June 2024 may mark the period when the masks started coming off, exposing the ugly truths about how RIOC operates, dangling under the manipulating fingers of Albany.
by David Stone
The Roosevelt Island DailyNews
Any open-minded look at the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC) reveals it as a money grab. A lot of money goes in but far less impact pours out. If not the biggest, it’s probably the longest lasting boondoggle in New York history. Maybe we’re so used to it that we can’t see it anymore, but June 2024 serves as a reminder of how those involved cling to power and money.
New York State is corrupt. We know that, but RIOC goes further, turning it into an art form. Only when bureaucrats are not subject to the guardrails of democracy is anything like this possible. The majority on RIOC’s board fights to keep it just as it is.
RIOC’s 2024 Board Meeting
The Not So Good
Conway Ekpo returned to the board and, for the first time, showed off some personality. A brilliant, highly respected lawyer, he also has warmth and a sense of humor. It was good to see as he explained a year long absence. The man has a lot to offer the bumbling, money-wasting state agency.
But hopes for that were dashed when he also showed himself as an agent for the conservative strain keeping RIOC the ballooning boondoggle that hovers over Roosevelt Island.
“I recommend a resolution to ratify that individual resident board members should not be officially seated in any other position within RIOC not mentioned in our bylaws that might reduce their capability of maintaining independence or create that appearance as required by our bylaws and the law.“
Ben Fhala, Resolution #2
Board member Ben Fhala has faced nasty headwinds in his efforts at reform. He’s not always right, but he fights for breaking the spell of hard right RIOC politics. At last week’s meeting, he proposed a pair of resolutions that he hoped might patch up some holes or prevent others from opening.
When he made the above proposal, fellow board member Dr. Michal Melamed seconded the motion to approve, but then, in an unprecedented action, Ekpo jumped in and demanded that she explain herself. He objected to her seconding a motion, apparently hoping to keep Fhala isolated.
It looked like classic public bullying. At first, Melamed was taken aback, but she resettled and offered a straightforward answer.
She, like Fhala, feared that significant information was not being shared with the rest of the board and wanted that protection. Why would anyone resist that resolution is the better question. But lead by the ex-officio members representing Governor Hochul, the majority of the board, consisting mainly of dinosaurs, did.
Ekpo did not demand that anyone else explain their positions.
The pretty bad for June 2024
Fhala tried some other heavy lifting.
“I would like to propose a resolution to clarify the meaning of quorum to prevent any misunderstanding of the law and how we apply it at RIOC.“
Ben Fhala, Resolution #2
Simple and straightforward enough, but his reasons raised hackles among the bulwark of dinosaurs and stage managers sponsored by Hochul.
“Deep engagement between board members and executives at RIOC is critical for oversight and to prevent external actors from controlling the agenda and the interests of RIOC,” Fhala said.
“Unfortunately, I’ve been informed by a whistleblower that there is an attempt to block resident board members from engaging with each other. The whistleblower informed me of an alleged collusion between the RIOC legal team, Howard Polivy, and Meghan Anderson* to block interactions between resident board members under the legal rationale articulated in a resolution made by the board on October 17th, 2019.
*Meghan Anderson is chair RuthAnne Visnauskas’s surrogate on RIOC’s board.
“While I don’t think their understanding of this resolution applies, I would like to add a clear definition here to enable the critical work of the resident board members.”
The nitty-gritty
As the discussion ensued, Fhala explained that he had been told that Polivy was working with the board chair’s surrogate to block further reforms inspired by new board members Fhala, Melamed and Lydia Tang.
Here’s the short version as it spilled out of the arguments:
Since board committees are small, three or four active members at best, using Open Meetings Law, any discussion involving two or more board members, however casual, must be recognized as creating a quorum.
That rules out even the most incidental conversations as well collaborative skull sessions. No blue-skying ideas without Mother Hochul getting a record of it and a formal meeting established. It’s preposterous on the face of it. No corporate board operates effectively like that. “Effectively” may be the whole point.
