Can industry repair image?

How does an industry with egg on its face go about reforming its public image? It's a pressing issue for the real estate industry.

The tax assessor scandal has already convinced one landlord to state his case in the pages of The New York Times.

In a column last week, Jeffrey Gural, chairman of Newmark & Company, urged people to understand why he paid Albert Schussler $100,000 a year to lower his property assessments. The reason, said Gural, was that he had no knowledge that Schussler was up to anything illegal. If you wanted results, you hired the man whom everyone believed was a lobbyist--or else you accepted an unfair tax.

Gural said that he asked City Hall back in 1994 to investigate the corrupt tax assessment system, but nothing came of it.

"The city should bear a huge chunk of the burden for allowing it to happen," said Gural to the Times.

Gural did not respond to a phone call to comment on the scandal.

According to an official from the Public Relations Society of America--the largest PR trade group in the nation--the delicate business of crisis management is plagued with pitfalls.

"In building credibility, the blame game is never helpful. Coming up with ways to solve the problem, however, is viewed as proactive," said Jeff Julin, who sits on the PRSA's board of directors. Julin is president of a Denver-based PR firm, MGA Communications.

Credibility cannot be underestimated, said Julin, since this is what people base their opinions on. Trade groups are useful at times like these, since they can step forward and propose a better way of doing things.

"Creating a task force to address a long-running problem can help. The only problem is, people will wonder--why you didn't do this earlier?" said Julin.

Unfortunately for the real estate industry, many people already held the business in contempt. Julin said that trades that involve "wheeling and dealing" such as automobile sales and the law are often perceived as lacking an ethical core. People assume that in these industries, the ends justify the means--the latter of which are manifested by cutthroat tactics.

"The bottom line is, ethical behavior in business is the right thing," he said, underscoring the PR benefits.

The Real Estate Board of New York, an influential and powerful trade group, is working with the city to create a task force that will address systemic tax assessing problems.

"We'll be working with the Department of Finance to come up with ways to change this process and make it more certain," said REBNY president Steven Spinola.