This sounds so good on the surface, but it's full of baloney. You don't want true reform. You want to create political slush funds for politicians to dribble out to politically-connected groups as cover for bad developement. Can we say Yankees CBA? Willaimsburg? Atlantic Yards, West Side? Stand in line. Bertha Lewis is ahead of you. Instead of just requiring companies to live up to their agreements, how about stopping bad development that kills neighborhoods and stop creating slush funds that allows you and politicians to create the idiocy that it's palatable.

Yeah Anon. We can totally stop all of those development projects that you hate. Yeah Bloomberg is trembling.

Look, ACORN is NYC is messed up but that doesn't mean all organizations of low income people that are lobbying to get more from bad deals are bad. They are trying to preseve the lives of the most marginal people of all. The whole point of IDA oversight is so that there aren't slush funds - so that we can garuntee that the crappy development projects they throw at us will actually have benefits that the community can feel. So that if they don't create the jobs they promise we can do something about it.

Just saying no to development don't work. That's why the group is called "Develop Don't Destroy" afterall. You need to get over your beef against Adrianne and all of the other people that do organizing in low income communities. We aren't all Bertha Lewis.

Lewis is just the poster child, but others who pursue the same policies are also bad, just as bad, and those who do this are doing great harm to the people for whom they claim to fighting. And in some communities these groups come in from the outside, giving politicians cover for promoting bad development. They undermine the local community members' ability to fight it.

I'm sorry, but so many jobs to lower income people (if that happens at all) is not worth the price of my neighborhood. I am not coming from the viewpoint of a nimby co-op owner worried about losing property values. Just the opposite. I work with low-income people every day and I see the displacement these projects cause. I see lives disrupted and people forced to lose their homes and small businesses. So-called Inclusionary Zoning creates more displacement from all the towers that come with it. There's no gain.

Of course Bloomberg is not trembling. He's gloating since he has these groups suckered.

If ALL you want to do is be a watchdog on the IDA, that's OK, but watching this stuff for the last few years, that's just masking the real agenda.

Yes, Shame on Bertha Lewis, but also shame on others that pursue the same goals.

Are Lewis and Acorn wrong? Well, I for one don't know.

I assume that they are catching flack from the commenters above because of the deal they struck over the Atlantic Yards development. Was it a bad deal? Should they have held out for more? How much more?

In every struggle, on every issue, from big development projects to immigration reform, organizations and their leaders have to "know when to hold them, know when to fold them."

Should, for example, the Working Families Party have given up its effort on behalf of an increase in the minimum wage? In the deal they struck -- they supported (and provided the margin of victory for) Nick Spano, a Republican State Senator from Yonkers. While I was grumpy about the deal, the WFP did get a needed minimum wage boost for New Yorkers.

Community organizers and political leaders make deals--swap support on issues. They stronger they are, the better deals they can swing on behalf of their supporters.

Millstone misses the ppoint and appears to be misinformed. He presumes Acorn has a right to be a player in the Atlantic Yards issue. While many people and groups may have a right to voice their opinion, Acorn is and was not a stakeholder. It's not their neighborhood and they won't suffer the impact. It's an outside group and does not represent the community that will be impacted.

It's like the Carrion fake CBA in the Bronx and where he (on the Brian Lehrer Show) tried to falsely claim that the opposition came from outsiders, specifically people from Brooklyn. While some Brooklyn people attended the hearings and supported the Bronx activists, they deferred to the position of the Bronx people (who are really saying build it in place, not on their current parks).

So when the AY issue came about, the Brooklyn people in the impacted neighborhood organized. They wanted to stop the basketball arena and the size of the rest of the plan. No one (to my knowledge) has ever said no one should ever build there. But they also realize that the current project must be stopped before rational minds can sit down and negotiate what is appropriate for that part of town. Note I say negotiate, which is not the same thing as a CBA, which is simply a sell-out and not designed to stop or mitigate a project.

So at Ratner's behest, in comes Acorn from the outside. They don't say stop it. They don't say scale it down. They say do whatever you want as long as we get ours (and in which they will get a contract).

What Millstone needs to understand is that there is no deal with the community; it's with an outside group that is being used to undermine the community. And Acorn is helping to kill that Brooklyn neighborhood.

So if Shropshire, Lewis, Lander and other apologists (the fake progressives) want to help kill a bad project, then great. It they want to support an existing community in altering or scaling-down something that is out-of-scale, then great. And if they want full accounting for corporate pork (the subject of this thread), that's wonderful (as long as we also get full accounting for the pork the so-called progressive groups are seeking).

But they aren't fooling anyone. A review of their websites eseentially says they want their piece of the pie. That's the fundamental poroblem with CBA's, Inclusionary Zoning, etc. They are mechanisms that are being used to undermine communities abilities to preserve themselves as viable neighborhoods under the guise of what they are seeking.

Most (if not all) of the activists in the large rezonings are also for jobs and housing. I am. But it should be done by attracting business that is in scale with the neighborhood and not displace or drive out those people and businesses that have worked to make the neighborhoods worthwhile for decades.

