1/30/2018

CONFLICT OF INTEREST/DEMS/INFRASTRUCTURE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump’s critics are already lining up to undercut his infrastructure proposal — the purported bipartisan centerpiece of Tuesday’s [1-30-18] State of the Union speech — as a giveaway to his well-connected friends and a rollback of popular environmental protections.
Even before the president formally calls for a deal to help rebuild the nation’s aging infrastructure, a watchdog nonprofit stocked with former Democratic aides is ramping up a campaign to discredit his plan as ‘a blueprint for cronyism.’
The group Democracy Forward will release a report Tuesday that alleges potential conflicts of interest on Trump’s infrastructure advisory council, which was disbanded last summer. The board was led by two of Trump’s longtime New York developer allies, Richard LeFrak and Steven Roth, who were tapped to help shape his plan to shore up roads and bridges by leveraging public money with private investors’ involvement.
Among the potential minefields the group singles out are lobbying by LeFrak’s company against flood risk regulations that the Trump administration axed last year and the prospect that Roth’s company would benefit from a public-private partnership in the works to build a new Penn Station in New York City.
A spokesman for Roth said he ‘has not been commenting on all matters related to the administration.’ LeFrak’s company did not return a request for comment.”

-Elana Schor, “Trump critics seize on developer ties to infrastructure plan,” Politico, Jan. 30, 2018 05:01am