NYC Comptroller's Race

Recently I wrote about how developers basically run this city for their own profit, getting sweetheart deals from our city and state government through backroom deals. The level of corruption that basically allows rich developers like Bruce Ratner to use our tax money to turn a profit and dominate politics is really quite amazing. Here I discuss the flip side of this: what the politicians get out of. The politicians get campaign money. Some developers will donated to pretty much everyone's campaign in key races to try and get a hold on whoever wins. This is why candidates who genuinely do not take developer money are important to reforming our system.

The NYC Comptroller race is possibly the most uninspiring one this year. Or at least so far. Seems no one wants to be the one to face the city's fiscal crisis. But apparently lawyers and developers (the latter not surprisingly) are very, very interested in who keeps track of the money in NYC.

This comes from True News from Change NYC:

Lawyers and developers contributed almost half of the funds to the three major candidates running for Comptroller. Of the 4,636 listed occupations (5,779 in total) on the contributor list, 826 are listed as lawyers. But even 826 is not the true number due to the fact that the candidates mislabel the contributors' occupations on the list. The same can be said for the 344 real estate contributors...Of the 200 contributions listed as CEOs, most are in real estate, law or banking. Many other listed professions that should have been specified as real estate include: Architect, Broker, Builder, Contractors, Developer, Director, Engineer, Management, Owner, Partner, President, Principal, and Self Employed....Of the 400 contributers listing their occupations as executives, many are developer’s lawyers and bankers. Talk about cooking the Comptroller books, Katz has a contribution listed as "Self Employed" and another contributer from Two Trees Mgmt listed as "Director" for his occupation, when in fact everyone knows that Two Trees is a very famous real estate development company.

There's more. The article is a good bit of digging around the finiancial disclosures of these candidates. And it is nothing new for developers to hide their professions...and for politicians to abet that hiding.

Looking at the Comptroller's race, Melinda Katz is widely known as one of the top recpients of developer money in the city...and that is saying a lot. She seems largely in the pocket of developers if eagerness of donations is any indication. David Yassky isn't qutie the enthusiasitic pro-developer candidate Katz is...rather he prefers speaking out about standing up to developers only to cave in when thrown a tiny crumb or hollow promise by a developer. His rhetoric often sounds good, but in a weak moment my wife, when asking him questions about his run for Congress in 2006, got him to admit in public that he believed developers will always win so the best we can hope for is to try and get whatever concessions we can from them when the deal is done. If Katz is something of a developer quisling, perhaps Yassky is a bit of a Neville Chamberlain when it comes to dealing with developers.

David Weprin is the one who seems least beholden to developers of the three, though I fully admit that could be as much the fact that I know the least about him than he is any better than the other two. He did make a proposal that was sure to give developers indigestion when he suggested that we should ease traffic congestion by raising construction fees and thus discouraging developers from blocking streets for as long as they do. So far he strikes me as the most conservative of the three, but also is the only one who has actual experience dealing with the city's money, having served as Deputy Superintendent of Banks for NYS, as Secretary to the Banking Board, and as Chairman of the Securities Industry Association (for what it's worth), experience Yassky and Katz largely lack. Now that may well mean Weprin is owned by bankers rather than developers, but to be fair he was involved in the banking and securities industries before Bush's policies started ruining our economy. Here is how Weprin describes on his website his tenure as Deputy Superintendent of Banks for NYS under Governor Mario Cuomo:

, [Weprin] was a watchdog of nearly $2 trillion, regulating more than 3,000 financial institutions and financial service firms in New York State, including international banking institutions, mortgage brokers, and mortgage bankers. One of several accomplishments David is proudest to have achieved on behalf of consumers as Deputy Superintendent was to reduce the number of days banking institutions may hold checks before clearing them, thereby reducing the interest they can earn on the backs of consumers and businesses.

So there you have it. The Comptroller's race in a nutshell: Lawyers, Developers and Bankers. Rumor has it another person, and a better candidate, may be joining the race. Will update next week.