This RIOC puzzle didn’t start with its callous reversal of priority boarding at the Tram. It goes way back. The RIOC road is littered with stupid decisions made by smart – and not so smart – people.
by David Stone
The Roosevelt Island Daily News
The RIOC puzzle today
Looked at objectively, RIOC is an outdated jalopy careening down the road without a driver. Take a closer look. It’s falling apart. The design is old and clunky. It can’t be fixed until someone comes up with a fresh blueprint.
Given the players involved, don’t count on any of them taxing their limited intellects with that task. From Hochul’s Executive Chamber on down the Hudson River, it crosses RuthAnne Visnauskas’s desk. It is a modern bureaucratic take on “fat and happy.”
RIOC’s staff is heavy with smart, decent people, but the mix produces stupid behavior. It’s mostly because of who stirs the pot on Main Street from 151 miles upriver.
Let’s take a look under what’s left under the hood.
- Driverless – This strikes you first. Nobody’s at the wheel. A nutty coalition of board members decided, a year ago, to take away CEO Shelton J. Haynes’s keys. RIOC, they cried, was a “hostile workplace” under Haynes. The same bunch supervised him for four years without a complaint. Suddenly, they had to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to lawyers for an investigation.
- Consistent Malfunction – Informed Roosevelt Islanders scratched their heads. When wasn’t RIOC a “hostile workplace?” Haynes didn’t invent it. From one possible angle, he fought it. The history of hostility was never entirely top down. An established in-house clique showered every incoming executive with rumors, accusations and backstabbing. RIOC’s been one variety of gang wrestling or another for over a decade.
- Cephalopod Fiduciaries: I once compared RIOC’s board to a cephalopod because both are spineless. But that, I realized, was unfair to the squids. With squids, spinelessness is a creative tool for exploring the world. With RIOC’s board, it’s just cowardice, a fear of facing Albany’s wrath. Everyone on the planet, except this board, stands up to our hapless Governor Hochul. This is like when the computer controlling your car is ridiculously underpowered. It sputters. It’s erratic. And God knows, underpowered.
- Lack of Maintenance: With rapid turnover a RIOC trademark, all hope for parts working together goes out the window. Sometimes, they don’t change the oil because nobody’s in charge of the schedule. Nobody rotates the tires. Other times, they burp up conflicting nonsense as they just did with priority boarding. Nobody at the helm. One wheel going this way, the other thataway. Staffs and cars need unity of purpose, something holding the parts together. RIOC ain’t got that.
The Joys of Bunkering
Credit where credit is due – RIRA’s current president Frank Farance was the first I heard use the term “bunkering.” He described RIOC’s reptilian response to pressure. Solving the RIOC puzzle requires understanding how and why this happens.
When reptiles are denied constant comfort and stroking, they react in a self-protective way. Sometimes, they lash out at a perceived enemy; other times, they scurry for cover. Like a bunker.
The first time I heard Farance make the bunker quip was, I think, when RIOC destroyed the Roosevelt Island Youth Program. Residents preferred keeping it alive, but RIOC killed it anyway. There was a hidden agenda. Farance exposed numerous holes in the official story… And, then, RIOC scampered into the bunker, refusing to answer any fresh questions.
RIOC did it again when we caught them lying about feces-contaminated water in public fountains. It did it again when challenged over the details of how Swift Emergency Medical landed the COVID testing site. And also when its lifeguards weren’t guarding anything while a young man drowned in Sportspark.
Recently, it’s refused to answer questions about a resources giveaway to the PTA and whether board member Conway Ekpo acknowledged his conflict of interest. Why is RIOC tormenting the Wildlife Freedom Foundation over a contract its CEO approved a year ago? Who knows? It never stops.
Whether there is wrongdoing or not, hunkering down in a bunker makes any organization look guilty. Because of this strategy, RIOC often appears more guilty than it is. Gutlessness is an organizational flaw, not wrongdoing.
In the long run, it may turn out that it’s just hopelessly discombobulated without a fixer or leader in charge.
Finally…
At RIOC, when smart people do stupid things, there’s a reason. In this case, don’t follow the money. Follow the power push spilling unpredictably out of Albany. The Executive Chamber, also known as “The Second Floor,” at the capital carries out the governor’s policies. It entangles with RIOC’s local executives on a daily basis.
