Do Conflicts of Interest Steer the New York City Planning Commission? The Answer Is “Yes” When It Comes To Selling/Shrinking Public libraries (Unless You Don’t Want to Call Them “Conflicts of Interest”)- Implication For Protecting The Public

Over 2,000 completed testimony forms opposing sale and shrinkage of the library and collected in just over two weeks

On September 22, 2015 the City Planning Commission was taking oral testimony about whether to approve a proposal to sell very cheaply Brooklyn’s second largest central destination library, located in Downtown Brooklyn, the recently expanded and fully upgraded Brooklyn Heights Library.  Citizens Defending Libraries (of which I am a co-founder) delivered over 2,000 completed testimony forms collected in just over two weeks at the end of the summer opposing the sale and drastic shrinkage of the library. Confronted with twenty-two reasons not to sell the library, most members of the public submitting the testimony cited the more than half of those reasons not to sell the library, the majority citing all of them. . . . . .   

Notwithstanding, on November 2, 2015, ten City Planning Commissioners voted unanimously to sell and drastically shrink the library, pulling in very little money for the city in return for that sale.

Click to enlarge: Twenty-two reasons that most of the more than 2,000 people delivering testimony against the library sale thought were good reasond NOT to sell the library

What explains why not one of these commissioners sided with the express, nearly universal sentiment on the part of the public?

The New York City Planning Commission at the September 22, 2015 hearing

The lock-step lineup of commissioners also voted 180 degrees contrary to the recommendation Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams made against selling and shrinking the library.  Moreover, the commissioners knew that Citizens Defending Libraries also has, with its two petitions, well over 25,000 signature opposing such sale, shrinkage and underfunding of libraries.  The commissioners rejected and failed to take to heart the common sense, some would say conservatively-based advice of Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute, who directed an appeal to them in her New York Post column before their decision about how we are depriving “future generations” : NY libraries shouldn't be selling land - especially to build `affordable housing', By Nicole Gelinas, October 18, 2015.- See also her radio segment on the subject.

About the only conceivable explanation for the commissioners being so out-of-sync is that, pretty much across the board, the City Planning Commissioners have interests very different from the rest of the public’s. . .

. . . Two commissioners currently in office actually didn’t vote (there are twelve commissioners now holding office): The two were recused from the vote because they were acknowledged to be directly involved in the proposed library sale and shrinkage under consideration.

One commissioner recused was, Joseph Douek.  He is one of the trustees of the Brooklyn Public Library, one of the co-applicants proposing to convert the library into a real estate deal and also was on the board of another co-applicant, the NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC), while the proposed sell-off was formulated.

The other commissioner recused was Michelle de la Uz.  Her position on the commission is as an appointee of the Public Advocate (appointed by de Blasio when he held the position). The Public Advocate's job is to be an elected watchdog for the public interest.  In another capacity Ms. de la Uz heads the Fifth Avenue Committee in which role Ms. de la Uz has already been advocating for the sale and shrinkage of this library and also pursuing a number of other Brooklyn Public Library real estate deals like Sunset Park, Clinton Hill (requires accompanying upzoning), Red Hook and finally turning the Sunset Park Library into a multi-use development.  Supposedly Commissioner de la Uz’s Sunset Park Library   redevelopment will be moved to the head of the list for city funding if the Brooklyn Heights Library is sold.

But what of the other ten commissioners who did vote?  Whatever causes their point of view to diverge so significantly from what the public wants, they say it is not a conflict of interest and they say there was no similar need for any other of them to to similarly recuse themselves.  We know this because Citizens Defending Libraries raised the issue of the likely need of seven more commissioners to recuse themselves, noting how those seven commissioners were respectively, in various ways, involved professionally with businesses, entities, and individuals in selling off the libraries.

CPC Chair Carl Weisbrod

Firmly rejecting the notion that any other commissioner might have to recuse themselves by reason of a conflict of interest the commission’s Chair Carl Weisbrod observed of the various professional entanglements (refereed to by him as their “essential . . . broad exposure to the business realms and civic realms of city life”) we “clearly would not want a commission of cloistered monks.”

Whether the commissioners have been living like “cloistered monks” or not, the question is whether the vote of all ten of the commissioners, each and every one of them under the circumstances and taking their associations into account, could be interpreted as independently exercised votes of conscience rather than reflecting a desire to please those in the real estate industry.

Having conflicts of interest is inherently awkward, but having a conflict of interest doesn’t make you a bad person.  What makes someone a bad person is having a conflict of interest and letting that conflict of interest determine an outcome.  A shade of nuance over from this is having a conflict of interest and, because you believe that you can still exercise your best judgement, voting or exercising discretion in a position of trust despite that conflict.  If you then vote in accordance with how that conflict might sway you (rather than the reverse) even if you think you are exercising your best judgment, you then have an appearance of impropriety, difficult to explain away.

If your standard is that you should avoid the appearance of improprieties (and that’s the standard most would advise) and you have many conflicts that can create such appearances then you may not be a bad person, but the question is whether you are holding a position it is not good for you to hold, whether it would be better for another, less conflicted person, to hold that position instead. . .

. . . With the world of New York real estate (especially the huge projects and major decisions regularly coming before City Planning) being such a small world of big monopolies, mostly a few, often family-based organizations, it is not surprising that commissioners who are `broadly’ involved in that world and not living like “cloistered monks” would face overlaps of involvement worth looking at.

Along these lines, the Citizens Defending Libraries press release announcing that it was raising the conflicts of interest issue noted:

The perhaps startling number of commissioners asked to recuse themselves can be accounted for by a number of things deserving public attention: Because so many of the New York City Planning Commission commissioners are deeply enmeshed in their own private real estate careers, the ubiquity of Forest City Ratner as a developer, and lastly because all of New York City's many libraries have now become an attractive target for transformation into real estate deals.

The reference to Forest City Ratner is because four of the commissioners had identifiable business interactions with Forest City Ratner and the commissioners were voting to approve the amendment of an agreement with Forest City Ratner (incidentally allowing for the wiping out of a public park and open space with many trees) whereby the transfer development rights could transferred through Forest City Ratner’s property.

Aside from the recused commissioners de la Uz and Douek, three other of the commissioners had connections to library sale transactions, one of them being Chair Weisbrod because of the involvement of the Episcopal Diocese of New York in real estate matters relating to the sale of New York City Libraries.

Commissioner Cheryl Cohen Effron, a particularly interesting case when it comes to conflicts of interest and selling off libraries

When it come to selling libraries Commissioner Cheryl Cohen Effron was a particularly interesting case because she (and I am stealing language liberally from the press release) has multiple relationships with many of the people involved in promoting the sale of New York City libraries.  That includes working directly with Linda Johnson, president of the BPL, one of the co-applicants to sell and shrink the library.  It also includes being on the board of the Revson Foundation formulating policy with Sharon Greenberger, the former Chief of Staff to Daniel Doctoroff, Deputy Mayor for Development for the Bloomberg administration who as a BPL trustee worked with Janet Offensend to structure this and other library sale transactions.  Her involvement with promoting the sale and shrinkage of libraries in a surprising variety and number of ways is extensively set forth in this open letter to her from Citizens Defending Libraries before the commission's vote: Friday, October 30, 2015, Open Letter To NYC Planning Commissioner Cheryl Cohen Effron Respecting Her Vote About Selling & Shrinking the Brooklyn Heights Library, Other Libraries The Revson Foundation, Center for an Urban Future, And More 

Among other things, the Revson Foundation granted money to the Sunset Park Library real estate transaction tied in with this one, a reason Commissioner de la Uz has already recused.  The Revson Foundation has also given money to a number of other organizations promoting NYC library sales, including the Center for an Urban Future whose representatives testified more than once during these proceedings that the Brooklyn Heights Library (and others) should be sold based on reports the center did funded by the Revson Foundation.  Effron has been simultaneously involved on the "Benefit Committees" for Center for an Urban Future galas (for at least two years) working with David Offensend who, as COO of the NYPL sold the Donnell Library while his wife Janet was involved as BPL trustee structuring the nearly identical proposed Brooklyn Heights Library sale.

On left the David Offensend deal, the luxury tower replacing the  Donnell library. On right, the Janet Offensend deal, a luxury tower to replace the Brooklyn Heights Library replicating the Donnell deal.

The debacle of selling the Donnell Library, still infamous, was alluded to several times by the commissioners during the hearing as a generally acknowledged mistake (although the Revson funded Center For An Urban Future endorses it as model).  We have now passed the 8th anniversary of its sudden, secretive sale: The luxury hotel, condominium tower and restaurants the lucky developers to whom the property was handed got to build were up and running last March, but the tiny, underground, shrunken mostly bookless library to `replace’ the once grand Donnell is still nowhere in sight.

David Offensend was also working to sell the Mid-Manhattan Library and Science, Industry and Business Library as part of the Central Library Plan.  That’s the same plan predicated on removing 3 million books from the research stacks of the 42nd Street Central Reference Library and sending them to New Jersey, something hurriedly done before Bloomberg left office so that we are still trying get them brought back.

Commissioner Effron was not recused from the vote and voted just the way one would expect her to given all these previous efforts   Explanations for why none of the commissioners, including Commissioner Effron, recused themselves were offered in general terms so pinpointing what exact reasoning applied to each respective commissioner is difficult.  From what was offered it seems that, in the case the of Ms. Effron, the idea seemed to be that she didn’t have a conflict of interest because Sharon Greenberger, working with her the board of the Revson Foundation to set policy and provide funds to organizations promoting library sales, including the Center For an Urban Future, and former hedge funder David Offensend, working with her on the fund-raising galas for the Center For an Urban Future, were considered just “acquaintances.”  Chair Weisbrod suggested that to “just know” someone or have inconsequential dealings with them was not a concern. The Commission Counsel, Anita Laremont, opined for the board that “incidental business relationships” don’t create conflicts while Weisbrod similarly said that just to have “dealings with” someone doesn’t create a conflict.

