Fire in the Hole
by Richard Lipskyhttp://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/
PUBLISHEREDITORART DIRECTOR
Neil Fabricant Mike Dang Jay Van Buren
When the folks voted to
install Mike Bloomberg astheir mayor—and did it a
second time—the prevailingwisdom was that, owing tothe mayor's vast fortune, the public could count on a cor-
ruption-free mayoralty. What
was not taken into consider-ation was the Bloomberg old boys network that opened up New York City to his long-
time deputy (now chief of his
business operations) DanDoctoroff and the Related
Companies to NYC. As a re-sult of this, we were able to
bear witness to a whole series
of sweetheart no-bid deals
that left the city less well off
than it should have been.We have, of course, out-
lined most notably the gifting
of the Bronx Terminal Mar-
ket by Doctoroff to his old
friend and business associate
Steve Ross (New York Times,
"Transforming Bronx Termi-
nal Market, but at a Steep
Price," 10/24/05). This storyhas been well-documented, but others less so. But nowcomes something even more
egregious. It involves themayor's culpability in the
Deutsche Bank re and the
role played by sweetheart
contractor Bovis.
Wayne Barrett has out-lined the shamefulness of all
that has transpired—a shame
that is magnied by the fail
-
ure of the local press to prop-
erly tar baby the mayor on
this issue: The
Village Voice's
July 22nd cover story,
"Bloomberg's Biggest Scan-
dal—the Deutsche Bank
Fire—Should Be His Down-
fall—Why isn’t it?" exam-
ined the determination of top
city officials, includingBloomberg's one time top
deputy Dan Doctoroff, to ig-
nore the risk of installing Bo-
vis Lend Lease and its prime
subcontractor Galt at the de-
molition site of the bank
building. Doctoroff brushed
aside warnings from the
city's investigations depart-
ment about Galt in deference
to Bovis' reckless desire to
hire the “mob-tainted rm.”
Let's not forget that two
reghters were killed as a
result of the city's actions
here: “Manhattan DA Robert
Morgenthau has indicted Galt
and two of its ofcials in the
negligent homicide case in-
volving the death of two re
-
ghters, Robert Beddia and
Joseph Graffagnino, at the bank site. He also charged
one Bovis employee, but said
he did not indict Bovis be-cause it could have causedthe collapse of a company
that employs thousands.”
And, as Barrett has told
us, not a single paper has
even bothered to call for the
removal of the re commis
-sioner—an incompetent ad-
ministrator with no re ght
-ing expertise, whose claim to
fame involved a see no evil
approach to child abuse whenhe was in charge of Adminis-
tration for Children’s Ser-
vices (ACS).
The question with all of this is why did the city pro-
mote Bovis, and who was re-sponsible for the shilling of a
failed company? As Barrett points out, Deputy Dan wasin the middle of this mess as
well: “At the very moment
that Doctoroff and the Lower
Manhattan Development
Corporation went ahead withthe Bovis contract at the bank
site in 2005, the company
was engaged in what city at-
torneys call now "repeated
failures to perform in accor-dance” with “generally ac-
cepted professional stan-
dards” in the construction of the $275 million Bronx Hall
of Justice, the 10-story court-
house that Bovis completedalmost three years late. The
lawsuit is still pending.
All of which under-scores that the Bloomberg
administration has been rifewith incompetence and cro-
nyism, and his billionaire brothers in the press have been covering for him. We
have been particularly curi-
ous about why the
Post's
Ru-
pert Murdoch has been such
a mayoral toady. After all,
the paper has an ideologicalview of the world that's dia-
metrically opposed to the one
espoused by the Nanny may-or.
In response to our queryon this, Barrett referred us to
his magnum opus of last year
on Bloomberg: “In 2007,
Bloomberg L.P. decided, ap-
parently after some consider-
ation, not to compete with
Murdoch for The Wall Street
Journal. Murdoch similarly
decided this July not to com-
pete with Bloomberg when
he paid $4.5 billion to buyMerrill Lynch's 20 percent
interest in Bloomberg L.P. In
this walled-off billionaire
Fed up New Yorkers will be published periodically until theelection.For all inquiries, includingadvertising and letters to theeditor, contact Mike Dang:mike@bloombergwatch.comall material © Bloomberg WatchInc. unless otherwise noted.Cover illustration and editorialcartoon by Keith Seidel.
continued on p7
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