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tel/fax:
718.362.4784
Please note our new postal address when sending
contributions to the legal fund:
121 5th Avenue, PMB #150
Brooklyn, New York 11217
About DDDB
Our coalition consists of 21 community organizations and
there are 51 community organizations formally
aligned in opposition to the Ratner plan.
DDDB is a volunteer-run organization. We have over 5,000
subscribers to our email newsletter, and 7,000 petition
signers. Over 800 volunteers have registered with DDDB
to form our various teams, task-forces and committees
and we have over 150 block captains. We have a 20 person
volunteer legal team of local lawyers supplementing our
retained attorneys.
We are funded entirely by individual donations from the community at large
and through various fundraising events we and supporters have organized.
We have the financial support of well over 3,500 individual
donors.
More about
DDDB...
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Dolly's Follies
Disgraced City Planning Commissioner Dolly Williams
Fined for Atlantic Yards Conflict of Interest
In August 2004, it was reported
in the Brooklyn Paper that Brooklyn's only representative
on the City Planning Commission, Dolly Williams, had become an investor in Bruce
Ratner's Nets. It was amply clear to us that her financial stake with the team
and her role as a Commissioner created a conflict of interest that broke the Ethics
Law of the City Charter, which says that a city officer with ownership interest
in firms doing business with the city has a conflict of interest. . Days after
the disclosure Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn
lodged a complaint with the city's Conflicts of Interest Board (click to download
the complaint).
At the time, Ms. Williams told
the Brooklyn Paper: "It is not a conflict, otherwise I would
not do it."
Tuesday, over three years after the complaint was filed, the Conflicts of Interest
Board released a disposition
by Ms. Williams where she admitted that her partial ownership of the Nets
and her vote in favor of the 2004 Downtown Brooklyn Rezoning -- which included
a rezoning of a small part of the Atlantic Yards project site which would benefit
Forest City Ratner -- was a conflict of interest. The Board also announced a $4,000
dollar fine it has imposed on the now disgraced
commissioner. Ms. Williams has not explained why she did not recuse herself
from that vote and admit to her conflict much earlier.
In October, just a few weeks before the Conflicts of Interest Board issued their
press Release
announcing Ms. Williams' fine, Borough President Markowitz announced that he
would not reappoint Ms. Williams to the Planning Commission -- he did not
raise the issue of her conflicts as a reason. It's disturbing that it took so
long to make a decision he should have made years ago when it became clear that
he had appointed a Commissioner with numerous
conflicts that would hamstring her ability to properly represent the borough
on the Planning Commission.
In a time when government officials all too frequently use their positions for
personal financial gain, it's good to know that some justice, albeit rather delayed
and convoluted, has been meted out; we look forward to more
justice on a larger scale.
The New York Sun reported on the fine and the Borough President's new
appointee for the City Planning Commission, in an article headlined "Planning
Commissioner Fined for Atlantic Yards Conflict of Interest."
Posted: 11.28.07
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