Tish James snoozes as NYC charity burns tens of – Latest News
State Attorney General Tish James ought to be digging into the $100 million pit of waste, misplaced alternatives and sure self-dealing that’s the West Harlem Development Corp., however she’s too busy posing for cameras and dropping lawsuits in opposition to the Trump administration.
Columbia University funded the WHDC in 2009 as a payoff to native powerbrokers as it bought the state to make use of eminent area to help it swallow a large chunk of the neighborhood.
The nonprofit was imagined to invest these tens of thousands and thousands of bucks in Harlem economic-development tasks, with $20 million earmarked to construct reasonably priced housing.
Instead, the WHDC turned a spout of political patronage, handing out grants to small native Harlem arts or youth organizations, paying fats salaries to politically linked insiders and — bizarrely — allegedly serving to to formulate the Council on American Islamic Relations’ “strategy on responding” to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror assaults and hostage-taking.
Economic development and reasonably priced housing? Not a lot in any respect; simply a conduit for money, energy and affect within the fingers of extremely linked insiders like present Chair Milton Tingling and Executive Director Zead Ramadan, a board member of CAIR-New York.
Tingling, a retired choose, was simply named to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new Jew-free advisory panel on judicial appointments.
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Ramadan is the central determine in a federal lawsuit in opposition to the WHDC, introduced by its terminated director of housing development, Vincent Morgan, who taped his boss Ramadan’s allegedly racist rants about Dominicans, African-Americans, Zionists and Jewish control of New York City. (Ramadan has denied any wrongdoing.)
The dysfunction on the WHDC is well-known amongst uptown pols, who gained’t go on the report concerning the noxious group; Columbia has washed its fingers of the entire thing after years of peeping concerning the waste and abuse.
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But the place’s crusading AG James, whose duties embody policing New York tax-exempt charitable organizations?
She hasn’t been shy about suing teams with whose positions she dislikes, from the NRA to the Catholic Church, however declines to raise even an eyebrow concerning the scandalous WHDC.
The West Harlem Development Corp. is a poster youngster for the neglect and deep-rooted waste that defines a lot “economic development” in New York, and the “community benefits” blackmail surrounding most massive tasks.
And that, no doubt, is why Tish James gained’t do a factor to liberate the tens of thousands and thousands nonetheless within the WHDC hoard for the precise good of the group.
