The Public Authorities Control Board, which oversees and reviews projects financed for public authorities, including HFA, turned down $100 million in federal funding for a 287-unit building to be located at 10 Liberty St. and another $115 million for the 264-unit Battery Park City Site 19B. The 293-unit 20 River Terrace property, currently under construction, was the only Liberty Bond project on the PACB's agenda to pass. That building will receive will receive $125 million in federal funding through the $8-billion Liberty Bond Program.

State Comptroller Carl McCall, a non-voting member of the PACB, yesterday urged the agency to reject the three buildings' funding applications. "This plan is bad housing policy and bad economic policy," said the Democratic gubernatorial candidate. "We desperately need affordable housing in New York. Instead of using these scarce resources to meet this huge need, the [HFA} rushed through this plan to finance luxury housing."

HFA spokeswoman Sally Crockett lambasted McCall's remarks as political grandstanding. "You would think that Carl McCall would know that Congress voted in a bipartisan way to establish the Liberty Bond Program as an economic stimulus program," she told GlobeSt.com yesterday. "This initiative will not impede or replace the other traditional programs that are targeted toward lower-income citizens and that have helped created more than 125,000 new housing opportunities for New Yorkers."