It seems Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz needs a car available 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, whether to drive him from his Windsor Terrace home to work at Borough Hall, or to dinners in Manhattan that are said to be official meetings. The thing is, the driver still gets paid until the shift is over--if he's still with Markowitz or not. The New York Post reports:
Once the beep packs it in and there's nothing more doing at Borough Hall, the driver on duty is allowed to go home. Of course, he keeps getting paid until midnight.
Taxpayers pick up the tab of $177,372 a year, not including overtime.
It's all within the city's lax rules, since the Conflicts of Interest Board has decided that elected officials with government vehicles can do just about anything they want with them.
The Post goes on to describe the suspicious second job of one Markowitz driver, Altay Karabay, who also sells ads for Bandshell magazine, the program distributed at the Seaside concert series, which are hosted by Markowitz. This situation is legal, as Bandshell receives no money from the city. Seaside does though, and it's housed in the same office as Bandshell and shares the same phone number--so for Karabay to work there, it's really skimming the lines of ethics.
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