What was perhaps intended by Chair Weisbrod to be the coup-de-grace in dismissing any idea that Ms. Effron could have a conflict of interest was that her long record of involvement with those pushing for these library transactions together with any of Commissioner Effron’s own committed involvements in promoting such library sales and shrinkage as Donnell, the Brooklyn Heights Library and the NYPL Central Library Plan, were “charitable.”  Mr. Weisbrod, reading from his prepared statement, referred to board member involvement in “charitable efforts to assist libraries.”

The Revson Foundation is a charity.  The Center for Urban Future is non-profit.  Spaceworks, receiving funding from Revson with a principle purpose (albeit with a real estate oriented bent) of shrinking and privatizing NYC public library space as “underutilized” is technically non-profit, Urban Librarians Unite, advocating for library sales is a non-profit and receiving funds from Revson is a non-profit.

Ms. Effron “has served on more than twenty boards”- That’s from Ms. Effron’s bio on the website of the Municipal Art Society introducing her as “as a New York-based real estate developer specializing in the revitalization of warehouses into multi-tenant manufacturing centers” from when she was a speaker at a “summit” in 2011.

Although BPL president Linda Johnson, who when she arrived at the BPL in 2010, the year before, told her board that the real estate plans were her priority, was also a speaker at the summit that should not be held against Ms. Effron because the speakers in 2011 were many and far ranging. Nonetheless, the Municipal Art Society has also been devoting it resources to the promotion of this and other library sales.  Worse, it stands as a prime example of how a charitable organization’s charted course can be commandeered and reversed.  As Noticing New York has covered before, the Municipal Art Society, once a bulwark for the public interest has started backing developments it once helped direct excoriating criticism at, handing out two awards for Ratner’s Atlantic Yards (once the “poster child” for bad development) and an award to the man who was viewed as having bollixed it up, Sharon Greenberger’s former boss and Bloomberg Deputy Mayor for Development, Daniel Doctoroff.

That a once powerful organization that could be depended upon to critique the excesses of the real estate industry has now, instead, been moved into the category of cheerleader (only occasional deference to its ostensible purposes still paid) must be extremely valuable to the real estate industry, “Better than money in the bank” to use an expression.

Sounds like a joke, but true story-  Two hedgefunders sit in a Mid-town Manhattan Starbucks.  “So what’s up?” says the first.  “I don’t know,” says the second sounding somewhat put upon, “They’re wanting us now all to get on the boards of 501(c)(3)s.”  

Why when you look at the LinkedIn profile for a young ambitions professional, a salesman/consultant/PR type always playing the angles, do you see the vaguely expressed objective of “getting on the board of a charity”?  Just any kind of “charity”?

With the percentage of nonprofit board members coming from the finance industry reportedly doubling since 1989, the increasing dominance of Wall Street financiers on charitable boards is raising concerns about how those institutions set their goals.

Charities should not always be presumed to be doing good in this world.  Forest City Ratner created “charities,” non-profits to promote Forest City Ratner's very much for-profit Atlantic Yards project.  With financial assists Ratner also induced existing charities to veer into the course of supporting his project, putting them at odds with the broader community opposition that soon arose.  Then Ratner essentially used one of the non-profits he created to run a candidate (Delia Hunley-Adossa) for City Council against Tish James, the City Council Member who was leading strong opposition to his mega-monopoly project.

Charities should not always be presumed to be doing good in this world, but the presumption that they are doing good can be like putting on a suit of armor for those from the business world who have other motivations.

In a May 30, 2015 New York Times Sunday Review Op-Ed, "Who Will Watch the Charities?," by David Callahan, founder and editor of Inside Philanthropy, says "(W)e should end the charade that all philanthropy is somehow charitable," and gives multiple examples of why.

There are, of course, requirements under state law that the purposes of charities be truly charitable.  There are levels of regulation under the federal tax code intended to enforce concepts along those lines which the IRS is supposed to enforce.  State law is most often supposed to be enforced by the State Attorney General, (currently in New York State: Eric Schneiderman) but that is a political position, subject to the same sway of big money as may subvert the purposes of charities.  In all, there is much deference paid to the judgement of the supposedly charitable boards even when the decisions they make are suspect or bad.

Whether conclusive or not, that activities are denoted as “charitable” goes a long way to negate an inference of “financial gain” being sought.  The City Planning Commission concluded that, apparently largely because they were describing them under the rubric of  “charitable,” Commissioner Effron’s deep and repeated involvements with those shrinking libraries were not conflicts because, as such, she would not be considered to be using “her position to obtain a financial gain, contract, privilege or other private or personal advantage, direct or indirect for . .  herself or for any person or firm with whom he or her is associated.”

In fact, in presenting how involved Commission Effron has been with promotion of library real estate deals Citizens Defending Libraries did not trace through any of her involvements to “financial gain” or attempt to say specifically whether she was receiving other “private or personal advantage, direct or indirect for . .  herself or for any person or firm with whom he or her is associated.”

The Effrons described by Muckety as a “power couple,”

Commissioner Effron is described by Muckety as one half of a “power couple,” her husband being Blair W. Effron, co-founder of New York based Centerview Partners, an investment banking firm based in New York City with offices in London, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

According to its website since its 2006 founding Centerview has:

advised on over $1 trillion of transactions. Our clients include over 20% of the 50 largest companies in the world by market capitalization, and we have been involved in many of the largest and most complex corporate situations and transactions.

The subject of conflicts of interest can be confusing and baffling in the challenge of its analysis, especially when one realizes that conflicts don’t necessarily have to manifest themselves in bilateral quid pro quos.

For instance, conflict can involve three-way exchanges.  When former Connecticut Governor John G. Rowland resigned in scandal one of the things that brought him down was the purchase from the governor of a “pied-à-terre” condominium unit at an apparently inflated price by an antiques dealer.  The antiques dealer, a Mr. Pratt, didn’t have any business dealings with Governor Roland and wasn’t trying to get any benefits for himself, but “Mr. Pratt's frequent business partner and closest friend” was Robert V. Matthews, whose companies “received $8.7 million in rent and $4.8 million in loans and loan guarantees during Mr. Rowland's tenure.”

Another example of how confusing things can be: Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, who (together with others such as Zephyr Teachout) writes about the problem of what money in politics buys at the expense of public good, has been making it clear that the corruption of money in politics should not be considered just the kind of particularized quid pro quos that the Roberts Supreme Court is trying to narrow things down to “a contribution” to a government official or candidate “in exchange for his agreeing to do a particular act within his official duties.”  It is instead a more systemic problem involving generalized understandings about how the interests of wealthy players will be served ahead of those of the general public.

This gets into questions of what the law is, or may be interpreted to be, versus what it should.be. . . .  Or as the refrain goes: “The crime is what’s actually legal!”  (At least when certain people are writing the rules.)

Thus part of the defense being mounted for former NYS Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver against his criminal prosecution for corruption is that while there may be more or less broad belief on the part of the public that Albany is corrupt, and while what goes on there, even exactly what Silver was doing may make people “uncomfortable” it is not against the law because Silver successfully side-stepped leaving evidence of a technical ”quid pro quo.”

In his opening statements in Silver's criminal trial Silver’s defense attorney Steven Molo said of Silver and his the huge payments he was taking as alleged kickbacks (per the Observer):

. .  the government simply disapproved of the entirely legal fact that Mr. Silver and other state lawmakers can hold outside employment and, instead of trying to change such laws—which he said will present “inherent conflicts of interest”—the government was “leveling false criminal charges against one of the senior legislative officers, senior government officials in this state.”

 “It makes some people uncomfortable, but that is the system New York State has chosen, and it is not a crime,” Mr. Molo said. “The prosecutors are trying to make it a crime, but it’s not.”

A New York Post editorial chose to quote Mr. Molo on another aspect of the defense, everybody does it:

"It's impossible, absolutely impossible," argued defense lawyer Steven Molo, "for a member of the Assembly to .?.?. do the job that a person in the Assembly does and not have some sort of conflict of interest.
   
"That may make you uncomfortable," he added, "but that is the system New York has chosen, and it is not a crime."

That’s not exactly a you can’t be a “cloistered monk” defense, but it has an echo of it.

It’s worth remembering that Sheldon Silver, and similarly charged Republican Senate leader Dean Skelos also, may not be convicted.

The key to what’s actually kosher, or what ought to be, is what Sheldon Silver sought to conceal.  So, last Monday, testimony was taken from a staff member on the Assembly Ways and Means Committee about how budget reports were adjusted to conceal Speaker Silver’s involvement with “discretionary funding that Sheldon Silver had allocated to items of his own choosing.” 

It is worth noting that during the oral testimony hearing about the library sale, Commissioner Effron was conspicuous in her non-disclosure of her relationship with the Center for an Urban Future when eliciting testimony from its representative.

The possibility of conflicts on the part of the other City Planning Directors don’t involve charities.  Dismissing the possibility of their importance, Chairman Weisbrod said that they in some cases involved  “really ancient dealings.”  CPC Council Anita Laremont stated “Past business relationship is irrelevant. . . . Acquaintances, past business dealing, or incidental business relationships do not meet [the definition of conflict of interest].”

Not much of what was raised for the commission to consider about conflict of interest was all that “ancient,” except for one past involvement of Chair Weisbrod himself: Chair Weisbrod was the former head of the NYC Economic Development Corporation when the Ratner agreement about development of the property, then sought to be amended, was put in place for the adjacent Ratner building completed in 1986.  As for the real estate deals involving the Episcopal Diocese of New York and its pension funds purchase of a portion of the NYPL’s SIBL at 34th Street, the deal's inception looks like it goes back to 2007, but in 2012 there was a significant transfer of real estate, followed with a number of other transactions, some quite recent, and it looks quite likely that negotiations still continue respecting future possibilities.

