Adams Donor Avoids Prison After Admitting to Campaign Finance Scheme
The businessman, Erden Arkan, pleaded guilty in January as part of a sprawling corruption case unveiled against Mr. Adams last year. President Trump's Justice Department moved to abandon the charges against the mayor weeks after Mr. Arkan's plea.
Mr. Arkan, who is Turkish American, has close ties to New York City's Turkish community and owns KSK Construction, a local building firm. He pleaded guilty to soliciting funds from 10 of his employees and to making straw donations to Mr. Adams's campaign. The charges grew out of an investigation into the mayor conducted by the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, the F.B.I. and the city's Department of Investigation. Prosecutors said Mr. Arkan gave $1,250 apiece to the employees to donate to Mr. Adams's campaign.
At a hearing at Manhattan federal court on Friday before Judge Dale E. Ho, Mr. Arkan said he accepted responsibility for his actions.
'I feel profound sadness for the choice I made,' he said, adding: 'I'm deeply sorry to New York City taxpayers.'
Judge Ho said that the actions he pleaded guilty to were not a 'victimless crime,' and that if donors circumvented the limits imposed by law, it would breed cynicism in the system.
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Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Geoff Epstein wants to become Framingham's third mayor. Here are his priorities
FRAMINGHAM — He has three key priorities, a clear campaign finance strategy and a name that ... has brought some attention. Geoff Epstein has big plans for Framingham. Epstein, a former School Committee member, hopes to become the city's third mayor. He's facing off against incumbent Mayor Charlie Sisitsky, who's seeking a second four-year term, in the Nov. 4 city election. After filing with the state's campaign finance office in January, Epstein, who also writes The Framingham Observer blog, went on to acquire enough signatures to appear on the ballot in November. In a sit-down interview with the Daily News, Epstein shared his goals if elected, which include investing more in the schools, installing more environmental projects and repairing infrastructure. Mayoral candidate is focused on three main issues Epstein said his top three issues are education, environment and infrastructure. Epstein, who has served on both the Framingham and Newton school boards, says things have gotten worse in Framingham Public Schools over the past four years. While saying the School Department has the best team the city could have, he says it's time to return money to the school system. 'Our schools were promised': Trump administration review holds up $1M in Framingham education grants According to Epstein, Framingham schools have been defunded by $30 million in taxpayer-funded support. He said that because local funding strayed from the trajectory it was on when he was on School Committee, that money has been defunded. 'If it had stayed on the trajectory it was on, the local support, taxpayer-funded support of the schools, it would be at $95 million,' Epstein said. 'If you compute overall, what's the difference between if it stayed on the direction it was going when I was there (on the School Committee)? Thirty million.' According to the schools' fiscal 2026 budget sheet, local funding went from $89.8 million in fiscal 2022 to $84.8 million in fiscal 2023. This was further reduced to about $80 million in fiscal 2024 before rising to $86.7 million in fiscal 2025. For the current year, the school budget has $90.6 million in local contribution funding. Epstein also said MCAS scores have gone down for every grade. "That's unusual, there's something really dire about that," he said. Epstein wants to expand preschool for students in order to increase English language profiency before they start kindergarten. He also wants to boost compensation for classroom aides, as well as address the city's teacher retention rate. 'Urgency of climate change': Framingham State unveils its latest sustainability initiative "Teacher morale is low, so you've got a situation where students are not performing well and the teachers are leaving, which is very unusual, Epstein said. "The school school system is trending down because of that." For the environment, he wants to expand solar installations on public buildings, something he said the city should have begun awhile ago. "We should have gone gangbusters on that and installed them," Epstein said, adding that installing solar panels at schools and parking lots would generate up to $3 million in utlity savings. "I thought that was a natural thing that should obviously be done and wasn't; if I get elected mayor, we'll try and do 10 solar installations a year, which you can actually do." Lastly, Epstein wants to address what he says is a backlog of roof and road repairs, along with water and sewer infrastructure. He pointed out that a year ago, Department of Public Works Director Robert Lewis called the city's water and sewer infrastructure a "ticking time bomb" during a City Council public hearing. 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The deadline to register to vote is 5 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 25, if in person and 11:59 p.m. that day if online. All public officials are sworn in on Jan. 1. This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: Geoff Epstein outlines priorities in campaign for Framingham mayor Solve the daily Crossword
Motor 1
23 minutes ago
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'AND THE VENT WAS CLOSED:' Woman Gets into Boyfriend's Tacoma. Then She Sees the Strategically Placed Strand of Hair
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UPI
24 minutes ago
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Bolivia heads presidential run-off between right-leaning candidates
Rodrigo Paz Pereira, candidate for the Presidency of Bolivia from the Christian Democratic Party, celebrates with supporters in La Paz, Bolivia, on Sunday, August 17, 2025. Paz Pereira is headed to an October run-off election after finishing with the most votes in Sunday's election. Photo by Luis Gandarillas/EPA Aug. 18 (UPI) -- Bolivia is headed to a presidential run-off election between a center-right politician and a right-wing candidate after voters on Sunday rejected another term of the Movement for Socialism, which has governed the country for nearly two decades. According to preliminary results from the South America nation's election commission, Sen. Rodrigo Paz Pereira, 57, of the Christian Democratic Party, had 1.6 million votes for 32.1% of the vote share, followed by former rightwing interim President Jorge Quiroga, 65, who garnered 1.3 million votes for 26.8% of the vote tally. Neither received enough votes to win the election outright, necessitating a run-off in October, as was widely anticipated. Eduardo del Castillo, 36, candidate for the ruling Movement for Socialism, finished sixth in a contest of eight candidates, with 159,769 votes, for a little more than 3% of of the vote. More than 5 million eligible voters in the country of 12.4 million cast ballots, the election commission said. "I want to thank all the men and women who made this possible and gave a voice to those of us who had none, who didn't appear in the polls, who didn't exist," Pereira said in his victory speech in the Bolivian capital of La Paz, The Guardian reported. "We will fight corruption head on, dammit!" Pereira's lead comes as a surprise as polls showed businessman Samuel Doria Medina, 66, of the National Unity Front party, was the frontrunner, according to the BBC. The election commission shows Medina finished third with a little more than 1 million votes and a hair shy of 20% of the vote count. Pereira, son of former President Jaime Paz Zamora, who served from 1989 to 1993, campaigned on ending corruption and redistributing central government funds to the regions. The run-off will see the country elect a non-socialist leader since 2006, when the country elected union organizer Evo Morales its first indigenous president, who served until his resignation amid protests over voting irregularities in 2019. MAS party member Jeanine Anez became interim president until 2020, when Luis Arce Catacora was elected president. The unpopular Arce decided not to run for re-election. Sunday's vote comes as the country is experiencing an economic crisis, with the New York-based Foundation for Economic Education libertarian think tank saying its economy is on the brink of collapse. The election is seen as a repudiation of MAS and the election of a right-wing leader could see closer Bolivia-U.S. ties. A U.S. Congressional Research Service report published just a few days ahead of Sunday's election states that under MAS administrations, Bolivia has strengthen ties with China, Russia and Iran, while expressing support for authoritative governments Venezuela and Cuba. Platforms of Bolivia's right-leaning candidates suggest a distancing from such countries and prioritization of relations with democratic nations.
