It's back.

But it's back with more urgency than last year or the year before.

Once again, Assemblymember Pete Grannis has started the ball rolling on legislation that would put residents in charge of RIOC. It's not such a unique idea, after all - citizens of a community electing those who guide it. It's as American as... well, America.

And while we wait...

Roosevelt Island's physical resources continue to deteriorate, as the State continues in a long-term casting about for some way to get it right. The idea of the season is full-throttle catch-as-cash-can development of whatever resources can be marketed on whatever formula will prop up RIOC's creaky financial structure. Cash in on what we have to sell, the reasoning goes, and we'll be able to take care of things.

But taking care of things means more than producing some outcome that generates funding for the repairs the Island needs. Taking care of things means paying attention, all the time, and doing it right depends on a level of skill that seems unattainable in the bulk of personnel the State sends in to do the job.

It's an item of consuming interest that the minds being applied to the problems and opportunities of Roosevelt Island have wildly different qualifications:

• There's the RIOC Board, unelected, too many non-resident, mostly paying attention once a month or less.
• There's the Residents Association Common Council, living here and living with the Island's problems and with its future.

And if you listen to the discussion of the Island's critical issues at RIOC Board meetings, and then at RIRA Common Council meetings, you can see and hear - even feel - the difference. The RIOC Board acts like a doctor who's decided on a cure and is trying to fit the illness to the treatment he has in mind. (Right now, it's development in overdrive.) Members of the RIRA Common Council, on the other hand, can often be seen to be working their way thoughtfully through the problems of the Island.

Oddly, the group that has the power is the unelected group that largely doesn't live here and tends to pay attention once a month. And the group that is power-starved is the elected group that does live here and has to pay attention all the time.

The Grannis legislation seeks, once again, to correct that incongruity and set things right.

Godspeed.