Here's a few tidbits I found:

Jerry Speyer donated $50,000; half on July 17, the other half on  October 13.

Wendy Neu, a major Democratic donor, also gave $25,000.

Peter Kalikow gave $10,000.

Donald Trump donated a total of $6,000.

Harvey Weinstein gave $5,000.

Barbara Streisand gave $1,000.

UPDATE: Michael Regan, a spokesman for News Corp. confirmed that a July 16, 2009 donation for $4,000 in Andrew Cuomo's filing is from News Corp.

The elected officials on the host committee for the event include Yvette Clarke, Jeff Aubry, Jose Peralta, Maria del Carmen Arroyo, Maria Baez, Helen Foster and Melissa Mark Viverito.

One of her strongest opponents is Adolfo Carrion, the only Latino in the race.

It’s worth noting that Arroyo, Baez and Foster are also, like Carrion, from the Bronx.

The invitation also includes a number of big real estate people who sit on Katz’s finance committee: Douglas Durst, Peter Kalikow and Richard Ravitch. Katz recently said that her connections to the real estate industry are an asset to her.

Attendees included noted real estate developer Jack Rudin, former MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow aspiring mayoral candidate, John Catsimatidis, and DC 37 union boss Lilian Roberts, and president Ed Malloy of Building and Construction Trades Council.

Vallone apparently took the opportunity to unofficially declare his candidacy for higher office.

According to an attendee, Vallone pointed out that the mayor was on the cover of Newsweek with a big article about how he’s not running for president, then declared jokingly that he was "raising money to not run for borough president."

According to a source close to Vallone, the event raised $200,000.

Then Governor Eliot Spitzer stepped in between.

When Mr. Sander was appointed executive director of the M.T.A. back in December, Mr. Spitzer threw in the title of chief executive for good measure. Mr. Sander, a former city transportation commissioner who worked tirelessly as a policy advisor for the Democratic Governor’s campaign, was named next in line for the top, if recently weakened, transit position.

The only problem was Mr. Kalikow, the white-haired real-estate scion who never seemed comfortable in the limelight and yet refused to relinquish it. He was one of those George Pataki contributor-appointees that Mr. Spitzer loved to excoriate—no, on second thought, he was the Pataki contributor-appointee that Mr. Spitzer most loved to excoriate.

It was the M.T.A., after all, that Mr. Spitzer called “the most mismanaged, least competent one out there”—even though the transit system was poised to undergo a historic expansion and was, given its age, looking better than it had in a long time.

Mr. Kalikow vowed to hang on, at first for a year or more, then until funding came through for major capital projects (which will likely take place in October), and, finally, until this spring.

It finally happened, at a place—if not exactly a time—of Mr. Kalikow’s choosing. The May 7 press conference where he announced his resignation took place at Club 101, a private club for executives on the ground floor of a building that Mr. Kalikow’s real-estate firm built, 101 Park Avenue.

Wearing his trademark pinstripes, Mr. Kalikow called it an “emotional day” and looked choked up.

“This was a tough job,” he told the dozen or so reporters. “I could actually take my jacket off and show you my bruises to prove it, some of them more painful than others.”

It’s hard to figure out why Mr. Kalikow was reluctant to leave all of that behind, except that this man, who got around in limousines and Ferraris, had worked up quite a passion for public transportation—even if he didn’t use it. His six-year tenure, the second-longest of any M.T.A. chairman, will perhaps be most remembered for an odd little strike that seemed to accomplish nothing for anybody, two sets of books, and a story that Mr. Kalikow told about his grandfather—who, as a boy in Russia in the middle of a snowstorm, went to the bathroom in his pants, only to regret it once the cold set in.

“We could pee in our pants now, roll the fare back, and everyone will feel great,” he said in front of the West Side Chamber of Commerce in 2003. “But we’re going to face it again next year.”

But also under his watch, the M.T.A. secured enough funds to get started on the Second Avenue Subway and a Long Island Rail Road tunnel to Grand Central Station; broke ground on a new transit center at Fulton Street; and put 4,400 new buses, subway cars and commuter rail cars into service.

Mr. Sander will not be taking over Mr. Kalikow’s title, even though he has taken on many of the chairman’s duties. When Mr. Sander was appointed chief executive back in December, Mr. Spitzer’s spokeswoman, Christine Anderson, told The Observer in an e-mail, “It is believed that he will take over when [Mr.] Kalikow steps down.”

