A Legacy of Mistrust

As Island leaders look at legislation brought forth by the Maple Tree Group after two years of research and quiet (though public) effort, there's a distrust in the air.

Residents find themselves asking, Why is the Governor suddenly so willing to sign off on self-governance for Roosevelt Island?

The premise behind the question is that the Governor must so dislike Roosevelt Island that he's willing to use his office to hurt us.

No wonder there's distrust. For three years, the Albany administration of George Pataki was utterly unresponsive to complaints about Jerome Blue - just as unresponsive as Blue himself. Furthermore, Blue's every move seemed designed to alienate concerned residents, and the paranoid secrecy at Bunker RIOC created a gnawing suspicion that residents' needs were low-priority - perhaps even that residents were expendable in Blue's eyes.

But the Governor's reasons for sticking us with three years of Blue were his political debt to Al D'Amato, almost surely, and the cries of pain were probably ignored because, after all, we're not only New York City, but we're mostly Democrats, and in the grand scheme of things, we're small potatoes.

And the Governor's motives for signing on to the self-governance idea are probably not as dark as Blue's seemed to be. Whether Pataki moves on to a Vice Presidential nomination or stays in Albany, he serves himself best if he pacifies this Island. He's not likely to do that successfully by programming self-governance to fail.

We would do well, then, to examine the self-governance plan, and the Governor's contribution to it, at face value, as hard as that may be. There are enough difficulties in evaluating a substantial change in the Island's route into the future without viewing Albany through Blue-colored glasses.

DL