A task force created by New York City Comptroller John Liu to regulate "public benefit agreements" on major development projects that receive public subsidies today recommended that negotiations over such agreements begin at the start of the city's environmental review of the projects and end with the certification of the projects by the City Planning Commission into the city's Uniform Land Use Review Process.

Its recommendations on based on the principles of "accountability, transparency and enforceability," the report said.

"A negotiating team will be selected from among the participants in the planning process to represent the community stakeholders," the study urged, adding that "To minimize potential conflicts of interest, team members shall agree to neither solicit or accept direct funds from developers and be barred from future contracts implementing the benefit agreement. Signatories shall live or work in the community. Executed agreements must be made public to facilitate monitoring of implementation, discourage conflicts of interests, and to inform residents of potential employment opportunities and other negotiated benefits."

The task forcer was chaired by John Ahern, president of the NYC Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, Priscilla Almodovar, chief operating officer, Community Development Banking, JP Morgan Chase, Barry Gosin, chief executive officer, Newmark Knight Frank, and Joyce May, executive director of the Asian American/Asian Research Institute at CUNY.

An article in today's edition of The Wall Street Journal by Michael Howard Saul said that the "four members of the task force have resigned and another four members are refusing to sing the final report" that has 29 signatures "attached to it."

"In a letter to the task force co-chairs, four dissenters wrote that the task force's recommendations would create 'additional red tape and bureaucracy and ultimately waste taxpayer funds on a new set of city-funded consultants,'" the article aid, adding that the letter also stated that "In today's increasingly competitive environment, a proposal like this would make New York a more difficult place to do business and to build."

The article said that Julia Vitullo-Martin, one of the dissenters who signed the protest letter, said construction costs are 40 percent higher in New York City than Chicago and that "Adding more costs on what we already got is insanity."

Many observers have noted that some projects are approved with quite controversial last-minute changes that were not considered earlier in the public approval process.

The task force report noted that in March 2010, the New York City Bar Association recommended that the City of New York either refuse to consider Community Benefit Agreements (CBAs) in the land use approval processor consider only those CBAs that conform to clear and uniform standards."

The task force recommended that its proposals apply to "major projects" that seek floor area of 500,000-square feet more than what is permitted "as-of-right" and/or have publicly subsidized funding of $75 million or more, and/or are "generated through large-scale plans and Special District designations in excess of 27 acres."

It said that "the cost of delivering PBA terms must be quantified and be proportional to the public assistance provided to the project."