RENT HIKE ENJOINED
Poor HIV and AIDS patients who live in subsidized housing won't be subject to the sharp rent increase the city and state were trying to impose — at least for now. Federal District Judge Frederic Block issued a preliminary injunction barring the rent hike, according to a brief in The New York Times. The advocacy group Housing Works had sought the injunction, and the city and state have 45 days to make their cases. Neither the state nor the city wants to take much responsbility: the city says the state ordered the change, and the state says the increase is necessary to bring the city into compliance with federal rules other localities follow. No word on what those rules are.

 
VETTING 'POLITICAL' JUDGMENTS
The Times also offers a followup (to the New York Law Journal) on the investigation by the state Commission on  Judicial Conduct into Manhattan Supreme Court Judges Michael Ambrecht and William Wetzel. (The Law Journal got a scoop when the judges tipped off the paper — start figuring the angles on that.) The question in the probe is whether Wetzel influenced Ambrecht to issue a ruling critical of Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau. The case involved then-Judge Leslie Crocker Snyder's grant of attorney's fees to the law firm that she eventually left the bench to join — before (drum roll, please) subsequently becoming Morgenthau’s opponent in the Democratic primary. Whew!

FATS FRACAS
We haven't talked about the proposed trans fat ban here (ok, so we do like the occasional medium fries), but it's getting a little hard to ignore. Under the proposal, the city's more than 24,000 restaurants would have to remove trans fat from oils, margarines, and shortening within six months. They would have 18 months to make all other items trans fat-free.The New York Sun says today that the Bloomberg administration might alter its proposal slightly, but didn't say how. Yesterday in the only public forum scheduled to discuss the planned ban, the city's Board of Health heard a lot of testimony from a brigade of dieticians, doctors, and restaurant industry leaders. But criticism of the ban was limited mostly to difficulties in implementing it, not its intent, the Sun reports.There are however, always the Libertarians. "Eliminating choice and coercing behavior is not the American way," Audrey Silk, the former Libertarian candidate for mayor who opposed the city's smoking ban in 2003 told the health board yesterday. "Our bodies aren't yet the property of the state." Libertarians are often anti-litigation, too, though in this case one imagines they might make an exception.

 
DA BUILDING CODE
The Sun also reports on another Bloomberg administration and City Council push: legislation to boost fines for violators of certain sections of the building code. Council Member Domeic Recchia Jr. suggested prison time for contractors who violate city codes.