[CPEO-BIF] Groups say release New York brownfields funding

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

For Immediate Release:
March 4, 2008
New Partners for Community Revitalization


Brownfields Groups Say: Release State Funds for Communities

Money Approved by Lawmakers for Economic Recovery
Sits in Bureaucratic Limbo

Brownfield Redevelopment Summit Calls for Money to Be Used Where it's Needed


(Albany, NY) - Community redevelopment leaders and municipal 
representatives called on state government officials to get on with the 
job of fixing New York's ailing brownfield redevelopment program at a 
Capital press conference today. Speakers at the press event represented 
participants in the Brownfield Opportunity Area (BOA) program from 
across the state. More than a dozen cities and local planning 
organizations are participating in a two-day Brownfields Summit 
organized by New Partners for Community Revitalization. Summit events 
have included a Monday afternoon roundtable at the Department of 
Environmental Conservation and with the Department of State, and 
meetings with lawmakers and top state environment and economic 
development officials, including DEC Commissioner Pete Grannis.

"We are here at a time when the state budget negotiations are getting 
underway, to remind lawmakers and state agency officials to get on with 
the job of cleaning up New York's contaminated urban lands," said NPCR 
Co-director Jody Kass. "Money appropriated in previous years for the 
Brownfield Opportunity Area program should be released, and state 
brownfield tax credits should go to the projects that need them."

Every year since passage of the state brownfields cleanup law in 2003, 
up to $15 million has been appropriated under the BOA program for 
community groups and municipalities to use in planning how to revitalize 
neighborhoods impacted by contaminated lands. Most of the BOA funds, 
some $60 million, approved in Pataki-era budgets, require a memorandum 
of understanding between the Governor, Senate Majority Leader and 
Assembly Speaker before they can be awarded to the grantees. This 
unnecessary micro-management of the program is further confounded by the 
statutory requirement that both the DEC and the Department of State be 
involved in the releasing of grant funds, leaving tens of millions of 
appropriated dollars in limbo that could be used to build the Upstate 
economy and revitalize Downstate urban neighborhoods.

...

For the entire press release, go to
http://www.npcr.net/news/030408_release.doc

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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