GL Analysis: Will the City's Huge Building Scandal be Addressed?

We won't for a minute claim that the problems with the building and development industry and the violence it inflicts on the quality of life of Brooklyn residents from Sheepshead Bay and the South Slope to Williamsburg and Greenpoint are anything new. Corruption, malfeasance, the development industry and city government have all fit together like hand and glove for generations. Yet, there is something about the excesses of the current building boom and the lack of municipal oversight that have taken problems to new levels. This week, the Daily News ran the kind of series that draws attention to the kind of scandalous nonperformance of city government that imperils quality of life. The series covered outrages in the South Slope, abuse of immigrant workers, the disgusting big picture and more.

None of this comes as news to anyone that lives in neighborhood where buildings are going up on every block or who's spent more than five minutes walking around any number of Brooklyn neighborhoods. For a sense of the scope of the problem, consider that the Buildings Department was called on to conduct 413,844 inspections last year with a 350-member inspection force, which works out to 1,182 inspections per person. No wonder builders and developers can get away with everything from undermining neighboring buildings to working illegal hours and doing dangerous work and ignoring Stop Work Orders. The conduct of the Bloomberg Administration on this front--and before it, the Guiliani Administration--has been grossly negligent.

They even seem to vaguely realize it now that they've been publicly shamed. Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff told the news that Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster had met with the mayor about improving standards and enforcement. He admitted that the Department might be "more reactive than it should be" and said, "We are running to catch up in the face of a spectacular building boom." The News reported:

Doctoroff said Bloomberg inherited an understaffed and inefficient Buildings Department rife with corruption. "We have made substantial progress," he insisted.

He said a new city construction code, expected to be implemented by year's end, will increase penalties for violations and reform aspects of the much-abused honor system that allows architects to certify plans without verification.

In neighborhoods like the South Slope where resident pressure and blog coverage has embarrased the Buildings Department, residents say there have been improvements. In other neighborhoods, problems like slow response and inaction persist. Of course, right now, we are only talking about construction-related problem, not the environmental horrors all over North and South Brooklyn to which both the state and the city are turning a blind eye as toxic sites are developed for housing with virtually no proactive public oversight, no information that buyers can access easily and with a kind of environmental clean-up honor system for developers.

More oversight is needed on all fronts. And it needs to be put in place quickly.