How your government actually works…
Stanley Ng, one of the founders of the “Scholastic Merit Fund,” said Thursday it had raised $25,000 this fall and hopes to raise $100,000 by January to protect the 1971 law that mandates the admissions test for at least three of the eight specialized high schools.
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The fund hired lobbying firm Parkside Group, LLC for $60,000 from Oct. 2 through Sept. 30, 2019, plus certain expenses, according to a filing with the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics. One of Parkside Group’s lobbyists is Evan Stavisky, who went to one of the specialized schools, Bronx High School of Science.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/stuyvesants-admissions-test-backers-hire-lobbyist-1541112407
Digging further we see the Parkside Group runs many Democrat Legislature Campaigns.
“There ought to be a cooling off period before political consultants can lobby the very elected officials whose campaigns they ran,” said Camarda. “There is a great deal of public cynicism about government these days, and arrangements like these undermine people’s confidence that government officials are making decisions in the public interest.”
MirRam Group, run by one of its founders, Luis Manuel Miranda, is not the only group that dabbles in both campaign management and lobbying. The Parkside Group is one of the largest similar groups. This year, it worked on the campaigns of Rep. Joe Crowley and State Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins along with lobbying for state interest groups like developers and unions.