Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

When covering the press conference last Sunday by three elected officials previously on-the-fence or supportive of Atlantic Yards, I didn't point out that two of three had received campaign contributions from people connected to Forest City Ratner and Atlantic Yards. Such contributions, along with constituent feedback, might have nudged Assemblyman Karim Camara and state Senator Eric Adams toward their respective AY positions, supportive and near-the-fence. My armchair analysis: Camara and Adams don't need such campaign money now, and they're more worried about constituents who haven't gotten expected/hoped-for jobs, contracts, and housing at the project. While I had covered most of those contributions, I'd also missed somel. In no case did the Atlantic Yards-related money represent a large percentage of the total, but the contributions were significant enough to be noticeable. Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, who did not get Ratner-related contributions, proba...

Developer Bruce Ratner's brother, and ally, appears in Brandt Goldstein's 2006 book Storming the Court: How a Band of Yale Law Students Sued the President--and Won , excerpted below: [Law student] Lisa [Daugaard] met [Professor] Harold Koh in the spring of 1991, as a second-year student in his international business transactions class, known as IBT... After the IBT class, she'd seen enough: Koh was of the system, by the system, and for the system. She would never have dealt with him again had it not been for a radical New York lawyer on campus named Michael Ratner. To Lisa, Ratner was the anti-Koh. Bearded, bald, and fond of quoting Che Guevara, he'd represented everyone from inmates in the 1971 Attica prison rebellion to Nicaraguan citizens attacked by U.S.-funded contras. Ratner had come of age at Columbia Law School during the Vietnam War, and he considered most politicians "corrupt assholes." Along with his colleagues at the Center for Constitutional Rig...

When, in September 2006, I first wrote about lawyer Michael Ratner's campaign contribution in apparent furtherance of the goals of Forest City Ratner (run by his brother Bruce), nobody in the press seemed to care. When news of corruption charges against state Senator Carl Kruger first surfaced this month, I mentioned that Kruger had received FCR-related campaign contributions, and on Friday I wrote again about Michael Ratner. Exclusive? Today, in an article labeled "Exclusive," the New York Post offers Kruger's campaigns see big 'Net' gains : State Sen. Carl Kruger -- who, the feds charge, directed state money to the Atlantic Yards project, which includes a new Nets arena -- took thousands of dollars in campaign cash from deep-pocketed donors connected to its developer, the team and the arena. (Actually, he directed state money toward a Prospect Park project pushed by Forest City executive Bruce Bender.) Nets investor Michael Ratner and his wife, Karen Ra...

Now that charges are swirling around state Senator Carl Kruger, it's worth a look back to see how Forest City Ratner (FCR) apparently steered campaign contributions to him less than a month after the Atlantic Yards plan was announced. Kruger, along with some other undistinguished Brooklyn politicians, received campaign contributions via a most unusual source: FCR CEO Bruce Ratner's brother Michael Ratner (below right), the eminent human rights lawyer, as well as his wife Karen Ranucci. Kruger got $2000 from each on 1/6/04, as indicated in the graphic (click to enlarge; full list at bottom). Atlantic Yards was announced on 12/10/03. Michael Ratner's curious pattern Michael Ratner wouldn't comment when I first wrote about this in September 2006. I suggested that he was carrying water for his brother Bruce, who for a stretch was a "refusenik" from campaign contributions. Michael Ratner's Brooklyn political contributions--in a pattern quite different from...

Even if Michael Ratner, the most publicly left-wing member of the Ratner family, has given several contributions to Rep. Dennis Kucinich's Congressional and Presidential races, others in the family worked hard to support Kucinich's most recent opponent. Should Kucinich scrutinize plans for the Atlantic Yards arena the same way he's done the Yankee Stadium deal --with the important distinction of doing it beforehand rather than after-the-fact--undoubtedly there would be reason for the Ratners to support his next opponent. Cimperman v. Kucinich In a 2/26/08 piece in the Cleveland Leader headlined Cimperman Is Doing Corporate Work , Cleveland gadfly journalist Roldo Bartimole wrote about the campaign of Downtown Councilman Joe Cimperman to gain support from developers in the city, including Forest City Enterprises. Bartimole wrote: Cimperman got one of his first tastes of the downtown crowd after taking office. At a holiday party, someone poked him in the back. It was the leg...

Now that Rep. Dennis Kucinich , an Ohio Democrat best known for his maverick presidential run and his effort to impeach President George Bush, is going after the "loophole" behind financing for the Yankees and Mets stadiums and the Atlantic Yards arena, one of his supporters in New York City, radical lawyer and Nets part-owner Michael Ratner, has to be considering the concept of blowback . Kucinich is questioning the statement by the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department that they had no choice but to endorse a questionable interpretation of the tax code via a Private Letter Ruling (PLR) for the Yankees and the Mets stadiums--a policy on which the Empire State Development Corporation and Forest City Ratner have relied to plan financing for the Atlantic Yards arena. The IRS has since proposed tightening the rules. Kucinich has asked the IRS and the Treasury department to offer "additional clarification of your position before you proceed with further rulemaki...