EDITORIAL

Trust in Tatters

Perhaps the last two and a half years have made it inevitable. When trust is broken, it is not easily regained. New York State’s daily presence, RIOC President Jerome Blue, has turned virtually every Roosevelt Islander who cares into a cynic who will not easily trust the State again.

So perhaps it is inevitable that seemingly positive moves by DHCR Commissioner Joseph Lynch are met with a nearly knee-jerk suspicion. In the Kremlinology of residents’ relationship with the State, no move is taken at face value, no gesture greeted without wariness.

Examples:

• Lynch invites Residents Association President Patrick Stewart and RICO Chair Susan Whitaker to sit in on RIOC Board meetings. After an initial sign of relieved gratitude, there is another reaction: "What’s his angle?"

• Lynch first seems to be signaling by various actions and private comments that he is carefully circumscribing Jerry Blue’s orbit of power. Then he seems to praise him in a New York Times article, and the talk is that he is straddling a political fence labeled expediency.

• Lynch first agrees to assist the Maple Tree Group in securing a foundation grant that will help plan a transition between State control and resident control of Roosevelt Island, thereby keeping the group from securing alternate government sponsors – then misses a critical deadline. The grant is lost.

• Lynch seems to be telling the Maple Tree Group that he feels its draft legislation – the Grannis Bill endorsed by 92 percent of Island voters on November 3 – can be shaped to be acceptable to the powers in Albany. Then he delays providing promised guidance just long enough that the bill may be too late getting into the legislative mill this year. Then he seems to suggest things should really be left largely as they are, deleting provisions for hiring professional management, and staying with patronage appointments. The result – a suspicious impression. (It may be cleared up in the week ahead.)

• Lynch creates two committees of the RIOC Board and names residents to them, along with others. First reaction: "We finally have a voice." Second thoughts: "These committees are stacked."

 

The last instance is perhaps the most important. Much remains to be seen – after all, the committees have met only once. Already, one hopeful outcome was to require Blue to attend a community meeting on the minischools conversion and hear what residents have to say.

But Lynch named Blue to both committees, an action which certainly moderates any isolation of Blue. And he named only two residents with long track records of being outspoken – Joan Christianson and Patrick Stewart. And on each committee, the doubters see that in one way or another, he can exert control or strong influence over half the membership.

Then, of course, the two committees are advisory committees. Seen through a cynic’s lens, the committees can be viewed as tools that the State can cite in an assertion that residents have been given a hearing – but their advice can be ignored if it doesn’t serve the State’s purposes, or the purposes of Lynch’s boss, Governor George Pataki.

There is the hope, of course, that Joe Lynch is the man he seems to be – a State official with rock-hard integrity, sensitive to residents, dedicated, professional, and determined to do the right thing.

But he has a long way to go to regain the trust that Jerry Blue so lustily trashed.

DL