While certain dealings could maybe be characterized as "ancient" the conflicts of interest law sometimes has a long memory with a “lifetime bar” (albeit narrowly construed) applying to city officials and employees ever working on the “same transaction” for someone else in the future.  While this “revolving door” prohibition invokes an elephant's memory standard, there isn’t a reverse counterpart that prohibits someone implementing a transaction for a private party then going into government and continuing to implement it further or consummate it there.

As for Chair Weisbrod’s previous involvement with the Ratner deal at EDC: Although not cited, he might have been able to excuse himself from a “lifetime” bar with respect to it by arguing that he was, at the CPC, once again working for government, not the private sector, so the bar should not apply.

A review of most of the other overlapping professional relationships of the commissioners show they involve more contemporaneous and/or possibly recurring situations.

For instance, Commissioner Orlando Marín has a professional association with the Bluestone Organization.  The Hudson Companies is the developer applicant wanting to buy and shrink the library.  Bluestone is a partner with the The Hudson Companies in another Brooklyn project, Gowanus Green.

Orlando Marín

Mr. Marín did not recuse himself, reportedly because he is not now with the Bluestone organization.  But when Bluestone was called up by someone seeking to check this information about when Marin left Bluestone, it was Commissioner Marin who answered the phone.  The explanation is, reportedly, that he operates as a sub-contractor.  We understand that answering the phone at Bluestone Mr. Marin was not happy and somewhat defensive, complaining about being “stalked.”  But, remember, there is nothing wrong about having a conflict of interest, the question is whether someone lets that conflict determine outcomes.  Conflicts should also not be concealed.

On September 22nd, after the commission hearing where oral testimony was taken, several of us there to defend the library had to wait patiently to talk to Commissioner Marin because David Kramer, whose Hudson Companies was a co-applicant asking for the library sale, was ahead of us conversing with  Commissioner Marin about business opportunities and who they mutually knew and who was doing what.  While it cannot be said exactly that Kramer was offering Marin business we as listeners agreed that it was very easy to interpret it as having that flavor, and the conversation was certainly reminder to Marin that they were in the same club with shared interests and point of view.

Later, after one of the commissioners’ meetings (Monday, October 5, 2015) where there was a follow-up discussion about the library before the commissioners voted, CPC staff shooed me away from talking to Commissioner Cantor (whose question indicated he was uninformed about the relationship between the Donnell and Brooklyn Heights libraries, including the Offensends).  I was told it was improper for the public to be talking to the commissioners while a matter was pending.

There is a back hallway at the City Planning Commission that leads to where the commissioners can be found before and after their meetings.  It is blocked by a sign that reads “Staff Only Beyond This Point.”  After the commission’s November 2nd voted to approve sale of the library to Hudson Companies, a witness excitedly reported seeing David Kramer pass beyond that sign, disappearing down the hallway.  Sounds like he knew his way.

Should Citizens Defending Libraries have raised these questions about conflicts of interest before a vote?  With any group, and this must be supposed about the commissioners too, there is a strong psychological impulse to “circle the wagons” and band together when any of its members are in any way questioned.  And while not all the commissioners were exposed to questions about the possibility of conflicts in this instance, the possibility of other other conflict being raised in the future is huge.  A little research in connection with other matters might expose nearly all of the commissioners to many such challenges going forward.  You might say that, thinking ahead to the future, they needed to defend how principled or not they have a right to be as a matter of principle.

Citizens Defending Libraries could have waited and raised these issues after the vote, but raising them after the vote seems lame, sour-grapes, and last ditch, less like you were honestly concerned about the issue from the get-go.  The actual fact of the matter is that, given the composition of the board and its history, the board could have been expected to vote the interests of the real estate industry club to which they belong no matter what.  Raising these issues explicitly as we did in advance in a context where the public interest was so clearly contrary to what the board decided at least helps light the way for those who will be dealing with the City Planning Commission in the future.

Chair Weisbrod dismissed the need for any other commissioners to recuse themselves somewhat disdainfully, sounding admonishing as he asserted that by raising these issues Citizens Defending Libraries “demonstrate a lack of understanding as to what constitutes a conflict of interest.”  To add authority to this assertion Weisbrod said that the CPC’s Counsel, Anita Laremont had discussed the issue with the city's Conflict of Interests Board.

Is the Conflicts of Interest Board exacting and tough enough to protect the public?  Some things it does will throw a convincing scare into people.  For example: As previously written about in Noticing New York, in 2009 the Conflict of Interest Board sought to fine a librarian $1,000 because, as a proud father, he promoted and gave away free copies of his daughter's new graphic novel version of  of "Macbeth." 

At almost exactly same time, the Conflicts of Interest Board was exempting the members of charitable boards, including those on the library boards, from newly enacted disclosure rules, doing so very much against the expectations of legislators who had passed the law.  It may be said that the tough rules are for small fry, not the big fish.

In 2009, the New York Times wrote about how the Conflicts of Interest Board was likely not so reliable for discerning conflicts pertaining to Mayor Bloomberg:  City Board Set Up to Monitor Ethics May Have Conflicts of Its Own, by David W. Chen, September 6, 2009:

But even as they scrutinize the ethics of others, several board members, all five of whom were appointed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, have ties to city funding and the mayor's fortune that raise questions about their own potential conflicts.

        * * * * 

Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union, a nonprofit government watchdog, said, "There may be reason to question how strongly they are monitoring the activities of senior administration officials, given that they have ruled against a number of lower-level city employees for rather minor mistakes or judgments and then appear not to be as equally fair-minded in their review of higher-level folks."

Conflicts of Interest Board bias is likely to flow from who appointed them.  The five members of the Conflicts of Interest Board are appointed by the Mayor (with the advice and consent of the City Council).  When Mayor Bloomberg first took office, the COIB, its then members appointed by his predecessor, issued restrictions to prevent Bloomberg’s continued interactions with his Bloomberg LLP. terminal sales business.  Ultimately, those restrictions were not enforced when Bloomberg ignored them and kept calling up his business to check on terminal sales (mostly with companies doing business with the city).  The board that was not enforcing the restrictions transitioned to one Bloomberg appointed himself.

Anthony Crowell, on the Conflicts of Ethics Board and the Brooklyn Public Library Board, appointed to both by Bloomberg.  He was Bloomberg's special counsel.

Currently, three of the five sitting COIB members were appointed by Bloomberg.  One of those three is Anthony Crowell, a trustee of the Brooklyn Public Library, and former chair of the BPL's borad of trustees as the library sales were first pursued hot and heavy.  He was appointed by Bloomberg when he was Bloomberg’s special counsel.

Does this make it sound like the club that gets to decide who can do what is altogether too small?  In 2006 the Conflicts of Interest Board was asked whether Anthony Crowell being on the (charitable) BPL board (ultimately pushing for libraries sales) at the same time he was part of the Bloomberg administration constituted a conflict of interest.  He’s still on the BPL board so you can guess what Conflicts of Interest Board decided.

No matter, it is not really clear at this point what was communicated to the Conflicts of Interest Board in the recent discussions the City Planning Commission reportedly had with them nor which of them did what in reaching the conclusions that there were no other conflicts of interest that needed to be dealt with.

Here is what the CPC’s Counsel Anita Laremont stated for the record during the meeting:

in order for there to be a conflict requiring recusal . .  there would need to be a determination that a commissioner was attempting to use his or her position to obtain a financial gain, contract, privilege or other private or personal advantage, direct or indirect for him or herself or for any person or firm with whom he or her is associated. . .  Past business relationship is irrelevant. Nothing in the various alleged relationships evidences an association of the type that would constitute a conflict or allow the conclusion that any commissioner was attempting to use his or her position for personal or financial gain or other advantage for themselves or others.  We remain unaware of any such relationship, beyond those of Commissioner de la Uz and Commissioner Douek who are both recused .

The relevant provision of the City Charter on this is Charter Section 2604 subsection 3, which prohibits public servants from using or attempting to use their city position to obtain any financial gain, contract, license, privilege or other private or personal advantage, direct or indirect for themselves or for any person or firm with whom or with which they are associated. . . Acquaintances, past business dealing, or incidental business relationships do not meet this definition.  In short, none of the claimed relationships here would require recusal for any of the named commissioners.

To be absolutely fair, although the overwhelming divergence of the commissioners' votes from what would obviously appear to be public interest cannot be readily explained without resorting to an examination of problematic ties to the real estate industry, not every one of the ten votes can necessarily be ascribed to possible conflicts of interest.

Commissioner Anna Hayes Levin, a particularly depressing vot because of Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.

The vote that was most depressingly troubling and not explicable in this way was that of Commissioner Anna Hayes Levin, the appointee of Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.

Commissioner Anna Hayes Levin has no apparent conflicts or ties to the real estate industry. Appointed by Borough President Gale Brewer, she should have been expected to vote exactly as Gale Brewer wanted so long as it was the right thing, and Commissioner Levin comes across as very smart and informed so she must have known that voting for the sale and shrinkage of the library was not the right thing to do.  During the hearing she properly raised valid, on-target concerns about what was proposed: That this was a “one-shot deal,” a lack of a proper appraisal showed that the city was not even getting the “tear-down” value of an extremely valuable asset, how there was absolutely no guarantee that any of proceeds going to the city would ultimately be spent on libraries (the “main argument” for the proposed sale), that the BPL was selling the library without even bothering to design the “replacement” shrunken library first, she expressed concern about the imbalance and burdens between development and supporting public infrastructure when our educational infrastructure, schools and libraries get such short shrift.

