ALBANY

ASSEMBLYMAN HOLDS HEARING ON PROGRAM TO MONITOR VERIZON

A state Assemblyman is holding a hearing today on the expiration of a program that scrutinizes Verizon New York’s service quality and gives consumers rebates when the telecommunication company misses quality standards.

A program adopted three years ago to address Verizon quality complaints lapsed on February 28 as planned. State regulators at the Public Service Commission noted that market forces combined with continued state oversight will be enough to produce better phone service in New York.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, chairman of the Assembly Committee on Corporations, Authorities, and Commissions, disagrees.

“The PSC has walked away from its legal duty to ensure adequate telephone service in this state,” Mr. Brodsky said in a statement released Saturday.

The Westchester County Democrat said data he received from Verizon show it failed to meet one of five service quality goals for the final period of March 2004 to February 2005. Missing the target for restoring service to customers within 24 hours of outages could result in a $15 million fine against the company, Mr. Brodsky said.

A Verizon spokesman, Cliff Lee, disputed Mr. Brodsky’s assertion that service quality was declining in the state. Mr. Lee said service has steadily improved over the years and that the latest data showed Verizon narrowly missed one goal.

The PSC is still reviewing Verizon’s latest service quality record and will issue its quarterly report this month. A PSC spokesman, David Flanagan, said state regulators will continue to exercise broad regulatory authority over Verizon despite the expiration of the Verizon Incentive Plan.

“The only thing that changes with respect to service quality is automatic rebates,” Mr. Flanagan said. “We’re not walking away from anything.”

– Associated Press

CITYWIDE

VACANCIES IN PUBLIC HOUSING MEANS $18M LOSS IN RENT REVENUE

An increase in vacant public housing apartments in the city since 2003 has meant an $18 million a year loss of rental income, a new report says.

The report from Upper West Side Assemblyman Scott Stringer is an update of a December 2003 study. Data from the city Housing Authority showed that from November 2003 to last January, the number of vacant apartments increased 10% to 4,831. About 81% of the vacancies were for longer than a year and some for as many as 13 years.

“I’m surprised that the numbers are going in the wrong direction,” Mr. Stringer said in yesterday’s New York Times. “It is absolutely incomprehensible that we would leave any unit vacant that long because that’s the difference between a family living in a shelter or on the street, or in an apartment.”

Mr. Stringer said the numbers are not acceptable because 137,000 families are on a waiting list for public housing.

A housing authority spokesman, Howard Marder, said a few thousand apartments are always empty because of repair work being done or because they are reserved for emergencies. Some are also in such a state of disrepair, they are uninhabitable for many years.

– Associated Press

POLICE BLOTTER

FUGITIVE CAUGHT AT RACETRACK WITH CASH, CREDIT CARDS A federal fugitive sought for more than five years by authorities for credit card fraud in New Jersey was arrested Wednesday at a Queens racetrack, Queens district attorney Richard Brown said.

His pockets stuffed with $171,000 in cash, dozens of credit cards and Social Security numbers, and a fake $100 bill, police arrested Ervin Caspi, 49, on charges that he stole more than $175,000 through an intricate scheme that involved identity theft, credit card fraud, and money laundering.

According to law enforcement sources, Mr. Caspi, a Romanian immigrant, stole the names and Social Security numbers of dozens of people and used them to establish phony credit card accounts. Mr. Caspi would take cash advances from the accounts and keep the money for himself, often leaving his victims in financial ruin, law enforcement sources said.

One of his victims, Albert Burch, 54, told police that since his wallet was stolen in June, he has received numerous phone calls from creditors demanding more than $30,000 in delinquent charges and a letter from the Internal Revenue Service stating that he failed to report tens of thousands in winnings from the Pocono Downs race track. Mr. Caspi was found with Mr. Burch’s drivers license, AAA card, and voter registration card at the time of his arrest.

– Special to the Sun

ACCUSED KILLER CAUGHT AT AIRPORT IN DOMINICAN REPUBLIC A Queens man accused of murdering his girlfriend early yesterday morning was caught hours later by customs enforcement agents in a Dominican Republic airport as he tried to flee the country, police said.

A violent domestic dispute with her boyfriend left Lilliana Alvarez, 19, dead in her Woodside, Queens, bedroom with one fatal gunshot wound to the head, police said.

Police found her 3-year-old daughter unharmed in the apartment, but could not locate her boyfriend, Jose Tavarez, 23, for questioning.

Customs agents picked his name out of a roster of passengers bound for the Dominican Republic from John F. Kennedy International Airport, according to police. Mr. Tavarez was subsequently arrested on charges of murder and criminal possession of a weapon, police said.

– Special to the Sun

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