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Tony Aiello serves as CBS 2's Westchester Bureau reporter. Aiello covers news across Westchester County, southwest Connecticut, and the lower Hudson Valley.
Aiello joined CBS 2 in October 2002, after nearly five years at WNBC-TV. Prior to that, he served as a national correspondent for Dow Jones Television and the top syndicated business show, "The Wall Street Journal Report." He also has worked as an anchor and reporter at stations in Milwaukee, WI., Nashville, TN., and Greenville, SC.
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I'm not sure even the winner saw it coming.
Westchester County is still stunned by the results of Tuesday night's election for County Executive. Democratic incumbent Andy Spano - swept out of office by a tidal wave of unhappy taxpayers.
Riding the crest of that wave was Republican Rob Astorino. What a difference four years makes.
In 2005, Spano trounced Astorino by 16-points., 58% to 42%. On the Democratic line alone, Spano tallied more than 100,000 votes four years ago.
Tuesday, Spano scored a mere 62,000 votes on the D line. And Astorino won more votes on the Republican line than Spano did on the Democratic, Conservative, and Working Families Parties lines – combined.
Yes, voter turnout was down 18-percent versus 2005. But it's clear many Democrats who did head to the polls chose to vote for Astorino over Spano. The Democrat running for District Attorney outpolled Spano by 11,000 votes, for example.
"Spano fatigue" probably played a role. After 12 years as County Executive, he pushed his luck seeking a fourth term. Remember Mario Cuomo in 1994? The fourth time is seldom the charm.
But more than anything, Astorino successfully made the race a referendum on property taxes, a hot topic in Westchester, where homeowners pay the highest average tax bills in the country. He was relentless in pinning the blame on Spano, even though the county portion is only about 17% of those tax bills. School district taxes have risen far higher and much faster than county taxes.
But you can't vote out a school superintendent, so many taxpayers focused their fury on Andy Spano.
He's a good man, and a dedicated public servant. But Spano's activist, start-a-County-program-for-every-problem approach appears to have fallen out of favor with those who foot the bill.
Astorino promises to slash taxes. That will mean cutting jobs and trimming or eliminating programs at the county level, always a painful process.
Look for lots of complaining as Astorino moves to fulfill his mandate.
Ah, September. The tang of fall is in the air. And the scent of campaign silliness wafts across the political landscape.
How silly? So silly - the only appropriate word for it comes from everyone's favorite political analyst, Homer Simpson.
D'oh!
I received a breathless e-mail Tuesday from Tony Castro, a Democrat running for Westchester County District Attorney. "Castro: DiFiore Use of State Coat of Arms in Campaign is Illegal."
The candidate takes exception to this image used in campaign material by incumbent DA Janet DiFiore:
As you can see, the DA shield shows a portion of the official New York State Coat of Arms - with the figures of Liberty and Justice standing on either side of a Hudson River landscape.
The Castro campaign insists it is a misdemeanor to use the Coat of Arms unless it's for official state business.
"It's hard to say what is more disturbing," Castro is quoted as saying, "the fact that ... Janet DiFiore ignores the law or ... that she is ignorant of the law."
Castro goes on to say he's written to Attorney General Cuomo demanding he take action to stop DiFiore from using the Coat of Arms in her campaign material.
Now - here comes the "D'oh!"
Look at what appears on Tony Castro's own web site:
Yep - the guy who complained about DiFiore using the shield with state Coat of Arms - uses the shield with state Coat of Arms himself! It's there on the right hand side, a little tough to see, but there nonetheless.
Now, I'm no political genius, but I'm pretty certain that if Candidate A complains Candidate B is violating campaign rules, Candidate A should be pretty darn certain he's not violating the same rule himself.
The DiFiore campaign says because she's the DA, her use of the shield with state Coat of Arms "is entirely appropriate." The campaign also says "Mr. Castro's credibility is strained beyond tolerance when he objects to the use of the shield... at the same time that he displays the very same shield on... his own campaign web site."
A Castro spokesman promised the Coat of Arms would be removed from the campaign Web site, www.tonycastroforda.com, and told me "we made a mistake."
"We made a mistake" is campaign code for - you guessed it - "D'oh!"