At the time, the Governor-elect seemed willing, even eager, to try to amend a fairly new law—in place for less than a year—that, in deference to the federal Sarbanes-Oxley legislation and the clamor for accountable leadership, wrested executive powers from the M.T.A. chairman and gave them to the executive director instead.

But the idea of changing that law and reviving the model of leadership exemplified by Richard Ravitch, a near-legendary up-to-the-elbows type of “executive chairman” from the early 1980’s, proved daunting and, perhaps, completely unnecessary.

“As we’ve gotten operational experience, and the new team has taken over at the M.T.A.,” Ms. Anderson told The Observer on the afternoon of May 7, “there was a strong sense that the set-up was actually for the better, that it was better to have someone as chairman to provide the oversight necessary. We got in and realized this was a positive step, and chose to move forward and not try for changes.”

For one, trying for the changes would have required tussling with the author of the law, Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, who, while a Democrat, has proved time and again his willingness to criticize the Governor. (In an interview, however, Mr. Brodsky said he was still undecided on the chairman/chief executive distinction.)

For another, changing the law would have meant that the Sheriff of Wall Street would be violating one of the sacred principles of post-Enron governance: that a chief executive should report to a board of directors of which he is not a voting member, and the chairman of which should provide independent oversight.

And why exactly pick another fight in Albany? Because the 1980’s were such a heyday for the M.T.A.? When the lights in the subway cars would go out because some crackhead had stripped out the copper wire?

Mr. Ravitch, who is now in private practice as a lawyer, said he still believes that it is best to have one single chief executive and chairman, because the M.T.A. is “sui generis” as an institution.

“The danger is that there couldn’t be a total meeting of the minds if there are two different people, although the current executive director is smart enough to deal with that situation,” Mr. Ravitch told The Observer. “You want the political heft of a chairman who has everybody else reporting to him, and who has the confidence of his board in order to get things done.”

In the time leading up to his appointment, Mr. Sander did pretty much everything that any outsider could do to get the 2005 $2.9 billion transportation-bond act passed. He caught hold of Mr. Spitzer’s ear often and held onto it throughout his campaign, becoming his chief transportation advisor and speechwriter.

And yet, Mr. Sander said that he wasn’t disappointed by the Spitzer administration’s decision to pass him over for chairman.

“We discovered that both models are viable—the Ravitch and the post-2005 model—but that the previous model of a part-time C.E.O. had some issues with it,” he said. “It’s possible that we could have gone to the Legislature to amend it, but we didn’t.”

The distinctions among a chairman and chief executive and executive director, after all, are nebulous ones, and depend as much on the personalities involved as on the job descriptions. Once he came into office in January, Mr. Sander began to present himself as the public face of the agency, even if the public thought that Mr. Kalikow was still in charge.

After board meetings, Mr. Sander, who clearly enjoys the chance to discuss policy options and r
attle off names and numbers, would stand alongside Mr. Kalikow and answer questions from the reporters—something that the previous executive director, Katherine Lapp, rarely did.

At the May 7 announcement, Mr. Sander took to the podium and declared, “This is Peter’s day,” refusing to go into much detail about off-topic questions like the possibility of fare hikes. But, once off the podium, he took another five minutes of questions, diving into the pros and cons of congestion pricing. (“Some areas need to be clarified,” he said, including how to pay for operating all those extra buses that the Mayor is suggesting that the M.T.A. run.)

“Lee is the principal having negotiations with [Deputy Mayor] Dan Doctoroff, [Port Authority executive director] Tony Shorris,” said Kathryn S. Wylde, the president and chief executive of the Partnership for New York City, an organization of business executives. “He’s dealing directly with members of Congress, the federal Department of Transportation, and the primary interface of those conversations used to be [Mr.] Kalikow.”

As for Mr. Kalikow’s nominal replacement, the Spitzer administration says the process will take several weeks, and that the Governor has just begun to consider candidates. A tolerance for getting bruised is apprently a must.

Peter  Kalikow’s Monday morning announcement that he would step down after six years as  chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority surprised no one, not  least of whom Mr. Kalikow himself.
 
“Make no mistake  about it, this was a tough job,” Mr. Kalikow said at the resignation  announcement, held in 101 Park  Avenue, a building his family owns. “I could actually  take my jacket off and show you my bruises to prove it, some of them more  painful than others.”
 
