Who Speaks for You?

Governor Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday nominated three new appointees to fill empty seats on the board of the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA), one of whom is a part-time resident of Battery Park City, another of whom lives elsewhere in Lower Manhattan, while the third has no direct connection to the community, but has extensive experience in real estate development and management.

The two nominees who do not live in Battery Park City are, respectively, trusted friends of Authority chair Dennis Mehiel and BPCA president Shari Hyman. Community leaders and a coalition of six elected officials representing Lower Manhattan have responded with a stinging criticism of Governor Cuomo’s practice of appointing people who do not live in the community to the BPCA board, and called for the nominations to be withdrawn.

Former Community Board 1 chair and Lower Manhattan resident Catherine McVay Hughes, who has been nominated by Governor Cuomo to join the board of the Battery Park City Authority. Ms. Hughes has been a leading advocate and expert in local resiliency measures.

The nominee who will be most familiar to Lower Manhattan residents is Catherine McVay Hughes, the former chair of Community Board 1 (CB1). While Ms. Hughes does not reside in Battery Park City, she is a longtime resident of Lower Manhattan, where she has for years spearheaded efforts to build public support for resiliency measures that would make Downtown resistant to future extreme-weather events. Ms. Hughes is also a trusted friend of BPCA president Shari Hyman, according to multiple sources who know them both.

A second nominee, Louis Bevilacqua, is a senior counsel at the law firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft (headquartered in Brookfield Place). Sources who have seen Mr. Bevilacqua’s nomination documents say that his legal residence is in a Long Island community slightly more than 100 miles east of Lower Manhattan, although he also maintains an apartment in southern Battery Park City.

The third nominee, George J. Tsunis, is an attorney, real estate developer and hotel operator who lives in Matinecock, on Long Island. Mr. Tsunis does not have any personal history with Battery Park City, but has a wide-ranging background in real estate (his company, Chartwell Hotels, a publicly traded REIT that owns a portfolio of hotels in New York, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania) and public service (he is a board member at Hofstra University and the Javits Convention Center).

Mr. Tsunis is also a friend of BPCA chair Dennis Mehiel. Both men are prominent members of the Greek-American community, and they collaborated closely on a years-long, successful effort to persuade the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to find a home within the rebuilt World Trade Center complex for the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which for many years was located across the street from the Twin Towers, and was destroyed during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Also like Mr. Mehiel, Mr. Tsunis is a prodigious financial supporter of political candidates, especially Democrats. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, he has contributed more than $850,000 to various office-seekers and political action committees in recent years, some $60,000 of which was donated to the 2014 reelection campaign of Governor Andrew Cuomo. Together, Mr. Meheil and Mr. Tsunis were leading East Coast fundraisers among the Greek-American community for the 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Tsunis is also a noted philanthropist. Earlier this year, he donated $1 million to the medical school at the State University at Stony Brook to establish the Tsunis Fellowship for Cancer Prevention. In 2013, he contributed $1.25 million to the same university, to establish a Center in Hellenic Studies. The Tsunis family have additionally donated millions of dollars to a broad range of charities, including the NAACP, the North Shore Hebrew Academy, and the Long Island Children’s Museum, as well as Hofstra University, the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Friends Academy.

Governor Cuomo’s three nominations to the BPCA board come against the backdrop of widespread efforts to secure direct representation for Battery Park City residents at the agency that governs them. For several weeks, members of both houses of the State legislature have been debating and amending a bill that would compel the Governor to appoint local residents to the BPCA board, although the prospects for the bill’s passage remain unclear, as does the likelihood that the Governor would sign such a measure, if it passed. For two years, the grassroots organization Democracy for Battery Park City has been collecting more than 2,500 petition signatures and lobbying elected officials to have residents appointed to the Authority’s board.

This question is becoming increasingly urgent as residents who rent their apartments face the pending expiration of legal protections that make these units affordable for middle-class tenants, while condominium owners struggle with ever-increasing “ground rent” payments that may force them from their homes. For both categories of resident, the future is clouded by the ground lease that governs occupancy of land in Battery Park City, which expires in 2069. Under the current terms of this lease, every home in the community will legally disappear in 52 years, as ownership of all the real estate in Battery Park City reverts to the Authority. For condominium owners, this will mean that their property is effectively confiscated, while renters will face the prospect of eviction. Both owners and tenants will be rendered homeless under this scenario.

And yet, residents have never had significant representation on the board of the agency that will determine their futures. While there have been periods in the past during which various governors had appointed a single resident to the BPCA’s seven-member board, there has never been a legal requirement for even one seat to go to a person who resides within the community. Several months ago, Battery Park City resident Martha Gallo resigned, which brought to zero the number of people who live in the community and serve on the Authority’s board.

The appointment of Mr. Bevilacqua may, in some measure, restore the previous status quo by apportioning one seat to a person who has a home in the neighborhood. But even if residents come to believe that they are ably represented by all three new nominees, this delegation would still comprise a minority within the seven-members of the BPCA.

