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June 2, 2010
Bloomberg’s Do-Gooder Charity
NY Observer
by Reid Pillifant
Since taking office, Mayor Bloomberg has made the Mayor's Fund a particular priority, transforming a little-used nonprofit into a robust public-private player that has helped stem deep budget cuts in city agencies, and advanced objectively good causes like tree planting, reducing domestic violence and increasing economic literacy.
In Mr. Bloomberg's eight years in office, the Mayor's Fund has raised more than $150 million--for everything from portrait conservation, to eye care for underprivileged kids, to Katrina and Haitian relief efforts. But it's tough to deny the fact that a substantial part of that money comes from people who do business, in one way or another, with the city. "It's a really great arrangement for people making the donations, because they get to please an influential elected official and they get a tax deduction," said Susan Lerner of Common Cause NY. "There is an increasing tendency-which is pushed very vigorously by this administration-to completely blur the lines between public and private, between profit and charity," Ms. Lerner said.
...The mayor, who has sole discretion to appoint the fund's directors, placed friends and supporters on the board to help fill the fund's coffers. Financier Steven Rattner--the mayor's personal money manager--was tasked with tapping the donor community; gossip columnist Liz Smith organized a lavish fund-raiser for the society set.
Around the same time, the Conflicts of Interest Board revised its guidelines for city nonprofits: City officials could pursue private donations for pet projects, as long as the donor didn't have a "specific matter either currently pending or about to be pending before the City official or his or her agency."
...Real estate interests, including the Rudin and Speyer families and the Association for a Better New York, are all consistent contributors. (Rob Speyer, the co-CEO of Tishman-Speyer and currently the chairman of the fund's board, declined an interview request.)
Bruce Ratner, one of the board members, gave liberally--a fact occasionally noted by the press, since his controversial Atlantic Yards project was, at the same time, winding its way through the city bureaucracy. In one December 2005 flurry, three Ratner-related entities-Forest City Beekman Associates LLC; Forest City East River Associates; and Forest City Ratner LLC-together gave between $450,000 and $1 million to restore a Coney Island carousel.
"Bruce and Forest City Ratner have indeed supported the rehabilitation of that amusement, and they are guilty of thinking it will be much loved again by kids and their families," a spokesman told The Observer in 2007.
NoLandGrab: Guess that whole conflict-of-interest thingy needs a little reworking.
Posted by eric at June 2, 2010 10:28 AM