Here's the dirty little secret about the Westchester County affordable housing settlement: The numbers do not add up.
Last week, the County agreed to build or acquire 750 units of affordable housing, with most of them to be located in wealthy, white suburbs such as Larchmont and Scarsdale.
Under the terms of the settlement, 563 of the units must be "new construction." Do the math, and you realize the deal just doesn't add up.
The County has agreed to spend $51.2 million dollars. That's less than $70,000 per unit that's been promised.
Building a single unit of "affordable housing" in Westchester has proven to be an expensive proposition. County officials say the hard costs (lumber, fixtures, labor, etc) and soft costs (lawyers, marketing, etc) associated with building a single affordable unit is more than $450,000. That's an unimaginable number in most of the country, but it's the reality here in New York.
Let's be generous and say an economy of scale gets the per-unit cost down to $250,000. The most the County could get for its $51.2 million is about 200 units of new construction.
So why does the County keep talking about 750 units?
Well, Westchester hopes the state or federal governments will get generous and give the County millions more to build all the units promised. But how likely is that with DC and Albany both in the middle of budget crises?
The County points out that James E. Johnson, the court-appointed monitor, has discretion to alter the terms of the agreement. He could tell the County, "build what you can with the money you've committed and we'll call it a day."
But some worry Johnson and the Feds will go the opposite route – and insist the County pump millions and millions of additional dollars into the program, in order to at least get close to the 750 unit goal.
That's the fear as County Executive Andy Spano pressures the Board of Legislators into approving the settlement.
"We're really setting ourselves up for failure," Legislator George Oros, (R-Cortlandt), told The Journal News. "We are signing something we know we can't achieve. How are we going to comply with this?"
Democrat Martin Rogowsky told the paper, "I'm concerned about signing a document where there's some vagueness."
County officials say if the deal is not approved, the case will go to trial, and Westchester could be on the hook for more than $150 million.
In essence, the County is telling legislators – yes, the deal is vague, yes, the numbers don't add up. But no – we don't have a choice.
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Sen. Chuck Schumer says America's private health insurance industry needs "competition."
President Obama just launched a "competition" for the best ideas to boost students' school performance.
But a "competition" to find the best Democratic candidate for a US Senate seat? Perish the thought.
Schumer and Obama are working publicly and privately to clear the field of competition for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.
She's New York's unelected senator, appointed by our unelected governor. Schumer and Obama are using every means at their command to knock off any challenger who dares to oppose her.
Obama and Schumer have pressured all the high-profile potential candidates - Rep. Carolyn Maloney, Rep. Steve Israel, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer - out of the race. That leaves second-stringers such as labor activist Jonathan Tasini and Suffolk County Legislator Jon Cooper as the only people considering a primary challenge.
Obama and Schumer say a knock-down, drag-out primary fight will eat up financial resources and wound the winner heading into the general election against a potentially deep-pocketed Republican.
They've tapped Kirsten Gillibrand as the anointed one. End of discussion and onto the general election.
There is real irony at work here.
When Barack Obama was thinking of running for president, he was told repeatedly that a primary challenge to party favorite Hillary Clinton would be damaging and divisive.
Obama countered by arguing a healthy primary would invigorate the party faithful and toughen up the eventual winner for the general election. He also insisted primary voters deserved to choose from among a variety of voices.
That was then. This is now.
Schumer and Obama have decided "healthy competition" – so valuable in other endeavors – is of no value when it comes to choosing a Democratic candidate for the senate seat held by Robert Francis Kennedy, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
As many others have pointed out – if Obama had followed the "don't hurt the front-runner by entering the primary" philosophy in 2007, he wouldn't be president today.
I can't help but feel that Daniel Schuler is in denial. And it was on full display at today's news conference.
"Definitely not," Schuler said when asked if his wife Diane had a drinking problem. "I never saw her drunk since the day I met her."
He and his lawyer talked about her abscessed tooth, an embolism on her leg, her trouble with gestational diabetes, anything but the most obvious explanation for the massive quantity of alcohol in Diane's system on the day she smashed her minivan full of kids into an SUV.
Every sign in this case points to Diane Schuler being a secret alcoholic.
We now know the Schulers lived separate lives five days a week.
Diane worked days at Cablevision. Daniel worked nights for Nassau County.
She left in the morning and he stayed home with the kids. A babysitter came for a few hours when Daniel went to work, and left when Diane came home.
After the kids went to bed in the early evening, Diane was alone. If she drank herself to sleep every night, Daniel might never have known.
When they were together on the weekends, Diane could have toughed it out in order to hide her secret drinking. Maybe she snuck a shot or two while Daniel was doing yard work. Perhaps she kept a small bottle in her purse for a sip while she was running errands.
Any recovering alcoholic will tell you vodka is the alcohol of choice for the secret drinker. It's clear, it doesn't smell, it's easy to hide on your breath with a cigarette or a stick of gum.
A broken bottle of Absolut vodka was found in the charred wreckage of the minivan.
Over the years of secret drinking, her tolerance would build up. Two or three drinks would eventually become five or six in order to reach the same level of "buzz."
A less experienced drinker would have passed out well before reaching the 0.19 BAC the coroner found in Diane's blood, with even more alcohol undigested in her stomach.
In the days after the crash, police sources told me they were considering a mini-stroke, a reaction to a prescription drug, even a toxic reaction to a spider bite as a potential cause of Diane's deadly driving. Everyone was giving her the benefit of the doubt.
The obvious cause was the one no one talked about, until the toxicology report bared the ugly truth. It's an old story. Drinking, drugs, and driving are a lethal mix.
So now – I can't seriously entertain theories about sore teeth and bumps on her leg somehow causing her to guzzle vodka and smoke pot.
I accept Daniel Schuler's word that he "never saw her drunk." Nonetheless, the most obvious, the most logical explanation for her behavior is that she was a desperate, secret alcoholic.
Daniel, his family and his friends insist Diane was trustworthy, careful and responsible. Doesn't matter. Lots of alcoholics are high-functioning.
I know, because my father was one.
Dad died in 1991. 55 years old. Alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver.
There are people who knew my dad for 30 years who told me at the funeral "I never saw him drunk."
Sound familiar, Daniel?
Perhaps she's holed up in her fancy apartment on Riverside Drive.
Or – maybe she's hanging at her pricey pad on Shelter Island.
I'm looking for Rachel Arfa, trying to get her side of the story, on behalf of 520 families in the Bronx who think she has some explaining to do.
They'd like to know why their ceilings are crumbling, their walls are moldy, and why their children are living with rats and roaches.
"Living here is crazy, crazy," said Cihanna Castado, a resident at one of Rachel Arfa's buildings. "Every morning something else is wrong with my apartment, and nothing's been fixed in more than a year."
Arfa is the CEO of a real estate investment firm called Ocelot Capital. During the boom years, she leveraged and borrowed her way to a small empire of more than 20 buildings in the Bronx.
They're mostly tenements in the Crotona section. The residents tend to be working-class poor, who can only afford a couple hundred a month for their rent. Many of the apartment units are rent-regulated or subsidized.
The rental income certainly wasn't enough to pay the debt service on the multi-million dollar portfolio Rachel Arfa assembled. But Fannie Mae, the federally-backed mortgage giant whose shenanigans contributed to the boom and the bust, didn't seem to mind.
Fannie Mae bought the loans that a German bank made to Rachel Arfa's company, even though the loans violated Fannie Mae's own lending standards.
Arfa bragged about her wheeling and dealing in a press release back in 2007.
"We're proud that Ocelot Capital will soon be one of the leading local firms with investments in affordable rental properties," Arfa was quoted as saying at the time. "These properties provide stable cash flow and have good long-term profit potential."
A few months later the real estate market started to tank. When the "profit potential" disappeared, so did Rachel Arfa.
Federal and city officials say Ocelot Capital has stopped doing maintenance on 520 apartment units, including Cihanna Castado's at 1804 Weeks Ave.
There are holes in her bathroom and kitchen ceilings. Water constantly pours from a broken faucet. The floor tiles break up as you walk on them. The hallways are covered with graffiti.
