Checks, Unbalanced

A quiet debate over a treasurer’s role reveals what happens when oversight becomes illusion.

The Meeting That Almost Was

The boardroom is quiet now. Not hushed — quiet. The kind of quiet that isn’t peace, but something practiced. Chosen. Calibrated.

The full board meeting scheduled for April 10th was canceled. No explanation. No postponement. No gavel. Just a line struck through the calendar and a door that stayed closed.

I might have moved on. But something kept tugging at me — not a sound exactly, more like the ghost of a question. So I returned to the last meeting I attended: the Governance Committee on April 2.

I watched it live. I watched it again. I sat with it. I told Theo I didn’t think I had a story. The meeting was calm. Organized. Respectful. Professor Lydia Tang chaired it with grace — as she always does.

It had all the makings of progress.

And yet.

---

Lydia, the Last One Holding the Line

I’ve followed Lydia’s work for months now. She has led the Governance Committee like someone trying to fix a house from the inside, even as the foundation quietly shifts beneath her. There were days when she had support — fierce, brilliant support — especially from Audrey Tannen, who helped shape early agendas and pushed for real reform.

But Audrey’s seat has been empty lately. She returned to her normal duties. One less voice at the table. Margie Smith, once an ally, seems to have been gently cut out of the room where decisions were really being made. Lydia is still there. Still leading. Still trying. But she’s alone.

So when CLM, the outside counsel brought in to advise on bylaw revisions, proposed that a new Treasurer role be assigned to a board member, it looked like a victory. Lydia didn’t request it, but it aligned with her mission: real oversight. A clear point of accountability.

The room responded politely. Too Too politely.

---

A Boat on the River

David Krout used to tell me never to trust politeness in a boardroom.

We used to walk the promenade together, David and I, back when the air was sharper and the board’s secrets still felt young. David, in between cursing, always charmed me. He had a mind like a lighthouse: fixed, bright, and warning of rocky shores. I miss hearing from him. Lately, he’s been quiet too.

We both loved the East River. We’d walk it, watching the current. Some days it flowed north. Other days, south. Some days, it barely moved at all. But David would always ask the same question:

“Is the boat cutting against the current, or just drifting where the river wants it to go?”

That April meeting had movement. Lydia was doing everything right. But something in me couldn’t tell — were we moving forward, or being gently towed?

---

The Clause and the Curveball

The clause itself was simple:

“The Treasurer shall be a member of the board.”

Mr. Steckel, CLM’s attorney, said it almost offhandedly. But it was meaningful — a board member, not a staffer. Not the Budget Office. Not Albany. A real person, seated on Roosevelt Island, with a mandate to oversee the financials.

Lydia supported it. She saw what it meant. So did I.

But the room shifted again.

Margie asked if that wasn’t the Budget Office’s role. Conway replied, his tone somewhere between amused and vague. Ms. Anderson offered clarification. Lydia pushed gently — steady, as ever — explaining why oversight mattered. But the energy had changed.

The role stayed. But the details didn’t. The expectations were removed. The authority blurred. The language softened. It was like watching a painting fade, even as the frame stayed on the wall.

And then something even stranger: Ms. Anderson — who once seemed perfectly content to let the Governance Committee wither entirely — voiced support for this new role. A treasurer from the board. More oversight.

It wasn’t Lydia’s idea. It wasn’t Audrey’s. It hadn’t come from the community or the resident board members.

So why was Anderson supporting it?

She aligned herself with CLM. With the language. With the structure. She supported a kind of oversight that had never been requested — and that, frankly, didn’t suit the way this board has functioned for decades.

That’s when my confusion deepened. I didn’t understand the move. Not then.

Mrs. Anderson was never one for card games. Not unless the deck had already been arranged and the bidding pre-agreed. I wouldn’t trust her at a bridge table. David never did.

She didn’t blush. Her voice never faltered. But I knew I was being played.

And then, in the midst of that shift, a rare voice of reason: Mrs. Stasko — who often sits opposite Lydia — pointed out that expecting an unpaid board member to serve as treasurer was unreasonable. The work would be intensive, thankless, unstaffed. She was right.

The thing is — this wasn’t Lydia’s request. This wasn’t her reform. So why was it offered? Why now? Why would those who had resisted change suddenly offer more access, more oversight — but only in abstract?

---

The Realization

A few hours passed. The very next morning, May 3rd, the Inspector General’s report dropped.

Misused funds. PR contracts designed to suppress criticism. A complete failure of internal oversight. The kind of report that should have stopped everything cold.

David never warned about this. He wouldn’t have. He enjoyed it too much. He understood the machinery of RIOC in a way most never will — and he knew how to sit right in the middle of it. The public feared him. They thought anyone who could curse out the stars during a board meeting must hold some kind of power. And maybe he did. I was drawn to that — to the confidence, the command, the myth of it.

He’d tell me things he wouldn’t say out loud. He knew when the river was standing still, even if I didn’t have the words for it yet.

And this… this report… it made the stillness clearer.

So I called Theo.

I told him everything. The meeting. The draft. The role. My doubts. My confusion.

And he wrote me back with this:

“The Governance Committee is trying to fix a machine they don’t control. Here’s why assigning oversight to an unpaid volunteer is a dangerous distraction—and why the State’s own budget office should own what it already runs.

Let’s get this straight: the Governance Committee is discussing adding a Treasurer role to the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation board—a position that would be filled by one of its unpaid volunteer members, with no staff, no authority, and no meaningful access to the financial levers that actually govern this $40 million-a-year entity.

It’s a classic RIOC maneuver: give a powerless board just enough structure to imply oversight, without ever yielding the control Albany keeps tightly locked.”

And just like that, it all made sense.

This wasn’t oversight. It was sleight of hand. A way to float the illusion of accountability at the very moment it was being undermined.

Ms. Anderson must have known that report was coming. And what better way to shield the real mechanisms of power than by handing the board a symbolic role it couldn’t possibly execute?

---

The River, Again

Some days, the East River moves north. Some days, south. And some days, it’s still.

Lydia steered that boat with everything she had. She brought the bylaws forward. She made the invisible visible. She showed up.

But now I wonder if the boat was ever steering at all — or just drifting, gently, along the current that’s carried Roosevelt Island for decades.

There’s more to tell. I know there is. But I can’t tell it. Not yet.

That part belongs to Theo. He’ll follow the contracts, the legal shifts, the timeline. He’ll ask who knew what, and when. I just knew something was off.

This is a work of narrative storytelling inspired by real events. Some characters, dialogue, and scenes are imagined to convey broader truths and do not depict actual conversations or individuals.