A bill that would require Governor Andrew Cuomo to appoint Lower Manhattan residents to a majority of the seven seats on the board of the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) has passed the New York State Assembly with near-unanimous support. On Tuesday, all 139 members of the lower house of the State legislature who were in the chamber when the roll was called cast their votes in support. (Ten members were not present, and thus did not vote.)
The lead sponsor of the measure in the Assembly is Deborah Glick, who represents northern Battery Park City, as well as other areas of Lower Manhattan. Also co-sponsoring the measure is newly elected Assembly member Yuh-Line Niou, who represents the southern half of the community, along with multiple other neighborhoods Downtown. Earlier, on April 25, the bill passed through the Assembly’s Corporations, Authorities, and Commissions Committee, also with unanimous support. “I am pleased that the Assembly stands beside me in ensuring community representation in local governance,” Ms. Glick said afterward.
In the upper house of the legislature, where the bill is sponsored by State Senator Daniel Squadron, the bill has been before that chamber’s Corporations, Authorities, and Commissions Committee since January. The relative ease of passage within the Assembly and the slow pace of action in the Senate are likely attributable to the Democratic Party majority in the lower house, and Republican Party control in the upper house. This performance is thus far a reprise of the legislature’s performance last year, when the Assembly passed as similar bill quickly and with a strong majority, while it languished in the Senate.
On Thursday, Senator Squadron attempted to catalyze movement on the Senate version of the bill, by writing to State Senator Michael Ranzenhofer, who chairs that house’s Corporations, Authorities, and Commissions Committee. Mr. Ranzenhofer is also the State Senate’s deputy majority leader for economic development, and represents an upstate district that stretches between Rochester and Buffalo. Earlier this week, Mr. Ranzenhofer presided over a meeting of his committee, which discussed and voted on (among other matters) a measure related to the State Dormitory Authority’s financing clinical facilities. But it did not discuss or vote on Mr. Squadron’s bill relating to the BPCA board.
Mr. Squadron’s letter to Mr. Ranzenhofer noted that, “recent events have made passage of this bill all the more important. Martha Gallo, the lone community member on the Board, resigned in April. As the Board considers important issues such as a comprehensive resiliency plan for Battery Park City, ensuring that a majority of Board members are community members will ensure the community has a say in vital issues.” He continued, “I hope you will join the community in supporting this legislation and place [the bill] on the next Senate Corporations, Authorities, and Commissions committee agenda.”
In a related development, six elected officials representing Lower Manhattan wrote to Governor Cuomo on April 21, urging him to appoint area residents to the BPCA board. In addition to Senator Squadron and Assembly members Glick and Niou, U.S. Congressman Jerry Nadler, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, and City Council member Margaret Chin wrote that the BPCA board’s, “current and potential vacancies provide an opportunity to ensure a local voice in BPCA decision making.” (This was a reference to the fact that three of the seven seats on the BPCA board are currently vacant, while three other members of the board are continuing to serve, despite the fact that their terms have expired.) “We therefore urge you to use this opportunity to appoint multiple community members to the BPCA board,” the added.
What remains unclear is how to define a “community member.” Ms. Glick’s statement after Assembly passage said, “this bill simply promises residents of Battery Park City that their interests will be represented on the board,” and that it will ensure, “this local governing body is more reflective of the community it is charged with representing.”
But the text of the bill that passed the Assembly and is now before the Senate requires Governor Cuomo to appoint residents of Lower Manhattan, defined as being with the boundaries of Community Board 1 (CB1), rather than residents of Battery Park City itself.
The April 21 letter from the six elected officials goes on to note that the BPCA board, “makes decisions that impact the daily lives of residents, yet board members lack one key qualification: living in the community they oversee.” The letter also observes that appointing, “community members to the Board… will provide a critical representative perspective in Board deliberations.”
A literal reading of these passages would seem to imply that the elected officials are demanding that residents of Battery Park City be appointed to the BPCA board, rather than residents of Tribeca, the Financial District, or the Seaport neighborhood. But the bill currently before the legislature says the opposite: “if less than a majority of the members of the Battery Park City Authority [board] are residents of the community district in which Battery Park City is located, future appointments must be of residents of the community district until a majority is achieved.” The phrase “community district” refers to the CB1 catchment, a collection of neighborhoods encompassing 1.5 square miles, bounded roughly by Canal, Baxter, and Pearl Streets and the Brooklyn Bridge.
This distinction may prove crucial. While decisions made by the BPCA board can arguably be said have an indirect effect on residents of surrounding neighborhoods, the Authority directly governs the 92 acres of Battery Park City itself. Because none of its board members are elected, this effectively means that residents (who fund the operations of the BPCA, through remittances like ground rent, payments in lieu of taxes, and civic facilities fees) have no voice in decisions affecting their lives. Residents of adjacent neighborhoods benefit from BPCA largesse, in the form of parks and the free Downtown Connection shuttle bus (which the Authority subsidizes), but bear none of the cost associated with these programs.
Whether BPCA residents would feel more comfortable with such decisions being rendered by people who live a few blocks outside the community, rather than a few miles away (as is the case with many current members of the BPCA board), but still do not contribute financially to the Authority’s operations and are not directly impacted by those operations in the way that residents are, remains unclear.
In this sense, Battery Park City provides a striking contrast with another community that is, in many other ways, very similar. Like Battery Park City, Roosevelt Island is a residential community developed by New York State, subject to a long-term ground lease, and governed by a State agency (in this case, the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation). But State law was amended in 2002 to require that a majority of the board seats at that agency be set aside for residents of Roosevelt Island itself.
This issue was explored in some detail at the March meeting of CB1’s Battery Park City Committee, where Eric Mayo, the director of operations for Senator Squadron, said, “when we were first discussing bill, we brought it to people in Albany, who said ‘that’s a lot of people for a small area.’ We don’t agree. There are plenty of qualified people,” in Battery Park City. “But the idea is that we want the broadest coalition possible to get the bill passed. So that’s how we landed on this language.”
Mr. Mayo added, however, “that’s not to say it’s set in stone. If there are concerns, we’re happy to discuss them. I’m happy to take them back to Daniel and see what we can do about them. But we’re flexible about the language.”
Following this discussion, CB1 enacted a resolution supporting Senator Squadron’s bill, with the with the caveat that preference should be given to residents of Battery Park City in filling BPCA board seats, as opposed to residents of Lower Manhattan as a whole.