I heard a story about Diane Teti, girlfriend of Brew Works owner Rich Fegley, and Ed Pawlowski meeting at some city event during the time that both of the former were opposing the trash incinerator being proposed by the later.
Pawlowski asked Teti what she was doing opposing him after he had helped secure funding for the Brew Works. When she told him that was what a mayor was supposed to do he replied "You know how it works, one hand washes the other."
This sort of attitude from Pawlowski may very well be why a Grand Jury is now sending the FBI to raid city hall. Spokesman for the city Mike Moore has claimed that based on what was taken by the FBI that the city contracting process seems to be the target of their probe however J.B.Reilly, CEO of City Center Investment, has made it clear in the time since the raid that City Center has never had a contract with the city.
While this is true the FBI specifically listed Reilly as one of the targets of their investigation on the search warrant. Due to this one must assume that the investigation is not limited to the cities contracting process.
Back to Pawlowski's hand washing we can see that Reilly washed Pawlowski's hand first by being the largest single donor to Pawlowski's campaign starting in 2005 when he was first running for mayor. The same year the FBI has been searching records back to. Reilly and his partner in City Center Joe Topper even maxed donations to Pawlowski at $10,000 each in non election years.
However the other hand washed right back. Before the NIZ formerly had lines drawn on a map Reilly started buying property downtown. Lots of it. A map published on the front cover of the Morning Call showed these properties nearly a month before the NIZ zone was actually created. When the NIZ zone (or zones as despite the law stating a zone there are three separate zones) was created it was not a simple square. The NIZ does not follow boundaries such as 5th to 10th, Liberty to Walnut. Instead the NIZ is a very complicated area jutting out to include a block here, part of a block there, one building on this street, another on that one. Interestingly enough most of the areas the downtown NIZ juts out at are areas Reilly owns property.
Despite buying all these properties before the NIZ was formerly laid out it was not enough for Reilly nor did Pawlwoski think that drawing the NIZ map to include these properties was enough hand washing. So before there was ANIZDA, before there was any way to apply for NIZ funds, a grant for $20 million was given to City Center so they could buy most of the block across Hamilton from the new arena.
So far the NIZ has given out over 1 billion dollars in loans but none of these loans will be repaid by those that received the money. Instead the taxpayers of Allentown will have to repay these loans and there is no end in site. On the 14th of July Pawlowski's facebook linked to an article about new NIZ backed development on the waterfront and the day before he linked an article about Reilly's City Center building another two towers near the arena. Despite the FBI and Grand Jury investigation the NIZ money grab continues. Pray for your future Allentown because none of your elected officials care about you.