No Board of Directors of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation has yet fulfilled its legal role – coded into New York State law – with regard to the hiring and firing of the President of the Corporation.

For a dozen years under Governor George Pataki, the Board routinely turned its back on its right, power, and responsibility to seek out and hire a qualified chief executive for the public-benefit corporation over which it supposedly exercises ultimate authority.

Pataki first sent an absolute zero named Jerome Blue to play the role of RIOC President. For three years, Blue ran roughshod over the Board and over anything resembling a responsibility to serve the public interest – the interest of the Roosevelt Island public or the interest of New York State’s citizens. The Board of Directors of RIOC did nothing about it. Nothing.

When Blue’s presence finally threatened to become a putrid embarrassment – when he refused repeatedly to be fired because Senator Al D’Amato would each time veto that idea on behalf of his old political servant, but when he could no longer be allowed to conduct operations here in a way that would surely, ultimately, rise to a level of public and press notice past the shores of the Island – Pataki pulled him out and gave him another high-paying State job in which he lasted about a minute and a half.

Yet for three years, the RIOC Board had tolerated – and even cooperated in – the Pataki administration’s perversion of RIOC.

Then Pataki sent Robert H. Ryan. While Blue was an absolute zero on a scale of 1 to 10, Ryan ranged from a one to a minus one, at times looking good but ultimately going through an embarrassing public meltdown, screaming, uncontrolled, before a large audience of Roosevelt Islanders. The administration found a reason to fire him. Then, of course, Pataki made him Assistant Secretary of State.

Then Pataki sent Herbert E. Berman. Had the Board learned a lesson? No, out came the old ragain.

Next week, the RIOC Board will meet on Thursday at 4:00 and it will surely the better choice of a new and better Governor, Eliot Spitzer. Taking nothing away from Spitzer or Steven Shane, we can anticipate that the RIOC Board will fail totally to observe this State’s and this nation’s tradition of the rule of law and will , quite literally, the Governor’s choice for the high-paying ($140,000 a year, anyone?) position of RIOC President.

During the Pataki reign, a hard-working cadre of Roosevelt Islanders called the Maple Tree Group worked hard to get an elected RIOC Board for this community, on the theory and hope that an elected RIOC Board would actually be responsible – would actually follow the law – would actually find a qualified community manager and hire her or him. Voters backed that effort with overwhelming votes, even though a Residents Association President who was serving on the RIOC Board tried hard to keep the very question off the ballot. Finally, in the environment created by the failures he’d already appointed to the RIOC Presidency, Pataki agreed only to increase the RIOC Board complement of residents to a majority, still appointed by him.

There seemed to be reason for a restrained celebration: Actual residents would finally have the controlling votes on the Board. That situation obtains today.

In the 128 days we’ve waiting for a changing of the guard at RIOC, the RIOC Board has been rendered ineffectual by the castration of its real-estate committee, which tried to move forward on resident-ownership plans for Island House and Westview, and for a Mitchell-Lama exit for Rivercross, but was told to wait for new personnel to settle in at DHCR. In short, that committee was summarily stripped of its power, along with the power for the Board to pass on its recommendations.

Residents now have the controlling votes on the RIOC Board. They took no timely action against Blue. They took no timely action to jettison Ryan.

And, next week, the RIOC Board will surely act true to past form and the Governor’s choice.

Then, we have to hope that this RIOC Board will finally start to act responsibly – start to follow the rule of law and actually govern the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation.

There is a lot to be done to arrest the alarming slide of Roosevelt Island from the starring role it once held as a stunning example of what government could do with the right people in charge. Let’s hope Steve Shane acts decisively to correct that situation. Let’s hope the RIOC Board will finally exercise its lawful role.

And let’s hope that, if Shane doesn’t and the Board doesn’t, the residents of this Island will finally rise up in an indignant and angry protest to demand something better than the perversion of democracy we’ve had for the last dozen years.

DL