My name is Connie Murray. I am a native New Yorker and have lived in Long Island City for over two decades.
I spoke here last month about the NYCEDC, the city’s public benefit corporation, which reports into the Mayor’s office and whose 500-person staff and robust expense budget are funded by taxpayer money. I want us all to understand that we pay for the EDC so it should never be more powerful than we, the people who literally fund it.
The EDC’s pathetic attempts at public engagement for Sunnyside Yards excluded the public so much that its final public “meeting” in December was a conference call. This is shameful: face your public, Cap’n “Benefit Corporation.”
Remember back in November 2018: in this very room, two weeks after Amazon announced HQ2 and was invited to have a presence here at CB2. Who did Amazon send? Nate Bliss from the EDC. A guy on taxpayer-funded payroll showing up as a proxy for a company which doesn’t pay taxes: that is cronyism and that is corruption.
The NYCEDC might call itself a public benefit corporation but it’s a monopoly benefit corporation, it’s a real estate developer benefit corporation: it benefits parties who exploit the public but never the public itself.
The EDC should no longer exist in city government.
Thank you
