By Yoav Gonen May 5, 2016 | 2:30am
Photo: Gregory P. Mango
Lynn Ellsworth speaks at a rally outside City Hall.
Nearly 100 civic and community groups on Wednesday called for Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara to create a blue-ribbon panel akin to the shuttered Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption and clean up the “pay-to-play” culture they said rules real-estate development in the city.
“We have put the dots together, and we ask . . . the US Attorney for the Southern District to connect those dots,” Lynn Ellsworth of the Tribeca Trust said outside City Hall.
“While we appreciate the current investigations going on with campaign finance, we ask the US attorney to create a federal version of the Moreland Commission against corruption — and to specifically focus on the pay-to-play party atmosphere on land use here in New York City.”
Demonstrators cited several shady deals exposed by The Post, including allegations that the Toll Brothers development company — which gave $50,000 to Mayor de Blasio’s Campaign for One New York — was allowed to build above height limits in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
City Hall and Bharara’s office both declined to comment.
Read full article at the New York Post here.
