The corruption of NYC’s love affair with developer Bruce Ratner is really becoming astonishing. It starts to look like the crony capitalism that Federal Republicans are currently so engaged in. Simply put, the city and state at several levels are paving the way for Ratner’s development plans without regard for the law or for the neighborhoods he wants to build in. Many apologists for Michael Bloomberg have tried to claim that Bloomberg, the city government and the state government are not involved. They claim that it is nothing but capitalism at work and that Ratner is buying the land all above board. But, thanks to the legal efforts of neighborhood groups like Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB), we are discovering more and more layers of corruption. Let’s start with an August 20, 2005 article in the Park Slope Paper. The lead paragraphs:

The same day they signed a widely publicized agreement setting aside land for developer Bruce Ratner’s proposed Atlantic Yards project, top officials of the Pataki and Bloomberg administrations signed a separate pact with the developer, granting him the right to build up adjacent urban renewal sites without city review. That second agreement was never made public, but it turned up this week in the state’s response to a fairly broad Freedom of Information Act request made by a neighborhood group opposed to the Atlantic Yards plan.

First of all, notice the first sentence: “a widely publicized agreement�? signed by “top officials of the Pataki and Bloomberg administrations…�? What about all those Bloomberg apologists who have in the past claimed that Bloomberg has nothing to do with these development plans? We know from the maneuvering over the West Side Stadium and the Atlantic Yards project that rival bids that give more money to the city are often flat out ignored by the Bloomberg and Pataki administrations in favor of Ratner. Where is the “free market�? in that? The second part of the above quote says that a SECOND agreement, was kept secret until a DDDB went through the Freedom of Information process. Here is the next sentence:

The document stipulates that Ratner would be able to obtain the development rights to build nearly 1.9 million square feet of residential and commercial space on properties north and west of the Atlantic Avenue rail yards, exceeding the current zoning for those sites, without having to put the proposal through the city’s lengthy land use review process.

So, let’s summarize: representatives of Pataki and Bloomberg are SECRETLY signing over development rights covering our homes and businesses to a private developer without the full review required by law. This is colonialism! Our homes and businesses are being treated like colonial land to be secretly divided up among rich developers, sometimes without our knowledge and without proper review. I don’t know about anyone else, but I am not alright with this! It is NOT good for the community, it is NOT a public process and it is NOT free enterprise. To all Bloomberg apologists: your man is excluding the public from discussions of what to do with their own neighborhoods and he is not allowing the free market to work by going through a bidding process. Then we have Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki offering to use eminent domain to condemn the neighborhood where Ratner wants to build. This horrible violation of the property rights of New Yorkers was condemned by the NY Sun:

So Mr. Ratner wants the state government simply to take their property for him. To condemn the neighborhood and hand it over to Mr. Ratner, Governor Pataki, through the Empire State Development Corporation, must claim that Prospect Heights is so in need of economic rejuvenation that the extraordinary power of the government to seize property through eminent domain in service of a “public use�?is essential. Shamefully, Mr. Pataki is already on board, as is Mayor Bloomberg. Those who make their living in Mr. Ratner’s path of destruction include a family-owned artsupply factory, a neighborhood bar that dates to pre-Prohibition days, and an immigrant-owned auto-body shop. Not only commercial, the neighborhood is dotted with newly renovated condominiums as well. These owners pay their property taxes and income taxes, and they employ dozens of New Yorkers at good wages and in good working conditions. “For someone to come and tell us that we have to�? sell out to Mr. Ratner, “that is wrong,�? said Simon Liu, who moved here from China more than 30 years ago, and who employs two dozen immigrant workers at his artsupply factory.

So we have behind the scenes secret deals between Pataki, Bloomberg and Ratner handing over development rights without proper legal review and we have Pataki and Bloomberg threatening to use eminent domain to take away the private property of American citizens to give it to a private developer for his own profit. The oversight agency that is supposed to review development projects and to decide eminent domain is the Empire State Development Corporation. Well, once again thanks to the legal efforts of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, yet another link of corruption has been revealed. From the January 28, 2006 issue of the Park Slope Paper comes the story that when the Empire State Development Corporation needed a lawyer to help with the state’s assessment of Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project, who should step up to recommend a lawyer and actually pay for that lawyer? None other than Bruce Ratner himself. He recommended HIS OWN lawyer. The Empire State Development Corporation accepted his offer and used Ratner’s own lawyer, paid for by Ratner, to review Ratner’s project. To quote from the Park Slope Paper’s print edition:

Ratner suggested the firm of Sive, Paget Riesel in a letter that also guaranteed the Empire State Development Corporation that he would pay all the legal and consulting costs incurred during their environmental review of his $3.5 billion arena, residential and commercial project. David Paget, a partner in the firm, was working as Ratner’s lawyer when the developer’s company wrote the recommendation in February, 2004. He stopped working for the developer shortly before he began counseling the ESDC in September, according to the New York Observer, which obtained the document through a Freedom of Information Act request.

So, the state agency whose job it was to review Ratner’s proposal and to decide eminent domain issues hired Ratner’s own lawyer to help them with the process and Ratner paid for it. I am sorry, but this is Third World level corruption. This is illegal and immoral and should not be tolerated in the United States of America. I need to emphasize that even though Pataki and Bloomberg are the two main politicians who are helping out Ratner, this is by no means strictly a Republican scandal. Democrats are also pushing Ratner’s plans down our throats, led most particularly by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. However, I am unaware of outright illegal activities on the part of Markowitz or other Democrats. Nevertheless, I am disgusted that Markowitz and other Brooklyn Democrats are still behind Ratner’s project despite the corruption that has surfaced. America is a nation where rule of law is supposed to dominate. Mayors and Governors are not supposed to violate the law to help out their friends. And yet that is exactly what is going on in New York. Where is the Public Advocate? Where is the State Attorney General? The main group fighting this corruption is Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. They are doing it because they oppose Ratner’s Atlantic Yards plan. I am glad they are doing it because I do not like to see such corruption blackening the reputation of New York, but I would prefer if an unbiased, state agency discovered and prosecuted the corruption of Ratner, Bloomberg and Pataki. Where are the state agencies whose job it is to catch this kind of corruption? Why are they leaving it to a neighborhood group with their own agenda to do their job. Well, until the state starts to do its job and challenge this corruption, I applaud DDDB’s efforts to reveal and prosecute the corruption surrounding Bruce Ratner’s plans.