She firmly expressed all these appropriate concerns during the early days of the proceedings and then she did that classic government maneuver that’s always startling whenever it is pulled in these situations: The day of the vote she obliquely announced that all her “concerns had been met” leaving it a mystery how that could possibly be.

Needless to say there is probably reason to be enormously disappointed in Gale Brewer as the probable influencer of this outcome.  It does not bode well with respect to the planned sale of SIBL being talked about that results in the shrinkage of the Mid-Manhattan library when “renovated.”  Further, it is already time to acknowledge that Brewer has not been the friend to SIBL one would hope and expect.

As Brewer’s appointee Commissioner Levin should also have voted against the sale based on Commission Chair Weisbrod’s indication that the sale of this public asset could be viewed (dangerously) as setting an interchangeable precedent for something Gale Brewer recently fought while still a City Council member: Selling public schools for redevelopment, putting them in the base of towers.  Indeed, although Citizens Defending Libraries offered caution about this and all its associated problems in its testimony, less than two weeks after the commission’s vote a report ran on WNYC, sounding like it had been placed by the de Blasio administration, a trial balloon for future PF.  It told us “Mayor de Blasio says” that the public should “allow developers to build taller and, in return, get things like new schools and libraries” in the buildings.  See: Dumbo Developer Proposes Schools in New Apartment Buildings, Friday November 13, 2015.

WNYC's report: Dumbo Developer Proposes Schools in New Apartment Buildings

Ironically, reporter Janet Babin’s WYNYC report is structured around “one real estate mogul” Jed Walentas of Two Trees Management in Dumbo who is “on board” making the proposal to do this “wherever there are new apartments coming on line” and uses the example of school space being put into Walentas’ Dock Street, Walentas proclaiming it “a model of how schools should get built.”   The report makes no mention of the sordid details of how the withholding of a more appropriate school was used to blackmail the community into approving a bigger Dock Street project for Walentas that the report holds up as a desirable example.

The report, biased in terms of time allocated and otherwise, lets Walentas make a sort of too-good-to-be-true-free-lunch pitch that by allowing a “bending the zoning code” by Mayor de Blasio we’d be creating “land for free” (Really?), and that “private developers can build schools cheaper than the city” and that the city spends “way too much money” building schools.  In asserting that there will soon be a “shiny new school” in the Walentas building the report skips mention of the controversial bait and switch the community is now dealing with in that respect.

The entire WNYC report offers just one sentence that offers a different point of view to counter what it hypes, but it’s a good one.  Maggie Spillane, a member of the community education council for Brooklyn Heights says: “I think for children, where they learn matters, and I don’t know that developers whose main interest is in selling apartments, really have the interest of the school children, sort of at the forefront.”  Her on-target observation, however, is undercut by the quickly following suggestion that a developer may want a good school to help sell apartments.

Think for a moment: Isn't the reason that we need our libraries and new schools because developers have gone crazy-wild building taller all over the place already?

How can the answer is to that problem then be to build even more and even taller?  (it's like those who say the answer to guns in schools is even more guns in schools.)  What happened to providing schools and libraries the old-fashioned way keeping pace with development, no hostage taking allowed?

Besides, why are we noticing that the result of letting the private developer Hudson Companies build super-tall (400 feet) on the site of the Brooklyn Heights Library is that the `rebuilt' shrunken library the public is getting in exchange, hardly a free lunch, is actually a significant loss, just one-third the size of the library the public, no private developer in sight, recently enlarged and fully upgraded in 1993.

Why is it that Gale Brewer apparently wanted her appointee to the City Planning Commission to set a precedent to approve the sale and shrinkage of NYC city libraries, likely followed by New York City schools in deals that drastically shortchange the public?  Why would she want to be seen as retroactively blessing the inexcusable sale and shrinkage of the Donnell Library?  An answer is that she may have had a deal with de Blasio.  In the larger scheme of things, that's OK, not a conflict of interest, if Borough President Brewer made a good trade, one that actually benefitted the public.  Horse trading and deal making is the basis for much of the way that government and politics operate.

But why would de Blasio want to be selling off and shrinking libraries, something he decried as he ran for mayor saying: 

It's public land and public facilities and public value under threat. . . and once again we see, lurking right behind the curtain, real estate developers who are very anxious to get their hands on these valuable properties

The answer is that, shortly after saying this, de Blasio was taking money from the real estate development team looking to acquire the Brooklyn Heights Library while their application was spending.  Money in politics is not the kind of possibly prohibited conflict of interest we have mostly been talking about here, but in the big picture, money in politics represents interests that conflict with those of the public.

Reade Street, above the door when you enter City Planning Commission premises

The vote of the city Planing commissioners occurred at 22 Reade Street.  That’s sadly ironic because the commissioners voted to greatly curtail and take away space for New Yorkers to read. . .

. . .  Another irony: The Monday the commissioners voted to shrink library space the New York Times ran a front page story about how the troubling shortage of New York City library space often means that needs are not being fulfilled.  The article said that surging “demand for story time  . .   has posed logistical challenges” for NYC libraries “particularly those in small or cramped buildings.”  See: New York Times:  Long Line at the Library? It's Story Time Again, by Winnie Hu, November 1, 2015.

Citizens Defending Libraries tweet of New York Times story about inadequate library space.

You can't make this stuff up!

The City Planning Commission would have you believe that there were no conflicts that should have required any of the other commissioners to recuse themselves, a sort of `Move along folks, nothing to see here' kind of thing.  It's flabbergasting that, even by the very narrow constraints according to which the CPC would like to define and admit to conflicts that their answer is that there absolutely weren't any more conflicts at all to be recognized (or even asked about).  Beyond this, there is the bigger picture question of what is allowed to drive the planning commission and what the public would likely sense ought to be considered a conflict with an appropriate writing and interpretation of law.  That kind of analysis would likely call for more recusals in this instance and probably for a different, stricter approach to selecting who should serve on the commission in the first place.

Thankfully the City Planning Commission speaking for the real estate industry doesn't have the last say.  Whether the Brooklyn Heights Library should be sold and shrunk will now proceed to the New York City Council will confront the issue of setting this formidable precedent. Its first hearing will be 1:00 PM this Wednesday, November 18th in the Council Chambers at City Hall. The City Council is a body of elected officials.  There Stephen Levin, the elected City Councilman in whose district the City Council is in, will have a substantial say about the outcome.  At a previous hearing Mr. Levin said that "95%" of his constituents are opposed to this sale, that he wasn't able to walk "ten feet in district" without hearing about this issue and that it was the "#1 issue" when he was re-elected. . .

. . .  We'll see how this plays out.

City Strategy Of Withholding Basic City Services To Blackmail Public Into Accepting Bigger Development

On right, Pacific branch library proposed to be closed to for the sake of real estate deals.  This photo is from:  Reflecting Pictorially, And Otherwise, On The Un-Truth And Consequence Of BP Markowitz’s Assertion Arena Is In Business District, Not Brownstone Neighborhood 

Should the Bloomberg administration be allowed to pursue strategies of withholding basic services from city communities in order to blackmail the public into accepting bigger development projects the administration wants but the public doesn’t?

To understand exactly what we are talking about here it is worthwhile to go back to the Walentas Two Trees development of the Dock Street Project, opposed by people like Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning, historian David McCullough because, given its huge size and location, it will blot out historic vistas of the iconic Brooklyn Bridge.

Here is how things went:

    •    A version of the enormous project was proposed and the public rejected it and the special permissions needed to make it possible.

    •    The community wanted and felt it needed a new school.  The Bloomberg administration told the community it could not have a new school.

    •    Then the Bloomberg administration said that the community would be given the new school it desired, provided that the new school was put in the Walentas Dock Street project (making it even bigger) and that project was approved.  This was notwithstanding that the Walentas project was not of an optimal design to house such a school.

    •    Later, internal administration e-mails surfaced that showed that the city administration was green lighting the community school only for the purpose of getting the Walentas project approved and that it would not consider furnishing the school in another or more optimal location if one could be found.  Because those administration officials knew this couldn’t be their position publicly they decided to just pretend to consider alternative sites for a school.

    •    The approve-the-project-for-a-school plan garnered an increased level of public support for the Dock Street project but, in the end, the special approvals needed for it to proceed were granted only when they were pushed through the City Council by Speaker Christine Quinn over the objections of the community and the local elected city council member representing the area.

That’s one clear cut example.

I have just been writing about another similar Bloomberg administration strategy: The Bloomberg administration’s defunding of the city library system in order to create a (“demolition by neglect”) financial crisis and holding out the carrot that it will restore funding to the library system only if the public goes along with the selling off of library sites for the sake of real estate deals around the city and, in the process significantly shrinking library services for our growing, wealthier city.  See: Thursday, January 31, 2013, New City-Wide Policy Makes Generation Of Real Estate Deals The Library System’s Primary Purpose.

There are other examples of the manipulative creation of such Faustian bargains:

    •    Across the river on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge, you have Forest City Ratner's extra-tall Gehry-designed building on Spruce Street.  That building towers over everything else in the vicinity and Ratner’s control of the site is related to the inclusion in the building of a school the community needed and which should have otherwise been provided.  The blackmail quality of the terms of that bargain took an accentuating turn when the Ratner organization threatened to halt construction unless the local community board agreed to confer still greater benefits to Ratner than had been originally worked out.

    •    The St. Vincent’s shell game of a real estate circus that ultimately resulted in the demise of St. Vincent’s Hospital in bankruptcy was at one time promoted with the notion that Rudin Development, the private real estate developer designing and pushing the deal (that would have effectively sold off a portion of the Greenwich Village Historic District), was offering to be involved with “giving” a school to the community.    

