What’s going to be the biggest news story to come out of your district in 2013?

Garodnick: Dan Garodnick will kiss every baby in Council District 4 in support of his reelection bid.

Quart: As the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway moves closer to completion, the MTA is going to have to start planning for the next phases of this project. We’ll begin discussing the next phases of construction and how to fund it.

What’s going to be the biggest political upset in 2013?

Garodnick: Hillary Clinton will take Mayor Bloomberg’s advice and run for mayor, but she will lose in a nail-biter to a young, charismatic politician who comes out of nowhere and gives better speeches. He is gracious enough to give her a deputy mayor post.

Quart: Scott Stringer winning comptroller. He has some serious competition in that race.

What will be the single most important development for the downtown community in 2013?

Garodnick: With the Roberts settlement announced, 2013 will be the year Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village tenants get management to work with them on a condo conversion, and begin the process of taking ownership of their community.

What’s one thing that everyone thinks will happen in 2013 that probably won’t?

Garodnick: Joe Lhota will lose the Republican nomination for mayor when his campaign is saddled by allegations that sometimes the MTA’s trains are late.

Who will win the Super Bowl in 2013?

Garodnick: Giants. I got this right last year, so why stop now?

Quart: Anybody but the Patriots.

Read our predictions on literature, Broadway, politics and fashion.

Who are the 100 most powerful people in New York City politics? Of course, the answer is both subjective and controversial. Still, in an audacious attempt to arrive at a ranking that reflects who really are the movers and shakers that drive New York City’s agenda, City & State has solicited the off-the-record opinions of many of the five borough’s most savvy political insiders, poured over dozens of reader nominations and incorporated the results of our online polls. It should be emphasized that the scope of this list has been limited strictly to city politics. It does not judge each individual’s place in history or standing on the statewide, national or global stage. If that had been our aim, we would have arrived at a very different list. Also, though our selectees come from different communities, genders, parties, sexual orientations and religious affiliations, we openly acknowledge that the list does not adequately represent the city’s rich diversity. We do believe, however, that it is an accurate portrait of the distribution of power in city politics at this moment in time—and thus an illustration of how far we still need to go for our government to mirror the demographics and dynamics of its people. With no further ado, we boldly present City & State‘s first-ever New York City Power 100 List. We hope it gets you talking.

To read the full list, please visit cityandstateny.com.

By Alan S. Chartock

A long, long time ago, I spent the summers on Fire Island with my family. My best friend, now passed, was Jon Lipsky, who went on to develop a tremendous reputation as a teacher and a playwright of the first order. His older brother, Michael, became an eminent professor at MIT and a formidable administrator at the Ford Foundation. Their younger brother, David, became a scientist and was largely responsible for the New York City water supply. Their father, Eleazar, was the author of many important novels and an assistant district attorney in the office of the legendary DA Frank Hogan. My friend’s cousins included the son and daughter of a publicist, “Uncle David.” Publicist David Lipsky’s daughter, Lisa, ran the Fire Island movie house. The youngest son, young enough for me not to have really known him, was Richard Lipsky. I just remember Richard as a little kid with his stomach hanging out over a bathing suit, walking barefoot in Ocean Beach. For a while it looked like Richard would follow in the footsteps of his distinguished cousins. He did well at college and then went on to earn a Ph.D. in political science.

The next time I heard about Richard Lipsky, I was publishing The Legislative Gazette in Albany and teaching at SUNY New Paltz and Albany. Instead of sticking with an academic career, Richard became a lobbyist and enjoyed some success. He was terrific at gaming the press. He would call the editors and offer them tidbits and stories. Like his dad, he had a temper. Eventually, his success as a lobbyist began to wane, and he fell in with Carl Kruger, the man I have always called the “Bad Kruger.” The “Good Krueger” is Sen. Liz Krueger, a brilliant public servant who seems earnestly devoted to the public good. The Bad Kruger is a complicated man, apparently shaped by a very hard childhood. Today he is seemingly uncommitted to contemporary ethical standards. As you probably know by now, the Bad Kruger took a turn for the worse when he deserted his professional responsibilities and went on the take. People would go to a designated lobbyist—none other than the kid in the bathing suit, Richard Lipsky—and give him money to put the fix in with the Bad Kruger, who would make things happen. When the FBI apprehended Richard Lipsky, there was money all over his home at the prestigious Normandy apartments on the West Side.

This is all a matter of public record. Both the Bad Kruger and Richard Lipsky were caught so red-handed that denial was impossible. They both pleaded guilty and are off to prison. Both made a public show of remorse. At his sentencing, the lawyer for the Bad Kruger made the defense that his client wasn’t as bad as some of the others in politics. I am sure that this did not sit well with the members of the Legislature. The U.S. district judge in the case, Jed S. Rakoff, took note of the good things that the Bad Kruger had done and let him off with a lighter sentence than the federal prosecutors were seeking. Richard Lipsky, the little kid in the blue bathing suit, will also go to prison.

