About Jim Brennan

James F. Brennan is a candidate for the office of New York City Comptroller in the 2009 election. The incumbent, William Thompson, is term limited. As of January 2008, Mr. Brennan has raised over $400,000 from nearly 1300 individual contributors.

Jim Brennan represents the 44th Assembly District in the New York State Assembly. He is a 23-year veteran of the Assembly, has chaired three separate committees of the Assembly and has been a staunch independent reformer throughout his career.

• In its 2004 endorsements, the New York Times cited him as one of only two incumbent members of the Assembly worth returning to office.
  
• From 1995 through 2000, Jim chaired the Assembly’s Standing Committee on Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities, where he initiated the two major expansions of housing for the mentally ill, the New York New York II program and the Special Needs Housing programs of 1998 and 1999. These funded 5000 units of supportive housing.
  
• Jim is the author of a major piece of budget reform legislation, the Tax Expenditure Report. This law, passed in 1991, requires the Governor to submit to the Legislature as part of the budget an itemized accounting of tax breaks that exist in the State Tax code.
  
• There are 58 Brennan laws on the books of the State of New York; another Brennan bill, the Work and Wellness Act, which allowed the severely disabled to return to work and keep their public health insurance, passed as part of a broad 2002 Health Care package.
• Jim also authored the Security Breach Notification bill designed to help protect the public from identity theft by requiring any business or government agency whose computer data of private personal information has been breached to notify their customers of the breach.
• In 2000 Jim sought to change the leadership of the State Assembly and proposed an overhaul of the rules to create a democracy in that body. He produced the first report by any member of the Legislature, the press, or the public on the legislative leadership's designation of funding without public disclosure. Jim was removed from his committee chairmanship for these activities.
• In 2004 Jim and Speaker Silver reconciled and in 2005 Jim was asked to lead an investigation into Governor Pataki's proposal to create five casinos in the Catskills. As Chair of the Assembly Committee on Oversight, Analysis, and Investigation, Mr. Brennan conducted hearings that led Pataki to withdraw his proposal.
• In 2005, as Chair of Oversight, Jim directed an award-winning report on how the State Department of Health undermined services for the disabled who need wheelchairs and other durable medical equipment.
• In 2006 Jim was appointed Chair of the Assembly Committee on Cities and, during budget negotiations, proposed a statewide program to aid distressed cities. This was enacted at the end of the 2006 session, with the State creating a $300 million Urban Revitalization fund, called the Restoring New York Communities program.
•  full-time Assemblymember, Mr. Brennan maintains two constituent service offices. He is an attorney, a graduate of Yale University and Brooklyn Law School.