When I was writing yesterday about the starving of the library system in order to blackmail the public to approve real estate deals I missed noticing a piece of the overall puzzle unfolding in this regard.  It involves the defunding that is demolishing libraries by neglect and it loops us back again to the Walentas Two Trees development that is again requesting a zoning increase premised upon its provision of a benefit the public wants and should otherwise be entitled to.  It was written about in Atlantic Yards Report: Friday, February 01, 2013, Pacific branch library building adjacent to Atlantic Yards site too expensive to repair, destined to close; will it be demolished?

Image used by Atlantic Yards Report is from library's web site

One of the many libraries the city is seeking to sell off for real estate development after defunding and demolition by neglect is the Pacific branch of the Brooklyn Public Library at Fourth Avenue and Pacific Street just below.  (See yesterday’s article for information about many other libraries in the city system whose doom is similarly threatened.)  The library is adjacent to the site of Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards mega-monopoly and a stone’s throw from the “Barclays” arena spearheading it.  We hope that officials do not plan to add to Ratner’s contiguous multi-acre mega-monopoly by giving the site to Ratner, but library officials have refused to disqualify or blackball Ratner as a future owner (without bid?) of library properties as a result of the sell-offs toward which they are maneuvering.

The city wants to close the Pacific branch library . .  And what is envisioned as the plan whereby the public can get that library back?  The public will have to approve greater density for a new Walentas Two Trees development building that will include such a library.  Here is the developer’s public spiel as to why they should get greater density for their proposed project (nearly double the number of apartments currently permissible) with a zoning change in order to give the library back to the public (emphasis supplied):

The development company claims putting about 300,000 square feet of apartments above 50,000 square feet of commercial space and cultural offerings — including three Brooklyn Academy of Music theaters, a new home for the Pacific Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, and a rehearsal space managed by 651 Arts — is a far better proposal than the tallest possible structure it could build without a zoning change, which would set aside about 152,000 square feet for arts and commercial tenants and 171,000 square feet for housing.

(The above is from: January 16, 2013, Looking for apartments: Two Trees seeks zoning change to allow more housing near BAM, By Eli Rosenberg, The Brooklyn Paper.)

Bigger building Two Trees wants to build with zoning change.  Click to enlarge


* * *
PS (added February 9, 2013): The following recent article (with links to others) that ends with a link to a petition to stop the defunding and skrinkage of the library system for the sake of creating real estate deals: Saturday, February 9, 2013, Libraries That Are Now Supposedly “Dilapidated” Were Just Renovated: And Are Developers’ Real Estate Deals More Important Than Bryant Park?

Promising Predictions as Bloomberg’s Political Plaything

Knowing the “No”s of November, the Election Month

Back in September we commented skeptically on predictions that the Brooklyn Bridge Park would be opening by the end of the year. Some of what we said:

The public is being further titillated by the projection that spurs having been kicked so that the first phase of the long-delayed Brooklyn Bridge Park will be open by December, just two months after the mayoralty election. Really?

* * * *

Notably, much like the Times advises public officials to do in the case of Moynihan Station, the city is now suddenly moving Brooklyn Bridge Park forward (we’ll gauge how fast when December finally rolls in after the election) because it is setting the extraneous focus on development aside.

This was part of piece we did wherein we noticed a rash of new Bloomberg pre-election promises about development while commenting that by falling over himself to put developers ahead of the public interest Bloomberg had been particularly inept at actually producing development. (See: Wednesday, September 23, 2009, Getting Bloomberg Out of The Way to Honor Moynihan.)

It turns out that we didn’t actually have to wait for December to find out about the Brooklyn Bridge Park opening. We didn’t even have to let the election month of November conclude to find out. The mayoral election was November 3rd. On November 24th, a mere 21 days later, the Brooklyn Eagle ran a brief story that the opening of Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 6 is being postponed. Now we are told that “It won’t be ready until spring.” (See: B’klyn Bridge Park Pier 6 Opening Postponed, by Brooklyn Eagle, 11-24-2009.) The story said only that Pier 6 won’t be open in December but since the story said that the reason that the opening is being delayed is “because they say a harsh winter could damage the facilities” it is entirely possible that we shall soon find out that the reasoning applies equally and that the opening of Pier 1, the other pier that was promised to be opened in December is also being postponed.

(Below is a picture, appearing with its original caption, of Pier 1 that we included in our September story followed by an up-to-date photo of the progress.)

(With about nine more weeks to go before its announced completion date, this is what Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Phase I looks like today.)

Predictably True: Election After-Math On NYC Budget

What a difference a matter of weeks can make if it takes you from pre- to post-election. We found out more quickly, only a week after the election, that Bloomberg was cutting the city budget almost 12%, the steepest cut since the cuts in response to the 9/11 crisis. (See: Bloomberg budget ax will cut to the bone, by Sally Goldenberg and David Seifman, November 11, 2009 and Mike's budget chopping spree, by Sally Goldenberg, November 17, 2009.) The cuts applicable to nearly all agencies were announced to take place in two phases (does that make either of them seem smaller?): 4% in fiscal year 2010, and 8% in FY 2011. But this was the announcement that was immediately post-election. Does anyone want to bet that the announcements of how much is actually being cut will also occur in two phases with additional cuts being announced in January when more serious budget deliberations are underway? When the Bloomberg administration announces the additional cuts, can they then get away with saying that they are just a percentage adjustment of the figures previously released or will the press add it all up together and announce that the cuts are 15%+ (or whatever it is) in cuts to the budget announced since Bloomberg won the election in November?

More Election After-Math

Some other numbers have received their post-election release as well. The current tally is that Bloomberg spent at least $102 million in direct campaign expenditures to get elected to his extended third term. (See: November 27, 2009, Bloomberg Spent $102 Million to Win 3rd Term, by Michael Barbaro.) Since this figure is post-election (as of Nov. 26) it will be close to the final figure although the Times points put hat it does not yet include Bloomberg’s “storied bonuses to campaign workers, which can top $100,000 a person.” Some of his storied bonuses are much higher: In 2005 he gave his campaign manager, Kevin Sheekey, a $400,000 bonus and Patricia (“Patti”) Harris, his top aide currently First Deputy Mayor got $350,000 for less than three month’s work. (See: Bonuses Uncertain for Bloomberg Election Aides, by Michael Barbaro, November 6, 2009.) Accordingly, our last Noticing New York estimate that he would spend $105 million looks like it was pretty dead on target, though near the end of the election we passed on word that the Times was estimating the incumbent mayor was “on pace to spend between $110 million and $140 million.” (See: Sunday, November 1, 2009, Bloomberg vs. Thomson (54% to 29%?): It’s Not What You Think. (For Instance the “P” is Missing and What Might “P” Stand For?).)

No matter that the Times’ last projected estimate was on the high side, it is still became a case of “never before in history” in many ways quite a while ago: Never has anyone in the United State of America spent so much of their personal money to hold political office, never was NYC’s mayor the wealthiest man in the city let alone become such with a multi-fold increase in wealth while serving in the office, never has a mayor had so many mind-boggling conflicts of interest with a personally-owned company that does business with so many of the same companies that the city itself has transactions with. No matter as well, because while our best estimate was that Bloomberg may have spent $102-105 million on direct campaign expenditures, these direct expenditures were dwarfed by his indirect campaign expenditures such as political contributions to buy endorsements ad charitable donations for political purposes. Counting those, we have noted, the total expenditures could be more on the order of $1 billion for Bloomberg’s third term.

Dueling Predictions

As our prediction on Bloomberg’s campaign spending was fairly dead-on accurate, let us try a few more predictions to duel with the guile of the prettifying before-the-fact promises that have been offered by the mayor. Try this one on for size: Columbia University will announce that it is deferring its plan to develop the swath of West Harlem for at least five years and at the same time is likely to announce that it is having problems technologically effecting the Jules Vernian giant underground bathtub basement that it used as a rationale to seize property through eminent domain. When will Columbia announce this? Not during the pendency of the litigation they are currently trying to win in order to uphold their abuse of eminent domain. They will hold back on the announcement as long as they can, perhaps hoping that by struggling longer with the bathtub technology and maybe shifting to a new architectural team they can conquer the problem before they have to acknowledge failure.

The reason that Columbia won’t announce anything like this during the pendency of the litigation is because litigations involving state agencies these days are more than a little like elections: Up-front government officials and the real estate development entities they go out of their way to assist are willing to say anything to win a lawsuit in the belief that once they have won it makes little difference that what they represented and promised wasn’t really true at all, irrespective of subsequent events disclosing the truth.

Witness the spectacle of that portion of the Atlantic Yards litigations that the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, just embarrassed itself with. The court managed to uphold a terrific abuse of eminent domain by deferring to a fairy tale version of the facts cooked up by state officials in service to the monopoly-seeking subsidy collector involved (Forest City Ratner). A key mechanism they used to do this provides an amazing example what we are talking about: The court based their decision on a “record” of non-facts that was officially closed as of late 2006, while they ignored conspicuous subsequent events that have continually demonstrated how false the facts of that “record” are in almost every respect.
The Amazing Carnage

Right now there are many litigations going on in efforts to stop Bloombergian real estate development: the aforementioned challenge to the Columbia University expansion, Atlantic Yards (a good several law suits), Willets Point, the Rudin/St. Vincent’s sell-off of the Greenwich Village Historic District, and the documented lying of finagling public officials on Dock Street. Many of these lawsuits involve the same conundrum of who are the courts going to believe, public officials creating a record of fictitious predictions or the contradicting realities that emerge. We won’t try to predict the outcome of all these litigations, but we will predict something else. While Bloomberg (if not stopped by lawsuits) may succeed in creating mega-project holes in the ground around New York, he will not in his third term as mayor succeed in creating successful developments to fill those holes.