I guess the point is that when you see some kid on the beach, maybe sucking his thumb, it’s possible that 50 years later that kid may turn out to be a brain surgeon or he may turn out to be a crook. The whole thing gives me the shivers. When I talked to my best friend Jon just before he passed and mentioned what was happening to his cousin Richard, Jon said, “Yeah, I know.” I’ve been wondering whether he saw it coming.

Unlike others who have no empathy, I just hate to see this happen to anyone. If you look into the childhoods of Carl Kruger and Richard Lipsky, you might find some clues about what was going to happen.

Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.

Ever since NYU unveiled its behemoth 2031 expansion plan in 2010, it has drawn heated reaction from Downtown residents, community groups, activists and politicians alike. Hosted by the Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS), last Tuesday’s panel of urban planning experts broke little in the way of new ground as the merits and failings of NYU 2031 were once again debated.

The MAS is a nonprofit membership organization involved in urban planning, design and preservation and has been involved in Village planning issues since the 1950s. The organization has also authored a comprehensive position statement on NYU’s plan, featuring detailed recommendations on neighborhood context, public space and public process.

The audience of more than 200, comprised mainly of NYU students, faculty and local residents, were eager to hear some ostensibly new perspectives on NYU’s plan to add about 6 million square feet of academic space throughout the city with nearly half of the expansion, equal to about the size of the Empire State Building, concentrated on two Washington Square-area superblocks located near the school’s main campus in Greenwich Village.

As the panel’s moderator, John Alschuler, chairman of HR&A, a regional planning consultancy, asked each member of the panel to weigh in on various parts of the NYU 2031 plan, the audience either groaned in disapproval or gave a brief round of applause in support.

Asked about the planned NYU hotel tower to go into the Zipper Building on the corner of West Houston and Mercer Street, Brad Hoylman, chairman of Community Board 2, which recently voted against the NYU 2031 plan, said that the board “scratched its head when it heard about the hotel plan.”

He added that the board was unclear about why there was a need for such a hotel, which would cast shadows on the landmarked Silver Towers located on the same lot.

Hilary Ballon, deputy vice chancellor of NYU Abu Dhabi and a professor of urban studies and architecture at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service, defended the proposed hotel, saying it is necessary to “support academics” coming to the area from out of town and even abroad.

And Gary Hack, a professor of urban design at Penn Design, the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design, called the hotel a “critical piece of the plan.”

But Ron Shiffman, a professor at the Pratt Graduate Center for Planning, said, “We have hotel space—there is no reason to not stay at other hotels in the area.”

While acknowledging that a certain level of expansion is necessary for the university, he noted, “Expansion for expansion’s sake is a formula for disaster.”

In response to a question about what level of growth is appropriate and constructive, Hoylman said that NYU has not gone to the community with adequate answers. “There is not enough information on what the school is doing.”

“Growth should not take away the character and distinctiveness of the community,” Shiffman said.

Expanding further on growth strategy, Shiffman said that the school should be encouraged to control the density in Manhattan by expanding into the outer boroughs such as Brooklyn or the Bronx.

“There’s a limit to density,” Shiffman said. “You do need some open space.”

Speaking generally about the plan, Ballon said it is about preparing for the future. “The plan represents people who’ve yet to emerge,” she said.

A handout prepared by the office of Assembly Member Deborah Glick was more skeptical of NYU’s plan. Under the headline “Truth be Told,” the handout said that the real truth is that NYU has tried for years to create a campus to compete with other universities and that this plan represents an “NYU administrative scheme that doesn’t reflect the needs of the students, faculty and certainly not the community.”

And Glick is not alone in her opposition. On March 22, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation led a press conference on the steps of City Hall to call upon Borough President Scott Stringer to vote “no” on NYU 2031’s ULURP application.

The press conference was followed up last week with a joint letter urging Stringer to vote no, signed by about 50 community activists, residents, politicians and preservationists including Simeon Bankoff of Historic Districts Council, Jeanne Wilcke of Downtown Independent Democrats and Sean Sweeney of the SoHo Alliance.

Ronna Texidor, a resident of Thompson Street, said, “No one who lives here wants 20 years of construction.”

“The university cares deeply,” said Ballon to loud groans from the audience. “The city is part of its identity. Its success is linked to the city.”

Said Hoylman, “We need NYU to make a better case to the community. We never saw any movement. We’re for taking the plan back to the drawing board.”

Stringer has until April 12 to make his recommendation to City’s Department of City Planning, after which City Planning has 60 days to act. From that point, the City Council has another 50 days, including a possible 15-day extension, for a final vote.