The Commissioners of The New York City Planning Commission: From The Human-scale NYC Viewpoint of Lynn Ellsworth, They Are The Foxes Guarding City Planning Henhouse

 Top row left to right: Mariso Lago, Kenneth Knuckles, Joseph Douek, Alfred Cerullo, Richard Eaddy,
Middle row left to right: Allen Cappelli, Hope Knight, Anna Hayes Levin, Orlando Marín, Larisa Ortiz
Bottom row left to right: Michelle de la Uz, Rad Rampershad, David Burney, Carl Weisbrod

We've grown bleary eyed seeing it on the federal level since Donald Trump took his trip from NYC's real estate world and started appointing his cabinet and top government policy officials: It seems like there isn't a single such appointment made where the inherent conflicts-of-interest and the effective capture by private interests of federal public agencies doesn't seem the carefully crafted intention of the appointment, rather than a gawd-awful mistake, incompetence or general obtuseness about what is in the public interest.  (It was right from the beginning.)

Where might Mr. Trump have learned that such a cookie-jar approach to populating government could be accepted as routine and par for the course?  Maybe from the way that New York City "government" puts the real estate industry in charge of "governing" all things real estate.  probably the most egregious example is New York City's City Planning Commission Commissioners.  There are tons of other examples in this city (like the revolving door at the Landmarks Preservation Commission for those who then lobby).

Villager op-ed

Lynn Ellsworth of Human-scale NYC recently addressed the question just how totally the City Planning Commission is captured by industry interests with an op-ed in The Villager, back up with her research that provides  gallery portraits of the Commissioners and the allegiances to the real estate industry that laden them.  See: OPINION: Foxes guard City Planning henhouse, by Lynn Ellsworth, May 22, 2019.

Her opinion piece represents points Ms. Ellsworth made at a May 15, 2019 press conference recently on the steps of City Hall speaking about the current developer practice of grabbing the sky for luxury condo units by building "void" buildings launched upwards to new heights on stilts to be taller than the rest of the city. 

May 15, 2019 press conference

Ms. Ellsworth's gallery is also reminiscent of a similar round-up of suspect commissioners that Citizens Defending Libraries put together in 2015 when the Planning Commission was hellbent to approve the shrink-and-sink deal that would sell Brooklyn's second largest library in order to turn the site over to the developer of a luxury tower.  Full disclosure: As a co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries, I was involving in putting that round up together as well as requests that various commissioners recuse themselves, only a few of which did (there was an opinion of no conflict of interest).  See:  Report on Tuesday, September 22nd City Planning Commission Hearing On Proposed Sale and Shrinkage of Plus Testimony of Citizens Defending Libraries, and 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.

Alicia Boyd of MTOP (Movement to Protect the People) is another activist who, in concert with a coalition of others, has sought to ventilate these conflicts of interest that usually go unremarked upon.  That has included demonstrations and press conference outside of the Planning Commission.

Lynn Ellsworth with Citizens Defending Libraries outside City Hall, December 2015 protesting library sale.

Ms. Ellsworth's gallery and the research it represents is a beautiful piece of work and valuable to have at hand.  She indicates that it may be subject to some refinement with some future revisions, but it is too extraordinary a resource not to be look at now.

Does Noticing New York publish the work of others?: Seldom, but sometimes.  In this case, veteran Noticing New York readers will find themselves in very familiar territory.   Enjoy, and file away for future reference.  Oh, and as you read, you will see references to NYC library sales.

* * *    

The Fox Guards the Henhouse at the Department of City Planning
Part 1: Profiles in Complicity

Communities Cannot Get A Fair Hearing when the Regulatory Agency is Captured by the Industry it is Supposed to Regulate.

By Lynn Ellsworth, of Human-scale NYC, May 16, 2019
(Contact: lynnellsworth [at] outlook.com)

In 1976, sociologist Harvey Molotch wrote a famous essay describing an "Urban Growth Machine" consisting of a coalition of large property owners, developers, realtors, industry-dependent elites and politicians whose economic interests aligned to push for insatiable real estate development they dubbed "growth".  Many years later, Rutgers economist Jason Barr studied high-rise development in Manhattan and described a "Skyscraper Industrial Complex" of real estate developers, real estate advisors and financiers, construction unions, architects, construction and engineering firms whose economic self-interests aligned to demand never-ending and unregulated high-rise construction.  

These forces have crystalized in New York City in the most powerful special interest lobby New York has ever known, the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) whose Board of Governors is dominated by an elite group of spectacularly wealthy oligarchic families, some of which have become feudal dynasties with thousands of tenants paying rent to them. It is a situation not seen since the medieval period. REBNY's financial and lobbying power is a matter of common knowledge.

This power is only a problem and a matter of public interest when the real estate industry comes to control the institutions that are supposed do the regulating for the public good. The Department of City Planning is a case in point. There, the Fox has come to guard the henhouse and communities can no longer get a fair hearing.*  The Commissions hearings have become a kind of Kangaroo Court for communities, for even the Commissioners at City Planning who aren't directly involved in real estate development are all clearly members of the "Skyscraper Industrial Complex".

(* Part 2 will discuss how to repair the situation in the City Charter.  This article will be subject to possible revisions- Please send typo alerts or any new facts to the attention of the author.)

