PEOTUS Obama shouldn't go near Adolfo Carrion with a 10-foot pole, but according to reports he is about to appoint the soon-to-be former Bronx Borough President as his Urban Affairs Director in the Office of Urban Policy.
What?! Community killer, Bronx political machine sleazeball Carrion to direct urban affairs for president Obama, former community organizer?
No, this is not a diary about "oh my god, Obama is failing." It is a diary about making a bad decision on a government official who has demonstrated over and over that he is not fit to govern, let alone be given a position of such high-standing to make policy regarding urban affairs. He has failed in the Bronx. He shouldn't be rewarded for that.
But worse than failing, his signature policy in the Bronx, for which he worked tirelessly (and corruptly), was to get a new stadium built for the richest sports franchise in the business--The Yankees.
But he didn't just get a new stadium built. He supported the removal of one of the Bronx's few public parks, to be replaced by that unnecessary, publicly subsidized shrine to a billionaire baseball team owner's luxury suite fantasies. Brian Berger's blog "Who Walk in Brooklyn," has posting a scathing piece by Bronx native Ernie Koy, Jr. Koy has plenty to say about Carrion. Since I'm only going to focus on the Yankee Stadium scam read it for more on Carrion's sleazy hackitude.
And here is the Village Voice’s Tom Robbins sarcastically explaining the top five (un)reasons Carrion should be appointed HUD Secretary (luckily he wasn’t). Here’s a commenter on Robbins’ blog post:
As a Hispanic person living in the Bronx all my life, I attest that Carrion is worthless and rotten to the core. He belongs in jail not in Obama administration.
Posted by: felix at December 10, 2008 2:44 AM
And here's the Neighborhood Retail Alliance blog, no friend of mine, telling it like it is about Carrion:
...And then there's Adolfo's betrayal of the merchants-many of whom were Hispanic-in the old Bronx Terminal market. As Robbins highlights: "5. Gets the big picture: When Bloomberg's development czar Dan Doctoroff announced he wanted to boot 23 long-time merchants and their 1,500 employees from the Bronx Terminal Market to make way for a mega-mall built by Doctoroff's best pal, Steve Ross of Related, Carrion got right on board. His office was supposed to find a new home for the market somewhere in his borough (which boasts the largest amount of vacant industrial space in the city). This didn't happen, but no biggie. They relocated themselves, spread around the city."
Adolfo Carrion simply doesn't have the requisite stature to be given any high cabinet position by the Obama team. Even the addition by subtraction that New York would benefit from, isn't a sufficient reason for supporting his undeserved elevation.
I'll repeat, Carrion, along with other government actors including Mayor Bloomberg, replaced the community's park with a billionaire's stadium. And it was a corrupt deal which is currently under investigation on the state level by Assemblyman Richard Brodsky andin Congress by Dennis Kucinich.
Of course that stadium's proponents did as stadium proponents always do: they promised jobs and that the public would not have to pay for George Steinbrenner's stadium. But, big surprise, their promises have turned out to be false. And the so-called "Community Benefits Agreement" orCBA brokered by Carrion is basically a slush fund, and Carrion never followed up to ensure that the meager money and actions promised by the Yankees came through for the community.
They didn't.
In New York City the Community Boards are the most grassroots level of government. What did Carrion do to Community Board 4 members (all volunteers) who bucked him? From the Times:
When a Bronx community board rejected the plan to build a new Yankee Stadium on land occupied by two neighborhood parks last year, the result was a surprising setback for Adolfo Carrión Jr., the Bronx borough president, who had been one of the new stadium's most ardent public supporters.
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This month, seven months after that vote, Mr. Carrión has replaced or demoted several of the board members. Some say Mr. Carrión's motives are to get rid of board members who voted against the stadium.
Mr. Carrión has declined to say whether the dissenting votes were the reason the members were not reappointed, but several current and former members of the advisory panel have accused him of acting out of vindictiveness, saying he is discouraging community involvement and stifling debate — which they say are unattractive traits for a man who might run for mayor in 2009.
"It's called revenge," said Mary L. Blassingame, a board member who lost her position as chairwoman of the board's housing and land-use committee this month after 21 years. "This shows total disregard for the community...
To paraphrase: what kind of friggin' change is that?
There are an endless number of highly qualified, skilled urban affairs experts in NYC who operate with integrity. Why is the Obama transition team scraping the bottom of the City's barrel when there is so much cream on top? Why is the Obama transition team preparing to appoint a Bronx machine hack to this position? To top it all off, Carrion supported Hillary in in the primaries for goddsakes.
President-elect Obama should de-appoint Carrion, and use his bully pulpit to push for Carrion for baseball commissioner if he must dole out a favor. Why put on the charade any more, he can go advocate for baseball franchises to his heart's content in that role.