After taking heat from Assemblyman Richard Brodsky earlier this week on a deal over Yankee Stadium, the city has created a mini-retort report of its own, addressing Mr. Brodsky's claims point-by-point.

Mr. Brodsky, who testified at Rep. Dennis Kucinich's Congressional hearing today on the issue, lobbed a series of accusations at the city on Tuesday when he released his report titled "The House that You Built" [click here for a PDF, along with testimony]. Among other criticisms, Mr. Brodsky charged that the city artificially boosted the appraised land value for the Yankee Stadium site so as to better qualify it for a complex tax-free financing plan.  read more »

On Thursday, inside the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C., two legislators will convene a hearing on the financing of New York sports stadiums. Neither are from New York City, but the duo, Assemblyman Richard Brodsky of Westchester and U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland, have begun a crusade against a complex city-crafted plan to finance new stadiums and arenas for the Yankees, Mets and Nets.

At the least, the two stand to be a biting irritant to city officials and sports executives, as City Hall seeks to fight back on one news-making charge after another. But more than an annoyance, the two bring publicity, scrutiny and attention to the issue that could conceivably influence an impending ruling at the Internal Revenue Service on the matter, threatening the development of the planned $950 million Nets basketball arena in Brooklyn and additional loans for the Yankees and the Mets.  read more »

As part of his crusade to reform the state's finances, Governor David Paterson outlined a proposal yesterday to cut an additional $1 billion from this year’s budget, plus $1.6 billion next year. Doing so put him at odds with fellow Democrats, and it's unlikely to turn into a legislative coup for the governor. How it will play politically, however, is a different story.

The governor's first dramatic warnings about the state budget, which included a rare televised speech and a trip to Washington, were met with some skepticism from state Democrats, and a series of proposals for reducing the budget by $1.  read more »

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky is giving David Paterson the benefit of the doubt.

“I’m just going to assume David misspoke when he talked about the sale of assets to fill the budget gap," Brodsky told me in an interview this afternoon. "Hugh Carey chiseled on the forehead of the people of this state, ‘You don’t sell assets to close a budget gap.’ So, if what they’re talking about is using the sale of assets sales [to fund] an operating budget, it’s not going to happen."  read more »

Brodsky, who chairs the committee that oversees public authorities--some of the assets that theoretically could be leased or sold under ]]> http://www.observer.com/2008/politics/brodsky-patersons-plan#comments Politics David Paterson Richard Brodsky Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:58:06 -0400 Azi Paybarah 72681 at http://www.observer.com http://www.observer.com/2008/brodsky-blames-bloomberg-rift-over-public-authorities

Once again, Assemblyman Richard Brodsky and the city are in a public spat.

Mr. Brodsky, the most vocal legislative opponent of the mayor’s congestion pricing plan, issued a statement today publicly criticizing the Bloomberg administration’s concerns regarding a bill that would reform public authorities. Mr. Brodsky had been in three-way talks with the governor’s office and the state Senate, and told us last week that the city raised new problems with the bill days before the end of the legislative session.

Based on a summary of the city’s objections that Mr. Brodksy sent out, it seems the city is concerned about the independence of appointees on public authority boards, among other issues related to oversight.  read more »

With the West Side rail yards development deal on very shaky ground, Assemblyman Richard Brodsky today announced a bill that would chart a new course for the 26-acre parcel west of Penn Station, bringing in a new authority to follow a Battery Park City model of piecemeal development.

“Instead of selling at the bottom of the market for a price that was never really what the property was worth in the long run,” Mr. Brodsky said, “we should do what we know works.”

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the rail yards, has been trying to sell them to a private firm to develop, though yesterday talks broke down with selected developer Tishman Speyer, which had planned to pay the M.T.A. about $1 billion for the property.  read more »

Should Governor Paterson indeed move the Moynihan Station project under the control of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, as he said he wants to do, at least two members of the State Assembly are poised to resist the action: Richard Gottfried, the district’s representative, and Richard Brodsky, the chairman of the committee that oversees public authorities.

“It’s a New York project; it ought to be run by a New York agency,” Mr. Brodsky said. “As a bi-state authority, they [the Port Authority] have been unresponsive, remote and immune to reform.”

Moving Moynihan from the state-controlled Empire State Development Corporation to the Port Authority would remove the Legislature from any direct control over the project, taking away its ability to pass laws about the plan or have approval power via the Public Authorities Control Board. (The PACB blocked the project from moving forward in a phased plan at the end of the Pataki administration.)  read more »

A day after the City Council voted in favor of congestion pricing, and before the state legislature has a chance to, critics of the plan are making the argument that it is a financial burden on community services and charities.  read more »

Richard Brodsky, the longtime former chair of the Assembly's environmental conservation commission and a leading critic of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, is declining to seek the support of the New York League of Conservation voters, in the latest chapter in a long-simmering feud dating back to the group’s defense of Governor George Pataki. Brodsky has recently found himself on the opposite side of much of the state's environmental lobby over congestion pricing.

In a letter to the group dated March 27 and released publicly today, Brodsky wrote, “For the reasons that follow I've decided, respectfully, to decline to fill it out, and to decline to seek your
endorsement or support.”

He goes on to write:

“[I]n 2006, LCV declined to support any Member of the Assembly, including me, and leveled direct and clear criticism of Assemblymembers and Assembly leadership for its failure to get legislation passed by the Senate, and signed by the Governor. Put aside the peculiar theory of government that holds the Assembly politically responsible for other branches of government. Put aside the strange politics of the previous twelve years, when LCV was a persistent and well known defender of Governor Pataki who raided the EPF “locked box,” reduced enforcement of environmental laws and refused to support any of the significant environmental legislation supported by LCV and passed in the Assembly."

The full letter is after the jump.  read more »

]]> http://www.observer.com/2008/environmental-feud#comments Green Politics Congestion pricing Richard Brodsky Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:33:30 -0400 Azi Paybarah 67147 at http://www.observer.com http://www.observer.com/2008/everybodys-talking-about-congestion-pricing

It’s a pretty crowded room upstairs in the City Council chambers, where testimony about congestion pricing is being given by city Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and the Director of Long-term Planning and Sustainability, Rohit Aggarwala.

In one exchange, Aggarwala told City Councilman Robert Jackson, “[Y]ou don’t have to get 20 percent of the people off the road to have 20 percent reduction in traffic.” She continued, “Sometimes, if you take one or two cars off, it takes a crowded, congested condition and it turns it into traffic that can flow.”  read more »

]]> http://www.observer.com/2008/everybodys-talking-about-congestion-pricing#comments Politics Anthony Weiner Bill Thompson Christine Quinn Janette Sadik-Khan Leroy Comrie Richard Brodsky Robert Jackson Rohit Aggarwala Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:11:43 -0400 Azi Paybarah 66841 at http://www.observer.com