So, it looks like after all the pious talk about public participation and transparency, the key decision on the World Trade Center site is going to get made behind closed doors by seven white men and Mayor Bloomberg’s girlfriend. That’s the upshot of the disclosure by the New York Post, confirmed yesterday by the Wall Street Journal, that an eight-person group has been meeting and will make the decisions on plans for the site. To understand how far this process has veered off course, it’s worth backing up to November 2, 2001, when Governor Pataki, joined by Mayor Giuliani, announced the creation of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which the governor’s press release said would “oversee all aspects of revitalizing and rebuilding Lower Manhattan south of Houston Street.” Mr. Giuliani said, “The creation of the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corporation will provide the kind of broad-based coalition required for the speedy redevelopment of Lower Manhattan.” And a broad-based LMDC was indeed created. It included a labor leader, Ed Malloy; two African-Americans, Deborah Wright and Stanley O’Neal; an Asian-American, Billie Tsien; and a Hispanic woman, Sally Hernandez-Pinero. The LMDC’s Web site claims, “LMDC is committed to an open, inclusive, and transparent planning process in which the public has a central role in shaping the future of Lower Manhattan.” And indeed, the LMDC has held a series of public hearings and meetings so extensive and inclusive and open that they risked lulling the public into a stupor. Now it turns out to have all been a charade — the real decisions are being made by this group of eight whose existence has never even been officially announced.

Now, it’s true that bad processes sometimes yield good outcomes, the Clinton health care reform proposal notwithstanding. As a matter of fact, we’re told the mayor’s companion, a Pataki aide named Diana Taylor, is an impressive woman in her own right. And these columns would be the last to suggest racial quotas for government bodies. Still, if politicians and publicly funded agencies are going to boast of transparency and broad-based coalitions, the least they can do is to keep their promises. Billions of taxpayer dollars and the future of Lower Manhattan are at stake. The chairman of the group of eight, Roland Betts, described the body to the Wall Street Journal as “an ad hoc group of four different interests.” He was speaking of New York City, New York State, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the LMDC itself. The sooner these folks stop thinking of themselves as representing “four different interests” and the sooner they start representing the single public interest — that of the city’s taxpayers — the better.