Newspaper questions city oversight that allowed demolition worker to die last week.
The death of hardhat Juan Ruiz is a sign of how needlessly unsafe and wasteful Gotham’s construction industry is. And a big part of the problem is the way city oversight is a game.
Why do project owners like Columbia University, with reputations to protect, tolerate contractors like Breeze National? Because it’s all-important on these jobs to know how to game city government.
Breeze was doing the demolition of the building that collapsed last week, killing Ruiz. The firm has a history: Its former principal, Toby Romano Sr., was convicted two decades ago of bribing inspectors on an asbestos site.
Sure, Romano’s son, Toby Jr., runs the firm now. But you’d think that, with the building industry in a serious down market, Columbia would have its pick of contractors — and would choose one, or make its project managers choose one, without a hint of a problem.
In fact, developers don’t have much choice. The contractors who get the jobs in the demolition industry have a big asset: men (and a few women) who know how the city really works. That is, how to game the system — often (although not always) legally, or close enough.
Read the full story here.
