Featured last evening in a livestream from Community Board 8, RIOC Deputy General Counsel Gerrald Ellis talked about RIOC, its uniqueness and challenges. Wisely, he left some things out or merely referenced – as the state agency’s interim status floated along.
by David Stone
The Roosevelt Island Daily News
Roosevelt Island According to Gerrald Ellis
Few dispute that RIOC, the state agency governing Roosevelt Island, is better under the interim leadership of Gerrald Ellis and Chief Financial Officer Dhruvika Patel Amin. The grounds look better, resident concerns are being addressed, and transparency is apparent as never before.
At no time have those benefits been more evident than they were last evening when Ellis talked, explained and fielded one-on-one questions for well over an hour. That’s at least one hour more than any other RIOC leader has done in memory.
View the full meeting on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa_4nxgiv24
What Was Said
Ellis kicked off with a history of Roosevelt Island. No secrets here, but it was refreshing hearing from a RIOC leader who is actually well-informed.
An important point made is that RIOC is “self-funded.” In other words, RIOC runs on money collected nearly exclusively on Roosevelt Island. In Ellis’s view, this means that all of the money collected from leases, permits, the Tram and Motorgate stays here.
The perspective, though, is that it also means that New York State pays not a dime for all the control and demands it makes on Roosevelt Island. Most of it is kept invisible. More on that later.
While fielding questions, the co-interim leader discussed the new responsiveness getting traction at RIOC. The results – work on Eleanor’s Pier, developing contingency plans for bus breakdowns, quick fixes on daily issues – are evident.
But, the limitations of RIOC’s prolonged interim status, bear some strains. As an example, key hiring decisions remain stalled. And, although Ellis did not say so directly, virtually every department is now shorthanded.
Yet, things are better. Things are getting done. The interim management team would like to do more.
The RIOC Advantage
Less apparent than clean streets and well-running buses to most Roosevelt Islanders are unique advantages in the very design of Roosevelt Island.
Clearly – if not for the populist design here, where you can meet your leaders on the street – Ellis would not have fielded questions in a live streaming event. Other places, buffers are in place. Here, they come down.
That’s not always so sweet for RIOC’s leaders, but in the cases of Dhru and Gerrald it is. It’s built into their characters and a credit to smart hiring decisions by President/CEO Shelton J. Haynes. (Haynes is currently suspended in a tangle of legal disputes.)
As Ellis noted, without the RIOC construction within the fabric of state and city government, we would not have an AVAC system nor Red Buses shuttling folks around. More importantly, Roosevelt Islanders would not have the kind of access on display last evening.
Nobody else in New York City has that, and RIOC’s leaders carry a greater personal load than others elsewhere. They have no phalanx of PR pros standing between Roosevelt Islanders and them.
Roosevelt Island leaders within RIOC aren’t even allowed blue Mondays. They must be on all the time or suffer the needles from the community’s rich trove of activists and critics.
The RIOC Disadvantage
Even more evident as revealed in a years long bog of lawsuits highlighting pitched battles within a dysfunctional state agency is the – let’s call it – meddling in the daily affairs by Albany bureaucrats.
From Susan Rosenthal through Shelton Haynes, we see political appointees pushing and shoving RIOC managers in all directions. The operatives, whose names you never hear, sometimes plot against local executives, as Team Cuomo did in bombing Rosenthal. Other times, they leave them dangling without support or training as they did with Haynes.
The results are an ambiguity within RIOC and its relations with the community.
Although, upon taking office, Governor Kathy Hochul promised improved transparency in state government, the message never got through to her delegates pushing Roosevelt Island around. We only know about their persistent daily meddling from all the lawsuits.
Which, sadly, we are also paying for.
On the Bright Side
Not engaging with local media – or locals at all for the most part – denied Haynes getting credit for gaining some autonomy for RIOC.
When RIOC hired him, it was on direct orders from Albany with the board folding like origami in a windstorm. But his own most recent high-profile hires, including Ellis, Amin and Communications Director Bryant Daniels went through a more open hiring process.
That is, although they still needed Albany’s stamp of approval, he recruited, interviewed and recommended each of them. Each became independent, productive contributors.
That set the stage for a powerfully smooth transition when a crisis sent RIOC reeling with Haynes’s unexplained suspension. (You can get a hint of it from the lawsuits, but much remains hidden.)
Finally…
While Roosevelt Island is currently on solid ground with Ellis, Amin and company, there’s no escaping their interim status. Most residents would be happy if the arrangement became permanent, but fear abounds over what Team Hochul might inject into the local tranquility.
RIOC’s board, charged with hiring and firing, is weaker than that bridge in Baltimore. Anything can happen, including the return of a vindicated Shelton Haynes. The process is invisible from here, and as far as we know, no one in Albany is asking for local input.
This leaves Roosevelt Island and its leadership in suspense with no telling how long that will last.
Enjoy and appreciate the good guys while we’ve got them.
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