THE CITY
Last fall the city Department of Investigation released a damning report
declaring that then-Mayor Bill de Blasio needed to reimburse the
taxpayers $320,000 for the cost of bringing his NYPD detail along during
his quixotic and ultimately failed quest for the White House.
At the time, the mayor questioned
DOI’s findings, claimed there were “inaccuracies” in the report, and
insisted he was simply following the advice of the NYPD. He also
maintained he had “never received any contradictory guidance” on the use
of the detail.
But a day before he announced his bid for the
White House, he did receive explicit advice from the Conflicts of
Interest Board (COIB) informing him in no uncertain terms that he must
pay back the city for the use of the detail on the campaign trail.
The clarity of this instruction is revealed in a May 15, 2019 letter
obtained by THE CITY via the Freedom of Information Law, signed by
then-COIB Chairperson Richard Briffault to de Blasio’s City Hall
counsel, Kapil Longani.
Briffault’s advice on how to avoid violating city conflict rules is unambiguous:
“The City may pay for only the salary and/or overtime of the NYPD personnel on such a campaign trip,” Briffault wrote. “All
other costs associated with such personal campaign travel — including
but not limited to airfare, rental cars, overnight accommodations, meals
and other reasonable incidental expenses — must not be borne by the
City. Rather these costs must be paid for or reimbursed by the Mayor’s
campaign committee.”
In explaining his decision to de Blasio, Briffault noted
federal campaign finance rules would require a federal candidate to
repay a government for the use of governmental resources as part of a
campaign. De Blasio is currently one of more than a dozen candidates running for Congress in the 10th Congressional District.
Three years after receiving COIB’s letter, the former mayor has yet to pay a dime.
De
Blasio did not respond to a voice message left by THE CITY early
Thursday asking about the straightforward declaration from COIB and his
decision to disregard it. Neal Kwatra, a spokesperson for his
congressional campaign, followed up later in an email to say he’d need
more time to research the issue before answering.
THE CITY
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s signature NYC Ferry took taxpayers for a
pricey ride when city economic development officials underreported its
costs by nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, City Comptroller Brad
Lander said Wednesday.
Lander accused the city of “playing hide
the ball” on ferry finances and criticized the economics and oversight
of the watery transportation network, which launched under de Blasio in 2017 and promised heavily subsidized $2.75-per-ride trips from piers in all five boroughs.
The comptroller’s report
says the Economic Development Corporation rang up $758 million in
ferry-related costs from July 2015 through the end of last year — but
only reported $534 million in expenses in its audited financial
statements and other records.
“This is a very substantial
financial underreporting and mismanagement,” Lander said while standing
near Pier 11 in Lower Manhattan. “$250 million of underreporting raises a
lot of questions and those questions should be asked.”
Auditors
found that the city’s actual subsidy on each ferry trip rose to nearly
double the $6.60-per-trip subsidy that the de Blasio administration
originally projected. The city subsidy amounted to $12.88 for Fiscal
Year 2021, according to the report, not the $8.59 that was originally
reported.
“It is a premium service, like express buses and it is
also a tourist commodity,” Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget
Commission, told THE CITY. “We should be pricing the ferries
accordingly and that should be able to reduce that subsidy.”
The comptroller’s report follows a series of stories in THE CITY about NYC Ferry, including one in January
that revealed how de Blasio’s budget office supplied a $23.2 million
infusion for the service before he left City Hall at the end of 2021 —
after the service had previously been funded by the EDC.
“The
ferry system was eating the EDC budget,” said Rein, whose nonprofit
organization detailed in a 2019 report how subsidies for NYC Ferry are among the highest in the country for comparable ferry networks.
Lander’s report calls into question the purchase of new boats — something THE CITY flagged in April 2019
— as well as the $2.75 fare that de Blasio insisted on for the
privately operated ferry trips. The price of an NYC Ferry trip is
considerably lower than one on similar services in San Francisco and Boston.
On the San Francisco Bay Ferry,
for example, fares are determined by three different zones, with the
priciest zoned trip set at $11.25 for a paper ticket or $9.00 for rides
paid for through mobile devices or the Clipper fare-payment system.
De
Blasio, in a statement through a spokesperson for his campaign for
Congress, said he could not comment on Lander’s report because he had
yet to fully review it.