Shame on DMI and those who pursue these agendas.

Well, I think I am ill-informed, misinformed and still I disagree with Anon April 15, 11:21 AM.

I live in the Bronx. I think some of the development deals pending in Brooklyn are bad ideas. For example, I think the proposed Forest City/Ratner Atlantic Yards plan, would -- if built -- create huge traffic problems all over Brooklyn. Even though I don't live in the neighborhood of the site, I use and enjoy the streets of Brooklyn. Anon seems to be telling me I have no business messing with the AY project because I am not a stakeholder.

Could Bruce Ratner negotiate with me if he wanted my support? Suppose he offered me season tickets to the Nets? Aside from the fact that I don't like to watch basketball, why shouldn't we bargain? How close must one reside to the project to be a stakeholder? I think the way Anon analyzes this is wrong: if s/he disagrees with Lewis and Acorn on the merits of their deal, that's something about which to argue. However, Anon's view seems to be that Lewis and Acorn are wrong to want a piece of the pie. Is this because they don't "deserve" any or because there is something wrong with pie?

Every struggle over resources and power involves popular effort and deal-making. Is a union leader (D Rivera?)wrong to support the re-election of a fairly right-wing Governor (G. Pataki?) who funds wage increases for health care workers? Maybe, but we should not be claiming he has no right to support the Gov.

These struggles are messy and people are going to disagree. Maybe Lewis & Acorn cravenly caved on key issues. (that's an issue I'd like to know more about) Certainly they do not represent the non-settling parties who want either a better deal or -- in the case of Anon -- no deal at all.

Mayor Bloomberg was just re-elected with substantial support. He remains very popular. He favors these huge developments (AY, Williamsburgh, Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium, the West Side Stadium -- maybe even the high-rise malling of the brooklyn piers.) If we are going change the overall development push from City Hall, we will need organization, power and a willingness to deal. Saying "shame on you" to people who are, in fact, close allies, probably wont help a lot.

Daniel and Grassrootsy, thanks for your constructive comments. Clearly, coherent, rational debate is what is needed as we attempt to address the complicated development issues that have plagued low-income communities and communities of color for decades now.

The IDA reform legislation that is moving toward introduction at the state, would, in fact, insure quality jobs for local people around any development that receives IDA funding. It will create greater transparency and accountability, and it will give community members another point of entry to discuss and debate local development projects.

Slush funds??!! We're not talking about CBA's. We're talking about reforming the way that public subsidies are handed out and what we should expect in return for the use of our tax dollars.

Turn the page anononymous, we've moved on.

As I said, accountability of corporate pork is one thing (and desirable). But you simply don't see that you're advocating getting your own pork and being an apologist for destructive development ... and in the process providing cover for Democratic hacks who approve large projects. It's unthinkable that so-called progressives are even entertaining these ideas, but you are.

Even your rhetoric is pollyanish ... "coherent rational debate ... address complicated development issues..."

Do you realize that sounds almost exactly like the whitewashing you get at City Planning under Amanda Burden or (before her) Joe Rose? We'll suffer through those left-wing activists and then rubber-stamp the projects wanted by Trump, Ratner or whoever. We'll say we listened to all sides and then say we revitalized an area with 50-story towers, stuffed with Fortune 500 corporations and all-those mid-level executive who will not dare to go to the local diner for lunch. Instead they want the more exclusive and expensive fare, so over time, the neighborhood diners and other small stores get pushed out and replaced by places that offer martini lunches.

Not only that, the younger executives might want to live nearby. If they're in the financial sector (and who isn't these days in NYC), then they will move into a recently-built tower stocked with studios to fit their needs (at $3,000/month). They aren't part of the neighborhood and don't add to the fabric of the community. These towers are temporary digs until they can sow their oats and then move to the suburbs.

But those towers displace people. The same people you portend (pretend) to be protecting, are getting evicted, displaced, erased. When those towers fill up (or if they want an older building), they'll flood the neighborhood looking for apartment in tenements, again willing to pay $2,000 and up. Any NYC landlord worth his salt will do whatever he can to get rid of the old rent stabilized tenant paying $500-$800 per month in order to get these new people. These days the rent laws have been so weakened that clearing out a building is pretty easy. And of course, those young turks will spend their nights at the rowdy bars in the neighborhood, making the area miserable.

And to buy-off the wimpy progressives, we'll throw them a bone.

Yes, you've moved on because you (not necessarily Shropshire but anyone advocating these positions) have been bought. And you have a willing partner in elected officials who a) want the campaign contributions of developers and landlords as they move up the political ladder, and b) want to create the illusion they are dealing with problems, hold a press conference to take credit for doing essentially nothing.

There are better ways to reinvest in lower-income communities. Ways that are not destructive or create displacement. but you're not even looking at those ways. Instead, you undercut local community groups' efforts to preserve neighborhoods (and I don't mean the co-op owners), I mean the rent stabilized units and small businesses that hold communities together, and which are quickly becoming endangered species. And your efforts are exacerbating that.