City Plan OKs $900K For Sex Predator’s Companies

A lawyer for a sexual abuse victim of Rabbi Daniel Greer posed tough questions this week about how Greer’s nonprofits operate and use, or misuse, income meant to strengthen neighborhoods.

Another city agency, meanwhile, rubber-stamped another $900,000 for those same nonprofits without asking a single question.

The tough questions took place in a federal court filing Tuesday in the latest chapter of a years-long effort to get Greer to pay $22 million in court-ordered damages to his victim.

The lack of questioning took place Wednesday night during the City Plan Commission’s latest virtual meeting, held online via Zoom.

All five commissioners present unanimously recommended approval of the city’s 2021 Connecticut Neighborhood Assistance Act (NAA) list of eligible local nonprofits.

That’s the annual program run by the state Department of Revenue Services (DRS) that gives out state tax credits to for-profit companies that make cash contributions to eligible nonprofits.

Although the program is run by the state, the city’s Livable City Initiative (LCI) collects, reviews, and passes along local applications each year to the Board of Alders, which ultimately votes on whether or not to certify the list of local nonprofits deemed eligible to participate.

The boundaries between state and local responsibility for the program are blurry.

No independent LCI review takes place of whether the millions of state-subsidized dollars spent each year actually go toward improving neighborhoods, even though LCI puts together and the alders sign off on each year’s list of eligible local nonprofits. The city trusts the recipients to claim the money was spent right, and leaves to the state any additional audits.

State statute requires nonprofits that receive more than $25,000 in NAA funding for a given project to submit to the city a post-project audit put together by a certified public accounting firm within three months of that project’s completion. According to LCI, in recent years, Greer’s companies have indeed submitted such post-project audits.

City Plan commissioners and alders, who have the responsibility of affirming to the state that the city believes the money is going to intended public use, then sign off on new state tax credits without asking questions.

This year, as has been the case for many years, six nonprofits controlled by Rabbi Daniel Greer — Edgewood Corners Inc, Edgewood Elm Housing Inc, Edgewood Village Inc, F.O.H. Inc, Yedidei Hagan Inc, and Yeshiva of New Haven Inc. — have applied to the city to receive up to $900,000 in state tax breaks through NAA to help pay for a variety of energy efficiency upgrades at the 52 affordable rental properties they own in the Edgewood neighborhood.

Those latest applications come as Greer sits in prison serving a 20-year sentence for sexually assaulting a former yeshiva student, Eliyahu Mirlis. Greer has appealed the criminal case.

They also come at the same time as a separate federal lawsuit filed by Mirlis advances through court. In that civil case, Mirlis has accused those same Greer-controlled companies of serving as a fiscal and legal shield for Greer, allegedly funneling the imprisoned local landlord money and helping him avoid paying a $21.7 million court-ordered judgment to his abuse victim.

Wednesday night’s City Plan Commission hearing on the matter represented an intermediate step in that annual, local NAA approval process.

LCI submitted the proposed list as a communication to the alders on Monday. The City Plan Commission heard and ultimately endorsed that list on Wednesday. The legislative item now returns to the Board of Alders for a committee hearing and a final vote before going to the state.

“Organizations pursuing funding under the NAA must submit a program proposal to their host municipality,” according to a 2019 state Office of Legislative Research summary of the program. ​“A municipality seeking NAA assistance must hold a public hearing on the proposals, which are subject to approval by the municipality’s legislative body. The municipality must submit a list of approved eligible programs to DRS by July 1.”

The City Plan Commission’s deliberations and unanimous endorsement lasted only a matter of minutes, and saw no discussion whatsoever of Greer’s companies’ inclusion — or of the many complicated and controversial legal and financial matters currently plaguing that landlord’s companies.

The commissioners did not even receive a full list of this year’s proposed NAA-eligible local companies until halfway through the meeting. Rather, they received these documents—here, here, here, here, and here —which provide a much more general overview of the annual state tax credit program.

After the commissioners got the list of company names from city staff and quickly skimmed the list, they unanimously voted in support.

“I am very comfortable from the standpoint of being a commissioner in giving a favorable recommendation to the full board,” Westville Alder and City Plan Commissioner Adam Marchand said, speaking to the commission’s relatively narrow focus on how any given proposal might affect the city’s built environment.

Before the commissioners voted, City Plan staffer Anne Hartjen explained city staff’s recommendation of the list as provided by LCI.

“LCI acts as essentially an informational and budgetary broker,” she said. ​“It’s a tax credit program run out of the state Department of Revenue Services. Corporations can donate funding, which is then funneled to local municipalities to be distributed to nonprofit organizations. And in return, the funders get tax credits from the state.

“This is the list from LCI of the organizations which will be receiving these [NAA benefits.] We as staff feel it’s in complete alignment with the city’s Comprehensive Plan.”

The night’s vote raises a number of questions about the local portion of the annual NAA approval process.

How clear is it to city government agencies that Greer’s companies are on the list they’re asked to vote on in an oversight capacity?

Does anyone at any level of City Hall think that the local government should not have to sign off on $900,000 in state tax breaks for Greer’s companies, simply because they may have filled the paperwork out correctly?

Does government oversight include doing any oversight?

The NAA proposed list now advances to the Board of Alders for a committee hearing and a subsequent final vote.

Click here and here for deeper dives on Greer’s companies’ NAA applications and legal and financial troubles.

Second Thoughts The Day After

In separate phone interviews with the Independent on Thursday, several of the commissioners who voted in support of the NAA list — and therefore in support of sending government subsidies towards Greer’s local real estate nonprofits — said that they either did not know, or hadn’t processed in the moment, that these conflict-laden businesses were on the list.