The Polivy angle
While Anderson’s only scent of a denial amounted to saying she had never had a telephone call with Polivy, he went further.
His situation with the board, Polivy said, is “onerous.” No doubt, that’s correct. Since Haynes’s suspension and for months ahead of it, his involvement exceeded everyone else’s – not just in time but in taking on leadership within a vacuum.
After relaying multiple whistleblower complaints to the full board, he accepted the role of liaison following the suspension of CEO Shelton J. Haynes. This entails acting as the terminal where information and interests intersect. Getting it wrong is easy, like it or not, because you can’t please everyone, no matter how hard you try.
But before June 2024…
Polivy gained kudos for absorbing employee complaints against Haynes as well as Chief Counsel Gretchen Robinson and AVP Tajuna Sharpe. But he was a reluctant messenger, and that showed.
While miserable conditions persisted inside RIOC, Polivy held back for over six months, even as he fielded complaint after complaint. In a sworn statement in a court case, he conceded that he tried helping Haynes weather the storm of accusations. That commitment delayed his revealing the damaging information he knew.
That was despite numerous firings by Haynes that crippled operations and the agency bleeding cash like never before.
When Don Lewis (RIOC’s then-Chief Counsel) went to Howard to make an anonymous complaint about (then-CEO) Charline Indelicato, Howard ratted him out to Charline and Don was fired within days after that conversation. That is why I never had any faith in going to him to complain about anything.
RIOC employee who prefers remaining anonymous for fear of retaliation.
At The Daily, we have firsthand knowledge of people who reached out to Polivy for help but could not get so much as a return email of phone call.
“That f—,” another said. “A BAD man.” We have the details concerning this complaint but can’t provide them because that might reveal the individual involved.
Without agreeing with the complaints as accurate, we can say that Polivy has been a lightning rod for them, far more than any other board member. And, adding in his complicity in the unethical removal of CEO Susan Rosenthal in favor of Haynes, his full-throated support of Haynes’s shaky financial leadership along with his playing along with the Swift Emergency Medial COVID Testing Site deception, Polivy is compromised. It’s common among the longer-termed members of this board.
In the long run, Polivy may simply be the best of a bad lot.
Finally, The Really Ugly from RIOC’s June 2024 Board Meeting
The saddest thing is that we have to focus on just one ugly incident when at least two deserve recognition.
For now, the dispute over purchasing guidelines takes a back seat, and again, we wonder why anyone would resist such a change. But the majority of RIOC’s board, lead by Budget Office surrogate and designated blowhard Morris Peters, did. The majority routinely resists fixing anything, even what’s clearly broken and has been abused.
The winner of the Really Ugly contest is the treatment board member Lydia Tang got when she asked for some general concurrence over a smart move in her Governance Committee.
Tang wanted to officially include residents Margie Smith and Audrey Tannen as non-voting members of the committee. It made sense. Since Smith left the board, the critical Governance Committee, required by law, had been out of action. Smith served as its chair and is widely recognized for her political awareness of all things Roosevelt Island.
Tannen, as Senator Liz Krueger’s chief of staff, is already free to sit as Krueger’s non-voting surrogate on the board. She serves as a sturdy and reliable conduit for resident concerns that never surface within RIOC’s management.
The Governance Committee got new life only after Fhala pushed hard for it while buffeted by push back from the usual suspects. Now, Tang geared up to make it both active and effective. But she made one big error.
She asked the board for concurrence. This board couldn’t concur on oatmeal. There are factions resisting change or improvement at any level on any front. The results were predictable.
Because Tang’s idea was so good and because even the dinosaurs could not find any reasons for objecting, the group fell into a chaos of falling into process arguments. It was deadening.
Finally…
Like who gives a damn? The board’s dinosaurs do. So, why not do this? And why not do it that way?
It was ugly and ridiculous, a terrible way of treating a fellow board member.
But who’s going to do anything about? Who’s going to fix this mess of a board?
Hochul could, of course, and has the authority to do it, but putting it mildly, she’s created bigger messes with no way of fixing them either.
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