Talk:Brian M. McLaughlin

large delete of non-encyclopedic info/plagarism

yesterday, someone added what appears to be an entire news article, verbatim. i deleted it and replaced it with a reword of the parts which appear to be most related to Brian McLaughin.

here is the segment i deleted:

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

Labor group hit in bid-rig probe

BY AUSTIN FENNER, JUAN GONZALEZ, GREG B. SMITH and ADAM LISBERG

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Friday, March 3rd, 2006

Federal agents raided the city's biggest labor group and the office of its politician-president yesterday in what a source said is a probe into bid-rigging on lucrative city streetlight contracts.

One target of the investigation is Brian McLaughlin, a seven-term Democratic assemblyman from Queens and the 11-year president of the New York City Central Labor Council, the source said.

Investigators believe electrical contractors schemed with corrupt union officials to manipulate the city's bidding system so they could divvy up street light contracts worth tens of millions of dollars among themselves, the source said.

Contractors are suspected of deciding who would submit the lowest bid on each contract, while keeping other firms out of their elite club by threatening labor unrest, the source said.

WNBC-Channel 4 reported last night that probers are looking into whether contractors installed a security system in McLaughlin's home and provided him with an American Express card to use for personal expenses.

The source said probers are examining McLaughlin's role as business agent for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3, the main union for streetlight repairs.

New York's streetlights are maintained by two companies, neither of which returned calls for comment.

Petrocelli Electric of Long Island City, Queens, fixes lights in Manhattan, in Brooklyn and on Staten Island, while Welsbach Electric of College Point, Queens, handles Queens and the Bronx.

Petrocelli currently has about $92 million in contracts with the city Department of Transportation, while Welsbach has about $70 million.

Investigators reportedly raided Petrocelli's offices yesterday as well.

Kay Sarlin, a DOT spokeswoman, said last night, "From what we've been told, no DOT employees are targets of the investigation."

When Mayor Bloomberg was asked about the raid, he said, "We'll see where it goes and what it's about."

Sources said that the city Department of Investigation was involved in the probe and that DOT had helped investigators.

McLaughlin, 53, a powerful figure in New York City and Albany, started his career as a journeyman electrician. He worked his way up to labor prominence through Local 3.

The Central Labor Council is an AFL-CIO umbrella group for 1 million workers in almost 400 city unions. McLaughlin makes $167,627 in salary and benefits from that job, and another $96,000 from the Assembly, where he serves as chairman of the Democratic conference.

"There are currently no charges or allegations against the Central Labor Council or any of its officers, directors or employees," the union group said in a terse statement. "The Central Labor Council is fully cooperating with this investigation."

Agents from the FBI's public corruption unit and the U.S. Labor Department's Office of Labor Racketeering and Fraud Investigations seized control of the Central Labor Council's W. 15th St. offices at about 9 a.m., emerging eight hours later with more than 50 boxes of files.

A lawyer for Local 3, Barry Brett, said he was unaware of the investigation. The FBI and the Labor Department declined to comment.

Local 3 is the subject of an unrelated civil lawsuit alleging it was involved in a bid-rigging scheme involving several electrical contractors that monopolized installation of telecommunications equipment in the city.

The raid comes eight weeks after McLaughlin stunned the city's political establishment by announcing he would not run for an eighth term, saying he wanted to focus on labor work "without any distraction."

Union insiders insisted yesterday there was no connection between McLaughlin's decision to give up his Assembly seat and the ongoing FBI probe.

"His reasons [for leaving the Assembly] were pure and dignified, and they remain that way today," said one top union insider.

Yesterday, McLaughlin skipped a fund-raising breakfast for another union leader without explanation. The CLC's longtime secretary, Ted Jacobsen, was in attendance - but suddenly left when his phone rang with news of the raid.

"He had to leave early - he said there was something happening at the Labor Council," said Arthur Cheliotes, president of the Communications Workers of America Local 1180, who said he would never suspect McLaughlin of wrongdoing.

"I've always found him to be an upstanding guy of integrity," Cheliotes said. "Brian's always done the right thing. I am baffled."

United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said she had lunch with McLaughlin on Wednesday and was shocked to learn of the allegations.

"I don't think any of us know enough to judge anything today, other than that our hearts go out to Brian and his family," Weingarten said.

With Pete Donohue, Joe Mahoney and David Saltonstall

A look at the New York City Central Labor Council:

1. Umbrella group for 400 union locals representing more than 1 million workers in public and private sectors.

1. Its motto is: "Working for Working Families."

1. Mobilizes union workers in political campaigns, helps organizing campaigns, and lobbies for workers' and immigrants' rights.

1. Led by Brian McLaughlin, who is also a Democratic assemblyman from Queens.

1. Founded in 1959 when the AFL and CIO councils merged.

i do not know how to properly cite sources, so would someone please cite the new information that i added as coming from this article (or anywhere else). --Anaraug 20:53, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Puff piece

This thing needs to be completely rewritten, and not by Mr. McLauglin or a PR person in his employ. "He is the proud grandson of Irish immigrants...", gee, that's just great. -- Mwanner | Talk 13:59, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Lol.. that whole thing got added today. I'm real tempted to just revert it. --Anaraug 02:45, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok. If we want to keep any of the new "information" at all, a large chunk of it was directly plagarized from [1], also there's some at [2] so at least its citeable, even if it's pitifully POV. --Anaraug 02:58, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the whole article was copied verbatim from the first site I found, I'm not sure if it was actually intended to be a puff piece or if someone was simply lazy. --Anaraug 18:36, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

two different people?

I have no idea what is going on with this article now. It seems like it has information about two different people. The Politician seems to be noteable enough for an article, but it still needs tons of work. --Anaraug 23:02, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

• It is in fact one person; however, it's badly-edited at the moment. McLaughlin was an Assemblyman and labor leader, who was considered a prominent reformer. Then it turned out that he was in fact stealing large amounts of money himself. This is not new to the world of organized labor - however, it's a little difficult to parse it together into a clear account, when he is in fact under indictment at the moment and a lot of information is unclear at best. 141.155.119.212 (talk) 03:54, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

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Needs rewrite

I'm in the middle of doing a brief copy edit / cleanup of this article, but it really needs to be rewritten altogether (and judging by previous comments here, has needed that for a decade). It's thick with direct quotes that don't need to be quotes... they are often unsourced or so generically worded (sometimes only 2 words long) that I don't see the point of most of them being indicated as quotations at all.

I am at least making the quotations make grammatical sense, for the most part, although the paragraph about McLaughlin's speech at Queens College (under Moskowitz hearings) is a hot mess with regards to grammar, punctuation, and generally making sense. The source given did not contain the nonsensical quote in that paragraph, but reference is made to someone "attempting to make sense" of the speech, so maybe the quote was total garbage to begin with? I have no idea. I don't know that it's necessary to keep that paragraph at all. I would love for someone who is not me to try and figure this out. Jessicapierce (talk) 21:50, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

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