Who Is Ground Zero's Ombudsman?

NEW YORK CITY-The sidewalks surrounding the 16 acres in Downtown Manhattan known as Ground Zero are still covered by tourists, who are forced to hold cameras high above their heads in an attempt to peek over the blue-shrouded fence guarding the construction site. Eight years after the event that drew those tourists there in the first place, construction at the site has been slow to come, marred by inefficiency and public frustration, and for the last year or so, a very public dispute between politicians, a massive public agency and commercial retail interests.

Over the past few days, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Silverstein Properties Inc. and the politicians who support them, have all raised the volume higher. The main players, including Gov. David Paterson, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, SPI and the Port Authority have issued statements and counter-statements that appear to point the finger at the other parties involved.

“If you get anyone involved who is part of the political process, or the construction process, you’ll get the same old tired answers,” says construction attorney Barry LePatner, author of Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America’s Trillion Dollar Construction Industry. “There should be huge outrage over this, but we’re in the middle of recession which draws our attention to a zillion other problems.”