‘Ratner-Extell Fight Turns Ugly’

Re: “Ratner-Extell Fight Turns Ugly,” Daniel Hemel, Page 1, July 26, 2005. Last Friday, amid widespread public pressure, the Metropolitan Transit Authority released information on the two bids that were submitted for Brooklyn’s Vanderbilt Yards development. The MTA has said a decision could come as soon as July 27, giving the public barely a handful of days to respond to the newly disclosed bids. Although the Vanderbilt Yards site is public property, and public subsidies for its development could run upward of $1 billion, city and state agencies have denied New Yorkers meaningful opportunity for input every step of the way.

This year, we have seen decisions over two of New York City’s largest development projects in recent memory cloaked in secrecy and devoid of true public participation. In the wake of these decisions, the state Legislature recently passed legislation to bring real accountability to our state’s 730 public authorities. As the bill awaits the governor’s signature, Fifth Avenue Committee calls upon the MTA to follow the spirit of the new reforms and postpone a decision until their next board meeting in September. As a public agency, the MTA must give residents the chance to participate in a process that could dramatically transform their lives. Brooklyn, and New York, deserve nothing less.

MICHELLE DE LA UZ
Executive director
Fifth Avenue Committee
Brooklyn

‘Transportation Financing’

Re: “Hevesi To Block Transportation Refinancing, Saying It Could Lead to Future Tax Hikes,” Brian McGuire, New York, July 22, 2005. By blocking the plan of the Legislature and governor to refinance $3 billion of New York State’s staggering $46 billion in debt, Alan Hevesi, state comptroller, has cast himself in the role that Governor Pataki promised to play when he first ran for governor – that of fiscal conservative and protector of the state’s taxpayers. The administration’s implication that Mr. Hevesi is retaliating for the governor’s veto of a bill that would have given the comptroller more flexibility in investing the state’s pension monies is belied by the fact that Mr. Hevesi has filled this role before, when he blocked Mayor Giuliani’s potentially disastrous plan to raise one-time funds by selling New York City’s single most valuable asset, the city’s vast upstate water supply. Mr. Giuliani, a purported Republican, managed in his eight years as mayor to increase spending exponentially, depleting the city’s $4 billion “rainy day” reserve and directly contributing to our past and future (projected) fiscal crises. By selling the water supply and then leasing it back from the buyer, Mr. Giuliani would have obligated the city to pay yet another bill that it could not afford – and in perpetuity, to boot.

Unmentioned in this debate is the fact that, in addition to the aforementioned $46 billion debt load, the state’s various unelected and unaccountable authorities (mainly under the direction of Mr. Pataki) have incurred more than $100 billion in additional, so-called “moral obligation” debt. Meanwhile, New York City, under Republican leadership for the past 12 years, has managed to incur similarly outrageous levels of debt. And our two most powerful Republican officials, Mr. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg, evince no intent to slow down, as evidenced by their attempt to borrow an additional $600 million – partly by using yet another state authority – under the rubric of “economic development” (also known as building a poorly planned football stadium).This is one instance in which we may be thankful for Albany’s dysfunctional Legislature, the leaders of which blocked the stadium plan. While, admittedly, Messrs. Silver and Bruno did so for largely political reasons, the outcome was none the less the correct one.

And let us not forget that Mr. Bloomberg earlier refinanced the city’s last outstanding debt from the 1970s fiscal crisis at an additional cost to taxpayers – who elected a Republican, not a Democrat – of several billion dollars. His attempt to block that particular refinancing scheme appears to have been Mr. Pataki’s last attempt at any semblance of fiscal conservatism.

ROBERT RENZULLI
Manhattan

‘Israel’s Frontier Thesis’

David Twersky has tried valiantly to draw a parallel between Jewish settlement in Israel and the settling of the American frontier [“Israel’s Frontier Thesis,” Opinion, July 20, 2005]. “Thinking about two historical movements,” he writes extensively of the American incursion into the North American frontier and then draws every kind of argument to show its similarity to the Jewish settlement of Israel. It doesn’t wash. It isn’t the Jews who came to this land as newcomers, but rather as returnees, after a long and involuntary absence.

OLGA BARREKETTE
Manhattan

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