The chaos of lawsuits challenging RIOC now sinks to new depths as executives say they will sue the operation they manage. Believe it or not, President/CEO Shelton J. Haynes and Chief Counsel Gretchen Robinson will sue RIOC itself. For good measure, they will also sue Governor Hochul’s office.
by David Stone
The Roosevelt Island Daily News
“As a result, by December 18, 2023, Plaintiffs intend to amend their complaint to add Title VII claims against the Chamber and RIOC, as well as additional allegations of retaliation,” Haynes’s and Robinson’s attorney Milton L. Williams said in a filing with the U.S. District Court for Southern New York.
The plaintiffs received “right to sue” letters from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on November 20th.
They were already suing five state officials in a lawsuit smearing a dozen or more residents, elected officials and former employees for orchestrating an alleged racist backlash against them.
Full Disclosure: Haynes and Robinson accuse me personally of instigating the racist backlash through news articles.
RIOC Now: Can It Function?
The question may be academic because doubts about RIOC’s functioning as a unit at all are plentiful. For many, it seems like a scattering of independent operations lacking central leadership, some good, some not so good.
But while the initial version of this lawsuit attempted to throttle RIOC’s state overseers, according to a filing by the state’s attorney, this goes even further.
As Haynes and Robinson, RIOC’s top executives, add the Governor’s Executive Chamber and RIOC itself, they create an impossible tangle of knots.
Having already thrown Team Hochul’s collective backs against the wall, are they now suing themselves? Or is it just the Board of Directors that has consistently backed them, including efforts aimed at suppressing free speech and punishing whistleblowers?
Or just select board members they don’t like or did not approve before their appointments?
Who has oversight, if anyone? Will the internal warfare further cripple an already dysfunctional state agency?
Next Steps
In the final analysis, the core problems come down to Governor Hochul’s gross mismanagement of RIOC. She entered office professing high ideals but never held RIOC to any of them. And she coolly rebuffed legislation that would bring stronger local control.
Why she failed Roosevelt Island so miserably is anyone’s guess. We won’t speculate, but we hope she’ll finally get her hands dirty doing the necessary work of getting RIOC back on track.
That’s because, while the state officials war among themselves, it’s Roosevelt Island that suffers. Chronic mismanagement joins failures in both transparency and accountability.
And now, they’ve got dueling internal tensions contending for space with multiple investigations and external lawsuits.
Will they even find time to clean up this godawful mess?
The Five Amendments That Sold Out Roosevelt Island
Roosevelt Island did not lose control of its southern waterfront in a single deal. It happened in five quiet steps. Five amendments. Five missed chances to renegotiate.
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