Why do we confidently predict such carnage at sites like Coney Island, West Harlem where Columbia is taking over, Willets Point and Atlantic Yards? Because during the eight years that Bloomberg has been mayor (good economic years with a robust real estate market) Bloomberg has not been able to capitalize successfully on the simpler development opportunities that were already his to take advantage of: Ground Zero, Queens West, Moynihan Station (the new Penn Station) and, where we started. . . Brooklyn Bridge Park. Which brings us back to the words with which we concluded that article where we looked skeptically at the idea of the December Brooklyn Bridge Park openings together with many other promising predictions that administration officials furnished to the public intending that they be believed only for a limited period of time, only just long enough for Bloomberg to get a grant of power from the electorate in the election. This is what we wrote:

Some of Bloomberg’s developments may have been held up by litigation, but mostly they have been held up by his own misplaced focus, and if some have been litigated against, that too is largely the result of his own misfocus which has resulted in projects, often mega-projects, that are on top of everything else incredibly poorly designed.

It does not seem to us that Bloomberg (nor either his cohorts in development malfeasance) is a man to whom the electorate should be giving grants of power based on prettifying prognostications of what his destructions will lead to, whether those prettifying predictions come pre-election, pre-City Planning Commission, pre-City Council approvals, or pre-court litigations.

Our thoughts on Navigating the Voter Minefields When All the Candidates Know the Words to Mouth on Development

This will provide our good government, good real estate development oriented, Noticing New York thoughts on who to vote for in a number of tomorrow’s most important primary elections and why: Tony Avella for Mayor. Norman Siegel for Public Advocate. John Liu (or David Yassky?) for Comptroller. Josh Skaller in the 39th City Council District. Jo Ann Simon (or Evan Thies?) for the 33rd. Tish James for the 35th. Yetta Kurland in the 3rd to defeat Christine Quinn and unseat her as speaker of the City Council.

To get to these decisions we had to wend our way through a number of voter minefields. We hope that sharing our thoughts with you will be helpful.

Real Estate Development: Do Candidates Receiving Contributions From the Industry Who Know What To Say Really Mean It?

Last week our attention was caught by what we think was an epitomizing exchange between David Weprin and Melinda Katz in the New York Times account of last week’s Comptrollers’ debate. Mr, Weprin and Ms. Katz, are among the four candidates running for Comptroller, all of whom are City Council members. The Times suggested that Mr. Weprin, trailing in a Quinnipiac University poll, seemed anxious to upend the race which is likely to involve a runoff.

In one of his many challenges in the debate, Mr. Weprin took aim at Ms. Katz. “How can you be independent of the real estate industry when your finance committee, which is on your Web site, is a who’s who in the Real Estate Board of New York?” he asked.

Ms. Katz said she had maintained her independence, but Mr. Weprin kept at her.

Ms. Katz said, “You know, David, as chair of the finance committee, I know, looking through your contributions, that we probably don’t want to have this discussion.”

Replied Mr. Weprin: “I’m willing to have the discussion.”

(See: Councilman Attacks Rivals in Final Primary Debate for Comptroller, By Kareem Fahim, September 10, 2009.)

The exchange captures how all the candidates for city office implicitly acknowledge the overriding importance to voters that public officials not be in the pocket of the real estate industry, coupled with the deep and rightful suspicion that just because politicians adopt the rhetoric of opposition doesn’t mean that they are honestly independent of the industry. Mr. Weprin certainly knows the political facts of life. He is the son of Sol Weprin, Sheldon Silver’s predecessor as Speaker of the Assembly. (In our former public agency life we used to work for Mr. Weprin’s brother and we also used to run into David frequently in the days when he was an investment banker.)

Debate In the 33rd Race Where the Candidates Were Saying the Same Things About Development

At the same time that the Comptroller’s debate was going on we were at a debate for candidates running for the City Council’s 33rd district (currently David Yassky’s seat- Yassky is one of the other candidates for Comptroller) where the principle of how essential it is to oppose the real estate industry’s political dominance was similarly much in evidence. We have written before about how all the candidates in the 33rd (and the 39th) District races oppose the current kind of rampant development by politically connected developers, citing as touchstones that all of them are opposed to Atlantic Yards and development in the Brooklyn Bridge Park. (See: City Council candidates don't support AY project, May 08, 2009 09:20AM)

A Radical Surprise Including a Description of Real Estate and Government Corruption

What surprised us in this most recent City Council debate was to discover how radically in opposition to real estate industry shenanigans candidate Steve Levin, Assemblyman Vito Lopez’s former chief of staff, presents himself as being. Early in the debate Mr. Levin went out of his way to bring up and label as “corrupt” the events whereby, as revelatory e-mails show, the Bloomberg administration connived behind the scenes to get approval for the Dock Street project. Ultimately, Speaker Christine Quinn pushed Dock Street through the City Council despite the fact that the e-mails disclosed the irredeemable taint of an invalid decision process and intentional misrepresentations for which the senior Bloomberg officials and the School Construction Authority were responsible.

Dock Street is in DUMBO and the City Councilman for the district, David Yassky who is also running for Comptroller, opposed the project as did Councilman Eric Gioia who is running for Public Advocate. Others who voted against Dock Street include Councilman Tony Avella, who is running for Mayor and Councilman John Liu the fourth and final of the candidates running for Comptroller. Ms. Katz was amongst those who overlooked the “corruption” Mr. Levin spoke of to vote for Dock Street. Mr. Levin says that, if elected, he would put an end to this kind of corruption in the City Council. We were unaware that he did anything to oppose Dock Street’s approval when it was in the offing: Apparently he didn’t, he is only a late discoverer of the crime we (and Newsweek) were writing about at the time.

Mr. Levin also portrayed himself as, like the other candidates, passionately against Atlantic Yards. We had reported about his opposition previously but his “many serious concerns” about Atlantic Yards seemed to be so awfully tempered (“I am against the use of eminent domain unless in the case of overriding public benefit resulting from that use.”) that his language was reminiscent of the mega-project’s supporters. By contrast the majority of the candidates in the race (without explanation; candidate Isaac Abraham was not there to express himself) all firmly support Develop Don’t Destroy’s more effective categorical opposition to the Ratner project rather than what has been described as the “mend it don’t end it” open-to-compromise approach of Brooklyn Speaks.

Do Degenerative Changes to Atlantic Yards Project Evoke a Radicalizing Passionate Response?

To be fair, since Mr. Levin first provided his views on Atlantic Yards by giving us the comments previously published in Noticing New York before the mega-project degenerated significantly with additional MTA giveaways and diminished the likelihood that anything except a net-loss arena will ever be built. It is now much easier to be passionately against the project. In fact, it hardly makes sense for any politician to be anything else. Everyone for instance now knows that the Independent Budget Office’s report to tally the no-bid giveaways of subsidy to Forest City Ratner at $726 million and estimate the net loss to the city at $220 million ($39.5 million in direct losses and $180.5 million in opportunity losses). The city is pretty much just handing Ratner a check for $726 million, no questions asked, with not much asked in return. (See: Thursday, September 10, 2009, The Surrounding Light Smears Ratner’s Atlantic Yards Arena.)

We have talked with people who are willing to wonder whether Mr. Levin in his heart of hearts has significant reservations about the kind of big, manipulated, city-involved, corrupt kind of real estate development he says he opposes and to hold open the possibility that his opposition is legitimate notwithstanding that Assemblyman Vito Lopez is routinely and deeply involved in exactly this kind of thing. Most recently, Lopez has been prominently involved with the Broadway Triangle site. (See: Tuesday, August 11, 2009, In the 33rd: Levin vs. everyone else, AY & Broadway Triangle, and the argument for IRV (Instant Runoff Voting).)

Lo-Pez Dispensation?

Lopez jumped into the proposed redevelopment of the immediately adjacent former Pfizer plant site right at the beginning, heavy-handedly proposing the inappropriate use of eminent domain to take the site away from Pfizer. (Pfizer Offering Williamsburg Plant Site for Affordable Housing—So, Why’s a State Assemblyman Trying to Seize It? by Eliot Brown January 15, 2008.) The ironies here two-fold: 1.) Lopez was proposing to take the site for housing but that was already the purpose for which Pfizer wanted to use the site, and 2.) Lopez was unfairly proposing to use eminent domain to achieve a private-owner to private-owner transfer that would wrest the property from Pfizer, and his ability to do so was enhanced by the infamous Supreme Court Kelo decision a case where, the shoe on the other foot, Pfizer was involved as a beneficiary of the same sort of forced transfer in the name of “economic development.”

One of the audience-submitted questions asked of Mr. Levin the night of debate was whether Mr. Levin would be independent of Mr. Lopez who was referred to in the question as the “second most powerful man in the state.” If he wasn’t, the synergistic effect of Levin attaining a City Council office could be really bad news. Mr. Levin responded with assurances that he would be independent of Assemblyman Lopez, and that the Lopez had always advised him to do the right thing.

Looking Through Doubt to Actions Taken

This then presents an ever-so typical situation. Voters know that the politicians know the principles they should enunciate about independence from the real estate industry but they wonder what the politician will actually do once in office. The best thing to do in such a case is to look at what candidates have actually done when they have had the opportunity to act. Another question asked at the debate (which we submitted) was whether candidates had submitted comment to the MTA or the Empire State Development Corporation opposing the most recent revisions to the Atlantic Yards project which pile extra inappropriate benefits onto Ratner without any quid pro quo in return. Our question also asked: “Why or why not?”

