Fighting words for MMA law
ALBANY — Mixed martial arts supporters want to follow in the footsteps of breakout star Ronda Rousey (bottom) by scoring “a quick knockout” in their effort next year to legalize the sport in New York.
Assembly Majority Leader Joseph Morelle, the bill sponsor, said he intends to push for its passage within the first few weeks of the legislative session rather than allow it to languish until the end of the session, as has happened in the past.
“My goal is to have this considered earlier rather than later so it doesn’t get caught up in other issues,” Morelle (D-Rochester) said.
“I just don’t want it to linger for six months and have to keep coming back to the question of whether we’re doing it or not,” he said.
After amending the bill to include insurance protections for MMA fighters who get seriously injured, Morelle believed he had the votes at the end of the last legislative session for passage.
But the measure never made it to the floor because some supporters were not in Albany in the waning days of the session.
New York remains the only state that still bans the popular, but controversial, sport.
lll Patricia Lynch, a former top aide to indicted ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, is selling the influential lobbying company she founded in 2001, sources say.
MWW, a powerful public relations and crisis communications firm, is close to finalizing the purchase of Patricia Lynch Associates, which for years was among the state’s three biggest lobbying groups, the sources say.
Lynch, who is highly respected by Democrats and Republicans in Albany, will stay on in an executive role, a source said. She is said to have already moved into MWW’s Park Ave. South offices in Manhattan.
MWW President Michael Kempner is an influential New Jersey Democrat who has raised money for President Obama and Hillary Clinton.
“MWW has a huge national communications and strategy practice but had no New York State or City government affairs practice,” said one source familiar with the deal.
Lynch’s connections to Cuba through her firm’s Panama office were also enticing, the source said.
Lynch’s firm in recent years has suffered from reduced billings, layoffs and departures, and federal tax liens. Last year, her firm fell to 10th among top lobbyists, though it still managed to take in a respectable $4.2 million in client compensation.
lll A group charged with helping indigent inmates is using the reported abuse of inmates after an upstate prison break to raise funds.
Prisoners’ Legal Services put up its solicitation on its homepage last week shortly after The New York Times ran a story in which inmates claimed they were brutalized by guards at Clinton Correctional Facility following the escape of two prisoners.
“If you are concerned about the prisoners referenced in the recent New York Times article, please consider donating,” the group wrote.
Prisoners’ Legal Services Executive Director Karen Murtagh defended the post, saying her organization doesn’t have the funding necessary to handle the more than 10,000 requests for assistance every year. But a law enforcement source said using unproven allegations of brutality to raise money is “unfortunate” and “should clearly raise doubts about the legitimacy of their motives as well as the accusations made by inmates in The New York Times article.”