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March 4, 2010
Irony Watch (MTA Hearing Edition): A Tale of Two Marties
While there was surely a veritable parade of blowhard politicians monopolizing the microphone at last night's Brooklyn hearing on planned MTA service cuts, the outrage of Brooklyn State Senator Marty Golden and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz is especially ironic, given their outspoken support for the MTA's giveaway of the state-owned Vanderbilt Railyard to Forest City Ratner for a fraction of its value, and with sweetheart payment terms, to boot. They may as well have been cutting student MetroCards in half themselves.
NY1 News, MTA Hearing Turns Rowdy In Brooklyn
Golden, who disrupted a hearing on Atlantic Yards last May, appears around the 55-second mark in the NY1 report.
"You understand what we're doing here? We're hurting people's lives. It's wrong," declared State Senator Martin Golden at last night's Brooklyn hearing.
Markowitz, who prioritizes a pseudo-replacement for his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers above all else, doesn't appear in the video, but he did speak at the hearing (click here for a transcript), saying:
"The MTA has a decision to make — it has to decide whether it is appropriate in this crisis to fund flashy "cosmetic" mega-projects in places like lower Manhattan while starving the system as a whole."
Yes, he actually said that, forgetting, we guess, his cheerleading for the public funding of a flashy, money-losing mega-project in Prospect Heights.
Related coverage...
Atlantic Yards Report, Markowitz discovers fiscal prudence regarding MTA megaprojects and property
Posted by eric at March 4, 2010 4:58 PM