As Steve DiBrienza started his run for his old City Council seat, he rapidly got sidetracked by an apparent scandal. The highly dubious NY Post claimed DiBrienza had simply kept his old city council office, two doors down from current City Councilman Bill de Blasio's office (did Bill know this?), paid for by city money (either with the approval of Gifford Miller and Christine Quinn, or they both were sadly lax in their oversight of their colleagues), and still drew a salary from city money. The cover for this was a supposed non-profit called the "Neighborhood Assistance Corp." Clever name. Sounded good AND it sounds like a branch of the legitimate, national organization Neighborhood Assistance Corp of America.

I was unable to find any trace of DiBrienza's Neighborhood Assistance Corp, the non-profit funneling taxpayer money into DiBrienza's pocket. DiBrienza has been claiming that his organization sponsored youth sports in the district. If so, that would be fine. This sounds very much like Bill Clinton's unfortunately named "Midnight Basketball" program which helped keep kids off the streets and doing stuff after school, but was denigrated by Gingrich and his Grinch Republicans who would rather wait for the kids to commit crimes and then send them to jail, rather than spend less money just keeping them busy and out of trouble.

Problem is, even the coaches of teams that DiBrienza was supposedly sponsoring have no idea what he is talking about. The soon-to-be Murdochized Brooklyn Papers reports:

When reached by The Brooklyn Paper, DiBrienza said his group sponsored soccer, basketball and softball teams at three Catholic schools in Windsor Terrace and Park Slope.

But a sports director at one of the schools said he hadn’t heard of the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation or seen DiBrienza in years.

“I know all the sponsors,” said the athletic director. “[DiBrienza] has helped us in the past, but I couldn’t tell you the last time.”

Neighborhood activists also said they have barely heard of DiBrienza’s group or seen it in action...

DiBrienza’s non-profit is small. Its annual budgets have ranged from $100,000 to $209,825 — almost all of it from the Council grant and almost all of it spent on salaries to its executive director and others who are not required to be identified because they draw pay of less than $50,000.

So...this tells us two things. ALMOST ALL of the annual budget of this agency went to paying SALARIES. And what little was left over for the supposed sponsorships of youth sports programs must have been so inconsequential that the directors of those same sports programs don't even know about it.

This is how Quinn and the current city council has been spending our tax money. We pay our taxes and they give it to friends like DiBrienza who spend it ON THEIR OWN SALARIES. It is a scam. DiBrienza scammed us and Quinn either agreed with it or turned a blind eye. Bloomberg, Quinn, and the city council has been mismanaging this city badly. That is why I am pushing for so many challengers this year. Councilmen who preside over such mismanagement, preside over the worst economic crisis to hit our city (none of them saw it coming, though Eliot Spitzer did, none of them worked to prevent it and none of them have done anything to mitigate the situation), and arbitrarily voting themselves another term counter to the expressed wishes of the voters. Vote...the...bums...out.

And you know, I STILL haven't heard word as to why councilman and wannabe comptroller David Yassky gave DiBrienza $40,000 in discretionary funds in 2006. Was it related to the non-profit that spent its budget on salaries? Where did the money go?