CITYWIDE

PUBLIC HOUSING TENANTS MAY REFUSE TO PAY RENT IN FACE OF HIKE

Tens of thousands of public housing tenants may refuse to pay their rent if the city doesn’t rescind a proposed hike, a City Council member of Brooklyn, Charles Barron, said yesterday. Calling the proposal “disgraceful,” Mr. Barron said tenants’ association leaders would meet tomorrow to discuss taking action to resist the increase, including a possible boycott of payment. Last month the city’s housing authority announced the increase as part of a broad program to overcome budget deficits. The proposal would be the first rent increase since 1989 and would affect tenants with household incomes greater than $20,000 a year – about 27% of all residents.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

STATEWIDE

FERRER ENDORSES SPITZER, NADLER BACKS CUOMO

The front-runners for the Democratic nominations for governor and attorney general announced major endorsements over the weekend. The state’s attorney general and a gubernatorial candidate, Eliot Spitzer, was endorsed in Albany on Saturday by Fernando Ferrer, the party’s unsuccessful choice for New York City mayor in 2005. In the attorney general’s race, Andrew Cuomo was endorsed Saturday by Manhattan elected officials: the Manhattan borough president, Scott Stringer; Rep. Jerrold Nadler; a state senator, Eric Schniederman, and an Assembly member, Linda Rosenthal.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

COUNCIL CALLS FOR STATE REGULATION OF GASOLINE INDUSTRY

Fed up with skyrocketing prices at the pump, the City Council’s finance chairman is calling for state regulation of the gasoline industry. A council member, David Weprin, a Democrat of Queens, wants Albany to give oversight power on gas prices to the state’s Public Service Commission, which already regulates electricity, water, and natural gas in New York. “I filled up my car last night. It cost me over $50,” Mr. Weprin said at a news conference outside City Hall yesterday. The proposal is one of several that politicians on the local and federal levels have put forward recently as gas prices have soared well past the $3 a gallon mark in many parts of the country, including New York.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

POLICE BLOTTER

INVESTIGATORS LOOK FOR MAN WHO LURED CHILDREN TO CAR

Investigators are hunting for a man who has been approaching young girls in a Brooklyn neighborhood while pretending to be a police officer and asking them to get into his car. In one case, the 10-year-old victim fled. In another, an 11-year-old ran after the man exposed himself. In a third episode, a 10-year-old girl got into the car after the man showed her a badge and asked for directions, but escaped when he exposed himself and began fondling her. The three incidents happened in mid- to late afternoon in the Boro Park section of Brooklyn. The first took place on April 11, the other two on Friday. Police described the man as being in his late 20s.

– Associated Press

WOMAN RUN OVER BY OWN CAR IN CEMETERY

A Queens woman was run over by her own car yesterday during a visit to a local cemetery, police said. Evanglista Vartholomeou, 76, of 150th Street in Queens, was visiting the Maple Grove Cemetery on Kew Gardens Road around 5 p.m. yesterday when the incident occurred, police said. Vartholomeou stopped her car 200 feet into the cemetery, but left the car running. She was fatally struck when the car hit her after she exited the vehicle, police said. Police officers stationed nearby found her pinned under the 1991 Ford Continental shortly after the accident occurred, and Vartholomeou was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

– Special to the Sun

LONG ISLAND

DOG OWNER CHARGED IN MAULING OF 4-YEAR-OLD BOY

EAST MEADOW – A man surrendered yesterday after his dogs attacked a family, biting a 4-year-old boy on his face and chest, police said. Lawrence Kelly, 25, of East Meadow, was charged with one count of violating a state law regarding dangerous dogs, a misdemeanor. The boy was walking with his grandparents and 14-month-old sister in East Meadow on Friday afternoon when two Rottweilers and a bulldog approached them, Nassau County police said. One of the Rottweilers jumped on and attacked the boy, but the grandfather pried him from the dog’s mouth and rushed him inside their house, police said. The dogs gave chase and repeatedly tried to bite the boy and grandfather, police said. The boy’s ears were torn, and he suffered big gashes on his face and bites to his torso and buttocks.

– Associated Press

TRISTATE

HIGHEST COURT TO HEAR EMINENT DOMAIN SUIT

TRENTON, N.J. – Developers across the country are keeping tabs on a lawsuit going before the New Jersey Supreme Court yesterday, in which a homebuilder is suing over a township seizing his land to preserve open space. Developer Michael Procacci Jr. had been planning to build 23 homes on his 16 acres in Mount Laurel before the township used its eminent domain powers to take it. An appellate panel sided with Mount Laurel last year, and Mr. Procacci appealed to the state’s highest court. “It is definitely a case to watch closely,” a Princeton lawyer who formed the Coalition to Stop Eminent Domain Abuse, Bill Potter, told yhe Star-Ledger of Newark for yesterday’s newspapers. The case “could signal what the courts will do” when it gets a case from towns where he believes “significant abuse is taking place,” Mr. Potter said. Mr. Procacci has the backing of builders’ groups.

– Associated Press