Roosevelt Island Tram exec defends paying PR firm $170K in taxpayercash to launch anti-tourist smear campaign

His hiring prospects became a total tramwreck!One of the executives who paid to plant stories blaming tourists for Roosevelt Island’s notoriously mismanaged Tramway insists he did it because scores of bad press made finding people willing to work for him nearly impossible, he said through a lawyer.Shelton Haynes of the Roosevelt Island Operating Commission — one of three execs who paid a PR firm nearly $170,000 in taxpayer cash to manipulate local media outlets and plant web posts — said the group’s bad online reputation was a major recruitment headache.“Because of the overwhelming negative press, which was devastating to the morale of the other employees of RIOC, it made it hard to recruit talent to work at RIOC,” Haynes whined through his attorney, Milt Williams.“The reputation… it was really viewed in poor stead,”  said Williams, a partner at Walden Macht Harran & Williams.The group forked over big bucks to hire the PR firm Status Labs to game Google-search algorithms because press slamming the tram’s poor service had been relentless, he said.“It was inundation: That’s why they went to Status Labs, they were desperate,” said Williams, a  partner at Walden Macht Harran & Williams.Last month, a state report found that Haynes and three other well-paid ROIC executives paid to plant posts online claiming a swarm of tourist were behind  tram mishaps.But it was actually ROIC mismanagement, faulty equipment and lackluster service that were largely to blame for problems with the popular 59th Street tram over the East River, the state Office of the Inspector General said in the report.In an interview with The Post, Williams defended Haynes by insisting that roughly $76 million in improvements to Roosevelt Island were made under his leadership — including renovating the Sportspark Complex and completing the tram elevator project.Local newspapers and other outlets had for years bashed the RIOC, with  The Roosevelt Island Daily News c...