To be specific, of the 13 members of the Commission who control the Department of City Planning:

-    One is a real estate investor, a donor to the Mayor and runs a $75 million "opportunity fund" for Brooklyn (Douek)
-    One is a former lobbyist for the real estate industry (Cappelli)
-    Five are real estate developers of various types, ranging from an employee of Bluestone to CEOs of Development Corporations to the head of the Fifth Avenue Committee (de la Uz, Knuckles, Eaddy, Knight, and Marín)
-    The current Chair's professional history is that of running the notorious corporate subsidy-granting Empire State Development Corporation, a real estate development entity for the state.  It has seriously abused eminent domain to the detriment of black and low-income communities. One academic notes that the Corporation acts as "Robin Hood in reverse, taking from the poor to give to the rich" (Lago)
-    Only one has a degree in urban planning, but alas, runs a consulting firm advising city agencies and developers how to "optimize" their retail tenant mix so that it fits the owner's "goals" (Ortiz).
-    At least two have serious conflicts of interest with the current rezoning project on the table at Gowanus (Bluestone and Fifth Avenue Committee).  At least one had a clear conflict of interest with the East Harlem rezoning (Knuckles).
-    Two are architects with high-rise projects under their belts (Burney and Rampershad).
-    One has long been a cheerleader for the Hudson Yards project and whose spouse is a partner at the  ‘Big Law' firm of David and Polk that advises the developers such as Extell who are involved in the Hudson Yards project as well as many other major real estate players in NY (Levin).
-    One is CEO of the real estate controlled BID, the Grand Central Partnership, whose board of directors reads like the Who's Who of the Board of Governors of the Real Estate Board of New York and who has pushed for multiple upzonings in Midtown(Cerullo)

Is it any wonder these Commissioners, the majority of which represent the real estate development community, mistake upzoning, real estate profit-making and high-rise projects for actual urban planning?  We call on the City Charter Commission to repair the situation (see Part 2 for details).

Profiles of the Real Estate Industrial Complex at DCP:  with citations.

Mariso Lago, Chair of the DCP.  One of her claims to competence for serving as Chair is her experience as CEO of the Empire State Development Corporation. Part of the stated mission of the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) is to support economies though "real estate development" across New York State.  The current Chair is Howard Zemsky, a real estate developer who owns the Larkin Development Group. ESDC mostly organizes public subsidies for big developer-run projects (such as the Amazon project.  It also issues public bonds to pay for them and awards contracts to developers.  Current NYC "signature" and "large-scale" projects include the redevelopment of Penn Station and of the Javits Convention Center.  ESDC specializes in creating interlocking boards of subsidiaries to carry out its work. It is famous for the abuse of eminent domain to impose its vision.  It used those powers for the disastrous Atlantic Yards Project that demolished a swathe of Brooklyn as well as the Columbia Manhattanville Project that destroyed an immense stretch of West Harlem for Columbia University's new glass-filled campus. One of ESDC's subsidiaries was also responsible for building luxury housing in Brooklyn Bridge Park - even when it become clear that housing was not needed to subsidize the park. One of the ESDC's subsidiaries still manages a portfolio of 20,200 housing units in New York City. ESDC bonds were used to build a network of 32 adult prisons to accommodate people arrested under the Rockefeller drug laws.*  "Good Jobs First" a national good government group, accuses the ESDC of "awarding lavish subsidies with little accountability."  An Institute for Justice report by Dr. Dick Carpenter found that ESDC's "eminent domain abuse disproportionately targets those who are less well off and less educated" and acts as "Robin Hood in reverse, taking from the poor to give to the rich."  The Brooklyn Bridge Park redevelopment was particularly ridden with conflicts of interests and scandal during Ms. Lago's tenure at the Empire State Development Corporation. The architect of one of the governor's biggest deals at the ESDC was found guilty of bid rigging. E.J. McMahon, Director of the watchdog group ‘Empire Center' has fretted over misplaced priorities at the ESDC with the comment: "What roads could you build, what bridges could you build with the money you are spending on factories [then handed over] for private corporations?" Gotham Gazette describes ECDC-supported entities as "scandal-plagued."  Ms. Lago has publicly supported a high-rise, glassy, Dubai-on-the-Hudson vision for New York City in a video interview with the real estate press , calling it a ‘win-win-win'.  She mentions that the only real strategy DCP has it to define areas to "take more density" and in the same interview she expresses to be one with REBNY's desire to do away with the State FAR cap on height and bulk.  She has no training in urban planning.

(*King, Ryan S.; Mauer, Marc; Huling, Tracy (February 2003). "Big Prisons, Small Towns: Prison Economics in Rural America" (PDF). The Sentencing Project. Archived from the original (pdf) on 2010-07-10.)

