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October 27, 2009
Despise the Initiative Process? New York City Shows Why Progressives Need It
BeyondChron
by Randy Shaw
An interesting perspective from the author of The Activist's Handbook.
What do Governor Schwarzenegger, the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, labor activists, land use reformers, and many progressives have in common? All blame ballot initiatives for California’s current problems. California’s budget crisis has spawned such outrage over the initiative process that there is talk about new restrictions, with many progressives concluding that a onetime populist process has become a tool for the powerful to control policy. Fortunately, New York City provides a case study of a large, ethnically diverse, California-like entity where citizen ballot measures are not an option. The result? A profoundly undemocratic city where large real estate developers call the shots. Progressives who attack “ballot box planning” and other uses of the initiative process should look at what happens to NYC neighborhoods that have no ability to stop or even influence the most destructive of development schemes.
...The Atlantic Yards
This Brooklyn-based project is in a class by itself for circumventing the popular will.
It’s no so much that New Yorkers would automatically reject this proposal for a basketball arena and sixteen high-rise buildings adjacent to residential neighborhoods; as bad as this idea is, what is worse is the massive level of public subsidies to enrich the private developer, along with the use of the type of eminent domain – for private profit rather than public benefit – that even pro-development conservatives oppose.
Posted by eric at October 27, 2009 3:51 PM