City audit blasts Downtown Brooklyn Partnership over shoddy bookkeeping

The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, the semi-public development organization formed by the Bloomberg administration in 2006, is coming under fire from City Comptroller John Liu just in time to potentially derail its bid to take over the Metro Tech Business Improvement District.

According to the Post, Liu’s office released an audit of the Partnership yesterday detailing its failure to keep accurate payroll and donation records and to abide by competitive bidding laws. The Partnership also had a $319,956 deficit as of the end of fiscal 2009, according to the audit, which covered July 2008 through June 2009.

Meanwhile, it is nonetheless seeking an already controversial $216,000-a-year contract to run the $2.6 million budget of the Metro Tech BID.

The developer-friendly group that supports the takeover, which includes backers of both Forest City Ratner and Mayor Bloomberg, has scheduled an emergency meeting for today to try to get the plan approved. They say the merger would streamline operations and rid the system of bureaucratic inefficiencies, but small business advocates have been crying foul, arguing that several board members represent developers and therefore have conflicts of interest in the debate.

The Partnership already gets $200,000 per year to run nearby BIDs representing the Fulton Mall and the Court-Livingston-Schermerhorn streets corridor. [Post]