Kenneth Knuckles, Vice Chair of the Commission.  He has been on the Commission since 2002 and has no training in urban planning.  He was the longtime CEO of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation (known as UMEZ) and only retired from there at the age of 70 in April of 2018.  UMEX is a real estate development organization that does a few other small business support activities under the heading of "economic development."  Substantial funding for UMEZ comes from New York City, meaning UMEZ has an internal incentive not to bite the City hand that feeds it.  Under Mr. Knuckles, UMEZ provided $87 million in loans to real estate development projects and was the key player setting up the controversial East River Plaza that benefited big developers (specifically, Ratner, Blumenfeld, and Canyon Capital Advisors).  That plaza is a vertical mall for big box stores and features a bizarre $64 million parking lot that as of 2012 was nearly empty, with less than 5% used of the spaces actually in use.  A senior accountant who worked at UMEZ wrote about his experience there on Glassdoor, saying "the only successes I saw while I was there were in funding large corporations to develop areas in Harlem." Mr. Knuckles is quoted in Crain's thus: "I would like to say we created the environment that was conducive to stores like Whole Foods [now owned by Amazon] coming to Harlem."  The role of Whole Foods in the "whitification" of Harlem was called out in 2016 in Michael Henry Adam's moving opinion column in the Times, "The End of Black Harlem" in which Adams wrote: "Whole Foods might as well be Fortnum and Mason…To us our Harlem is being remade, upgraded, and transformed, just for them, for wealthier white people."

Joseph Douek, Commissioner.  He is Chair and CEO of an investment and hedge fund called Viceroy Equities which is "betting big on Brooklyn with a $75 million Opportunity Zone fund".  Recall that opportunity zone investors will pay zero capital gains taxes if their real estate investments are held for ten years.  Opportunity zones are pure subsidies to real estate investors.   He has no training in urban planning.  Opportunity zones in Brooklyn overlap with proposed upzonings.

Alfred Cerullo, Commissioner is the President and CEO of the Grand Central Partnership, a big real estate Business Improvement District (BID). That BID drove the recent upzoning for the Vanderbilt Corridor and Midtown East, as both upzonings directly benefited members of the Partership. Of course, the Board of Directors of the Grand Central Partnership also reads like a who's who of the Real Estate Board of New York, with REBNY's CEO John Banks literally serving as the official secretary of the BID.  Cerullo is a Republican and former actor with a law degree, but no training in urban planning.  SL Green, a big real estate firm, owned 1 Vanderbilt and spearheaded the shocking upzoning for that area.

Richard Eaddy, Commissioner.  Mr. Eaddy's work prior to government service was with ET Partners, a real estate development and consulting firm.  He had previously been Chief Financial Officer of the real estate company "L & M Equity Participants" the precursor of L& M Development partners, a firm which brags on its website that it has "over $7 billion in development, construction, and investment".  He was also development manager at the real estate company Olympia and York.  His master's degree is in real estate development.  He has no training in urban planning.  It is safe to consider Mr. Eaddy to be a member of the real estate development community.

Allen Cappelli, Commissioner  A lawyer without training in urban planning who appears to be a professional board member, although according to the New York Times he was once a lobbyist for the real estate industry.  He is a former member of the board of the MTA where he served for 8 years overlapping with John Banks, current president of the Real Estate Board of New York (Cappelli was appointed to the MTA in 2008, while Banks was already on it while Banks continued to be on the MTA with Cappelli until 2015).  As a resident of Staten Island, Cappelli "was the only [MTA] member of the board to vote against increasing tolls and fares."  Note that the New York Times has called the MTA "one of the most unwieldy bureaucracies in the state" with an infamous amount of "bloat."  After leaving the MTA, De Blasio put him on the Civil Service Commission for three days a week of work at $412 a day.

Hope Knight, Commissioner is President and CEO of a private entity known as the "Greater Jamaica Development Corporation" whose mission is to "plan, promote, coordinate and advance responsible development" and is specifically responsible for glassy towers in the Jamaica neighborhood known as "The Crossing" and the "Hilton Garden Inn" and is now actively promoting to builders property lots containing 99,000 and 84,000 square feet respectively.  The Chair of the Board of the corporation is Peter Kulka, CEO of KJL Management Corporation, a real estate property management company in Queens." The Corporation's job of cheerleading new development includes the breathless phrase on their website "Jamaica makes new development happen!  $3.7 billion worth!" Ms. Knight's prior work had been on the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zones" from 2003-2015, (an entity described under the paragraph for Commissioner Knuckles.)  Ms. Knight does not have a degree in urban planning but instead an MBA from University of Chicago and considerable prior experience in banking with Morgan Stanley.

Anna Hayes Levin, Commissioner.  Her degree is in law, not urban planning. She served for many of the Empire State Development Corporations subsidiaries  such as those for the redevelopment of Hudson Yards and the Javits Center.  For example, she was  "alternative director" of the Hudson Yards Development Corporation. She had been chair of the Land Use Committee of CB4 during the tumultuous and controversial approvals for the Hudson Yards project between 2001 and 2009. At the time, she was also on the Javits Community Advisory Committee and on the Penn Station Community Advisory Committee, all ESDC projects.  Ms. Levin is married to a senior counsel and long-time partner at the law firm of Davis Polk, a firm which claims (in their words) to be ‘'at the center of the real estate marketplace." Their clients include major real estate players in NYC including SL Green, Slate, Naftali, Related, RXR, and Extell.  Their website specifically states that the firm advised Related on the Hudson Yards deal.

Orlando Marín, Commissioner.  He is currently employed by the Bluestone Organization, which is "a private developer" and which describes itself on its website as "a real estate development company."  Bluestone's website says it is developing projects with the ‘Fifth Avenue Committee" (a real estate development corporation whose Chair is also on the Commission).  Mr. Marin also once worked at the Empire State Development Corporation. He has a BA in architecture and a diploma in ‘Real Estate' as well as a Master's in public administration.  He lives in the Longwood area of the Bronx, an area that Crain's describes as a place where investors "clamor to rezone."  Bluestone's website describes its investments in areas where upzonings have been or are now on the agenda, including Bushwick, Jamaica, Gowanus, Crown Heights and Rockaway.  Some of these are in partnership with developers such as the Fifth Avenue Committee, Hudson Properties, and Jonathan Rose.

Larisa Ortiz, Commissioner.  Ms. Ortiz does have a degree in urban planning, but her principal job is working as a consultant (Larisa Ortiz Associates) to real estate developers and government agencies. She specializes in how to optimize their retail rents. Many of her clients are either large shopping center developers and New York City agencies and BIDs.  She markets herself as (from her website) a "commercial district advisor."  Her firm's mission includes to "develop market-based strategies for the redevelopment of urban places."  One of her clients is the New York City Economic Development Corporation where she advised them on the miserable "Fulton-Nassau Crossroads" program for retail in Lower Manhattan and the similarly controversial retail destruction of the Essex Street Market.

Michelle de la Uz is a Commissioner and Executive Director of the "Fifth Avenue Committee" which is unequivocally a real estate development firm, notwithstanding its status as a "community development corporation."  It's website claims real estate assets of over $100 million and has buildings in the works that will cost more than $400 million.  The committee does specialize in "affordable" housing, a term whose definition is obviously contested throughout the city and Uz does have a record of voting against rezonings that she thinks do not have deep enough levels of affordability, but she does not question the high rise or skyscraper character of De Blasio's policies. She does not have a degree in urban planning.  The Fifth Avenue Committee was instrumental in the demolition of the Brooklyn Public Library in Sunset Park. They received a no-bid contract to take on that particular development project.  The village of Sunset Park hotly contested the arrangement, pointing out that the Fifth Avenue Committee had given heavily to De Blasio's non-profit "Campaign For One New York."  Her organization in 2017 got $2.945 million in revenue from "government grants" and spends over $5 million for salaries, nearly all of its total revenue. Part of its revenue comes from $385,000 in rents from the buildings it owns. The Fifth Avenue Committee founded the "Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition for Justice" to advocate for certain groups during the planning for the Gowanus upzoning, a group that has pushed in favor of the rezoning.*  De la Uz wrote an op-ed in the Daily News in 2018 advocating for a spot rezoning for the community-contested project at 80 Flatbush Street in Brooklyn that favored a single developer, saying ‘we need to build bigger' and says resistance to developers is just "a regressive reality that must change" echoing the unproven fantasy REBNY p.r. line that not building skyscrapers might "impact job growth." She then fantasizes in the op-ed that the 80 Flatbush project was going to happen "without public subsidies" which indicates a weak grasp of reality.  Last, her organization partnered with another developer, Hudson Properties, to advocate for building a child care center next to the spot on the Gowanus canal that emits coal tar fumes that are so toxic that even the Environmental Protection Agency is concerned.

(* See the audit and 990 forms for Fifth Avenue Committee that Propublica has kindly made available.)

Rad Rampershad, Commissioner.  Mr. Rampershad is an architect, not an urban planner. He is resident of the low-rise, heavily down-zoned neighborhood of Richmond Hill, Queens, where Gary Barnett the CEO of Extell also lives.  He is a Senior Project Manager at the Gerald Caliendo architecture firm in Briarwood, Queens. His firm designed the glassy high rise "Four Points by Sheraton" in Long Island City and the similarly massive glass tower known as the "Z Hotel" in Hunters Point north of Long Island City. Architects like this are courtiers and dependents to the real estate industry.

David Burney, Commissioner.  Mr. Burney does have a degree in urban planning and is director of the Urban Placemaking and Management program at Pratt Institute School of Architecture, all of which definitely makes him not a real estate developer and not a deep part part of the "Growth Machine."  He was Director of Design and Capital Improvement for NYCHA for 13 years under Bloomberg, a worrisome aspect of his professional life:  as we all know there has not been adequate capital improvement in NYCHA for many, many years during the Bloomberg era. Mr. Burney was also one of the architects who did the massively over-scaled 29-storied Zeckendorf Towers in the Grammercy neighborhood while he was at the firm of Davis, Brody, & Associates.

Carl Weisbrod, former Chair of the Commission.  He is a senior advisor at HRA, a consulting firm that advises real estate developers and government agencies on big redevelopment schemes. The Real Deal credits Weisbrod for turning Times Square into the tourist zoo that it has become while he was in a "series of government positions."   He was for example president of the Economic Development Corporation for some of that period during which time he used "eminent domain aggressively to help the city take-over much of the land in the 42nd Street area."  While at HRA he led the rezoning of Hudson Square on behalf of his client the real estate division of Trinity Church.  That rezoning is resulting in the subsequent demolition of many a historic property in that area. He is a lawyer, but has no degree in urban planning.  He was for many years head of the Alliance for Downtown, a big real estate BID (developer Bill Rudin was one of the founders) that dominates much of the politics of Lower Manhattan.  As head of City Planning, he pushed through De Blasio's upzonings, over the opposition of  90% of the community boards in the city.  In that position, he also green-lighted the massive Extell tower in the Two Bridges area of Manhattan, claiming that the developer's requests amounted to a "minor modification" of the permit he granted, thus Carl Weisbrod, former Chair of the Commission.  He is a senior advisor at HRA, a consulting firm that advises real estate developers and government agencies on big redevelopment schemes. The Real Deal credits Weisbrod for turning Times Square into the tourist zoo that it has become while he was in a "series of government positions."  He was for example president of the Economic Development Corporation for some of that period during which time he used "eminent domain aggressively to help the city take-over much of the land in the 42nd Street area."  While at HRA he led the rezoning of Hudson Square on behalf of his client the real estate division of Trinity Church.  That rezoning is resulting in the subsequent demolition of many a historic property in that area. He is a lawyer, but has no degree in urban planning.  He was for many years head of the Alliance for Downtown, a big real estate BID (developer Bill Rudin was one of the founders) that dominates much of the politics of Lower Manhattan.  As head of City Planning, he pushed through De Blasio's upzonings, over the opposition of  90% of the community boards in the city.  In that position, he also green-lighted the massive Extell tower in the Two Bridges area of Manhattan, claiming that the developer's requests amounted to a "minor modification" of the permit he granted, thus allowing the developer to avoid going through ULURP. The Manhattan Borough President has sued the city over Weisbrod's decision.  Weisbrod has since become Chair of the Trust for Governor's Island which is overseeing a major plan to allow developers to have their way with the island. Cityland describes Weisbrod at the time of his appointment as having a "continuity of a pro-growth outlook" (with "growth" referring to real estate development.)  When he was appointed to City Planning, Cityland also noted that "his commitments to curtail the limbo of the pre-certification process, loosen the shrink-wrapping nature of some building envelope controls….. will be welcome news for developers."  Cityland concluded with obvious satisfaction that he would get those things done for the developer community.

Part 2:  What is to Be Done?

The Fox Guarding the Henhouse situation can be fixed with tighter conflict of interest rules in the City Charter. 

To be continued…

If “The System Is Rigged,” as More and More of Us Probably Believe, What Do You Do? Where Do You Wind up on the Spectrum of Possible Reactions?

If the system is rigged, where do you fit in on the spectrum. You can take the poll down below and find out how other people are answering the question.

If “the system is rigged,” what do you do about it?  There is a range of responses people might have.

First: “Is the system rigged”?. . . Is that something people now believe, and what might we mean by that?

A good indicator that many people now believe the system is rigged is how many candidates that ran for office in the recent presidential race (pretty much all the candidates of significance), Jeb Bush, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were chasing votes by saying the system is rigged.

What were they meaning by that?  Probably pretty much the same thing, but for simplicity’s sake let’s take Hillary’s featured statement in the video that officially launched her campaign: the deck is “stacked in favor of those at the top.”

This rigging is no doubt about income inequality and it’s also about power inequality with power resting securely with the people who are at the very top, an increasingly thin sliver, who make society’s most meaningful decisions paying little heed to the needs or concerns of the majority. (Among those decisions the U.S. is making as a society is a steadfast neglect of the imperative of tackling global warming as an issue.)

There is the sense, borne out by much empirical evidence, that no matter what efforts you as a typical citizen undertake to change things you won’t have an effect.  Go out to work for Bernie, give him money?: The corporately-owned mainstream media will refuse to cover Bernie’s campaign and will side-step talking about the issues he presses.  Mobilize your New York City neighborhoods to testify overwhelmingly against the sale of public assets like libraries?: The politicians you worked to elect while they proclaimed they would protect these public properties will blithely and deaf to the public hand the real estate industry exactly what it wants.

Does it make you feel neutralized?  Do you feel like you are expected to surrender to the preordained decisions made by the powers that be?

Locally in New York City, the crushing and relentless power of the real estate industry, with plans contrived secretly in backrooms years in advance, is experienced as something that goes way beyond mere “influence.”  On the national level there is the Scylla and Charybdis of our Republican/Democrat duopoly that (with cultural issues often a distracting sideshow) very dependably gives the corporations what they want at the expense of the public.  More recently, we see coming out of the shadows, reported with increasing frequency as an acknowledged real thing, stories about the control of the “deep state.”

Given the “deep state’s” status as officially secret, its entrenched strategies of deception generally acknowledged to be its standard M.O., and that it is unaccountable and doesn’t give official interviews, who can reliably say what the “deep state” wants or where it steers us?  We can only guess.  If it were not for the recently emerged narrative of Donald Trump as a “disruptor” at odds with the “deep state,” it would be easy to imagine the “deep state,” whatever its intentions, is in firm control by those powers that be.  This is not to say that things aren’t odd right now.  The current narrative of Trump as president at loggerheads with the “deep state” has floated the idea that the “deep state” could be praised as a sort of naturally intended fifth estate protective of our balance of powers, virtually an essential ingredient of a functioning democracy, while, at the same time, the far right wing is styling the “deep state” as creation of the “progressive left” rather than the generally accepted notion that it’s an extension of the military-industrial-surveillance complex.

Enough: We digress too much.  Different people have different ideas of the exact structures that rig the system.  Generally it is a follow-the-money proposition. . . . In this city, for Noticing New York purposes, that’s a path that takes you to the real estate industry’s doorstep (and for all the furious distractions of Mr. Trump at the national level, the real estate industry is still in charge in NYC, probably even more firmly, while we are still destroying the world’s climate with global warming and concurrently sleep-walking through the longest, most expensive wars in the nation’s history). . .

The question here presented for this simple post is: How do we react when the system is rigged?

What are the possible reactions when you conclude that the system has been formidably rigged, that it is set up to only to serve those rigging it at the expense of everyone else?  There is a spectrum.  If the system is rigged where might you fall?  Here are possibilities and to make it fun, we have set this up as a poll that our readers may take . .

. . .Where do I fall on the spectrum if the system is rigged?:

•    Already a rigger. I am already in on the rigging behind the scenes.
•    Looking to get in the action. Knowing the system is rigged, I’d like to get in on the action and benefit from the rigging myself.
•    Just want to fit in somewhere. The system being rigged, I’ll take the world as I necessarily find it and just figure out where I fit in.
•    Looking for separate corners.  I’ll strive to separate myself and ignore the rigging while seeking to do peripheral good things the rigging won’t prevent (or maybe I’ll run my own separate racket in the shadows of the bigger ones).
•    Didn’t Even Realize. I don’t even realize the system is rigged (and, frankly, when my salary or my status in the world depends on believing it isn’t, such blissful ignorance may be my preferred state.)
•    Fighting the rigging. I’ll fight the injustice of the system being rigged.

Take survey here

Take survey here

As you take this poll, answering the question for yourself, you might also speculate where you think our New York City (and maybe our New York State) elected officials fit in on this spectrum, what answers they would give about the choices they have made if they were answering honestly.

NYS Attorney General Eric Schneiderman Is Taking Political Donations From Those He Could or Should Be Investigating- Despite a (Playboy) Model Being Involved This Is NOT A Model That Serves The Public Well

WNYC and News News 4 New York have partnered to report on Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office taking contributions from the potential targets of his investigations

You probably don’t come to read stories at Noticing New York for shallow analysis.

WNYC and News 4 New York have partnered to produce a pair of stories about how New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office is often taking political donations from those they are investigating.  Although I don’t know what to think when not-for-profit news organizations increasingly “partner” with for-profit news organizations, these articles ought to grab public attention.  (Note: The more sensationally presented News 4 New York story had to conclude with a disclaimer of ownership relations between NBC and companies mentioned in their investigative story.)

    •    WNYC: Could Some Political Donations to New York's Attorney General Be a Conflict of Interest? Interview by Jami Floyd, February 18, 2016

    •     News 4 New York: I-Team: Why Did Former Playboy Playmate Donate $65K to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman?  By Chris Glorioso and Ann Givens, February 18, 2016

Both stories state that Attorney General Schneiderman isn’t being accused of any wrong doing.  Both stories also note statements from a Schneiderman spokesman that Schneiderman has investigated his own political donors, and in the WNYC report, Chris Glorioso states that the Attorney General’s office says this “evidence that he is unbiased and not swayed by these political contributions.”  According to Glorioso, the spokesman also said that in cases where donors stand to benefit from investigations that “those investigations began from the ground up, they began from New Yorkers who may have been wronged in one way or another, or from whistleblowers who called out wrong doing in the financial sector.”

Is the investigation of an Attorney General of his own donors evidence of a lack of bias, a lack of problems with receipt of the money received?

An uncle of mine was in the public relations business in the 1970s and there is a story I was privy to growing up told as a cautionary tale in my family about a fabled, wealthy publicist of the time.  I found it fascinating.  I won’t use names because I have never been able to find anything anywhere documenting the allegation although I did read that records that might have said something one way or another about the facts were burned after the publicist’s death.

The story was that when clients came to the publicist he told them that it was his job to tell the public everything good about the client, everything the client would want the public to know and everything it was the goal of the client to put out to enhance the client’s name and brand, but that he also needed to know what he would need to steer around. He explained that he needed to know all the client's secrets, the skeletons in the closets.  This man was recognized as being an exceedingly good publicist and did a good job for his clients, but if there ever came a time when a client thought about abandoning the use of his services, or if they began to think his fees verged on being too much, the situation could become uncomfortable. . .

. . . Was there reason for the client’s to be uncomfortable?  Was there ever an instance of private confidences having been breached?   I don’t know that there ever was.  I only know that the feelings of discomfort were part of the story that was told and that everyone knew from his flamboyant life style that the man’s fees were high.

I tell this story because it reminds me of another seeming paradox that might bring people up short when they first think about it.  Campaign finance reform expert and advocate Lawrence Lessig has written about how elected officials across the spectrum, both Democrat and Republican, “have an interest in extending the reach of regulation, because by increasing the range of regulated interest, you increase those who have an interest in trying to influence . .regulation.”  (This quote is from Lessig’s book, “Republic Lost.”)

Why do electeds benefit from regulation?  Is Lessig’s view that they necessarily want to enforce regulation?  No, it is that, as gatekeepers who get to collect political contributions in the money-in-politics “gift economy” that Lessig writes about, it’s good to have lots of “targets for fund-raising.”   Lessig tells us how federal lawmakers seek to be on certain “cash cow” committees which because of their regulatory power “primarily because members of those committees are able to raise large amounts of campaign money with little effort.”

Professor Lawrence Lessig appearing in the documentary, “The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz.”  Mr. Lessig's preface to the second edition of "Republic Lost" is a lamentation of our loss of activist Aaron Swartz.

In other words, Lessig quoting the work of Peter Schweizer and his book “Extortion,” describes an “extortion game.”  “What if politics is really largely about fund-rasing and making money,” is one of the quotes Lessig picks up from Schweizer.    

Later in analyzing what causes the campaign contributions, whether it originates with the hopes of the donor, or with the politicians and electeds soliciting contributions, and how much blame to put in the system itself Lessig writes:

Think about a more pedestrian version of this sort of extortion: We wouldn’t look to the failure of a local Mafia to give the victims of its extortion benefits as proof that there is no extortion. The victims are trying to avoid penalties; they’re not seeking special favors.

It’s particularly uncomfortable to apply this analogy to a state attorney general, because as Glorioso stressed in his WNYC interview:

Prosecutors are not just politicians, they are law enforcement officers.  They have subpoena power.  More than a law maker or a governor they can act unilaterally to penalize an entity, or to force an entity to cough up information.  So particularly here in New York where the Attorney general’s Office has been called the “Sherif of Wall Street,” a subpoena or a decision to investigate can have tremendous consequences in the market place.   

While, on one hand, there is a question of how things may turn out when there is competition between various moneyed interests, there is a bigger problem when you are the public with no money to pony up in the game.  Then you lose out entirely, in practical terms dropping off the face of the political earth.

Near the end of the NBC story Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center Democracy Program says: “As a general matter there is political science out there that says that the donor class has more influence over policy than the general public.”

Bill Maher on his Friday, February 13th Real Time showing speaking about how the average American has "only a minuscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

That is essentially what Bill Maher said in far more blunt terms on his last show a week ago:

Bill Maher: I just want to read one thing I read before on the show, it's a study, I am sure you are familiar with it, by two Princeton professors who said this is an oligarchy:

The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.

 . . And they wonder why there's a revolution!

The professors Maher referred to are Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page (from from Princeton University and Northwestern University) and their report, Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, uses in some cases some very academic sounding language to say these things; while they speak of “U.S. government policy” you can readily believe that with money in politics the way it is locally and in New York it is also true of New York City politics:

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

A summarizing preview was published (Oligarchy, not democracy: Americans have `near-zero' input on policy - report, April 15, 2014) containing these extracted quotes:

"Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts,". . 

While "Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association," the authors say the data implicate "the nearly total failure of 'median voter' and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories [of America]. When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

If you are involved in a political fight and want something that a considerable portion of the moneyed elite with influence and access also want, you might have a chance of winning it. . .  And there are some good things that the elite might also want to pass.  There are no reasons why the elite shouldn't be almost equally on the same sides of certain social issues such as abortion or gay marriage.  A goodly portion of the moneyed elites might also not want there to be fracking in New York State where the NYC water supply could be poisoned or the environment of vacations homes surrounding the city ruined.

The influence of money has certainly been a problem when it comes to how the fossil fuels industry has frustrated appropriate measures to head off climate change.  That includes all the money spent on climate science denial.  Even so, there must to be a certain portion of the elite, a large one, that don’t want their children and grandchildren to live in world that perishes, ceasing to exist as we know it because of severe climate change.

Notwithstanding, Lessig in his book (where in the updated edition he also writes about the Gilens and Page study) cites issue after issue with documenting polls showing that the policy the government follows is what the elite, the top 1%, want, not what the majority of Americans want.

We normally think in terms of going to our elected officials to get government to do what we want it to.  But maybe that doesn’t make sense at all. Instead of beseeching and lobbying our elected officials, the public probably ought to be at the doorstep of the moneyed elites trying to influence their viewpoints given the documentation (and Lessig includes graphs in his book) that “as the percentage of the elite supporting a proposal goes up, the probability of that proposal raises,” but “as the percentage of average voters show support an idea goes from 0 percent to 100 percent, the probability that idea will be adopted doesn’t change.”

$65,100.00 from 2010 Playboy Playmate of the Year tops Schneiderman's contribution list?

The WNYC and News 4 New York stories pointed out mysteries and lack of public access to information about what was going on with the contributions coming in.  The hook for both the stories was to ask the question why a former Playboy model from Texas, Hope Hope Dworaczyk, now Hope Smith, the 2010 Playboy Playmate of the Year, contributed $65,100.00 to become the largest political donor to Attorney General Schneiderman this January.

Ms. Dworaczyk recently married private equity billionaire Robert Smith who has contributed a lot of money, $150,000.00,  to Schneiderman over the years with much of the cash contributed to Schneiderman after he launched a probe, and then closed that probe, into the fees that private equity firms charge their clients.  The print version of the News 4 report explained that Smith is “the founder of Vista Equity Partners, a private equity fund that has attracted nearly $1 billion in investments from the New York Common Retirement Fund, a public pension, over the last seven years.”

Compounding the problem of mystery and its deepening the appearance of impropriety, News 4 interviewed James Tierney, a former Maine attorney general, now directing Columbia University's National State Attorneys General Program who, News 4 said explained that:

hedge funds and private equity firms are not transparent about their investments. That means the funds can allege some sort of wrongdoing about another company - and it is impossible for prosecutors to know if a resulting investigation could be seen as posing a conflict of interest.

Would you like to consider yet one more layer of complexity?  With all the money and ownership interests affecting the press there is, similar to the situation with elected officials including Attorneys General such as Schneiderman, the question of what gets investigated by the press . . .

