Sunday, September 1, 2013

Should Sandy Redevelopment Funds be Used for Luxury Condos?

As Bloomberg departs, two super scandals from his years in office stand out.  The City Time payroll boondoggle where Mark Mazer played him for a chump; and the rebuilding after September 11th.  The former has received some press, (why not put some displaced from Sandy is this nice spot!?
The impressive $1.8 million brick Colonial house was owned by accused CityTime mastermind Mark Mazer.




but the latter remains majorly under-appreciated.  In cogent blogpost, Good Jobs NY goes back and looks at how Federal money's were used to subsidize luxury condos' and "small businesses" such as boutique law firms.  But what really offends is the lack of a comprehensive regional development framework.   This is in part due to the corruption and economic incompetence of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation as well as the anti-transparency of the NYC Economic Development Corporation.  If NYC aims for a democratic resilience, NY'ers might have to get into a debate like those around the World Trade Organization in the last decade: reform or eliminate? 

Check out the excellent posts for background:
http://clawback.org/2013/08/23/federal-task-force-on-sandy-rebuilding-urges-regional-economic-development-community-development/
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1 comment:

  1. morphoSeptember 1, 2013 at 10:44 AM

    This is nice piece on how Juan Gonzalez broke the City Time scandal, and some fascinating other scandals.
    http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/juan-gonzalez-recalls-25-years-greatest-scandalous-scoops-article-1.1226436?pgno=1

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