DA Candidate Florence Focuses on Small Biz W/ Forum + Tour

Andrew Rigie, Executive Director of the Hospitality Alliance; Eleazar Bueno, a small biz owner and Chair of Community Board 12; Andreas Koutsoudakis, owner of Tribeca’s Kitchen and restaurant industry lawyer

Small Business Week

New York’s 220,000 small businesses run this city but because of the coronavirus and rising rents, many of our small, storefront businesses are shuttering. According to the city comptroller, vacant commercial space has doubled over a decade, up to 11.8 million square feet in 2017. According to Send Chinatown Love, 225 out of 307 restaurants in Manhattan’s Chinatown remain open as of September 2020, and all of them face economic hardship due to decreased foot traffic. The New York City Hospitality Alliance reported that 90% of restaurants in the city couldn’t make August rent.

Diana Florence began her career as a prosecutor 25 years ago in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, focusing on domestic violence cases, then complex frauds and corruption in the Special Prosecutions Bureau and Labor Racketeering Unit, and later becoming the head of the first of its kind Construction Fraud Task Force. She won landmark convictions against companies and individuals for defrauding 9/11 charities, corruption, domestic violence, wage theft, and deadly work conditions. She has taught trial advocacy for over two decades to lawyers in the DA's Office and has lectured investigators and lawyers from around the world on topics ranging from inter-agency cooperation to prosecuting fraud, racketeering and workplace homicide.

As an ADA, Diana held powerful interests accountable by prosecuting developers and corrupt corporations for cheating workers and taxpayers. In an historic case against Harco Construction, she ultimately secured justice for the family of a 22 year-old construction worker, Carlos Moncayo, who was buried alive at work. Using the existing criminal law, Diana charged the corporations and site supervisors, who had been repeatedly warned of hazardous conditions, with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide for Moncayo’s death. As a result, she drafted legislation (A10728) named after Carlos Moncayo, known as “Carlos’ Law” that would establish higher fines for corporations for endangering workers’ lives.

Diana has made prosecuting wage theft a centerpiece of her career, notably working alongside IronWorkers Local 361 to secure $6 million in stolen wages and back-pay from AGL Industries. Diana subsequently wrote a bill (A06795) with Assemblymember Catalina Cruz (D-Queens) to reclassify wage theft as the more serious crime of larceny. Other jurisdictions— like the Pittsburgh City Council and Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner— subsequently created similar prosecution models for wage theft.

Diana has worked side-by-side with community based groups, unions, workers centers, and government agencies to create an innovative prosecution model heavily rooted in broad based participation. She is also a fluent Spanish speaker.

She has previously published opinion pieces in CNN, The New York Daily News, El Diario, AM New York, and City Limits, lending her legal expertise to current issues.

Platform

Diana Florence wants to make a new PACT (Power, Accountability, Community and Trust) with New York that puts people first. PACT prioritizes prosecuting “crimes of power,” being accountable and transparent about the decisions of the DA, and working side-by-side with community stakeholders.

As an ADA, Diana created an innovative model of collaborative prosecution known as co-enforcement. Co-enforcement is based on knowledge instead of assumptions. It relies on collaboration with community partners to determine what justice looks like which then drives the priorities of investigation and prosecution. It starts with working alongside advocates, labor unions, tenants, worker centers, elected officials, industry groups, community leaders — the very people who are affected by crimes of power to ascertain the needs and values of the community. Using co-enforcement, the Construction Fraud Task Force Diana led built a trusting relationship with the community it served and together achieved success.

Biography

Born in Manhattan, Diana is a long-time resident of Kips Bay where she lives with her husband and two children. Diana graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, receiving a BA in Art History with a concentration in Spanish as well as her law degree.