MANHATTAN

CHAMBERS’S LAWYER STEPS DOWN WITH DRUG CHARGE PENDING The lawyer for Robert Chambers, the “preppie killer” who was arrested last week on charges of drug possession and driving with a suspended license, resigned from the case yesterday so his client can hire a criminal defense lawyer.

“This is a very serious case, and the prosecutor has said he is looking for jail time,” said lawyer Brian O’Dwyer, a civil attorney, in explaining his withdrawal from the case. “We’re not criminal specialists, and we thought he needed one.”

Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Larry Stephen scheduled Chambers’s next court appearance for January 24. The defendant remains free on $1,000 bail.

Chambers ,38, was arrested after he was stopped November 23 around 7:15 p.m. at 140th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. He was charged with two misdemeanors, alleged possession of a small amount of cocaine and unlicensed driving.

A court complaint said a computer check showed that Chambers’s license was suspended in May after he failed to answer a summons for running a red light. The complaint also said police found two straws and a tinfoil packet, all containing cocaine residue, in the backseat of Chambers’s car.

Chambers was released from state prison on Valentines Day 2003 after serving 15 years for the 1986 strangling of 18-year-old of Jennifer Levin during a tryst in Central Park.

After a jury deliberated more than a week on a murder charge against Chambers following his trial in 1988, he pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter.

– Associated Press

CITYWIDE

COUNCIL COMMITTEE TO MEET ON SCHOOL BUDGETING The City Council’s Committee on Education will investigate the intricacies of school-based budgeting today at a morning hearing.

“There’s a budget problem at two levels,” said the committee chairwoman, Eva Moskowitz. “First is the $14 billion and where does all the money go, and why do we seemingly have so little of it to spend on the kids.”

She said she’d like to create a sort of “Monarch Notes” of schools budgets so that parents and principals could understand the numbers and what they mean. She said she’d also like to find out if there’s a way for the budgeting process to be simpler for principals. This year, principals heard in June that they’d be receiving 3% less than they were in 2003-2004, before they were eventually told there would not be cuts. “There’s some level of unpredictability here,” she said. “I’m not sure we have to make principals go on this roller coaster ride.”

The Department of Education’s deputy chancellor for administration, Kathleen Grimm, and its chief financial officer, Bruce Feig, will testify about the 2-year-old budget allocation formula and other details of school-based budgeting. Representatives of the principals’ and teachers’ unions will also testify.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

COUNCIL MEMBERS OBJECT TO RAIL TUNNEL PROJECT Today, City Council Members Simcha Felder, a Democrat of Brooklyn, and Dennis Gallagher, a Republican of Queens, will hand-deliver close to 10,000 objections protesting the Cross Harbor Freight Movement Project, to the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

The Cross Harbor project, an $8 billion proposal to build a freight rail tunnel under New York Harbor connecting Jersey City, N.J., with Brooklyn, is designed to reduce truck traffic in the city. According to a spokesman for Council Member Felder, Cross Harbor would also include an inter-modal facility in Maspeth, Queens, to be constructed on land seized through eminent domain. The project would increase rail traffic to 32 trains daily from one a day on tracks that run through Brooklyn residential neighborhoods.

Opponents of Cross Harbor say that instead of reducing truck congestion in New York, the tunnel will only reroute traffic away from Manhattan and place a heavier burden on Brooklyn and Queens. A spokesman for Mr. Felder calls Cross Harbor a “fantasy” for Rep. Jerry Nadler, who has been a strong supporter of the proposal, insofar as it would benefit his district at the expense of Mr. Felder’s and Mr. Gallagher’s. A spokesman for Mr. Nadler declined to comment.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

MAYOR TO TRAVEL TO CROATIA OLYMPICS MEETING Mayor Bloomberg will travel to Croatia on Friday to present the city’s bid for the 2012 Olympics to a group of European Olympic committees. Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday he will travel with a group of advisers to the Croatian city of Dubrovnik, site of a meeting of the 48-nation European National Olympic Committees. Representatives of candidate cities are allowed to meet with members of the International Olympic Committee at the conference. The IOC will announce which nation will host the 2012 Games on July 6. Besides New York, four European capitals – London, Paris, Madrid, and Moscow – are bidding for 2012.

– Associated Press

STATEWIDE

PATAKI REITERATES HE HAS NO INTEREST IN BUSH CABINET POSITION Governor Pataki repeated yesterday that he has no interest in joining President Bush’s Cabinet. “I have denied interest in the present time, and I’m denying interest in the future,” the New York Republican told a news conference in Utica yesterday. “I love being governor of this state. I am very proud that people have given me a chance. I have not sought, will not seek, do not want to be a member of President Bush’s Cabinet.”

Mr. Pataki’s latest disclaimer came in response to a Washington Post report yesterday that the New York governor might be in the running for a cabinet slot as President Bush remakes his economic team for a second term. Asked why his name keeps popping up for one Bush administration job or another, Mr. Pataki said: “God only knows. You know I was as shocked as anyone to hear about the story today and it really kind of caught me by surprise.” Mr. Pataki’s third four-year term as governor runs through 2006. He has not said if he will seek a fourth term.

– Associated Press

POLICE BLOTTER

ARMED MAN ROBS DUNKIN’ DONUTS FOR THIRD TIME An armed robber left his medium-sized cup of coffee and two glazed donuts on the counter of a Dunkin’ Donuts after ordering a quick breakfast and all the cash in the store’s till yesterday. It’s the third time in the last month the unidentified man has used the same tactic at the coffee shop in the Jamaica section of Queens. In all, he has stolen nearly $3,000, said owner Geeta Shukla.

Surveillance cameras recorded the suspect entering the busy shop before noon yesterday. The man ordered the store’s most popular breakfast special: two donuts and a medium coffee. Next, surveillance cameras show the man pulling out a small black handgun before demanding the contents of the store’s two cash registers.

About $150 was stolen yesterday; about $150 was stolen on November 4, and $2,500 was stolen on October 24, Ms. Shukla said. Police have yet to make an arrest. Police seek a black male, 5 feet 9 inches tall, between 30 and 35 years old, wearing a black knit cap and a black puffy jacket.

It’s not the first time a robber has repeatedly mugged Dunkin’ Donuts stores in New York City. In 1998, 24-year-old Douglas Duncan was arrested after robbing eight separate Dunkin’ Donut chain stores in Manhattan in a period of two months. After learning of the case, police officers staked out the donut shops.

“Everyone was volunteering for that job,” one police officer joked to the New York Times.

– Special to the Sun

QUEENS

ADULT-HOME OPERATOR SENTENCED TO PRISON TIME The former operator of an embattled adult home in Queens was sentenced to between one and three years in prison yesterday for engaging in a mortgage fraud scheme to bilk his own nonprofit of more than $2 million.

Dressed in a turquoise winter coat and sporting a gray beard in State Supreme Court yesterday, Sherman Taub, 60, issued a statement of apology to the elderly residents who suffered substandard care at his Ocean House in Far Rockaway. When court officers attempted to place handcuffs on Mr. Taub, he physically resisted, twitching his hands in different directions, before disappearing from a Lower Manhattan courtroom.

His son, Judah Taub, 36, was sentenced to three years’ probation for his involvement in the scam on the condition that he pay what prosecutors estimated to be $1.65 million in back taxes.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun