- See more at: http://blogtimenow.com/blogging/automatically-redirect-blogger-blog-another-blog-website/#sthash.Q6qPkwFC.dpuf Peter Rivera Joins Cuomo's Transition Team | Bronx News Networkbronx

Friday, November 19, 2010

Peter Rivera Joins Cuomo's Transition Team

Andrew Cuomo announced last week that Bronx Assemblyman Peter Rivera, whose district covers West Farms, Van Nest and Parkchester, will join the Governor-elect's transition team, to help advise him on economic development and labor issues, before he takes the State's helm in January.

This is in spite of previous reports that Cuomo, in his role as Attorney General, had been investigating Rivera for having too-cozy ties to a nonprofit group he'd funded, according to the Daily News.

"Cuomo said he will scrutinize the relationships state Sen. Pedro Espada Jr. and Assemblyman Peter Rivera have with separate non-profit groups," the Daily News reported last year. Here's the link. 


Rivera had been called out in a previous Daily News story for plying $1.3 million in taxpayer funds to NETS (Neighborhood Enhancement for Training Services, Inc.) a nonprofit organization that had at one point employed Rivera's son, and whose top directors worked for his campaign.

“There is nothing going on there,” Rivera said in a phone interview this week.

Several calls for comment to the Attorney General's office were not returned.

A spokeswoman from Cuomo's gubernatorial campaign said that Rivera's appointment to the Committee on Economic Development and Labor "made sense," since his 76th Assembly District has a number of economic needs.

Rivera said he was "caught by surprise," when Cuomo asked him to serve on the committee, which met for the first time earlier this week. He will work with about 30 other appointed economic and labor advisers for the next month or so to "recruit, review and recommend high-level leaders," according to a press release from Cuomo's camp (you can see a full list of his transition team here).

"I've sat on transition teams before," Rivera said. "I think its an important job, but it's going to be a lot of work."

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