Community Benefits Agreements: A New Local Government Tool or Another Variation on the Exactions Theme?

This Article grew out of my participation in a subcommittee on community benefits agreements of the Committee on Land Use of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, but does not necessarily reflect the views of that subcommittee. I would like to thank the other members of the subcommittee—Ray Levin, Mark Levine, Ross Moskowitz, Wesley O’Brien, Ethel Sheffer, and Laura Wolff Powers—as well as members of the Committee on Land Use, for the many insights, arguments, and jokes shared while the subcommittee grappled with the intellectual and policy challenges CBAs raise. In addition, I am grateful to participants in the Reassessing the State and Local Government Toolkit Symposium sponsored by the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at The University of Chicago Law School, and the participants in NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy brown bag lunch series for many helpful suggestions and critiques. I also would like to thank Matthew Jacobs (NYU 2010), Michael Nadler (NYU 2011), and Caroline Nagy (NYU 2010) for their superb research assistance, and Bethany O’Neill for her tireless administrative support. Finally, I appreciate the financial support provided by the Filomen and Max D’Agostino Research Fund.