Local leaders, who have been working on both the legislative and political tracks to secure greater representation for residents, have reacted with disappointment to the news of Governor Cuomo’s slate of nominees. CB1 chair Anthony Notaro said, “while the proposed candidates for the BPCA board positions might be fine additions, this community has worked tirelessly to have real Battery Park City residents appointed to this board. Our residents have built and rebuilt, raised families and seen new generations grow, all the while being the only major stakeholder that was not a part of this board. We have legislation pending to correct this, so it’s imperative to hold off on any appointments until then.”

Tammy Meltzer, co-chair of CB1’s Battery Park City Committee, said, “the appointments are another snub of the Battery Park City community from Governor Cuomo. The deliberate choice not to appoint legal residents of Battery Park City is reprehensible and the timing is not accidental with legislation pending. These appointments should be put on hold until the legislation is passed to ensure at least two of the over 12,000 people who live in Battery Park City are included as a voice on the board.”

Robin Forst, a Battery Park City resident who is also a public member of CB1, said, “this is incredibly disheartening news from Albany. The Battery Park City community, which numbers close to 15,000 residents, has been pushing long and hard for a change in the composition of the BPCA board to insure the voices of the residents are adequately represented.” She continued, “we have had very strong support from our elected officials in this push. The timing and optics of these appointments is odd indeed. Legislation has recently passed in the Assembly in support of local representation and is pending in the Senate in advance of the end of session, just days from now.” She added that, “if the proposed nominees are appointed to these seats, this will render the legislation moot in the short-run. It is very concerning that the efforts and wishes of the Battery Park City community are, once again, being so blatantly ignored.”

Tom Goodkind, a Gateway Plaza resident who is also a leading advocate for housing affordability in Lower Manhattan, said, “this problem we have in the Governor’s Battery Park City Authority is clearly taxation without representation. Having proper representation at the Authority is a right. It is past time for the Governor to listen to his constituents by enforcing better representation for those who live in our area.”

Mr. Goodkind added, “for decades, I’ve seen a group of well-educated, well-heeled friends of the Governor making major decisions affecting the thousands who live in Battery Park City without a clear understanding of the consequences of those decisions. After years of embarrassing leadership missteps, it is time to start plans for removal of this non-representative governing body, the Battery Park City Authority, and hand decision-making over to the community. After a decade of effort, with only negative results, expecting that a protest or another resolution or letter from all of our elected officials will suddenly bring wonderful results appears foolish.”

Justine Cuccia, a founder of Democracy for Battery Park City, observed that, “the BPCA does everything that a government does, including collecting taxes, making and enforcing laws, building parks and schools, and much more. There’s only one thing governments do that the BPCA doesn’t: Represent the people who are being governed. And that can’t happen until we have residents — not just one, but a majority of the seven seats on that board — speaking on our behalf.” (The organization’s petition can be found online at democracy4bpc.org.)

Jeff Mihok, also a member of CB1, said, “with all due respect to Catherine, our former chair, once again the BPCA board is being filled with purely corporate people, most of whom appear to be lawyers. These nominees are a slap in the face to our community and to other professions, such as small business owners, teachers, architects, and so on, who make our community every bit as vibrant, if not more so, than corporate lawyers and other big business professionals. This is ridiculous and I hope that Senator Squadron and all other downtown elected officials object most vociferously to these nominees.”

Elected officials representing Lower Manhattan have also voiced grave reservations about Governor Cuomo’s nominees. In a letter addressed to the Governor, and signed jointly by State Senator Daniel Squadron, U.S. Congressman Jerry Nadler, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, State Assembly members Deborah Glick and Yuh-Line Niou, and City Council member Margaret Chin, the officials wrote, “while we were heartened to see a longstanding community leader nominated, we were extremely disappointed to learn the appointments will continue to leave the board without a single Battery Park City resident.” (In this context, the elected officials are using Mr. Bevilacqua’s address of record, on Long Island, as his official residence.)

“The BPCA board makes decisions that influence the daily lives of thousands of residents,” they continued, “who would provide an important perspective otherwise lacking in board deliberations. The lack of community input is why Senator Squadron and Assembly members Glick and Niou [are currently sponsoring] legislation to require Battery Park City resident appointments to the BPCA board.”

The letter concludes that, “Catherine McVay Hughes will make a strong member of the board and a welcome addition, but it is urgent that residents be appointed to work alongside her. Louis Bevilacqua and George Tsunis are not residents nor have they been active in the community — we strongly request their appointments be rescinded and residents be appointed in their place.”

Because appointments to the BPCA board legally require State Senate confirmation, the next step in the process is for that house of the legislature to consider the Governor’s nominees. If recent history is any guide, however, this is likely to prove a formality. Governor Cuomo’s last several BPCA board nominees were all confirmed within 90 minutes of their names reaching the Senate floor.