In other  words, he was ready to go. 
 
But,  eminently, Governor Eliot Spitzer was ready to have him go. Before he was even  elected governor in November, Mr. Spitzer was talking about his intention to  ease out Mr. Kalikow, whom Governor George Pataki appointed to a fresh six-year  term just last year. 
 
Mr.  Kalikow, for his part, responded to the incoming Governor’s vows by saying he’d  stick around as chairman for one or two years more. Then, he said he’d stay on  until projects he wanted had gotten off the ground; and then he said he’d resign  sometime this spring. 
 
Well, it’s  spring, consistently warm, finally, in New York City. And the controversies of his  tenure have caught up to Mr. Kalikow, a real-estate developer and a former owner  of The New York Post—the two-day transit strike last winter; accusations over  two sets of books for the M.T.A.; politically motivated land sales; and so on.  This was not the sort of resume for a major player in the Spitzer  administration.
 
Who,  though, will play Mr. Kalikow’s part now as  chairman?
 
It can’t be  Lee Sander, the M.T.A.’s recently minted executive director and chief executive.  The Governor has ruled out the chairmanship for Mr. Sander, an ardent supporter  of the Second Avenue Subway who wears his M.T.A. identification badge even at  his desk in the authority’s Madison Avenue headquarters. Mr. Spitzer, during his  transition to Governor, had indicated Mr. Sander was in line for the  chairmanship.
 
To give him  a third title, however, would require a legislative change that would undo a new  law prohibiting the chairman and the executive of the agency to be the same  person—a law formed from the belief by corporate governance experts that a board  should be truly independent and supervise the agency’s top staff. The Governor  determined that making that change would be too difficult, a state official told  The Observer.
 
Finding Mr.  Kalikow’s successor, then, will likely take another several weeks. The outgoing  chairman will stay on the job until then, a job he described yesterday as  “grueling… the hardest work I have ever done.” 
 
 

From Russianoff's goodbye statement:

It is a wonder Peter Kalikow held on as long as he did as chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, because, in announcing his resignation today, he certainly didn’t sound like he had had a good time:

At another point, he called being chairman “a satisfying but grueling job, but also the hardest work I have ever done." 

Oh, sure, he said he was proud of many things, but it's easy, as work on the Second Avenue Subway is under way, to forget all the things that didn’t go well on his watch: a two-day transit-workers strike, accusations over two sets of books, politically motivated land sales, and so on.

Today is the day Governor Spitzer has been waiting for: Peter Kalikow plans to announce that he is resigning as chairman of the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, according to a state official.

It was back in June when Mr. Spitzer, at the time simply the presumptive governor, vowed to replace Mr. Kalikow, a real-estate developer and former owner of the New York Post, even though he really would not have the power to do so. Mr. Kalikow, just reappointed to a six-year term, promised to stay on—at first he said for one or two years or more, then he said until projects he wanted had gotten off the ground, and then he said sometime in the spring.

Which brings us to today, it being early May, three weeks after the Second Avenue Subway groundbreaking. Mr. Kalikow will continue as chairman until Mr. Spitzer names a replacement, which is expected to take another several weeks, according to the state official. The Governor has ruled out giving the post to Elliot (Lee) Sander, who was installed as executive director and chief executive at the beginning of the year, and who Mr. Spitzer’s office had indicated, during the transition, was in line for the chairman position.

The announcement will take place at 10 a.m., in 101 Park Avenue, a building that Mr. Kalikow’s family owns, and which is located just two blocks south of Grand Central Station.

Today is the day Governor Spitzer has been waiting for: Peter Kalikow plans to announce that he is resigning as chairman of the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, according to a state official.

It was back in June when Mr. Spitzer, at the time simply the presumptive governor, vowed to replace Mr. Kalikow, a real-estate developer and former owner of the New York Post, even though he really would not have the power to do so. Mr. Kalikow, just reappointed to a six-year term, promised to stay on—at first he said for one or two years or more, then he said until projects he wanted had gotten off the ground, and then he said sometime in the spring.