"The owners simply abandoned the buildings, leaving tenants to live in buildings that have deteriorated dangerously," Sen. Chuck Schumer said. His office is trying to assist tenants in the Ocelot properties.
The company faces more than 5,000 housing violation complaints, and ten of its Bronx buildings are on the city's "worst buildings" list.
New York's Department of Housing Preservation and Development has spent more than $850,000 to make emergency repairs on properties abandoned by Ocelot.
Monday, tenants gathered on the stoop of one of the buildings and cheered as Schumer promised to pressure Fannie Mae.
"We want Fannie to sell these buildings to a responsible buyer, not just the highest bidder," said Schumer. "Fannie Mae caused this mess, and now must be willing to take a loss in order to get responsible ownership in place."
After covering Schumer's event, I made repeated efforts to track down Rachel Arfa to get her side of the story. I tried various office numbers, her pad in the city, her place out on Shelter Island. No luck.
So, if you're out there, Rachel Arfa, give me a call or drop me an e-mail. I'd like to hear your side of the story, and share it with the hundreds of tenants who consider you the source of their misery.
Government made a change. People complained. Government listened and offered a legitimate solution.
Hey! Sometimes the system works.
A few weeks ago I blogged about being "Priced Out of Playland," where a new price structure made it prohibitively expensive for a family to make a short visit to the amusement park in Rye.
I crunched the numbers and showed how an hour-long visit that cost my family $27 last year, was $57 under the new scheme. Ouch.
Turns out I wasn't the only Playland visitor angered by the new price plan.
"We got a lot of complaints," admitted a County source. "People were unhappy."
Yesterday, Westchester County – which owns Playland – came to its senses.
Beginning this week, the park is offering a "Stimulus Plan."
For $12, a visitor gets admission and access to any four rides. That means an hour-long visit for a family of four is now only $8 more expensive this year than last year, versus $30 more expensive without the "Stimulus Plan."
I told my sons last night "we can afford Playland again!" and their whoops of joy were loud enough to disturb my nearest neighbors.
The County's new price plan remains a terrific bargain for people who want to spend several hours at the park, saving a family of four $42 over last year.
But residents in the Sound Shore communities often use Playland as a place to kill an hour with the kids on a busy weekend. The new price plan really hit those families hard, and they grumbled loud enough for the County to take note.
County Executive Andy Spano is determined to end the public subsidy for the rides and games section of Playland. Some taxpayers have complained for years they don't want their hard earned tax dollars used to prop up an amusement park.
The new "Stimulus Plan" is clearly an effort to salvage a decent year for Playland. Park attendance was slammed by a double-whammy in June; 22 days of rain, and unhappy families who stayed away because of the new price plan.
The County says attendance was strong for the July 4th Holiday weekend.
We'll soon see if attendance pops now that the "Stimulus Plan" is in place.
The ranks of the unemployed grew in June by 467,000 people. Toni Badagliacca of Thornwood is one of them.
"It's little comfort to have so much company," Badagliacca said.
A year ago, Badagliacca had a full-time job and two part-time jobs.
Today, she has no job, despite years of experience and a wide-variety of job skills.
"Administrative assistant, bookkeeping, payroll. I also waitress and I'm a dental assistant," Badagliacca said.
She spoke outside the Department of Labor office in White Plains, where she's taking a class to upgrade her computer skills.
"I have to make myself more marketable. I haven't done a full job search in 30 years," Badagliacca noted. "I don't have a college degree, and yet to find work as a payroll clerk they're looking for two years of college."
"I can do payroll in my sleep, but that experience doesn't count, apparently, without college on my resume."
I asked Badagliacca how she'll survive without a job. Does she have savings to fall back on?
"My savings account is empty, and so is my retirement account," she said. "I lost one part-time job, then my full-time job, and then my second part-time job, all in the last year."
"I even tapped the cash value in my life insurance policy."
Badagliacca is surviving on about $1600 a month in unemployment benefits. She's also asking her two adult children for help. They live with her at her house in Thornwood.
Her husband died in 2007.
She's in her late 50s, and this isn't the life she imagined. She wonders - how did things go from okay to awful so quickly?
"I'm petrified and depressed," Badagliacca told me.
"Mostly, petrified."
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