Winners & Losers 12/16/16

Another week, another stream of contestants on the reality show playing out at Trump Tower. The biggest winner seemed to be Kanye West, who got an unexpected meeting with the president-elect. The loser though? Trump Grill, which Vanity Fair said “could be the worst restaurant in America.” At least our losers can breathe a sigh of relief that they weren't caught up in that circus. 

WINNERS

Louis Ciminelli - Buffalo’s biggest developer may still have a whole heap of trouble to deal with, but at least one legal battle is going his way. A judge ruled this week that a case brought by the Buffalo School Board - the effort led by Ciminelli’s longtime rival in the ego-driven Western New York real estate world, school board member Carl Paladino - alleging that his company had withheld information in an effort to inflate profits on a $1.3 billion reconstruction contract would be dismissed. With that out of the way, now all he has to worry about are those pesky federal bid-rigging charges.

Joseph Emminger - The town of Tonawanda supervisor breathed a sigh of relief this week, as investments from GM and a Japanese tire maker will retain more than 2,000 jobs and add new employment in his Western New York burg. While Gov. Andrew Cuomo came to town to shake hands and plenty of state legislators showed up to laud the new investment - the companies plan to spend more than $370 million - Emminger was the one with the most to lose, as the future of the GM plant was uncertain, and so is the real winner here.

Constance Malcolm - The mother of Ramarley Graham, the teenager who was shot and killed by Officer Richard Haste inside his Bronx home in 2012, fought very hard and long for a trial for Haste. And while Haste will not be having his day in court, he will now be facing an internal NYPD trial, which can hopefully bring a conclusion to the long and difficult road for the Graham family.

Keith Jackson - The photonics business is booming in Rochester.  This week, The American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics announced that they are setting up their Test, Assembly and Packaging facility at the ON Semiconductor site, which has to make ON Semiconductor CEO Keith Jackson happy, as well as the legion of local elected officials quick to praise the deal.

Wayne Spence - Members of the Public Employees Federation have a new deal. The second-largest public sector union in the state will get 2 percent raises for the next three years, but more importantly their health care costs are not going up. The deal was apparently very popular among the members with more than 95 percent of members backing it.

LOSERS

Carmen Farina -The New York City schools chancellor had a string of bad headlines this week to deal with. Some schools are struggling to meet students’ safety and other basic needs, let alone concentrate on their educational mandate. A Politico New York story highlighted how schools with many homeless students are given scant resources to help these pupils. And in Brooklyn, a 6-year-old autistic boy ran out of his school, which appears not to have required alarms on its doors, and was found by an off-duty cop on a nearby building’s roof.

Michael A. Fedorko - The Port Authority Police Department has long been considered a cushier alternative to the NYPD, with generally higher pay and shoter hours. But now PAPD Superintendent Fedorko is going to have to deal with a reputation as New York’s Laziest after 44 PAPD officers were caught hiding out in breakrooms and missing patrols. No discipline yet - must be easy to maintain a blue wall of silence when everyone is sleeping.

Alicia Glen - Perhaps New Yorkers should call Glen deputy of political donors. A Daily News story found that half of the meetings or calls the New York City deputy mayor for housing and economic development took with non-City Hall staff were with people who hosted fundraisers, gathered campaign donations or contributed to a nonprofit promoting her boss’ agenda.

Herminia Palacio - With ACS Commissioner Gladys Carrión stepping down, the city’s deputy mayor for health and human services will be shouldering even more of the burden - and fending off negative press coverage of the troubled children’s services agency. “We failed this child,” she admits of Zymere Perkins, but now she’ll have to convince ACS’s new independent monitor it won’t happen again.

Shalom Lamm, Kenneth Nakdimen and Volvy Smilowitz - There’s a lot of talk lately nationally about election rigging – but unfortunately it’s a reality here in New York. Three men this week were indicted on charges of bribing non-residents to register to vote in Sullivan County to support favored development projects proposed by Lamm and Nakdimen. Usually it’s just state lawmakers who are bribed to support economic development projects.