The current issue
Neighborhood Map
Bay Ridge
  • Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights
Brooklyn Heights
  • Downtown, DUMBO
Carroll Gardens
  • Cobble Hill, Red Hook, Boerum Hill
Fort Greene
  • Clinton Hill, Crown Heights
North Brooklyn
  • Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick
Park Slope
  • Prospect Heights, Windsor Terrace, Greenwood Heights
GO Brooklyn
Dining Guide
Where to GO
Events calendar
Classifieds
The Brooklyn Wire
Not Just Nets
Police Blotter
Perspective
Parenting
Politics
Transit
Podcasts
Brooklyn Cyclones
Merchant news
About The Paper
RSS Feeds

A weak court ruling

The Brooklyn Paper

Tools

Print this story
digg
del.icio.us

Before Bruce Ratner follows up his victory in state Supreme Court by bringing in construction cranes, it’s worth one more attempt to correct the ongoing misinformation campaign that state officials continue to conduct over Atlantic Yards.

Judge Joan Madden may have been correct when she ruled last week that New York State’s weak environmental laws give the state’s economic development agencies broad latitude to circumvent local authorities, override local zoning and hand-pick favored developers in the name of serving the public.

But Madden was wrong to not challenge the validity of evidence presented by the Empire State Development Corporation — evidence that clearly shows that the agency is not, in fact, serving the public interest at Atlantic Yards.

State officials say the proposed basketball arena at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues is a public benefit; that designation, they say, would qualify Atlantic Yards as a civic project and allow the use of eminent domain to condemn privately owned property and hand it over to Ratner.

Opponents of the project dispute how building an arena for Ratner and then giving his profit-making company a $1-a-year lease for 99 years could possibly be construed as a public benefit. Rather than question that scheme, Madden hid behind state law, which she said draws no distinction between a facility leased to a non-profit entity or a for-profit conglomerate.

Opponents also dispute how three blocks on the edge of the blighted Vanderbilt rail yards could be considered “blighted” (and, therefore, subject to eminent domain) when houses there routinely sell for more than $1 million. The state also has alleged that crime is rampant in that “unsanitary and unsafe,” yet those crime statistics have been shown repeatedly to be inaccurate.

Rather than pay some attention to the men behind that curtain of lies, Madden fell back on state laws that were crafted to facilitate raiding the public trough to hand over land and taxpayer subsidies to favored developers and their political patrons without regard to public sentiment or honest analysis.

Madden’s weak ruling makes it clear that in New York, the deck is stacked against truth — and her court couldn’t be bothered.

Is there no one who will look beyond the litany of lies and stop this charade?

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper

←Atlantic Yards: Ratner wins big: Ruling brings Atlantic Yards closer to reality
→Atlantic Yards: There goes the judge: Quits Yards case citing Ratner’s promo flier

Reader Feedback

Enter your comment below

By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:

You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.

First name
Last name
Your neighborhood
Email address
Daytime phone

Your letter must be signed and include all of the information requested above. (Only your name and neighborhood are published with the letter.) Letters should be as brief as possible; while they may discuss any topic of interest to our readers, priority will be given to letters that relate to stories covered by The Brooklyn Paper.

Letters will be edited at the sole discretion of the editor, may be published in whole or part in any media, and upon publication become the property of The Brooklyn Paper. The earlier in the week you send your letter, the better.