CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

KESSEL’S NYPA REIGN: IT’S ALL ABOUT DINING

Our NYPA correspondents report that C.E.O. Richie Kessel rarely shows up for work at his White Plains office. On the average, his office appearances are often limited to two half days a week. The rest of the work week he spends flitting around Long Island and New York City going to luncheons, giving speeches and receiving vanity honors.

Dining plays a very important and expensive role in the lives of Kessel and the hacks on his senior staff. For instance, NYPA employees have been ordered to pick up food from Manhattan’s Carnegie Deli and from one of Kessel’s favorite Long Island Chinese restaurants to feed Kessel and senior staff at his White Plain’s Executive Management Committee meetings. In these difficult economic times, it is an outrage that ratepayers’ hard-earned dollars are being wasted on NYPA employees traveling all over the metropolitan region to procure chow for Kessel and his hacks.

There’s more: Recently received FOIL information from NYPA reveals that Kessel and his staff spend plenty of ratepayers’ money to wine and dine at luncheons and dinners that have nothing to do with NYPA’s mission. Here’s a very small sampling:

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