Today we'll look at Philip Banks III, the top criminal justice official at City Hall — seven years after he was caught up in a federal corruption investigation. We'll also bid farewell to Yolanda Vega, the personality who launched thousands of televised New York Lottery drawings. She's retiring. |
 | | Robert Wright for The New York Times |
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As the top criminal justice official at City Hall, Philip Banks III is to oversee Mayor Eric Adams's top priority — public safety — and play a central role in Adams's plan to reduce gun violence. |
The urgency of the crime issue has raised the stakes for Banks. He now finds himself a point person for a plan that relies on cooperation with federal and state law enforcement agencies, including several that investigated him when he was a high-ranking police official — and might now have reservations about working with him. |
My colleagues Michael Rothfeld, William K. Rashbaum and Jan Ransom write that one of the agencies that scrutinized Banks's dealings was the Manhattan district attorney's office, something that has not been reported before. Adams's "Blueprint to End Gun Violence" called on criminal justice officials, including district attorneys, to adopt tougher policies. Until he shifted the emphasis this week, Alvin Bragg — the Manhattan district attorney, who like Adams took office at the beginning of the year — had called for a relatively lenient approach to cases involving gun possession. |
Banks has already tried to assuage concerns about his past. In a New York Daily News column this month, he wrote that he had neither betrayed the public's trust nor broken the law. He apologized only for associating with two businessmen, Jona Rechnitz and Jeremy Reichberg, who sought power by making connections to city officials. Rechnitz, who cooperated with the authorities, pleaded guilty to criminal fraud charges. Reichberg was convicted in 2019 on bribery and conspiracy charges. |
Prosecutors named Banks as an unindicted co-conspirator, saying he had accepted high-priced meals, tickets to sports events and vacations in the Dominican Republic and even a ring worn by Muhammad Ali from Rechnitz and Reichberg. The two-year investigation reached Mayor Bill de Blasio and led to prison time for Banks's close friend, Norman Seabrook, the leader of the city's correction officers' union, among others. |
Some government watchdogs say Banks's past raises questions about how he will conduct himself now that he has an even more powerful job. Richard Aborn, who leads the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City, a nonprofit that studies crime reduction strategies, praised Banks's experience but said the inquiry could cast a shadow. |
"It's something I think he is going to have to constantly confront," Aborn said. |
Banks and Adams declined to be interviewed. A City Hall spokesman, Maxwell Young, said in a statement that the accusations "have been litigated and relitigated with no findings of wrongdoing." |
Young described the false claims and omissions on financial disclosure forms as honest mistakes, saying that Banks had misunderstood the questions. |
There is no disagreement that snow is coming tonight and tomorrow. |
Beyond that, the National Weather Service said there was "still an unusual amount of uncertainty," even as it issued a winter storm watch and a gale warning. It said there was a "low to moderate potential" for more than six inches of powdery snow in New York City and a "moderate to high potential" for more than six inches on eastern Long Island and southeastern Connecticut. |
The uncertainty came from computer-generated forecast models that had been divided on where the storm would go. If the storm shifted slightly west — closer to the East Coast — New Jersey and New York City would get more snow. If it moved slightly to the east — away from the coast — they would get less, and Long Island and New England would get more. |
Of three models, the European model "slams" Long Island, said Tiffany Fortier, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service. One model, known as GFS, showed the storm hitting the Jersey Shore and New York City harder than the European model did. The third model, the closer-range North American model, was "pretty intense for the entire area," she said. |
As for today, expect a cloudy day with temps in the mid-30s. |
In effect until Monday (Lunar New Year's Eve). |
 | | Shiho Fukada/Associated Press |
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The challenge in this story is how to convey the name. Not how to spell it. How to convey it, because you can't hear it here. |
You won't hear it on lottery drawings anymore. The New York Lottery announced that Vega, 66, had retired after spending almost half her life announcing numbers and presenting outsize ceremonial checks to stunned winners of games like Mega Millions and Powerball. |
Vega said she began exaggerating the pronunciation of her name almost as soon as she first appeared on television for the lottery. Then, on a day when she was particularly "hopped up on some espresso," a director complained that "stretching your name is sucking up seconds of valuable time." |
"I said, 'I'm proud of who I am,'" she said, "and I continued to be true to myself and I continued to do it." |
Inevitably, fans tried to pronounce her name the way she did. "If she ever got tired of it," said Margaret DeFrancisco, the director of the New York Lottery from 1999 to 2004, "it never showed." |
I was visiting New York City in 2000, and my son, who lived in Brooklyn with his family, told me we were all going to an art show in Red Hook. He asked if there was anything else I wanted to see or do while we were out. |
I said that even though I had been born in Brooklyn in 1938, I had never been back to my birthplace, an apartment house at 1901 Avenue P, and would like to do that. |
I felt eager as we drove there. We found a parking spot right in front and jumped out to take a picture of me at the front door. I have one of my mother standing in the same spot when she was pregnant with me. |
Several older women were sitting on lawn chairs on the sidewalk. When they saw our family laughing and taking pictures, one of them called me over and asked why we were there. |
I said I had been born there but had moved away when I was still an infant. |
After chatting briefly, my family and I walked back toward our car. |
Another woman called out to me. |
"I overheard that you lived here," she said. "When was that?" |
"Nineteen thirty-eight," I said, "but only for a short time." |
The woman said that she had been living there since then. She asked whether I remembered anyone from that time. |
I said that I knew my mother had a close friend named Fanny Rubell, that she had a daughter the same age as me, that she and my mother had walked their baby carriages together and that they had spoken on the phone long after we moved away. |
"I am Fanny Rubell!" the woman exclaimed. |
Glad we could get together here. See you Monday. — J.B. |
Melissa Guerrero, Geordon Wollner, Corey Kilgannon, Olivia Parker and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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