Wow. You know you’ve messed up when the normally right-leaning RBJ takes our GOP county “leadership” to task for poor management. Ren Square is about to lose $30 M in federal funding due to “ongoing delays and inaction”. The article doesn’t tip-toe around the question of “whodunit”, either:

Decision-making primarily has come from a team led by Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks and project manager Mark Ballerstein, manager of the county’s division of engineering.

Local architect asdf Pospula weighed in on Ren Square’s mis-management:

“To get to this stage of the project and be so grossly out of touch with the budget says a lot of bad things about the architectural profession, ” Pospula said. “It equally says a lot of bad things about how the proect was managed by the county.”

The whole article’s worth reading, and it gives more detail to exactly how the mismanagement has been happening, but here’s the final money quote, from Laurence Heininger, past president of the Rochester chapter of the Project Management Institute and a certified project manager for 14 years:

“I know guys that have done work for Bausch & Lomb in India, and for Kodak in Europe and China. If Renaissance Sqare was a Kodak or Bausch product, all those people would be fired.”

“A-ha!” I can hear gleeful conservatives say. “This just proves that government can’t do anything right!!!” Um, wrong. How about: “A corrupt government that puts party and cronies over promoting the general welfare can’t do anything right.”

Remember, this is business as usual for the Brooks administration, and the local/national GOP leadership. Closed-door, back-room, sweetheart deals. Fiscal mis-management through crony capitalism, pay-to-play, one-shot deals, and financial shell games (like the FAIR plan).

Remember how Mayor Duffy had the guts to pull the plug on the Fast Ferry? Can we impeach Maggie Brooks and then spend the Ren Square $230 M for developing local alternative energy infrastructure?