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The Buffalo News/Thursday, April 6, 2017 

National News

C E N T E R FOR PU BL IC I N T E GR I T Y

New York Times

Temporary bathrooms have been installed at Bryant Park
in New York. The Bryant Park restrooms, known for their
fresh-cut flowers and full-time attendants, wil reopen this
month after being closed for renovations.

tion as part of the library, which
opened in 1911, the bathroom
was closed in later decades
as the park descended into a
blighted eyesore, a place best
avoided that was overrun with
drug dealers and criminals.
Dust and pieces of plasterboard
covered the bathroom floor.
“It was a total wreck,” recalled Dan Biederman, president of Bryant Park Corp., a
nonprofit that manages the
park.
In rebuilding the bathroom,
Biederman said, his inspiration
was Brooke Astor, the grande
dame of New York society. After
all, she was indirectly responsible for saving it: Biederman said
he had been told that in 1979,
Astor, then 77 and a member of
the library’s board of trustees,
was on her way into the library
for a meeting when she said a
“hooligan” approached her on
the front terrace and tried to
sell her drugs. She complained
to her friend David Rockefeller that the area needed to be
cleaned up. Rockefeller helped
secure the financial support to
make it happen.
“Mrs. Astor was in my mind,”
said Biederman, who envisioned
the bathroom as a powder room

in a country estate. “Anybody
from homeless people to Mrs.
Astor could use it.”
The upkeep of the bathroom runs to $271,000 annually, which includes $27,000
for 14,040 industrial-size rolls
of single-ply toilet paper and
$14,160 for flower deliveries.
The bathroom attendants earn
between $25,000 and $30,000
a year. The city-owned park is
supported entirely through private revenue from a variety of
sources, including corporate
sponsorships.
It has become a popular pit
stop for tourists, workers and
residents alike. Average daily bathroom use has soared to
3,266 people in 2016 from 1,818
in 2013, according to park data.
Lines can grow to 40 people
or more, with the wait on the
women’s side stretching to 15 to
20 minutes.
The bathroom cannot be expanded because the exterior of
the building, which has been
designated a landmark, has
to be preserved, park managers said. Inside, the men’s and
women’s sides were previously flipped to squeeze in a third
toilet for women (the men have
two).

WASHINGTON – Angelo
Pesce is serving a 10-year prison
sentence in Illinois on a major
theft charge.
While behind bars, he’s
barred from voting but that
hasn’t stopped Pesce from apparently creating a crudely
named political action committee ostensibly aimed at impeaching Donald Trump as it
solicits cash donations in the
process.
No federal law prevents
Pesce from forming a PAC or
soliciting money for it. And he
doesn’t have to tell unsuspecting donors he’s an inmate at
Taylorville Correctional Center on a conviction for having
scammed a woman out of nearly $100,000.
Pesce’s situation is the latest
reminder of a nagging problem
with political action committees: While most PACs follow
the rules, there are few safeguards against hucksters looking to make a buck.
With some PACs, “people donating think it’s a legitimate organization, but sometimes the
creators take your money and
run,” said Brett Kappel, a Wash-

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NEW YORK – Bryant Park, a
6-acre oasis set among Manhattan skyscrapers, packs in the
crowds with its winter ice rink
and holiday shops, summer
movie nights, smorgasbord of
artisanal fare and rustic lunch
tables and chairs under stately
London plane trees.
Yet it is a 315-square-foot
Beaux-Arts gem that draws the
longest lines: the bathroom.
If there is a Tiffany’s of public restrooms, this is it. Divided
into men’s and women’s sides,
it has self-flushing toilets lined
with sanitary seat covers that
rotate between uses, fresh bouquets of flowers, classical music
and two attendants at all times
who mop and shine until everything gleams.
But even that isn’t good
enough: For those who have to
go, it is about to get a whole lot
nicer.
When the bathroom reopens
this month after a $280,000
makeover, it will have sleek
Toto toilets and fixtures, wall
tiles in warm, earthy shades
to reflect the trees outside and
a modern air-conditioning system for the dog days of summer.
The attendants, fresh flowers
and seat covers will all return.
And for the first time, original artwork depicting Bryant
Park will be displayed, selected
from the park’s collection of 225
works by painters-in-residence.
“I’m going to come here
more,” said Will Chen, 30, a
messenger who uses the bathroom once a week. “I thought it
was already good enough and
now they’re going to make it
even better? I may live here.”
The bathroom is one of a pair
of compact buildings tucked
behind the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue; the other
has been converted into a park
office and storage area. Designed as a public comfort sta-

By Rachel Wilson

www.WindowWorldofBuffalo.com

ington, D.C., campaign finance
lawyer.
“There is no rule that a PAC
is barred from buying a boat
and riding off into the sunset,”
added Brendan Fischer, associate counsel at the Campaign Legal Center.
As a practical matter, that
makes it close to impossible for
a misled political donor to recover his or her money.
A message the Center for
Public Integrity sent to an email
address Pesce provided in paperwork filed with the Federal
Election Commission was not
returned. The prison where he’s
an inmate doesn’t allow reporters to contact inmates by phone
unless they appear on a pre-approved list.
Creating a federal political
committee is relatively simple:
Just fill out a few forms and submit them to the Federal Election Commission.
Pesce won’t be required
to reveal until mid-summer
whether his PAC has raised and
spent any cash.
Pesce’s PAC isn’t the first to
be formed from inside a prison.
Two years ago, Adam Savader, a former political volunteer
who had been convicted of cyberstalking and extortion, cre-

ated a super PAC named Second
Chance PAC. Savader’s super
PAC ultimately reported raising
no money.
Then there’s the case of
Cary Lee Peterson, a self-styled
“election campaign guru”
whose purportedly pro-Bernie
Sanders super PAC seemingly
scammed dozens of donors out
of tens of thousands of dollars.
There’s little evidence indicating Peterson’s PAC used
more than a token amount of
the money it raised to promote
Sanders’ bid for the Democratic
presidential nomination. The
rest is a mystery.
The FEC has asking Congress for more authority to deal
with scam PACs. But to date,
Congress has ignored the FEC’s
requests. Illinois Department
of Corrections spokeswoman
Nicole Wilson said inmates
are permitted to receive money electronically. And while Illinois corrections law prohibits inmates from “engaging in
an unauthorized business venture,” it’s silent on the specific
issue of inmates forming political committees.
– The Center for Public In­
tetrity is a nonprofit, nonpar­
tisan investigative news orga­
nization.

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By Winnie Hu

Being in prison is no problem
as scammer solicits PAC money

BU-1308835

A public restroom fit
for an Astor gets an upgrade