The NIZ As Etch A Sketch

When I sat down with Alan Jennings last month, he complained about the things mentioned yesterday in his resignation from the NIZ board. Other NIZ news besides Alan, is that the board cleared the way for Talen to move to the waterfront. What that means is that they unilaterally declared that state income taxes from Talen employees can be divided for both the arena debt, and for Jaindl's debt service by the river. Pat Browne, author of the NIZ stated;

"This is the result of a many-months-long public-private collaborative effort to balance the language of the NIZ program with its financial expectations,..."

Normally, if a law seems to have some leeway, I might say that it was written in pencil. However, in the case of the NIZ, it's an etch a sketch, they make it up as they go. Who knew that you could arbitrarily balance the language of a law? One of the reasons that Jennings resigned from the NIZ board is the lack of financial reports. State taxes will be diverted to pay for $1 Billion and counting in development, and nobody is counting the beans. Bills are accepted as presented, and the public coffer is dinged accordingly. Even Alan, whose own organization spends $millions of public money each year, was offended by the lack of accountability. According to Jennings, the Allentown NIZ is essentially a one man show, run by Sy Traub. The idea of a question seems to offend him. Personally, I don't solely blame Browne or Traub, I also blame the worms in Harrisburg called state representatives. They passed a law that they didn't know anything about, and continue to sanction an obvious work in progress, which works for the progress of just a few connected individuals.