Planning commissioner.

Fisher's sister once worked for the seniors group before becoming a judge. Battaglia's brother is also a judge.

Lopez no longer has any official tie to the senior citizens group. But he steers plenty of money to it -- $335,000 in member items since 2009.

In one recent year, the group got $15.9 million in taxpayer money from nearly two dozen state and city agencies -- on top of $43 million in city contracts for elderly home care.

It's not clear how the staggering pay raises for Fisher, 55, or Battaglia came about. The board of directors never discussed them, said one director.

"I'm just an old senior citizen, and I don't know anything about any money," said Soledad Cavalida, a board director and regular attendee of bingo and tai chi at the senior center's Stanhope Street branch.

Cavalida, 78, said the board meets every three months.

"When there is some project -- like a housing project -- you just sign the forms, but we don't talk salary," she said.

Fisher wouldn't comment on her compensation, telling a Post reporter outside her Bayside home to "go away." Battaglia didn't return messages.

Lopez said the organization he founded "does an outstanding job servicing the residents of north Brooklyn," but he wouldn't talk about the salaries.

Nonprofit experts say that the salaries are out or whack with what other groups pay.

"Wow," said Sandra Miniutti, a spokeswoman for Charity Navigator. "We don't see the $600,000 salary range until we're looking at organizations with total expenses of $500 million.

"These are extravagant tax payer-funded pay raises given to politically connected nonprofit employees that are part of Vito's political arm," said Esteban Duran, who is running against Lopez for a district leader position.

isabel.vincent@nypost.com