At Wednesday's meeting of the Hudson Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, several things of interest were revealed in John Mateo's report to the board. Mateo, of course, works for Mountco, HHA's development partner.
In his report, Mateo revealed, as he has before, that the person who appears to be the project's principal contact at NYS Homes and Community Renewal is Eu Ting-Zambuto, who, until May 2025, worked for Mountco and in fact worked on this project. That seems like a conflict of interest, but who's to say?
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| Ting-Zambuto and Madeo at an HHA meeting in July 2024 |
Madeo also told the board that they still need to get an equity provider to buy the project's tax credits. He indicated the market for tax credits was not good at this time but said that in the past weeks they have gotten "strong interest" from two firms that Mountco has done tax credit deals with in the past.
As Madeo indicated, there is currently a gap between the amount of money needed for the project and the amount they have. If they cannot fill the gap, the state must decide if it will provide the funding needed to close the gap. He cited three factors that make the HHA project problematic: low rents (82 percent of the units will be designated for households with incomes below 50 percent of the area median income); brownfield conditions that must be remediated; soil conditions that require extraordinary construction techniques.
A couple more things of interest emerged from Wednesday's meeting. It will be recalled that HHA is in the process of selecting a name for the proposed new development. The process began in January, when suggestions were solicited and received. It seems recently there was a vote among tenants to select the name, but the results had to be scrapped because it was discovered that someone had stuffed the ballot box, voting multiple times for their favorite name. As a consequence, there will be a do-over, with controls in place to prevent people from voting more than once.
The HHA Board of Commissioners has been short a member since Sara Black resigned in April after being appointed to the Planning Board. On Wednesday, Mayor Joseph Ferris appointed a new member of the HHA board: Ben Ezinga. Ezinga is a partner in Sustainable Community Associates (SCA) which in April 2016 proposed a plan for the redevelopment of the Kaz warehouses, the same area now proposed to become Waterfront Village. In March 2017, the SCA plan was essentially abandoned.
Ezinga was present at Wednesday's meeting. It was decided that he would take Claire Cousin's seat on the Redevelopment Committee. (Cousin resigned in January when she became a councilmember representing the Fifth Ward.) The Redevelopment Committee, which was created in August 2024, was originally composed of Cousin, Rebecca Wolff, and Nick Zachos, with Revonda Smith as an alternate.
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The Private to Public Revolving Door: Industry executives or corporate lobbyists are appointed to high-ranking government positions where they manage or regulate their former fields, including their old employer.
ReplyDeleteTing-Zambuto wasn’t “appointed”, she was hired. She also worked at NYS Homes & Community Renewal for a decade prior to being at Mountco for three years. Mateo’s disclosure that she is Mountco’s primary contact pretty much *is* disclosing a potential conflict of interest.
DeleteThe important part of acknowledging a conflict is actually what you then do about it.
DeleteMichael B - do you think the clear conflicts of interests with Ting-Zambuto and Ms. Black are not a problem?
DeleteHCS - As per usual, your assumption is just that: an assumption. The “clear conflict of interest” just plain isn’t. There is no financial or personal incentive for a state employee to award or deny financial support to individual projects. If you’d like to infer some sort of kickback or payola scheme, have at it. But the simple presence of a pre-existing and disclosed relationship between two parties isn’t the “gotcha” some commenters seem to think it is.
DeleteIt’s a tired tactic to cling to any seemingly untoward aspect of a project and hold it up as damning evidence. Criticize a project on its actual merits and flaws, not an assumed conspiracy. The latter cuts the legs out from under serious conversation.
New York’s ethics commission calls this the “reverse two-year bar.”
DeleteWhen a state employee handles a matter involving a recent former employer, recusal may be required to avoid even the appearance of preferential treatment.
Given that Ting-Zambuto worked on this same project at Mountco, it seems entirely fair to ask whether HCR reviewed the issue.
If the project made any sense Mayor Ferris would not have had to stack the Planning Board (Black) and MountCo would not have to benefit from a former colleague and ally on the inside of the funding agent.
The interest rate hike was interesting…
It does seem fair to ask if HCR reviewed the issue. Perhaps someone should do that rather than make spurious accusations of insider dealing.
DeleteMB -- the problem with a possible conflict of interest is that it's, in fact, possible there is a conflict. This has a demonstrably negative effect on the public's perception of the fairness and impartiality of public policy decision making. Having to prove something that requires an investigation is always done after the fact. Disclosure, therefore, is only half the battle. And the problem with reliance on an after the fact investigation is that the financial or personnel damage is already done. And that's not too good for faith-in-government either.
DeleteYour reliance on the NYS statutory ethical standards is understandable but misguided: there's not any serious academic or ethicist who believes that NYS's ethics laws are anything like a bar to actual unethical conduct. Having spent 3 years on the Columbia County Ethics Board, I can tell you that the NYS ethics laws are, in fact, a joke. Not worth the paper they're written on. The proverbial tits on a bull: they look good, but perform no function. Not that NYS is particularly egregious in this way; other states are as bad or worse.
The proper approach is for the public servant to recuse in favor of another staffer and, thereby, vitiate any semblance or appearance of a potential conflict. This doesn't hurt the public servant -- who receives a salary and perks, not a bonus or commission based on the project. And it doesn't hurt the applicant who should have no expectation of favoritism or other benefit from working with one public servant v. the other. The interesting thing in this approach is that is guaranteed to expose a conflict without the need for an investigation: if an administrator or the servant him or herself pushes back . . . well, you have to ask why when the public policy benefit is both so important and so obvious. Thus, requiring recusal where there's a potential conflict is likely as close as we may come to avoiding actual conflicts and ensuring public trust in government. Or we can continue to rely on the existing statutory standards -- they've worked so well so far. Right?
It would be poetic if the bond market determines the outcome of this boondoggle given that no one in a position to do so has undertaken a public review of the budgets and economics of this project.
ReplyDeleteI actually think that this is how this will play out. Maybe not exclusively the bond market but realities that pertain to financing will alter how it'll go.
DeleteI can't imagine that anyone in their right mind truly believes that the second phase of this two-stage project will actually happen. We will never be a given straight answer but financial constraints will be discovered that will make phase two nonviable and the only thing they will do as part of that second phase, possibly with a delay, will be the tear-down of the old Bliss building.
I’ve been thinking the same this entire time. At the behest of the developer’s bottom line, HHA has been going along with this over the top and overly aggressive plan that they’ve constantly had to “value engineer” down. But just like the Restore NY grant debacle, they will be the ones to screw it up in the end. They’re over their heads on this and the current economic and political climate will be a wall of reality that this will crash into. Not NIMBYs or planning board. They could have just modestly replaced Bliss for the current residents and offline units. But they wanted to use this as an opportunity to social engineer Hudson by dramatically increasing the scale of this project to bring in additional people to change the voter base and customers for Hudson’s Nonprofit Industrial Complex.
Delete"When the same people sit on both sides of the table, how can this review be independent?"
ReplyDeleteHudson Planning Board Public Comment Letter:
https://tinyurl.com/4rjnmcup