It's not unusual: NY screwing you

What's surprising about the governor getting caught with his pants down is that they've been down for so long. Of course, if Spitzer can spend his own family's money on prostitutes, what do you think he's been doing with yours? If he makes those sorts of deals with his personal finances and as a father, why do you think he will do any better with other people's money?

Spitzer's style of government is not new, and he's pretty much followed an important part of the governing style of the previous administration. New York has the most dysfunctional state government in the country (see the PDF of the Brennan report here). While Spitzer's personal foibles may not have cost the tax payers money, his failures as the leader of the state did cost real money- and real lives.

One thing Spitzer may have learned from our state government is to use shell companies. This is what happened in the disaster known as the World Trade Center clean-up. Our state government, in cooperation with our city government, showed fine partnership by hiring shell companies to hire mob-related companies to dismantle the Deutsche Bank building. The result was not only embarrassing delays, but a fire that cost the lives of two of New York's Bravest.

In the case of the Atlantic Yards, the state is using made-up community groups whose only function is sign on to the supposed "Community" "Benefits" "Agreement." These are shell organizations whose main purpose (this is my own opinion and does not represent the views of all who support 227 Abolitionist Place) is to take real money from the taxpayers and give it to a private developer.

In the case of the Downtown Brooklyn Environmental Impact Statement, the problem was a shell government. The city hired AKRF for its environmental review, and when their own experts concluded that there was powerful evidence of Underground Railroad activity on Duffield, the City simply ignored the experts. They decided to stay in their own fantasy land.

There is so much fantasy in all of this. Spitzer's sexual fantasies haven't cost the taxpayers too much money, but his administration's hiring of the John Galt Corporation did. You might think that our state government would think twice about hiring a company with no track record, especially since it was named after a fictional character thought up by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged.

I once thought that a spectacular disaster at the World Trade Center clean up site would spur New Yorkers to look more carefully at our state government. It did not. But now that all eyes are on Albany, I hope more people realize that Spitzer represents government as usual in this state.

It is time to start demanding real action in Albany. While Spitzer was off on his dalliances, he forgot to work on real reform. I would like to see our governor (whoever that is) work on eminent domain reform. Almost every other state in this country (42 out of 50, according to the Castle Coalition) has tried to limit the state's power to take property from one individual and give it to a preferred individual.

Spitzer's rule has been a huge disappointment, to put it mildly. But at least we can thank him for his novel way of bringing attention to Albany.

Firemen dying & crystal baseballs: Your tax dollars at work

It's hard to know where to start—there are just so many examples of pathetic and embarrassing abuse of the public trust by public authorities. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is always worth a few groans, and here are a couple examples from the last few days:

• A former LMDC employee was berated for talking about the safety conditions that lead up to the deadly Deutsche Bank fire. See TOWERING FEUD by the NY Post 9/27/07.


• LMDC denies ever hearing about the safety complaints, according to several articles, including Memo: Months before fatal fire, state help sought for WTC tower.


• In Firefighters Didn't Know Of Deutsche Bank "Escape Plan", Gothamist outlines how there was a plan that the LMDC had to deal with fires, but they just never bothered to make sure the Fired Department knew.
  
• The NY Times first reported on the LMDC's failure in An Escape Plan Stayed Hidden at a Fatal Fire.

But don't think the LMDC is the only agency that parties hearty on the public dime. The AP reports that Taxpayers Footing Bill For Yankees' Lavish Spending, Group Says. The Yankees deny the allegations:

“Elected officials are turning a blind eye to the fact that the Yankees seem to have unfettered access to the public trough,” Damiani said. “It goes to show how the Yankees will stop at nothing to squeeze every penny from New Yorkers for this project.”

In 2001, then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani authorized the Yankees to deduct up to $5 million a year on planning costs for the new stadium for five years for rent payments to the city, Good Jobs said.

...and the subsidies for "rent payments" went for things like crystal baseballs, according to Good Jobs New York.

So the NYC EDC's plan to destroy the Duffield Abolitionist homes to build an underground parking lot is pretty much par for the course. So is the NY State ESDC's failure to hire an ombudsman for the Atlantic Yards, despite a promise made 149 days ago.

The Atlantic Yards is the most visible fight against public authority abuse, but it is part of an even bigger problem. Are New Yorkers finally getting some guts to fight for good government? The answer is up to you, dear reader.

Government agencies & mobsters at Deutsche Bank fire

Here's a great idea: why not have an agency in charge of coordinating all the different construction activity in Downtown Manhattan? That would prevent a disaster like the Deutsche Bank fire, right?

Wrong. That agency has already been established, and it's called the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center (LMCCC). While several seasoned fire fighters have been held accountable for the failure to inspect the Deutsche Bank building, there has been little attention on the LMCCC, despite some troubling failures.

Here is how the New York Times describes some of those failures in "Questions on City’s Role in Demolition Near 9/11 Site":

As it turned out, the subcontractor hired for the demolition was an organization comprised of executives from one company without the requisite experience and two senior executives from a second company under scrutiny by city investigators, a company whose former owner twice had been convicted of federal crimes, and had been accused of ties to organized crime.

Maybe the LMCCC would be off the hook if they didn't know about any of this, but they did. According to the NY Times, Martha Stark, who served on the LMCCC committee overseeing the Deutsche Bank building, received a letter from city investigators about the executives with mob ties working on the project.