That mission does not include making RIOC a better, more community-oriented organization. There is no evidence suggesting that the Executive Chamber has any interest in or links with the community. The RIOC puzzle evolves from inserting Albany’s detached goals into community management. Smart people do stupid things because the handlers force an alien mission on the Island.
RIOC has many smart, reliable people, but they are no match for the corrupted power flow streaming down from Albany.
AVAC Is Working. The Model Is What’s Aging.
Roosevelt Island’s AVAC system is often discussed as if it were either a miracle or a menace. In truth, it is neither. It is functioning infrastructure that has reached a point in its lifecycle where how it is maintained matters as much as whether it exists at all.
David, while I have used variants of the word “bunker” (an accurate description), for me the origin goes to the late Dick Lutz whose editorial columns in the WIRE expressed frustration that RIOC board and execs would rather hide their heads than address the problems surround them. Bunkering was a positive feedback loop: when RIOC bunkered, it caused them to bunker more. Having seen this across several RIOC administrations since the 1990s, the only way to get out of bunker mode was to let the metaphorical fire burn itself out – typically 6-12 months before RIOC would then start becoming responsive.
With the current RIOC administration (i.e., post-Haynes), there are some opportunities to make things work better, but there are different time scales and with different topics/efforts. For example, if there is some operational issue with PSD, a phone call to PSD leadership about a constructive solution usually gets fixed within 48 hours (note: some problems, inherently, take longer timeframes). And speaking of PSD, they seem to have some clever solutions to dealing with some E-bike/moped problems that are causing the 114th Precinct to take notice (read: smart leadership in PSD, and smart on a City-wide scale).
We (RIRA) reported problems with the Tram stoppages, including technical understanding, technical solutions, operational solutions, and regulatory solutions. The tram operator confirmed all our insights, but the long-term problem is Dept of Labor is the wrong regulatory entity. The turnaround on that was around 2-3 weeks … within the range of expectations … and there are other follow-up tasks we need to monitor.
RIRA has made suggestions on the flashing stop signs – “enhanced conspicuity” in traffic engineering parlance. That took about a year to affect, not ideal but they are rolling it out, and we should give RIOC credit for implementing these safety enhancements.
But none of these compare to the old days of the Lighthouse Park footbridges washed away in the flooding from Hurricane Sandy. It took several years fix what would take a Long Island home landscaping crew to create in a weekend.
Although I can’t read minds of RIOC staff/board, there where several good management books in the 1990s and 2000s that applied to RIOC. One was a book called “Dinosaur Brains” and another was called “Dealing With People You Can’t Stand”. Both are excellent books for dealing with organizational dysfunction, and still applicable today. The reason why they still apply is that humans are still the main components of the organizational hierarchy and whether you are at the top, the bottom, or the outside, it’s important to understand some of these patterns – and for the careful reader, some of these patterns that exist in ourselves, stuff we need for self-improvement. You can read samples at Amazon, a high recommend!
Just to pick an example, in Dealing With People You Can’t Stand, the identify the Sniper personality type – coworkers who don’t say much but have that one-liner to poke holes in your presentation and tear you down in front of bosses or the public. The problem with the Sniper is that they hide behind their motivation (to disrupt or discourage), but they slink away into hiding after the damage has been done. You will see that in some RIOC Board members (and against other RIOC Board members). A strong executive (not necessarily the CEO, but could be the CFO, COO, General Counsel, or head of HR) might provide some productive guidance on tamping down those Sniper behaviors.
I’m not saying RIOC lacks leadership – there are good leaders in current staff/board – I’m saying that the lack of coherent executive leadership is what’s missing, and it can be accomplished without worrying about the Governor. Leaders like Shane, Indelicato, and Rosenthal – although I had strong disagreements with each of them – on balance they understood executive leadership. There were other leaders in the past including Chironis (former CFO), Opperman (bus operations), McManus (public safety), and Lewis (general counsel). Incredibly terrible leaders were CEOs Jerry Blue and Rob Ryan.
Thanks for your thoughts, Frank.