There were a number of opportunities to be involved. in this regard Even though the MTA raced with incredible speed to give these benefits to Ratner after their nature was revealed, Councilman candidate Yassky testified before the MTA to oppose them. There were two days of ESDC hearings in which people could make statements as many did, followed up by a month in which comments could be formulated and submitted. Many may predict that those comments are destined to be ignored (although that they are ignored may be a basis for litigation). For those feeling frustrated by the strong suspicions that comments will be ignored there was the opportunity to join a political rally in opposition to the megaproject held before the ESDC hearings began. Other candidates submitted comments and testimony in this process and almost all of the candidates for the 33rd District showed up at the rally in opposition. (Isaac Abraham did not.) (See: Thursday, July 30, 2009, At lightly-attended (and sometimes raucous) public hearing, dueling electeds, some déjà vu, and a “sham process for a sham project”.)

Mr. Levin did not show up or participate in any way in any of these activities, not even taking advantage of the month in which he could have submitted written comment. His excuse was that he was just very busy and wasn’t really conscious of an opportunity to fit things in. We were particularly curious about whether he would participate given that the Friday before the ESDC hearings and the opposition rally we ran into him at breakfast and reminded and encouraged him to show up. We even supplied some additional encouragement when we wrote about running into him and wondering in our post whether he would show up. (See: Wednesday, July 29, 2009, First Day of ESDC Hearings on New Sight-Unseen Version of Atlantic Yards: Some Noticing New York’s Testimony and Questions Asked.)

Notwithstanding, even the Friday morning we ran into him we suspected that Mr. Levin wasn’t going to show up or involve himself. Though we reported that he “spoke critically about the way the project had degenerated since his above statement, together with the new $100+ million package of giveaways with which the MTA recently sweetened the developer’s deal” he referred rather vaguely to probably having to knock on voters’ doors or do something else that would prevent him from showing up.

Not even submitting written comment in opposition during the month long comment period does not bespeak passionate opposition. There are billions of public dollars involved here, violations of every conceivable principle of good government and potentially great harm directed at the district Mr. Levin is hoping to represent. At one point during the debate evening Mr. Levin said that he had sent a letter to the Governor urging him to sign the proposed Public Authority Reform bill. Atlantic Yards is the current preeminent example of why that bill needs to be signed. To focus only on the abstract principles of reform while failing to directly address an immediate and concrete example of the actual wrong is dangerously abstract and distracting.

The Avella/Thompson Race for Mayor: Thompson’s Implodingly Mismatched Rhetoric and a Critical Mystery About Megadevelopments

So when politicians mouth the expected pieties about opposing sell-outs to the real estate industry and you inevitably want to know if they mean what they say we suggest that, as with Mr. Levin, you can only look at what those individuals have actually done.

The race for the Democratic nomination for Mayor between Comptroller Bill Thompson and City Councilman Tony Avella is another race where enunciated opposition to favors for big real estate developers has featured prominently while the question of what the statements of one of the two candidates actually means couldn’t be more stark. We may see that the Thompson campaign implodes, now or after the primary because its actions are so utterly at odds with its mouthing of rhetoric.

Thompson has made criticism of Bloomberg’s gifts to big real estate developers a standard part of his regular stump speech. (See: Monday, July 13, 2009, Waiting for What Thompson Will Say Specifically about Atlantic Yards.) He made it part of both his opening and closing statements in the first mayoral debate. These are the refraining words Mr. Thompson began his opening statement with (after an obligatory statement of thanks to the hosts of the debate):

For the last eight years, we’ve had a Republican mayor, Mike Bloomberg, who is focused on Wall Street, big developers, and the wealthy.

Thompson also spoke harshly in both mayoral debates criticizing the failures of the Bloomberg megadevelopments. In the second debate he was asked to list the three top failures of the Bloomberg administration and cited its failed megadevelopments. In the first debate he said this when talking about the economic failures of the administration:

Let’s look and be honest. The Bloomberg administration, as we look at the mega-projects that they’ve rolled out for growth and development: most of those have failed. Most of those aren’t moving forward. Whether it’s the stadium on the West Side, whether its Hudson Yards, whether it is places like Willets Point and Atlantic Yards. . . Those projects haven’t moved forward. There has been this over-reliance on Wall Street and it appears that they thought Wall Street would carry us forever. That didn’t happen. We need to diversify the economy of this city. I talk about smart growth and fair growth and fair growth that involves communities. . .

The above reminds us of our own criticism of Bloombergian megadevelopments. We think megadevelopments involve an inherently flawed approach, especially with projects like Atlantic Yards and Willets Point, that contain the seeds for their own inevitable failure. The problem however: It is not clear that Thompson is saying this or exactly what he is saying. Is Thompson against Bloombergian megadevelopments because they are inherently flawed or is his criticism instead that Bloomberg hasn’t pushed megadevelopments through and made them work? Because his list includes palpably flawed and unpopular projects like the West Side Stadium and Atlantic Yards it might seem that he means the former. But this is not actually clear and if he means the latter then Thompson, inconsistent with his rhetoric about not focusing on big developers, may well intend to out-Bloomberg Bloomberg in terms of blindly sinking public resources into megadevelopment.

One reason to believe that Thompson is a fan of forcing through megadevelopments such as the West Side Stadium and Willets Point is that Thompson has formally, come out in favor Atlantic Yards. Thompson was, in fact, in favor or Atlantic Yards at the outset though he has implied that the history is otherwise. Recently Thompson has come out again in favor of the Atlantic Yards megadevelopment after and despite its significant degeneration into a different and far worse project than it was in the beginning. (See: Thompson "Late Supporter" of Atlantic Yards. Says Urban Planning Not About "Developer Accommodation" 9.01.09.) By implication Thompson is necessarily favoring all the recent excessive extra giveaways from the MTA and ESDC to the developer about which he, like Mr. Levin, was silent.

In the second debate listing the three greatest failures of the Bloomberg administration Thompson listed Bloomberg’s override of term limits as the greatest failure. For the second greatest failure (about 20 minutes into the debate) this is what he said:

Megadevelopment and the failure of the megadevelopments that Mike Bloomberg has moved forward to the exclusion of small business across New York, that’s probably number two.

That’s not very elucidating, but that is what he said.

Thompson’s remarks about megadevelopment and whether he, ostensibly, favors or opposes them were so ambiguous we contacted the Thompson campaign for clarification. We asked: “What does he then believe is wrong with Bloomberg's record of megadevelopment and to what errors on the part of Bloomberg does he attribute the failures that he apparently would correct?” We received no response.

Again, let us think this through. Thompson says he is against a focus on big developers. If Thompson then opposes megadevelopments rather than promoting them how can he be in favor of the quintessentially objectionable developer-focused megadevelopment, Atlantic Yards? Consider just how many very sweet developer-focused megadevelopment-cookies Ratner is trying to take out of the cookie jar. (See: Friday, July 31, 2009, Ratner: The Little Boy Trying To Get Too Many Cookies Out of The Cookie Jar and Getting None.)

We think Thompson’s campaign is destined to implode. These inconsistences convince us of that together with Thompson’s obvious discomfort during the second debate when he was asked about pension investment scandal matters and his office’s handling of them.

Avella Sounding Like Jane Jacobs

By contrast Tony Avella’s position on megadevelopment, what was wrong with megadevelopment and what would work better is absolutely clear and un-Bloombergian.

In the first debate, NY1's Juan Manuel Benitez asked Avella about his opposition to big development:

You are a fighter against big development. After the collapse of the financial industry don’t you fear that new York City will lose its international clout if you don’t think big in terms of development and innovation?

Avella responded:

Naturally you have to do that* but I also think that there is advantage in thinking small and thinking from the bottom up. A lot of the philosophy in this city including the planning and development is all from the top down. It’s the Mayor, it’s the Department of City Planning, it’s the real estate industry that controls the agenda and Wall Street. I think we’d do much better if we did things from the bottom up and let the people work in their own neighborhoods to plan for thie own neighborhoods, for their communities. Let THEM work with the developers. I think if we did that we’ll have a much better city and you’ll find those innovative solutions come out of those discussions

(* Note that Mr. Avella and Mr. Thompson had both earlier criticized Bloomberg for not effectively handling the one big megadevelopment project that is necessarily a given, the redevelopment of Ground Zero.)

We think Mr. Avella is right. His answer is very Jane Jacobs-based. Mr. Benitez challenged Avella to defend his answer:

So you don’t have any big projects in mind? In case you are mayor of the city, you would wait for neighborhoods to come up with plans and projects?

Mr. Avella:

That’s what we do now. There’s no planning in this city. Mike Bloomberg isn’t doing planning. He reacts to the real estate industry in this city. And how many of his major projects have actually happened? We have to change the whole philosophy in this city. because the problem with what you are saying is that it comes down to money. It shouldn’t be about money. It should be about people in this city. And until we change that dynamic we ‘re always going to be in the same situation. Talk about the financial crisis: Absolutely we have to deal with this. But the way to deal with this is to strengthen small business, to bring back the manufacturing jobs which the mayor has basically undercut

Maybe it was what Mr. Avella had just said set forth above that led Mr. Thompson to make his own ensuing similar sounding remarks about failed megadevelopment.

Different Kinds of Elections: When It Is Wise to Vote For the Best candidate and When It Isn’t

After voters figure out which candidate’s deeds in office might actually comport with their campaign rhetoric they still have to figure where their votes can be effective. There are two kinds of elections going on this primary. Citywide elections will result in run-offs if no candidate receives more than 40% of the vote. City Council District primaries are decided by mere plurality.

Starting with the Easy Avella/Thompson Race: We like Avella

The primary election between Thompson and Avella is a straightforward matter for the voter: Just vote for the best candidate, or if you feel that Bloomberg is destined to win the upcoming general elections because of the hundreds of millions he is spending on the election, vote for the Democratic candidate who will send the clearest message to Bloomberg. Avella is clearly the best candidate.

Running Off to the Public Advocate Race: We Like Siegel

In citywide races with multiple candidates, the voter first must guess whether a runoff is likely. If a runoff election is expected or likely, a voter can send a clear message by voting for the candidate who is actually best. For instance, a runoff is likely in the race for Public Advocate. We think that voters should therefore vote for Norman Siegel since he is best suited for the job.