Part of the News 4 story related how Schneiderman has investigated and now halted in New York the Fantasy Sports Gambling industry (See the Frontline Report: The Fantasy Sports Gamble,
February 9, 2016).  NBC’s investment in this industry necessitated disclosure in its report, but there is money on both sides of the deal because NBC reported that Schneiderman has also taken money from the local regulated gambling industry which competes with fantasy sports gambling.

As noted, the WNYC and News 4 New York reports both make clear that, when all is said and done, the Attorney General’s office, despite how troubling all of this must necessarily be, is not being accused of any wrong doing.  Indeed, while part of the purpose of this article to deepen the analysis points out that it is simplistically naive to believe the assertion of Attorney General’s office when it says that Scheiderman’s investigation of his own “political donors” is “evidence that he is unbiased and not swayed by these political contributions,” that doesn’t change that fact that nothing written here concludes that Schneiderman doesn’t strive to do the right thing in a troublingly warped and problematic system.

We can note in more detail here the questions about how elected officials including state attorneys general are essentially gatekeepers to benefit that can be politically derived, essentially collecting tolls, but one would expect or hope that, because an attorney general's office is comprised of attorneys with the licenses and personal integrity on the line, it would ensure that the office operates within legal bounds and mostly according to Hoyle.

Tim Wu during the Teachout/Wu campaign for Governor and Lieutenant Governor from this Citizens Defending  Libraries gallery of events page.

Further, it must certainly serve as an inherent check and balance on the office that so many attorneys working there have no doubt gone to work in the office precisely because they hope it is a place where they can do the right thing and accomplish idealistic objectives they likely came equipped with.  A recent case in point is that, this fall, Tim Wu, the Columbia Law Professor and highly influential open internet advocate (and Tweeter par excellence), joined the Eric Schneiderman’s office.  Mr. Wu is also recently famous by virtue of his political foray to become lieutenant governor as running mate of Zephyr Teachout.  It was a campaign that was startlingly effective.  Ms. Teachout is a protégée of Lawrence Lessig and a central tenet of the Teachout/Wu campaign was the overriding need for the kind of campaign finance reform that this article is about.

Still, in the final analysis, how does our warped system serve or not serve the public?  When it comes to moneyed interests being on the scene does Schneiderman stand on the side of the public if all the money is on the side of private moneyed interests?   Or does our state attorney general fulfill predictions of professors Gilens and Page that the actual interest of the public will have “only a minuscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy”?

Here is a perfect test case with a now escalating profile.  The New York State Attorney General regulates charities and is supposed to "to police fraud and abuse" and, for instance, the office was recently even given additionally clarified  powers “to bring judicial proceedings to unwind interested-party transactions."

A complaint about such fraud and abuse by the Brooklyn Public Library was recently filed by a newly formed group, Love Brooklyn Libraries, representing the public interest.  There is, however, a lot of private industry money on the other side, particularly real estate interest money that would like to see Brooklyn public libraries sold for a pittance, far less than their value to the public.  Part of the problem is that the composition of the board of the Brooklyn Public Library is extremely ill-suited to upholding the public interest with far too many competing agendas at odds to the public’s.  This is exactly what the Scheiderman’s office is supposed to be regulating.  He is supposed to prevent and insulate the public from exactly that kind of harm.

Read about the composition of the board of the Brooklyn Public Library and competing agendas at odds to the public’s.

Point of disclosure: I am a co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries which has similarly brought such matters to the attention of the Attorney General’s office, not only with respect to the BPL and its trustees, but also with respect to the NYPL and, for instance, its sale of the Donnell Library.

Now if one were plotting it on one of those professorial graphs we talked about, it is important to know that the public almost universally opposes the sale and shrinkage of our libraries, the elimination of books and librarians and the deliberate underfunding of libraries in a time of plenty being being used as an excuse to do so.

The breaking headline news now escalating the status of this story: The New York Post has just come out with an eviscerating story about the sweetheart details of de Blasio's giveaway of the Brooklyn Heights library.  The developer to whom the de Blasio administration and the BPL trustees regulated by Schneiderman’s office wasn’t the highest bidder; his bid was 20% lower than another of the two bids that surpassed him.  It was an inferior bid in other respects as well.  See:  New York Post: Developer with ties to de Blasio scores job, despite being outbid, By Aaron Short, February 21, 2016.

The new facts in the Post article are further evidence of what Scheiderman needs to be investigating.  But even this needs to be put in context: David Kramer (of the Hudson Companies) was the low bidder for a library that should not even be sold.  Kramer and the other developers were only bidding for the value of the library site as a vacant lot.  There were being asked by the BPL and its trustees to bid only for the “tear-down” value of the library.  These bids were in no way related to the value of the library to the public from the public’s perspective, because de Blasio and the BPL trustees were selling off the library with no appraisal of the value of the library from the public’s perspective.  And it is important to remember that what we are speaking of is a recently enlarged and fully upgraded library that would cost more than $120 million to replace.

So that is the test case that the New York Post has now given an escalating profile: What Schneiderman does in this instance, a matter that the public cares about intensely, will tell us much about exactly how worrisomely warped our system is.

Citizens Defending Libraries on Thursday night outside an event where Mayor de Blasio and economist Paul Krugman were to discuss income inequity in NYC.

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.