Pols hit LGBT site ‘fix’
THE FEDERAL Small Business Administration web page dedicated to LGBT outreach has been offline for about 16 months — prompting concerns its removal “may have been politically or ideologically motivated,” two U.S. House members said in a letter Wednesday.
In their letter to the SBA, New York Reps. Nydia Velazquez (photo) and Yvette Clarke charged that the outreach page dedicated to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender entrepreneurs was taken down in January 2017, after President Trump’s inauguration.
When Dems asked SBA staff about the takedown in August they “were assured by the agency that the website was under construction with plans to reactivate the web page in the near future,” according to their letter, which was obtained by the Daily News.
“It has now been over a year since these resources were taken down. Other pages that were also under construction are already up and running,” the note states. “This is deeply troubling and renews our concern that this page’s removal may have been politically or ideologically motivated, rather than simply administrative.”
One still-active page that says “Learn about the benefits of LGBT business enterprise certification” in a white font, over an orange rectangle, doesn’t appear to present any information on the topic.
A link below the rectangle leads to another page with the words “LGBT Outreach” at the top, which also doesn’t provide any data,
Rather, text on the page advises, “SBA is currently updating programmatic information on SBA.gov. During the update, some pages are not available. The process is expected to be complete in the near future.” IT’S NO SECRET that the MTA is struggling to keep it together.
But that could soon be a thing of the past, the governor and transit brass said Wednesday, with the help of a plan to weld the rails together.
“The teeter-tottering that goes on while you’re a passenger, where the lights flicker on and off — those days are over with Continuous Welded Rail,” said Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Joe Lhota.
An electric welder, A CENTRAL Park pedicab driver dragged a Parks Department officer at least 50 feet as he tried to escape a summons Wednesday afternoon, police said.
The driver, Brent Greenberg, 52, was stopped because he was in a pedicabfree zone outside Tavern on the Green restaurant at about 12:45 p.m., cops said.
The officer, Tatiana funded by the Subway Action Plan, allows workers to double their pace to 40 miles of rail a year, MTA officials said.
The rail work will cut down on all types of disruptions in the subway, the agency says.
Where a regular rail has joints every 39 feet, causing a possible point of failure, a single piece of welded rail can run up to 400 feet.
The subway at the moment has 440 miles of track that can get welded rail, with nearly 390 miles already converted. Moye, 26, tried to give him a summons, but Greenberg bolted, tangling her radio in his wheels, sources said.
He kept going, even as Moye’s partner yelled at him to stop, police sources said. Moye was treated for cuts and bruises, authorities said.
Greenberg faces resisting arrest and other charges.