“I had no idea,” said Commission Vice-Chair Ed Mattison. ​“Generally, in cases like that, we expect that the staff will have called to our attention anything about it.”

He also was surprised to learn that LCI — the city agency that collects and processes local NAA applications each year — undertakes no substantive review of whether or not participating nonprofits spend the government subsidized donations on the projects described in their applications to the city.

The state DRS deputy commissioner and DRS’s spokesperson, meanwhile, have told the Independent that that state department’s audit division oversees all state tax credit programs, including NAA. They also said that their department had no records of any reviews of whether or not Greer’s companies have spent NAA-supported donations on energy efficiency projects. Even if they had such records, they said, they wouldn’t share them, because they are treated as confidential tax return information.

“Well, we make mistakes,” Mattison said when told about Greer’s companies’ inclusion — and the apparent lack of local oversight — on the locally-approved state tax credit list. ​“We’ll try and fix this one.”

Marchand had a slightly different take.

He too said that he did not realize until the after the vote that Greer’s six companies were among the roughly two dozen that the City Plan Commission unanimously recommended approval of for this year’s NAA program.

Even if he had realized, he said, he might have still voted yes. The City Plan Commission’s review of NAA applicants is not about whether or not the companies are owned by people who have done terrible things, he said. It’s focused on whether or not these state tax credit-eligible applications are in line with the city’s Comprehensive Plan goals around, for example, promoting affordable, environmentally sustainable, well-maintained housing.

“I didn’t even think about the connection to Rabbi Greer,” he said. ​“I was more thinking about: Are all of these entities, do they appear to be asking for these credits for the reason these investments exist?”

It’s not city funds that are going to these entities, he stressed, but rather state tax dollars (in the form of credits.) He said he still needs to learn more about what legally city officials — such as commissioners, alders, the mayor, LCI — are allowed to do in relation to the NAA program, and what falls under the purview and discretion of the state.

He then returned to the NAA project proposals themselves, including those from Greer’s six companies.

“The information I had last night is about the use and about the purpose” of these tax credit-supported donations, he said. The question before the commissioners was, ​“Did the list of names seem to indicate that they were appropriate for the use to which the program provides” state dollars?”

Radcliffe, meanwhile, voted in support of the proposed NAA list after first clearing with city counsel that she didn’t have to recuse herself because she is the volunteer, non-paid chair of the board of a separate, non-Greer-related local nonprofit applicant.

She told the Independent on Thursday that she cast her vote to recommend that the alders approve this list because it had been provided to the commissioners as one, complete package by city staff.

“It was part of a whole. It wasn’t a singular line item,” she said. The Greer-controlled companies were on the same list as plenty of other local nonprofits whom she said she wanted to support by recommending their inclusion in this year’s NAA program.

“We either vote on the entire list,” she said, or the commissioners vote against all involved.

She was asked for her thoughts on the fact LCI performs no substantive review of how local NAA-eligible nonprofits spend their state tax credit-supported dollars before advancing the list to alders and City Plan.

“The city should be doing that,” Radcliffe said.

That is, the city should be engaged in some kind of review, given that the city is involved — through LCI, the City Plan Commission, and the alders — in putting together each year’s list of NAA-eligible local nonprofits, she said.

“The city should be doing that with every dollar that’s doled out.”

The other two commissioners who voted in support of the NAA list on Wednesday night, Ernest Pagan and Kevin DiAdamo, could not be reached for comment by the publication time of this article.

Questions Raised, Still Unanswered, In Federal Case

A day before the City Plan Commissioners took their unanimous, discussion-free vote in support of government subsidies for Greer’s companies, Greer’s victim’s lawyer raised a slew of relevant questions about how these companies operate, in a new filing in an ongoing federal court case.

In that case, the former student victim, Mirlis, has accused five of Greer’s local nonprofits of funneling money to the imprisoned local landlord and his wife as a way of shielding him from paying the court-ordered civil judgment.

In August 2020, a federal judge found these accusations credible enough to issue a temporary restraining order against the companies, preventing them from selling or otherwise extracting wealth from any of their local rental properties until the court has decided whether those accusations of fraud are legitimate.

After months of attempted mediation discussions, Greer’s companies’ lawyers recently filed a motion calling on the judge to immediately rule in their favor, arguing that the companies are legitimate, independent enterprises focused primarily on improving dilapidated housing stock in the Edgewood neighborhood.

On Tuesday, Mirlis’s attorney, John Cesaroni, filed a motion to deny that motion for summary judgment pending completion of discovery.

Cesaroni argued the court still needs to find the answers to many as-yet unanswered questions before deciding whether or not Greer’s companies are indeed hiding money from Mirlis.

Those outstanding questions, Cesaroni wrote, touch on such topics as:

• The financial information of Greer’s local companies;

• The management and operations of those companies;

• The relationships among and between those companies;

• The use of properties owned by those companies to perpetrate the sexual abuse against Mirlis;

• Greer’s involvement with the Yeshiva and with those companies as officer and/or director;

• Property owned by those companies;

• Officers, directors, and employees of those companies;

• Transactions between those companies and the Yeshiva;

• Individuals who provide services to those companies;

• Who hires, fires, and manages employees of those companies;

• Transfers made by those companies;

• Debts owed to or by those companies.

Cesaroni wrote that he expects that such discovery will demonstrate, among other things, ​“the use of Defendants by D. Greer and the Yeshiva to prevent the collection of the judgment in the Underlying Action and perpetrate abuse against Plaintiff” and ​“Defendants’ and D. Greer’s efforts to knowingly interfere and thwart the collection of the judgment in the Underlying Action.”

Greer’s companies’ attorneys have denied all of these accusations, and have consistently asserted that the companies are independent entities with separate finances that should not be implicated in Greer’s individual criminal and civil troubles.