Which brings us to today, it being early May, three weeks after the Second Avenue Subway groundbreaking. Mr. Kalikow will continue as chairman until Mr. Spitzer names a replacement, which is expected to take another several weeks, according to the state official. The Governor has ruled out giving the post to Elliot (Lee) Sander, who was installed as executive director and chief executive at the beginning of the year, and who Mr. Spitzer’s office had indicated, during the transition, was in line for the chairman position.

The announcement will take place at 10 a.m., in 101 Park Avenue, a building that Mr. Kalikow’s family owns, and which is located just two blocks south of Grand Central Station.

Elliot (Lee) Sander, Governor Eliot Spitzer’s pick to lead the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, had been advocating for the subway line from outside of government for 10 years before assuming his present post in January. Now, with more than 40 percent of the funds committed and another 35 percent on the way, Mr. Sander says that the subway—or at least the first 33-block leg of it—has no choice but to happen.

But this $3.8 billion first segment of the train line, which will run from 96th Street south to 63rd Street and which should be finished in 2013, is competing against numerous other transportation priorities, each of which carries a price tag in the billions of dollars.

“Given the roughly billion dollars we need, it certainly will be a challenge to find that money, particularly while maintaining our normal state of good repairs,” Mr. Sander told The Observer. “But having attempted to do the project twice, having part of the tunnel built, having three-quarters of the money done—basically, for the fully funded grant agreement that we signed with the federal government—we are pretty much committed for coming up with the matching funds. While I think it still will not be easy, I think it’s very doable, and I think it will get done.”

THE IDEA TO DRAW A PARALLEL route to supplement the Lexington Avenue line was first proposed in 1929 and then again in the 1970’s, and both times fell victim to budget crises.

In the mid-1990’s, as ridership reached a breaking point on the East Side, the idea again picked up momentum among urban planners and the rank-and-file M.T.A. bureaucracy. In 1996, Mr. Sander, who was leaving his post as city transportation commissioner and retreating to the private sector, was a skeptic of the project at the time.

“This has been done before and abandoned,” Mr. Sander, 50, recalled himself thinking at the time. “Initially, when you look at it, it doesn’t seem like it is opening up new territory. To really appreciate the importance of Second Avenue, you have to look a little past the surface. And certainly the argument of decongesting the Lexington line is important, but it goes beyond that in terms of the need to provide the capacity to get more people into a central business district.”

It was Robert Yaro, the president of the Regional Plan Association, who changed Mr. Sander’s mind. And as Mr. Sander went on to hold positions simultaneously at New York University and DMJM Harris, a major engineering firm, he and Mr. Yaro became two of the subway line’s biggest advocates.

More than that, they founded the Empire State Transportation Alliance, a consortium that was able to pair transit advocates who thought a new subway made for good policy with the people who would benefit financially from building it: unions and contractors.

That combination created a potent, well-connected lobbying force to steer public funds to the subway, including $450 million from a state bond act that was passed in 2005.

That money, along with other state funds, will cover $1.7 billion of the first segment’s cost. Another $1.3 billion from the federal government is widely expected to be committed this year. But the source of about another $850 million in local funds is much less certain. People have not even begun talking about how to finance the rest of the line, which will ultimately stretch from lower Manhattan to East Harlem and is expected to cost billions more.

Meanwhile, Mr. Sander has yet to convince everyone of the value of the Second Avenue line. The Partnership for New York City, a group of business executives, published a study four years ago that, while not opposing the new subway, found that other projects, including a $6 billion rail link from lower Manhattan to Kennedy Airport, or the $2.1 billion No. 7 subway extension, would bring greater economic development.

“All of these projects are competing for limited funding,” Kathryn Wylde, the partnership’s president, told The Observer. “From an economic-development standpoint, because the East Side is fully developed, the Second Avenue subway did not score particularly high with our metrics. Judging from the point of view of what a transportation improvement adds to the convenience and comfort of riders, in that it supplements a heavily utilized system, it might make sense.”

THE SON OF GERMAN JEWISH EXILES who fled the Nazis, Mr. Sander prides himself on leading by example. He rides the Long Island Rail Road in to work every morning from his home in Douglaston, Queens, and takes buses and subways “80 percent of the time” to get to meetings. Though he is one of the state’s highest-paid workers, earning $340,000 a year in total compensation, Mr. Sander introduces himself to subway workers as he walks through stations and wears a necklace with his ID card even when sitting in his office. Moreover, that office, at the M.T.A’s Madison Avenue headquarters, is nothing special: The predominant color is burgundy, like the vests that subway-station workers wear.

A graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Mr. Sander had no particular interest in transportation until he got his first job in the field as deputy director of the city’s parking division in the 1980’s. From there, he went on to run the Manhattan bus system, became the transit director for the state transportation department and eventually was appointed to be Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s transportation commissioner.

Eventually—maybe very soon—Mr. Sander is expected to replace Peter Kalikow, the M.T.A. chairman who was appointed by Governor George Pataki, and to hold three M.T.A. positions at once: chairman, chief executive and executive director. Although Governor Spitzer has volubly signaled his desire to replace Mr. Kalikow, the real-estate executive and former owner of the New York Post has said that he would stay on until he saw the future of the Second Avenue subway secure. When asked whether that would be shortly after Thursday’s groundbreaking, Mr. Kalikow told The Observer this week that it would be “in the near future.”

The two men, Mr. Sander said, “had a really good transition,” and they both compliment each other in the way that people competing for ownership of a project do. (Mr. Sander: “Peter has been an integral part of that team.”) While Mr. Sander campaigned with his alliance of unions, contractors and planners, Mr. Kalikow worked the federal angle, twice bringing Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, then-chairman of the transportation appropriations subcommittee, up to New York to show him how the Lexington Avenue line looked during rush hour.

“The most important thing we did was, we would bring down a group to Washington, and Lee was great at that,” Mr. Kalikow said. “He held that group together.”

Last month, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, who will be one of the eight or nine officials at Thursday’s groundbreaking, issued what sounded like a warning to Mr. Sander and others who may be getting a little too giddy about the new subway line.

“We need to recognize that there are a lot of priorities to maintain the system, to build the system, and we believe that we need to build it beyond what we are planning today,” he told several hundred transportation planners at a meeting of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council. “But the money has to come from somewhere. If, in fact, we don’t know where it is going to come from, it’s a pretty good indication that we may not end up with what we want.”

Mr. Doctoroff later told The Observer that he supports the Second Avenue subway but wanted to encourage people to think about “innovative” revenue sources so that all the region’s transportation projects get done. He pointed to his own plan to extend the No. 7 line with revenues raised from tax payments by developers now that Hudson Yards has been rezoned to accommodate super-large office towers.

“I was always positive about the Second Avenue subway, but I admit I was a victim of that competition for funding,” Mr. Doctoroff said. “And everybody has been. Everybody has their own favorite project—but that doesn’t mean that many of these projects aren’t critical for the future of the city of New York.”

The Citizens Budget Commission, a business-backed fiscal-watchdog group, has suggested that the M.T.A. fund capital projects through a congestion-pricing system, which would impose charges on cars driven into central Manhattan via tunnels or bridges or from above 59th Street.

“I think Lee is a very dedicated and hard- working guy, and he is trying to figure out the best way to do everything,” said Charles Brecher, the executive vice president of the commission. “But you focus on getting money for getting new things started, and look at what happens to existing things.”

MR. SANDER AND MR. DOCTOROFF HAVE MET repeatedly since January, and both say that each has warmed to the other’s project. But Mr. Sander has objected to a provision he inherited from the Pataki administration that holds the M.T.A. responsible for cost overruns to the No. 7 extension.

“I have not changed my position—nor has Dan—about who does what if there are cost overruns,” Mr. Sander said. “But we are both in full agreement that it is not prudent to go there until we see where the bids are.”

Mr. Sander added that he is considering various funding mechanisms to raise money for completing the subway, but he wouldn’t get into specifics. He also said that the M.T.A.’s first priority would continue to be maintaining the current level of service.

Mr. Sander, however, believes that the Nos. 4, 5 and 6 subway lines are so crowded that the congestion will soon limit—if it hasn’t already—the number of workers and customers who can travel into midtown. Plus, he said, the Sept. 11 attacks taught the value of having more than one way to get around the city.

“Every time I go down to 42nd Street and Lexington and I see the hordes of people, I say to myself, ‘How can one possibly question not having a Second Avenue subway?’” he said. “At the end of the day, as I looked at this city and the region, I just have felt in my gut—and I know I am not alone with this—that the city will not be able to compete with London, Shanghai, or handle another million people if we did not do Second Avenue as well as some other improvements. And, in my view, Second Avenue is the most important of those.”