{"id":6835,"date":"2026-08-18T09:37:01","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T09:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=6835"},"modified":"2026-08-18T09:37:01","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T09:37:01","slug":"tish-james-snoozes-as-nyc-charity-burns-tens-of-millions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=6835","title":{"rendered":"Tish James snoozes as NYC charity burns tens of millions"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

State Attorney General Tish James should<\/em> be digging into the $100 million pit of waste, lost opportunities and likely self-dealing that is the West Harlem Development Corp., but she\u2019s too busy posing for cameras and losing lawsuits against the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

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Columbia University funded the WHDC in 2009 as a payoff to local powerbrokers as it got the state to use eminent domain to help it swallow a huge chunk of the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

The nonprofit was supposed to invest those tens of millions of bucks in Harlem economic-development projects, with $20 million earmarked to build affordable housing.<\/p>\n

Instead, the WHDC became a spout of political patronage, handing out grants to small local Harlem arts or youth organizations, paying fat salaries to politically connected insiders and \u2014 bizarrely \u2014 allegedly helping to formulate the Council on American Islamic Relations\u2019 \u201cstrategy on responding\u201d to Hamas\u2019 Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks and hostage-taking.<\/p>\n

Economic development and affordable housing? Not so much at all; just a conduit for money, power and influence in the hands of highly connected insiders like current Chair Milton Tingling and Executive Director Zead Ramadan, a board member of CAIR-New York.<\/p>\n

Tingling, a retired judge, was just named to Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s new Jew-free advisory panel on judicial appointments.<\/p>\n

Ramadan is the central figure in a federal lawsuit against the WHDC, brought by its terminated director of housing development, Vincent Morgan, who taped his boss Ramadan\u2019s allegedly racist rants about Dominicans, African-Americans, Zionists and Jewish control of New York City. (Ramadan has denied any wrongdoing.)<\/p>\n

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The dysfunction at the WHDC is well-known among uptown pols, who won\u2019t go on the record about the noxious organization; Columbia has washed its hands of the whole thing after years of peeping about the waste and abuse.<\/p>\n

But where\u2019s crusading AG James, whose duties include policing New York tax-exempt charitable organizations? <\/p>\n

She hasn\u2019t been shy about suing groups with whose positions she dislikes, from the NRA to the Catholic Church, but declines to lift even an eyebrow about the scandalous WHDC.<\/p>\n

The West Harlem Development Corp. is a poster child for the neglect and deep-rooted waste that defines so much \u201ceconomic development\u201d in New York, and the \u201ccommunity benefits\u201d blackmail surrounding most large projects. <\/p>\n

And that, no doubt, is why <\/em>Tish James won\u2019t do a thing to liberate the tens of millions still in the WHDC hoard for the actual good of the community.<\/p>\n

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The West Harlem Development Corp. is a poster child for the neglect and deep-rooted waste that defines so much \u201ceconomic development\u201d in New York \u2014 and that, no doubt, is why Tish James won’t do a thing about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nTish James snoozes as NYC charity burns tens of millions - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=6835\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tish James snoozes as NYC charity burns tens of millions - 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