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Governor Spitzer is totally diving into the World Trade Center redevelopment. One moment he's proclaiming support for Freedom Tower (after pre-gubernatorial earlier grousing that it was a "white elephant"), the next he's discussing the naming scheme for the WTC memorial.
The WTC Memorial's display of victims' names has been a source of much controversy for many victims' families. At first, the names were going to be arranged randomly, but then the WTC Memorial Foundation agreed to arrange the victims in groups: First responders would designated by company/precinct (but not by rank), while civilians would be grouped by their employers, but the employer names nor floors would be listed. Mayor Bloomberg, who chairs the WTC Memorial Foundation, has admitted that the naming strategy won't please everyone but they're still moving ahead. In response, some victims' families have banded together to protest this naming plan.
Now Spitzer says he wants to begin a "very public discussion" about the strategy, which sounds like he wants to steamroll over the Mayor's turf. Spitzer said, "It is something I think we will try to work through at the right time and the right place to get to a resolution that satisfies everybody." In other words, Spitzer wants to make everyone happy whereas Mayor Bloomberg is resigned/realistic about not everyone being happy.
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Are the 9/11 families ever going to be satisfied with ANYTHING?
no
Anybody close at all to the project knows that the answer to your question is no, and they've known it for awhile. There is so much sensitivity involved, but there's a myriad of conflicting interests and different viewpoints. Adding to the mix politicians seeking to make hay doesn't help either. But from what I can see, this project lacks real courageous leadership. Everybody is so busy worrying about how to minimize blame if things go wrong that no one is stepping up to say "Decisions must be made. There will be consequences, potentially bad ones, but as leader of this project and someone who believes in my own convictions, I will make what I consider to be the best decisions, and I accept whatever the consequences may be." So far, no one has showed anything close to the kind of stones necessary to make that call.
Didn't we already have several very public discussions about this?