Governor Nominates Two BPCA Directors
Without public discussion or prior announcement, Governor Kathy Hochul nominated two new appointees to the board of the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) on Wednesday. The Governor’s new appointees are Battery Park City resident Clinton Plummer and Upper West Side resident Angela Pinsky.
Mr. Plummer is the chief executive officer of Rise Light & Power, which owns and operates the gigantic Ravenswood Generating Station in Queens, on the East River waterfront opposite East 63rd to 71st Streets in Manhattan. The company’s mission is to repurpose the 27-acre facility (which was designed to burn oil and natural gas) into a clean energy hub and make it a point of connection through which future offshore wind farms will deliver power to the New York region. Prior to heading Rise Light & Power, Mr. Plummer held senior positions at Ørsted and Deepwater Wind, both large developers of offshore wind turbine facilities.
Ms. Pinsky serves as the head of government affairs and public policy for the New York arm of Google. Before joining Google, Ms. Pinsky was the executive director for the Association for a Better New York (ABNY), a real estate industry advocacy group. She is also a former senior vice president at the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY), a trade association. In the early 2000s, Ms. Pinsky served at a senior level in the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, where she focused on economic development.
The BPCA board ordinarily consists of seven appointees, but one of those seats is currently vacant. Governor Hochul’s designation of two new board members appears to indicate that one of the current BPCA directors will have to step down. (All of the current BCPA directors are currently serving expired terms, but as a practical matter, board members at State authorities often continue to serve after their terms have lapsed, until they are reappointed or replaced.)
A law enacted in 2018 requires that at least two of BPCA’s board seats go to people who live within Battery Park City. This measure was the culmination of a year’s long campaign by residents, community leaders, and elected officials who were trying to formalize a role and a voice for residents in decisions made by the agency that governs the community.
A subsequent proposed law, enacted by the State legislature but vetoed by Governor Hochul in 2022, would have expanded the BPCA board, and set aside a majority of its seats for residents of the neighborhood.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Finance Committee of the State Senate took up preliminary consideration of Governor Hochul’s nomination of Mr. Plummer and Ms. Pinsky to serve on the BPCA board. Neither nominee appeared at the hearing. After their names were read into the record by a Senate staffer (along with those of more than two dozen other appointees to various agencies), the entire slate was approved without discussion or debate by the Senators who attended the hearing. The next step will be for their nominations to be confirmed or rejected by the State Senate as a whole. If more than a decade of history with other BCPA board nominees is any guide, this process will likely be treated as a fait accompli.