This time it's for real.

The official announcement of his departure came Thursday morning at the regular meeting of the Board of Directors of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC), though the news had spread Island-wide Monday evening and Tuesday morning.

Blue's replacement as RIOC President is Robert Ryan, a Senior Vice President of the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC).

It is not known how the change fits with the anticipated passage of self-governance legislation for the Island (see separate story, this page) - whether Ryan is a temporary and transitional appointment, or is intended by the Governor to serve long-term - or whether the legislative move was simply the straw that broke the back of the Albany administration's willingness to continue risking the public-relations disaster Blue seemed to represent.

Ryan

Ryan, New Boss at RIOC

Even Governor George Pataki ultimately became disenchanted with Blue's inability to get along with residents. In November, shortly after Blue's patron, Senator Al D'Amato, was defeated in a bid for reelection, Blue was called to Albany and asked to resign. He responded, "I'm not ready yet," and Pataki's advisors apparently decided to dodge the consequences of a public firing.

"They counted me out," Blue is said to have told members of his staff in January, "and I'm going to do the dance down Main Street." With that, he gathered a phalanx of male staff members and walked from the RIOC office to the Tram station, then to Motorgate.

Blue's administration was so fractious that Joseph Lynch, the Commissioner of the State Department of Housing and Community Renewal, took over the job of chairing the meetings of the RIOC Board of Directors. Often, over recent months, Blue's proposed agenda for those meetings would be largely scrapped at Lynch's direction.

Blue also directed his administration's efforts at making Roosevelt Island self-sufficient. He was so determined to do so that he refused funds that could easily have been available to RIOC, had he only been wlling to request and accept them. Blue claimed success in the quest for a balanced budget at the beginning of 1999, but residents who have attempted to reconcile the claim with the facts suspect the claim relies on mirrors and masking tape more than reality. The suspicion is that Blue is pouring one-shot income, like funds from a settlement on the crane-Tramway accident of February, 1998, into day-to-day operating requirements.

In what often appeared to be desperation attempts to increase income and reduce expenses, Blue:

• increased fees charged to Island organizations for use of playing fields (1997), then backed off when faced with a vehement community reaction;

Blue so curtailed the flow of information from his office to Island residents that Patrick Stewart, President of the Roosevelt Island Residents Association (RIRA), accumulated a foot-high stack of requests and responses for documents exchanged under the Freedom of Information law.

Blue ignored RIRA and its elected Common Council, and while he adhered to that policy for nearly three years, RIRA stood fast as the focus of resident efforts both to unseat Blue and to roll back the decisions he appeared to make without resident consultation beyond a handful of die-hard supporters.

Blue apparently felt monumental pressure in the RIOC job. Residents were a constant source of irritation to him, according to staff members who talked with The WIRE from time to time on condition their jobs not be jeopardized. "He was explosive after meetings," one said, "and whenever The WIRE came out." Though Blue professed to ignore the Island's newspaper, he was actually an avid reader who devoured every issue as soon as it was available, then threw it in his wastebasket - then insisted copies be available when he wanted them. (While The WIRE has strived to report objectively on Blue and his administration in news articles, the paper often found fault with his administration in analysis pieces, or editorialized against his secrecy and unwillingness to work with residents, as well as his projects. In an attmpt to provide a balance of opinion, The WIRE asked Blue to write a RIOC President's Column. He did, for a while, then abruptly stopped supplying it.)

The WIRE was banned from the RIOC office at 591 Main Street at one point, in a move that lasted just one week. Thereafter, staff members were sent out to retrieve a dozen copies from one or another Island merchant; Blue wanted them for reference, but didn't want to see staffers reading the newspaper, or to see it around the office. "We had to have them, but they were not to be visible," said one RIOC employee.

Blue is said to have reserved his most coarse tantrums for female members of the RIOC staff. Regardless of rank, they were required to knock before entering his office - a protocol rarely required of male staff members.

Staff members used words like "paranoid," "secretive," and "control freak" in describing Blue's demeanor and approach to his job. One said, "He's desperately afraid of somebody knowing something more than he knows."

Blue was nominated by the Governor to become Commisioner of the State Division of Human Rights, and the nomination was reportedly confirmed Tuesday in an in camera (closed) session of State Republican Senators.