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September 29, 2006
Ratnerville: What Economic Impact Study?
Power Plays (the political blog of The Village Voice)
By Neil DeMause
The Atlantic Yards General Project Plan cites conclusions from an "independent economic analysis," only you don't get to read the report because it's on "double-secret probation," or something like that:
Leaving aside how "independent" a study can be when it's undertaken by the agency proposing to build the project, a bigger problem has emerged: The ESDC is refusing to let anybody see this report. Asked by the Voice last month who had conducted it, ESDC spokesperson Deborah Wetzel said she "didn't know." And now, two months after Norman Oder of the Ratnerville watchdog blog Atlantic Yards Report filed a Freedom of Information Law request for the study, ESDC FOIL officer Antovk Pidedjian has informed Oder that no such documents exist that are subject to disclosure laws. The reason, an ESDC attorney told the Voice: "It is ESDC's position that internal staff memos that address economic impact are exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Law."
Robert Freedman of the state Committee on Open Government explains:
While the law does exempt "intra-agency materials," he says, certain categories of material explicitly cannot be withheld—one of which is "statistical or factual tabulations or data," which presumably would include economic impact number-crunching.
Posted by lumi at September 29, 2006 8:42 AM