Senator Warns Albany on Turtle Bay
BY MEGHAN CLYNE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
June 21, 2005

Issuing a stark warning from Washington to lawmakers in Albany three days before they recess for the summer, Senator Sessions, a Republican of Alabama, said yesterday that New York's state Legislature should proceed with caution on the United Nations' proposed expansion because there is no guarantee, in light of possible congressional restrictions on the world body's financing, that the organization will be able to afford the $650 million price tag of a new building.
America provides 22% of the U.N. operating budget and has offered to lend $1.2 billion for the renovation of U.N. headquarters at Turtle Bay. As part of that refurbishment project, U.N. officials want to erect a 35-story, 900,000-square-foot swing space at a neighboring city park, Robert Moses Playground. A series of legislative approvals would be needed for the use of the parkland. Proponents of the project have indicated that the first hurdle - a land-use review bill to assess the impact of the new building on the surrounding community - must be cleared by this legislative session, which ends Thursday.
Including the cost of an East River esplanade to compensate the community for the loss of the playground, the new construction would cost an additional $650 million, to be financed by bonds issued by the United Nations Development Corporation, a city-state public-benefit corporation. Proponents of the project say the United Nations would repay the amount in full. In December, however, the Senate's majority leader, Joseph Bruno, a Republican of Rensselaer, expressed concern that New York taxpayers would be responsible for the $650 million if the United Nations defaulted on the bonds, which, he said, would be issued without the oversight of the Public Authorities Control Board.
The United Nations' ability to pay the bonds worried Mr. Sessions, who - in light of growing concern in Congress over U.N. accountability - introduced in April legislation that would halve the amount of America's loan offer for the renovation. Last week, under an amendment introduced by Rep. Henry Hyde, a Republican of Illinois, the House of Representatives voted 221-184 to make half of America's cash flow to the United Nations contingent upon the world body's implementation of minimal changes viewed as reforms.
Given the degree to which the United Nations relies on American contributions for its operations and the recent efforts at restricting that largesse, Mr. Sessions questioned whether the world body could afford the improvements to its facilities, including the proposed Moses building. To avoid approving the new construction only to have the United Nations unable to pay for it, New York's state legislators should be very careful about that, and think through that carefully, as they deliberate the Turtle Bay upgrade this week, the senator said.
I wouldn't say it's an absolute done deal that this is going to be funded, Mr. Sessions said of the $1.85 billion project.
The senator echoed the sentiments of many in Congress and Albany in expressing concerns about the transparency and legitimacy of the refurbishment. He said he is pursuing hearings on the project.
The Congress needs to do some sort of inquiry - a hearing or otherwise - into the full extent of the renovation of the U.N. building, the senator told The New York Sun, and that would include whether or not there needs to be another building built.
Many real-estate and development professionals, including Donald Trump, have said the projected per-square-foot cost of the U.N. renovation is exorbitant, according to Mr. Sessions. As such, There is a genuine fear in Congress that the U.N. is not managing its money wisely. When it comes to how the world body's limited resources should be spent, Mr. Sessions said, It's poor people, it's economic development, it's health care around the globe, it's peacekeeping.
He continued: That's what we want the U.N. to be - an effective organization - and they need to be utilizing every dollar they can to carry out a mission that people give them money for, not to see what kind of plush quarters they can spread into.
These are huge expenditures of dubious merit, he said of the refurbishment.
A Republican state senator from Long Island, Michael Balboni, likewise questioned whether the project was financially justified and said many of his colleagues shared his concerns.
Mr. Balboni, as chairman of the Senate's Committee on Veterans, Homeland Security, and Military Affairs, was asked by Albany opponents of the project to certify that the Moses building would not pose any security concerns for the surrounding community and the city, especially because the edifice would sit atop the Queens Midtown Tunnel, identified as a terrorist target. While Mr. Balboni said he was convinced the new building would not pose a security threat, the amount the United Nations would have to spend on security in constructing it - $40 million, he said - struck the senator as surprisingly expensive, raising questions about the costs of the entire project, which he labeled a boondoggle.
At this point I can't speak for my conference, Mr. Balboni said, referring to fellow Senate Republicans, but I know a lot of people share my concerns.
Those concerns, and Mr. Sessions's admonitions to New York's state legislators yesterday afternoon, came hours before the deadline for introducing new bills for the current legislative session. Legislature rules require that bills age for three days before being brought to the floor of the Assembly or Senate for a vote. Because the last day of this legislative session is Thursday, to be introduced in time, bills had to be printed before midnight. As of late yesterday evening, no bill pertaining to the U.N. expansion had been introduced in either the Assembly or the Senate.
A message of necessity from Governor Pataki could still bring a U.N. bill to the floor after the deadline, but spokesmen for Mr. Pataki and the speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, a Democrat of Manhattan, indicated that they were particularly averse to such last-minute intervention. The spokesmen indicated, however, that neither the governor nor the speaker had ruled out issuing or accepting messages of necessity to bring important pieces of legislation to votes.
As the Sun reported last week, a last-minute lobbying effort was undertaken by representatives of the Bloomberg, Pataki, and Bush administrations and leaders of organized labor to pressure Senate and Assembly leaders to break the legislative impasse that has stalled the U.N. expansion since December. At that time, with publicity about the U.N. oil-for-food scandal cresting, resistance to rubber-stamping the world body's expansion plans mounted within the Legislature. The lobbying effort prompted Mr. Bruno to bring the matter before his conference, where it received a mixed reception last week. Mr. Bruno was said to be discussing with Mr. Silver whether to bring the U.N. matter to the Senate floor. As of last night, however, state lawmakers indicated that no decision had been reached, and legislators said Mr. Bruno had not broached the subject in a meeting of the Republican conference yesterday.