Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is drowning embattled Bronx State Senator Pedro Espda, Jr., who represents all of the Norwood News coverage area, in civil suits.
On top of charges that he bilked the nonprofit Soundview HealthCare Network, the cluster of south Bronx health clinics he founded, for some $14 million, Cuomo filed another suit saying Espada (and his son, Pedro G. Espada) set up a sham of a job training program designed to pay temporary employees a fraction of minimum wage.
“The job training program was a sham,” Cuomo told reporters. “There was no training. There was no program.”
According to the law suit, Espada kept a revolving door of temporary workers who would do cleaning work at his health clinics for two weeks and then receive a $200 stipend, which amounted to a wage of about $1.87 an hour. Minimum wage in New York is $7.25 an hour.
Espada, who has been trying to rehab his image locally by showing up for Little League parades and giving money to area schools, claims Cuomo is trying to bully him and score points before entering the race for governor, which he is widely expected to win.
“Cuomo the bully strikes again,” Espada told PIX 11 News. “No one was ripped off. We gave opportunity to people.”
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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.