Democrat culture of corruption

Vito's be$t buddies

By ISABEL VINCENT and MELISSA KLEIN

Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez's gal pals continue to rake in the cash at the scandal-scarred social-services agency he founded.

Christiana Fisher, the executive director of Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council and Lopez's campaign treasurer, made $607,024 in salary, benefits and bonuses in 2009, according to the agency's latest tax returns, which were released last week and obtained by The Post.

Her total compensation almost exactly equals the $607,000 in pork-barrel money the City Council allocated to the Brooklyn agency last week.

The money continues to flow despite an ongoing FBI and city Department of Investigation probes into the agency and the astronomical salaries of its execs.

Fisher earned $393,589 in salary and bonuses in 2009, up from $308,000 the year before. Her base salary of $260,000 at Ridgewood Bushwick remained the same as in 2008, but she also earned an extra $90,000 from one of the agency's unidentified related entities, the tax forms show.

Her total pay package included $213,435 in unspecified "other compensation" and retirement and health benefits.

Lopez's girlfriend, Angela Battaglia, made $267,697 in salary and bonuses as housing director of Ridgewood Bushwick, the documents show. Her total pay package came to $282,940.

Battaglia also earns $54,150 as a city planning commissioner.

Ridgewood Bushwick, which provides housing and other services to seniors and the poor, relies heavily on taxpayer cash. It took in $17 million in government grants in the year ending June 30, 2010. The city also forks over some $75 million through contracts to provide social services.

One Brooklyn community activist said the high pay for Lopez cronies deserves investigation.

"If that's not corruption, I don't know what is," he said.

A Ridgewood Bushwick lawyer refused to comment on the salaries or the tax forms.

The agency filed the forms more than a month past the IRS deadline of May 16, and it faces possible fines of $100 a day for the delay.

It also filed its annual registration with the state Attorney General's Office more than a month late. The nonprofit has still not submitted its required independent audit, according to a source familiar with the filings.

Lopez, the Brooklyn Democratic Party boss, uses Ridgewood Bushwick as his power base. The thousands of people served by the agency and its 2,000 employees are at the center of Lopez's political machine in north Brooklyn. He hosts some of its taxpayer-funded events, including a senior picnic.

The Department of Investigation found last summer that some Ridgewood board members were so clueless they didn't know what they were voting on. Investigators also discovered that the director of the Hope Gardens senior center was operating her own nonprofit out of the center.