The Local Development Corporation

As you may know, the Board will be considering creating a Local Development Corporation (LDC) to assist in selling the Manor. This is only one of three options for structuring the sale. The other two are using County Law 215, and creating our own local law from scratch. A summary of the restrictions and advantages of each of the three options was available to the public during the Board meeting yesterday, and I can provide you a copy if you'd like.

Going into the process of selling the Manor (which is a result that seems inevitable), my primary consideration will be finding a buyer with a strong record of quality care. This may require that we choose a lower bidder, if the facilities run by the highest bidder do not exhibit an acceptable level of care.

Given this, I certainly can't see us using County Law 215, since this law requires that we simply sell to the highest responsible bidder ('responsible' meaning 'able to pay'). That works if we're selling surplus land or trucks, but not in the case of the Manor.

That leaves the LDC, and the option of writing our own law. There are concerns – mostly technical – about each of the options, but both would allow us to judge the bidders on criteria other than the price they are willing to pay (although there is some uncertainly regarding how specific we can be in a local law).

The LDC is controversial because it will take the decision out of the hands of the County Board. If we decide to create an LDC and appoint the members of its Board, then the County Board will give the Manor to the LDC, and the LDC – now a private corporation – will sell it. The County Board will have no input into the LDC after it hands over the Manor.

The LDC is a creature of convenience: it's pretty clear that a private corporation will find it much easier to process the sale of a complex municipal entity than the County legislature would. Fun fact: the LDC was invented in order to facilitate the sale of the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the 1960s. It's now an industrial park. An LDC owns the former Griffiss Air Force base in Rome, NY, and is developing an extensive business and technology park. And it's my understanding that an LDC was and is involved in the Bresee's sale and redevelopment.

Creating a local law, on the other hand, would keep the process – and the responsibility – in the hands of the County Board, but would also subject the process to much greater legal restrictions, and to the uncertainties of the political process (and the possible change in personnel after the fall's elections). It would certainly take longer. Many County Board members are leaning away from the local law and toward the LDC: in fact, absent some serious obstacle, I would predict that the LDC option will be chosen.

However, I am not convinced, for two reasons. First of all, I have said repeatedly – as many, or most, of my colleagues have – that my primary concern in resolving the fiscal crisis surrounding the Manor would be that quality of care continued. There are many issues and circumstances that I, and the Board, will not be able to control, but there are many others that we will be able to address – unless we give away the Manor, and with it, the process and responsibility for its sale. Right now, I'm not willing to do that.

Secondly, I understand that a municipal sale, through a local law, submits the process to the uncertainties involved in political life, and to the complexity and delay resulting from moving the process from Committee to the full Board and maybe back again. But isn't this how democracy works? It's a little messy, and it takes longer than we'd like. But when all the people are represented, and all the stakeholders have input at each step of the process, we get a result that we all can own. When Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others...” that's what he was talking about. And I agree.