Beverly Hershkowitz, assistant vice principal of the High School for Leadership and Public Service in Manhattan, signs the National September 11 Memorial and Museum beam, Wednesday, in New York.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg is asking New York state to dismantle the agency in charge of planning the reconstruction of ground zero, saying too much bureaucracy has stalled reconstruction at the World Trade Center site.
Bloomberg's comments came in a column in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, one day before the seventh anniversary of the trade center terrorist attack.
Bloomberg called the reconstruction of the trade center site in lower Manhattan "frustratingly slow, owing in large part to a multilayered governance structure that has undermined accountability from the get-go."
The trade center site is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, controlled by the governors of the two states. Planning at the site is overseen by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which has city and state-appointed board members but is a subsidiary of a state development agency.
Bloomberg said Gov. David Paterson should dismantle the LMDC and let the city take over its job of distributing outstanding community development funds, saying that "would eliminate one redundant layer of bureaucracy."
Bloomberg also said the Port Authority should pledge to build the memorial to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack by its 10th anniversary, and scale back the design for a multibillion-dollar transit hub at the site.
The Port Authority has been reevaluating the budget and schedules for all ground zero projects this summer. "The point of the report we are doing is to make decisions on exactly these tough issues and move on to getting every project on the site completed as quickly as possible," Port Authority spokesman Stephen Sigmund said Wednesday.
Representatives of Paterson's office and the LMDC didn't immediately comment.
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