Aide To Be Suspended Over Threat
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The speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn, will suspend the chief of staff of Council Member Charles Barron of Brooklyn for an undetermined amount of time for threatening a Queens council member, a City Hall source said.
Ms. Quinn is facing heightened pressure to fire Viola Plummer, who last month vowed to destroy the political career of Council Member Leroy Comrie, even if it took an “assassination.”
Ms. Quinn will meet with Mr. Barron and Ms. Plummer prior to tomorrow’s council meeting to discuss the suspension, the source, who requested anonymity, said. Ms. Plummer will be allowed to return to work if she apologizes for her threat and/or enrolls in an anger management course, the source said. Mr. Barron has said he would fight any attempt to fire Ms. Plummer.
A spokeswoman for Ms. Quinn, Maria Alvarado, said the speaker is reviewing the options presented to her by council lawyers, who already have told Ms. Quinn that she has the authority to fire Ms. Plummer.
Mr. Comrie initially called for Ms. Plummer to be fired, but he has remained quiet about her remarks since then. A spokesman for Mr. Comrie, Rance Huff, said the councilman is “a very patient person.”
“He’s going to wait for his speaker to address this situation. He is hoping it will be sooner rather than later,” Mr. Huff said.
A leading figure in the council’s Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus, Council Member Robert Jackson of Manhattan, said Ms. Plummer, who is chairwoman of a black activist organization in addition to her council work, should be disciplined but not fired.
Ms. Plummer made her remarks outside City Hall after Mr. Comrie abstained from supporting a proposal to rename a Brooklyn street after a radical black activist, Sonny Carson. Carson, who died in 2002, was a convicted kidnapper who declared himself “anti-white.”
The street name measure failed in the council, with the vote split largely along racial lines and nearly all of its support coming from the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus. Mr. Jackson, a co-chairman of the caucus, supported the proposal.
