Reo Far From Grand

In the Wednesday hearing on the Willets Point Order to Show Cause the city's attorney Chris Reo was at his histrionic best-underscoring the old maxim that when a lawyer has the facts she should pound the facts, but if not she should just pound the table. One of Reo's main points was that the Willets Point irregulars were simply spoiled sports standing in the way of Mike Bloomberg's field of dreams-and the ace WPU legal eagle Mike Gerrard was little more than an obstructionist.

Anything but confront the fact that the city is in this mess of its own making because it utilized environmental consultants who have grown so fat and arrogant with their favored nation status that they felt they could play three card monte with the traffic data-cause after all, who's even paying any attention. Well Brian Ketcham came in and gave these fraudsters an appropriate b-slapping by demonstrating to the state regulators what true professionalism really is.

Here's Reo in classic misdirection mode:"The city can’t be asked to sit and wait and not do anything when it has determined that the phase one impacts without the ramps are equal to or less than they would be with the ramps,” City Law Department counsel Chris Reo said in court Tuesday, later adding, “By Mr. Gerrard’s admission, the record could never be closed, and the government could never have the certainty it needs when pursuing an action.”

The city says? Is that like Simon? This attack on Gerrard is disingenuous because the city promised it would not proceed without the ramp approval and now Reo is claiming that its original promise is nothing more than an Emily Litella moment-because circumstances changed. Well they changed because the intrepid Ketcham caught the EDC so evil folks at their game-and Deputy Mayor Lieber swore to the court because he felt that the ramp approval was merely pro forma.

So as a result we get a phony Phase I that if it is built and the ramps are not approved will mean that the city council got totally snookered because the project will have all of the negative features of traffic jamming roads but no housing, convention center, etc, etc.

And how bad was the EDC traffic data for the ramp report" Think of this. WPU has virtually no political support and the development is being promoted by the entire political establishment. Yet the regulators are holding back and while they may be pressured to go against their better judgment the facts remain that the agencies are scared because they know that the EDC ramp data will not pass muster-and would be extremely vulnerable to the inevitable legal challenge.

So fly me down to Reo and watch the gyrations of the city's samba on this matter-but Judge Madden is pretty clued in to the facts on the ground and all Reo's dramatics won't change the fact that he was dealt a pretty bad hand.