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July 11, 2007
MOU Wasn't True...and They Knew It.
Here's Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn's reaction to news from Atlantic Yards Report that politicians knew in advance that the public tab for Bruce Ratner's controversial Atlantic Yards plan was going to be higher than what they publicly acknowledged:
Yup. State government, at least, knew that the public tab for Atlantic Yards would go much higher than the "public contribution" envisioned and disclosed in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by the State, City and Forest City Ratner in February, 2005.
Moral of the story? As per the Robert Moses playbook: If you are going to mislead the public, especially on costs to taxpayers, make sure they don't know until political approval is in the bag so elected officials can then claim** that they've got to get the taxpayers to pay for their "commitments", no matter what the cost "overruns" are.
(** February 3, 2007: "We have a commitment to pay for infrastructure costs and we will meet that commitment," the mayor said.)
Posted by lumi at July 11, 2007 8:13 AM