Of all the candidates for Public Advocate Mr. Siegel is the one who has essentially already started the job. The budget for the Public Advocate office has been substantially cut and Mr. Siegel is surely the best suited to be able to do a lot with a little. He already does, partly by knowing how to use the law.

One way or another this election is going to be about those who will be able to take on Bloomberg and restore a balance of power. For instance, Eric Gioia did an excellent job at the kind of thing that Public Advocate will have to do when he championed opposition to the Dock Street approvals. We think Mr. Siegel is most likely of all the candidates to be able to do that kind of job well and dependably. We note that Mr. de Blasio, like Mr. Siegel, joined in the lawsuit to challenge Bloomberg’s override of term limits. Still, for Mr. de Blasio the Office of Public Advocate is just a stepping stone to another office and the office doesn’t seem to really suit his temperament. It was not his first choice. Originally he wanted to run for Borough President.

Suitable candidates for Public Advocate (and for Comptroller) should all have shown their suitability by coming out in opposition to the Atlantic Yards and by criticizing the recent MTA giveaways. Norman Siegel did that and he has been consistently fighting eminent domain abuse. While Mr. de Blasio has expressed reservations about Atlantic Yards but as the project had grown significantly worse de Blasio has been waffling and inexcusably hiding out. Mr. de Blasio has also never opposed eminent domain abuse.

Running Off to the Comptroller Race: Liu or Yassky?

The Comptroller’s race is another race likely to go to a run-off election. Noticing New York readers worried about Bloombergian-style development and manipulation should NOT vote for Melinda Katz. Candidates Yassky and John Liu both oppose Atlantic Yards and are both likely to do well in the election. As both are able, what should be the deciding factor? It has been complained that Yassky should have opposed Atlantic Yards earlier and he likely could have been more strongly in opposition quite recently. Liu has many principled votes to his credit where he has often been heroically in the minority to oppose Christine Quinn-led Council Vote fixes. Where Liu shown commendably and Yassky behaved inexcusably was on the vote to overturn term limits. Yassky should never have supported Bloomberg’s power grab and the power garb has left the city multiple problems that will now be much harder to address.

City Council Plurality-Take-All Elections, The More is Less Equation

When it comes to City Council races, the voter has to decide on candidates based on which are likely to win the winner-take-all plurality. That regularly means forcing oneself to ignore lots of worthwhile candidates. For instance, it is not that the races for the 33rd and 39th Council Districts don’t have many exceptionally worthwhile candidates: They do, but paradoxically, the more candidates a Council District can field that truly reflect the district’s wishes and concerns, the greater the mathematical probability that, in the end, the district will not actually be represented by such an individual. “Circular firing squad” is one phrase that Norman Oder and others have used to describe this more is less proposition by which a multiplicity of good candidates cancel each other out in favor of a bad one.

In Atlantic Yards Report Norman Oder has recommended, and we agree, that the current system of plurality take-all voting should be replaced by a system like San Francisco’s instant runoff system which simulates a series of runoffs on one ballot by allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference. Unfortunately, that has not happened here yet so rather than voting for the best candidate voters need to vote for the best candidate likely to win. (See: Tuesday, August 11, 2009, In the 33rd: Levin vs. everyone else, AY & Broadway Triangle, and the argument for IRV (Instant Runoff Voting).)

Race in the 33rd: Jo Ann Simon- (Or Evan Thies?)

As we noted, there are serious questions about what to expect from Mr. Levin if he obtains a City Council seat. Those who would like to see someone else in office should probably then vote for either Jo Ann Simon or Evan Thies as the most likely to win. Of the two Ms. Simon is probably ahead and probably has the most critical endorsements including the New York Times. We find it odd that the two merging papers (Brooklyn Paper and Courier-Life) from the CNG chain endorsed two candidates running against Ms. Simon, Mr. Levin and Mr. Thies. The endorsement of Mr. Thies might conceivably benefit the other chain-endorsed candidate, Mr. Levin. (See: Friday, September 04, 2009, Looking at the weekly newspaper endorsements: James, Thies, Skaller, plus some contradictions.)

Race in the 39th : Josh Skaller

In the race for the 39th it is less obvious that there is a mismatched minority viewpoint candidate highly likely to win who would pose a problem for the community if they won. We think a vote for strong Atlantic Yards opponent Josh Skaller would be the voters’ best choice in this race. We recognize that Brad Lander is also likely to win and we recognize that Mr. lander has been quite eloquent in his statements opposing Atlantic Yards. Mr. Skaller is likely to do better against Mr. Lander given that in a surprise move the normally conservative pro-Atlantic Yards Courier Life has endorsed him. Of course, it is possible that if votes are split between Mr. Skaller and Mr. Lander, John Heyer may do better. John Heyer has been endorsed by the formerly more liberal but increasingly conservative, increasing pro-development Brooklyn Paper. Mr. Heyer’s views on Atlantic Yards are complex and he is the candidate who is least opposed to the extremely unpopular development.

Working Families Party: The Anti-Endorsement

One way we suggest deciding between candidates like Ms. Skaller and Mr. Lander these days is, all things being equal, (and things are not always equal) make sure you don’t vote for the candidate supported by the Working Families Party. The Working Families Party’s eagerness to broker power makes it the entity that is first to sell out a community’s interest after coaxes the community’s into reliance upon it. We think this means that a Working Family Party endorsement should be looked upon suspiciously as a likely indicator that the endorsed candidate is closer than other candidates to the conventional business-as-usual power structure.

In the races we are talking about in this post, the Working Families Party has endorsed Bill Thompson, John Liu, Bill de Blasio, Mr. Levin, Mr. Lander, Christine Quinn and Tish James. We wrote before about how the Working Families Party mentioning their endorsement of Mr. Lander told us that they endorse candidates who are opposed to Atlantic Yards even though they have unresolved conflicts of interest respecting business relationships with the developer. (See: Thursday, July 9, 2009, A Street Encounter Raises Questions About The Working Families Party, ACORN and Atlantic Yards That Seem To Lack Satisfactory Answers.)

Markowitz Anti-Endorsements

Another endorsement that might, like the Working families Party endorsement, be considered an anti-endorsement and a reason NOT to vote a candidate is an endorsement by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. Mr. Markowitz has endorsed Mr. Levin. He has also endorsed Mr. de Blasio who, before term limits were overridden, wanted to succeed Markowitz as Borough President and Mr. Markowitz has endorsed David Yassky.

Race in the 35th : Tish James

Not all rules are hard and fast, and as we indicated things are not always equal between candidates. There is no question about whom to vote for in the 35th Council District. Tish James has been endorsed by the Working Familes Party but she is one of Atlantic Yards most stalwart opponents and is the only truly qualified candidate in the race. There is something glaringly wrong with the fact that the New York Times did not endorse anyone in this race given that Ms. James ought to win and her main challenger, Ms Hunley-Adossa, is essentially on the Forest City Ratner payroll and utterly incapable of uttering a coherent thought or English sentence. Ms Hunley-Adossa also hides out, something we saw firsthand when we could not get her to respond to or answer our question about whether she had any knowledge about the level of subsidies going into the Atlantic Yards project. We asked her repeatedly but got only a stony silence. (See: Friday, August 28, 2009, Looking at the 35th District debate: Delia Hunley-Adossa surfaces (and shows why she's been inaccessible).)

Dumping Christine Quinn: One of the Most Important Races In the Primaries- The Race in the 3rd: Vote Yetta Kurland

Perhaps the most important Council race in the city is the race for 3rd Council District currently held by Christine Quinn, the current speaker of the City Council. Nothing would do more to send a message to Bloomberg about his override of term limits and his Bloombergian megadevelopment policies thant to defeat Quinn. A strong vote against Ms. Quinn could convey a powerful message even if it didn’t defeat her. Voting against Quinn should also send a message to the other members of the City Council that the balance of power between the mayor and the council needs to be restored. It would send a message that the council should not be a rubber stamp for the shenanigans of the politically connected, including the redistribution of wealth to the wealthy in Bloomberg’s megadevelopment projects. A message sent could also result in the removal of Quinn as speaker even if she is re-elected to her council seat. Let’s hope she isn’t though.

To name just a few things, Quinn in her time has been responsible for funding Atlantic Yards, the abuse of eminent domain in the Columbia expansion and at Willets Points, the corruption of the Dock Street project and the dismantling of the Coney Island amusement district and the selling off a portion of the Greenwich Village Historic District for development. She is also an impediment to an appropriate downsizing of Hudson Yards in her own district.

There are two candidates running against Quinn. We believe the one to vote for and the one who has the best chance of unseating Quinn is Yetta Kurland. It is not clear whether the other candidates is running just to set herself up for the next run while in the meantime consciously participating in vote-splitting that will impair the Quinn opposition.

Yesterday we were returning from time we had spent with a group that marched through Chelsea handing out flyers and carrying banners calling for Quinn to be dumped. As we reached the subway we happened to run into Yetta Kurland. We hope that is a good omen. She told us she was a Noticing New York fan. We were pleased. We didn’t know she was one of our readers.

We hope all of the above helps you get through tomorrow’s minefields. Good luck to us all.

(Here are the latest helpful links from Atlantic Yards Report: Monday, September 14, 2009
Thinking about the 33rd Council District (Part 1), Monday, September 14, 2009, Thinking about the 39th: why Dov Hikind causes Brad Lander to sound curiously like Charles Barkley, Monday, September 14, 2009, The Daily News's non-endorsement in the 35th District, Monday, September 14, 2009, Thinking about the 33rd Council District (Part 2): why I'm voting (gingerly) for Simon)