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May 12, 2011
Polarizing Downtown Brooklyn business group kept sloppy books - audit
NY Daily News
by Erin Durkin
Honchos at a group charged with lending its business expertise to Downtown Brooklyn could use some accounting classes themselves, an audit found.
Controller John Liu's report slamming the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership for sloppy bookkeeping came as the Partnership got the nod to take over another neighborhood business group - over the objections of some local merchants.
The audit found the Partnership couldn't account for $1.2 million in employee pay and benefits - 45% of its total budget for the year.
..."If that audit is any indication of how they're going to perform, you can kiss all the good work the BID has done over the years (goodbye)," said board member Vincent Battista, executive director of the Institute of Design and Construction, a junior college on Willoughby St. "They're so inefficient they don't know which way is up."
The board voted 22-9 to approve the takeover, backed by the city and major developers like Forest City Ratner. The move came after they shelved conflict of interest rules that could have barred the 13 board members who also sit on the Partnership board from voting.
Posted by eric at May 12, 2011 12:06 PM