Are New York’s public authorities fixed? Little more than a week ago, Gov. Paterson signed a bill to “rein in” New York’s “free-spending public authorities.”

But State Senator Bill Perkins of Harlem thinks that the convolutions New York’s Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) put itself through to get the Atlantic Yards basketball arena funded “vitiate the longstanding efforts of the Legislature to reform public authorities and make them more accountable and transparent.”

Moreover, Atlantic Yards may not even pass muster under the law, Perkins says.

How could that happen? (more…)

The Senate today also passed the so-called Public Authorities Reform Act previously approved by the Assembly and backed by Governor Paterson–complete with a form of super card-check for unions seeking to organize authority-sponsored hotel and convention center development projects.

The headline on the Senate’s Majority press release announcing the bill’s passage deserves a special niche in Albany’s jam-packed Pantheon of Preposterous Claims.

What does a tiny Arab emirate have in common with the NBA’s worst team, which currently plays in New Jersey?  And why should the answer matter to a taxpayer in Buffalo or Syracuse?  Nicole connects the dots in a timely op-ed in today’s New York Post.

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A few thoughts on the late-breaking Albany deal to pass the so-called Public Authorities Reform Act, now stalled for good reason in the Senate after passing in the Assembly:

Not for the first time, some of New York’s well-meaning good-government advocates are being suckered by a bill title.  Like most legislation trumpeted as “reform” in Albany, this measure’s modest virtues are being grossly exaggerated even as its negatives are being ignored, minimized or overlooked.

The bill stems from the pretense that public authorities are, as Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (D-Harrison) put it, “Soviet-style bureaucracies” that amount to a “secret, shadow government.”

In fact, because they are subject to the discipline of the bond market, the state’s major public authorities are far more transparent than the typical state agency.

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