An article in The Times this weekend looks at the mayor’s record at cleaning up corruption and incompetence at the Buildings Department and largely finds it wanting; but the paper also notes that no other mayor has had much luck in that department either. The problem, as the article frames it, is an inherent one when you have low-paid bureaucrats with quite a bit of power and discretion charged with policing an industry that’s making money hand-over-fist. When you pay people who have the responsibility as inspectors so little, they’re prone to having their hand out, said Daniel J. Castleman, a former chief assistant in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and current managing director at FTI Consulting. That’s not endemic to one mayor or a dozen mayors, that’s just the way it is. There’s so much money to be made in construction and development that people are going to offer you things and people who are paid less are going to think, ‘Who’s this going to hurt?’ The answer, as the numerous crane and building collapses in recent years show, is a lot of people.
Buildings Dept. Woes Have Persisted Despite Bloomberg’s Overhaul [NY Times]
Photo by Jon Meyer