(The Times has been doing a good job reporting on this, which is admirable. One firm in questioning, Safeway Environmental Corporation, was a subcontractor used in the development of their new headquarters. Safeway, incidently, was in the news back in 2005 when a building it was demolishing for Extell collapsed on Broadway & 99th.)

The questions of lack of oversight seem to be endemic in controversial projects around the city. For instance, the NYC Economic Development Corporation faced criticism because it hired AKRF without competitive bid in its environmental study of the Underground Railroad connections on Duffield Street.

Bloomberg has been praised for punishing the experienced fire fighters who failed in their inspections of the Deutsche Bank building. But will he hold the LMCCC accountable? As WNYC reports this afternoon, his administration is refusing to answer questions about its role due to the ongoing criminal investigations.

Failure to inspect basements

Some people get punished for failing to make inspections; others get paid not to make inspections.

There can be dire consequences when the city fails its job to do environmental inspections, and Bloomberg acted quickly yesterday to relieve three senior fire officials of their posts. Their failure to inspect the Deutsche Bank basement appears to be one of the factors leading to the recent death of two fire fighters.

This is in stark contrast to AKRF, which wrote an environmental review of the Duffield Street homes. After working for more than two years and receiving a reported $500,000, AKRF failed to send an archeologist inspect the basements of the Duffield and Gold Street properties.

The consequence for this shoddy inspection process is a continuing stream of contracts with the city and state. AKRF led the environmental review of the World Trade Center, the Columbia University expansion into Harlem and the Atlantic Yards.

LMDC: Deutsche Bank fire an example of good coordination

The New York state public authorities tried to defend their actions in the wake of the deadly Deutsche Bank fire. Here's what Metro reports in "Who's to blame":

Avi Schick, chairman of the LMDC, defended his agency.

“The deconstruction plan was conceived of and approved by a variety of federal, city and state regulators,” he said. “It was not proposed by LMDC but was put together in coordination with those agencies. Those agencies were on-site every single day and every single week that work occurred. We believe that those features exceeded what would have been normally provided.” (emphasis added)

For those who are facing oversight by other projects lead by state and city agencies, that sounds pretty frightening.

One feature common by the state agencies is blaming the community. Here's a quote from Debris fell but price kept rising by Juan Gonzalez:

[LMDC spokesperson Errol] Cockfield said. "There's been a desire from the community to have this building demolished and you have to balance safety along with the need to bring the building down at an aggressive pace."

Community leaders dispute that.

They say they have always urged safety, not rapid demolition. They say LMDC and City Hall have pressed to demolish the building quickly so Ground Zero construction can get going.

"We repeatedly called for a single agency to oversee the deconstruction and environmental aspects," said Amy Rutkin, chief of staff for Rep. Jerrold Nadler. "They kept kicking the ball back and forth between agencies for years."

Some have blamed the Fire Department for the recent deaths, but not Jerome M. Hauer, director of the city's Office of Emergency Management from 1996-2000. According to the NY Times,

he said the accountability for what occurred “has to rest” with the building owner and the demolition operators, not with the Fire Department.

There are still many questions regarding the Deutsche Bank fire, and this blog takes no position on the ultimate responsibility. Nevertheless, the fire does not provide any comfort for those confronting other projects led by public authorities, like Duffield Street residents facing the NYC Economic Development Corporation.

Deutsche Bank fire: Your public authorities at work

A Google News search for "Bovis" brings up a huge number of articles about the recent deadly fire at the Deutsche Bank building at the World Trade Center. A news search for "ESDC" brings nothing, which is odd when you think about it. The New York State Economic Development Corporation is in charge of this area.

Public authorities, which include the ESDC and the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC), were created to cut through the red tape that prevents development. That's all well and good, but the case of the Deutsche Bank Fire, that manifested into a disconnected water standpipe.

Public authorities have been failing to address environmental concerns in various ways in various projects. At the proposed Atlantic Yards development, where the ESDC is nominally the lead developer, the collapse of the parapet of the Wards Bakery led to promises of an Ombudsman... which never materialized. In Harlem, a judge recently ruled that there appeared to be collusion between the ESDC, AKRF and Columbia University.

The controversy over environmental oversight in the Downtown Brooklyn redevelopment plan includes another aspect of what the state defines as "environment," namely historic resources. The experts hired by the EDC through its contractor AKRF came to the conclusion that the Duffield Street homes should be preserved, but the EDC ignored their advice.

These are just part of the problems of public authorities like the ESDC. An audit released in May 2006 by New York comptroller Alan Hevesi reported that the Corporation loses track of its subsidiaries and recommended that "significant improvements be made in ESDC’s recordkeeping for and control over subsidiary operations."

Firms like Bovis and AKRF are for-profit businesses accountable to their owners. They are taking advantage of a situation created by public authorities like the EDC and the ESDC. (AKRF has a tenuous connect to the Deutsche Bank fire, since its role was limited to leading the team that wrote the GEIS.)

Neither our mayor or nor governor seemed to be concerned about insuring that the public authorities serve the public.

The mayor and governor are supposed to serve the citizens. But if they are not doing their job, it is up to the citizens to force them to do the right thing.



It sounds idealistic to say that the citizens should really be in control, but what choice do we have after the Deutsche Bank fire? What choice do we have when the mayor wants to destroy the Duffield Abolitionist homes to build a parking lot?