It’s time once again to pack the COMIDA board meeting

COMIDA Board Meeting
Tuesday, January 15
11:30am
47 South Fitzhugh Street, downtown Rochester

Behind closed doors (geez- did COMIDA violate the state open meeting law AGAIN?), Maggie Brooks’ COMIDA just changed the requirements for local workers, making it twice as easy for a contractor working on the Wegmans culinary facility to bring in workers from outside the area. And this contractor is doing this with the tax breaks the county is giving them. And you were wondering why your property taxes were so high!

That’s right folks, the same team that made headlines for attempting yet another self dealing operation (this time involving the creation of a local development corporation- LDC- to purchase Monroe County property tax liens) is bragging in the D&C out one side of their mouth about their ability to create jobs, while out the other side they are cutting deals to allow anybody and everybody to feed at the public trough, regardless of the effect on the lives of local residents.

This is actually standard operating procedure for the county. They’ve created half a dozen LDC’s to sell off or operate public assets, (Monroe New Power, to buy up the Iola Power Plant, Monroe Tobacco Securitization, to buy up the Tobacco Settlement funds, Civic Center Monroe County to take over the county parking garage, and the Greater Rochester Outdoor Sports Facility Corporation which currently owes $16 million to Monroe County in unpaid taxes on Frontier Field, etc). These LDC’s operate out of the COMIDA office. And in the cases of the Iola Power Plant and the Civic Center parking garage, the companies that now run these facilities were awarded COMIDA tax breaks (while we’re paying more to park our cars at the Civic Center garage). The League of Women Voters just released a report about these local LDC deals. These LDC’s operate beyond the scope of public scrutiny and can reward contracts without a transparent bidding process.

So that means that the Maggie Brooks team can decide who gets the contracts behind closed doors and, voila, contributions pour into the Republican Party housekeeping fund (Siemens Corp delivered a wheelbarrow filled with cash to Minarik around the same time they got contracts from two of these LDC’s).

And who is at the center of these LDC deals? That would be Michael Townsend, COMIDA’s attorney. Townsend is an employee of Harris Beach, the same legal corporation that got a COMIDA tax break to move out of the city into Bushnell Basin. That’s right, your tax dollars subsidized one of the most powerful law firms in the area to move out of the city and into the outer ring suburbs.

But wait, there’s more…

Harris Beach’s partners own the Granite Building which is now half empty. While the rest of us mere mortals are left holding mortgages on our depreciating homes (and some of us are experiencing variable rate mortgage increases), the folks at Harris Beach can rest assured that, when the Renaissance Square plan goes through, their Granite Building will be bought up in full by the Main and Clinton Local Development Corporation. And yes, you guessed it right, the Main and Clinton LDC, which will bail out Harris Beach on the Granite Building, was set up by Harris Beach employee, Michael Townsend.

So…

Will you be able to join us Tuesday, January 15, at 11:30am? We are doing a press conference before the meeting.

The COMIDA meeting is at 47 S. Fitzhugh St. downtown Rochester.

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One Response to “Maggie Brooks’ COMIDA does it Again!!!”

• rochesterturning.com: turning the tide upstate says:

  January 31, 2008 at 3:49 pm

  [...] Jon Greenbaum’s (of MetroJustice fame) take on COMIDA’s recent, secret, and destructive picking of your pocket.  Lots of good stuff, read it all, but here’s a couple highlights: Behind closed doors [...]

  Reply