I thought this statement from Jay was interesting. I can't remember a trustee abstaining in the past because of a conflict of interest. Barry, does this happen often?
"And the last point I want to make
is I will be abstaining on the vote today
because as Rob Eenza kind of broke some
confidentiality on, I was involved in a
public/private partnership that was
going to bring in a neighborhood of 150 to
$200 million to this project. so to avoid
any, any, any appearance of a conflict, I
will recuse, abstain from the vote, so I just
want that -- you know, if we do a roll call,
understand that because I just think it's
important that there is no appearance, and
I hope that, you know, as we go forward with
other projects that will come before this
board, that people understand that that
conflict of interest is an important
consideration."
Historically, TTBOMK OTTOMH:
Back in the day, Ira Lubert used to (literally) take two steps out of the room when they voted to award large contracts to his RE interests.
Those, of course, happened pretty regularly.
A couple relatively small-time deals - I think one Trustee who owned an equipment dealership, when PSU was buying some stuff from them, and maybe one or two other smaller ones (maybe they bought some potatoes from Masser or something)
Other than that: Some times that a Trustee would abstain when they were being re-appointed to the Board (like the B&I folks and other various and sundry re-appointments of those folks). But that is kind of a separate type of deal.
So.... all in all, aside from Lubert's stuff, pretty unusual.
Why, in this case Jay P would abstain? Not really for me to say, and I certainly can't read his mind. I can think of some reasons why he MIGHT have elected to abstain - and its his call - but from where I was sitting I wish he wouldn't have.
Something that isn't in that transcript.
It was Brandon Short - playing dumb - who precipitated and goaded Fenza (very unethically) "outing" Jay. Now, I personally don't think there was any reason for Jay to necessarily keep that stuff confidential - but that is his call - and he made it EXPLICITLY clear that he wanted none of that discussed publicly (which, given the circumstances, what his right). Short and Fenza, intentionally, deliberately, and overtly, violated his explicit confidentiality. Why? One can only suppose.
