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NY Post
A newly-disclosed email exchange between two top de Blasio officials
suggests the administration misled the City Council about the ouster of a
whistleblower who accused the mayor of corruption.
On March 13, 2017 Lisette Camilo, head of the city’s Dept. of
Citywide Administrative Services, testified to the council that Ricardo
Morales was forced from his job as a deputy commissioner at her agency
for reasons that had “nothing to do with Rivington.”
According to the email thread — which was released as part of
Morales’ wrongful termination suit against the city — the comment
shocked de Blasio employees who were watching Camilo get grilled.
“Did Lisette really say morales firing wasn’t related to rivington?”
asked then de Blasio press secretary Eric Phillips in one of the emails.
“Yes. That’s what we were told she had to say for legal reasons,”
replied Jon Paul Lupo, de Blasio’s former director of intergovernmental
affairs.
Camilo had been referring in her testimony to Rivington House, a Lower East Side nursing home that was sold to a developer in 2015 resulting in a $72 million profit.
The feds probed the transaction because the city lifted deed
restrictions, paving the way for the seller and subsequent buyer—both
repped by a major de Blasio donor—to cash in on the site.
Morales has said publicly that he cooperated with the probe and gave
“truthful testimony” about alleged wrongdoing by the mayor and other
city officials.
However, he was fired the same day the feds interviewed de Blasio in 2017 about the deal.
From
DNA Info:
A bill introduced in the wake of the Rivington House scandal aimed at preventing future nursing home closures has been rejected by the State Senate's Health Committee.
The "Rivington Act," named for the Lower East Side nursing home for HIV/AIDS patients that in 2015 was shuttered and sold to condo developers, would have created a community-driven vetting process to make it more difficult for an operator to close a nursing home.
The bill would have required the Department of Health commissioner to disseminate a report to city and state officials as well as the local community board assessing the impact the closure would have on the community. Community members and elected officials would have then made recommendations to DOH before the agency made a decision on the plan to close.
It was first introduced by State Sen. Daniel Squadron, Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou and Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon last year.
But the bill was voted down Tuesday afternoon by the Senate's Health Committee after committee chair State Sen. Kemp Hannon recommended a "No" vote, noting the bill was not "near shape" to become law.
"I don’t think it's in anywhere near shape to possibly become law, so I would recommend a 'No' vote, but if Senator Squadron’s going to pursue — and he’s not a shy one about pursuing — pursue the discussion we may see this bill again," said Hannon at Tuesday's committee hearing.
"It's defeated, but we will see it again," Hannon said after the vote.
From the
Daily News:
The city official who approved lifting deed restrictions that allowed a Lower East Side nursing home to be flipped for luxury condos has been fired.
Ricardo Morales, a deputy commissioner at the Citywide Department of Administrative Services, was let go on Friday — hours after Mayor de Blasio’s highly anticipated sit-down with federal prosecutors, his attorney confirmed Saturday.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the firing.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is investigating the Rivington deal as part of a broader investigation into whether de Blasio’s administration gave special favors to donors.
Guy Oksenhendler, an attorney for Morales, said he found the dismissal — in the context of the day’s events — to be highly problematic. “I find the timing of my client’s firing extremely suspicious,” he said. “Around the time that meeting would have concluded, my client was terminated.”
Oksenhendler added that he believes Morales was targeted by the mayor himself.
From the
NY Times:
The New York City Council is expected to pass legislation on Tuesday that would require mayors to personally approve any alteration to or removal of a city-imposed deed restriction, and would create an online database to track existing deed restrictions and changes to them.
The bill, which aides to Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would sign into law, represents the latest effort by city officials to prevent the circumstances that allowed a protected Manhattan nursing home, known as Rivington House, to be sold to luxury condominium developers this year.
The proposed law creates new standards for the agency that handles deed restriction changes, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, which approved the removal of the restriction on Rivington House in 2015 in exchange for $16.15 million. That action allowed a for-profit nursing home company, the Allure Group, to sell the property to a developer for a roughly $72 million profit early this year, after it had paid $28 million for the property several months earlier.
The transactions prompted overlapping investigations by the city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, and the Department of Investigation, which found no criminal wrongdoing but highlighted breakdowns in communication between city agencies, and a lack of attention within the de Blasio administration. The New York State attorney general is investigating the matter.
From the
NY Times:
Inside New York City’s Law Department, the case is named Matter No. 2016-013018. It goes by an even more mysterious title in the city’s $10 million contract with outside criminal defense lawyers: John Doe Investigation.
But for New Yorkers, the matter is better known as the federal inquiry into Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, and his aides, one that is said to focus on whether they traded favorable government actions for political contributions.
Last week, the de Blasio administration quietly filed with the city’s comptroller its contract with a law firm, Debevoise & Plimpton, that has for months been acting as outside counsel for the mayor and his aides. The contract, obtained by The New York Times through a request under the state Freedom of Information Law, offers the most detailed look yet at the cost of defending actions that the mayor has insisted were appropriate and legal.
The Law Department, which arranged for the legal services through negotiation as opposed to a competitive bid process, described in concise terms its need for a firm “with expertise in criminal defense law to provide legal services in support of the John Doe Investigation and any related litigation.”
The department checked several boxes saying it required a contractor to “obtain special expertise” not available at the agency, “provide services not needed on a long-term basis,” “accomplish work within a limited amount of time” and “avoid a conflict of interest.” The city’s corporation counsel, who oversees the department, waived a requirement for a public hearing on the contract, the documents show, on the ground that a hearing could “disclose litigation strategy.”
The de Blasio administration, prompted by required budgetary reports, has in recent days offered a limited accounting of its spending on outside lawyers: $6.5 million through the end of the year for overlapping investigations of the mayor, said Eric F. Phillips, Mr. de Blasio’s spokesman.
That amount includes $400,000 for lawyers at Carter Ledyard & Milburn, who have helped defend the city in state and local inquiries — including one by the comptroller — into the sale in February of Rivington House, a former nursing home in Manhattan whose deed restricted use of the property to nonprofit residential health care. Mr. Phillips declined to comment on whether the firm continued to work for the city on that matter.
Mr. de Blasio, asked at a news conference on Friday about the costs, said: “We’ve been asked to provide information; we’ve been very, very cooperative, and as many times as the investigators want to talk to members of the administration, of course they will have that opportunity. But each time requires preparation and representation. That’s why.”
A Law Department spokesman declined to reply to a list of questions about the contract.
From
DNA Info:
In an attempt to make up for the loss of nursing home beds at Rivington House, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday announced plans to build an affordable senior housing and health care facility in a city-owned building under the Manhattan Bridge.
First Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris dropped the news while testifying before the City Council during an oversight hearing on the administration's controversial decision to lift two deed restrictions on Rivington House nursing home for HIV/AIDS patients — a decision that allowed the home to be hawked to a luxury condo developer for $72 million. The mayor's office later made a formal announcement of the plan.
But though Shorris claimed the new facility — a building operated by the Department of Environmental Protection at 30 Pike St. — will replace the "bulk of what was lost in Rivington House," the mayor's office has only said the home will provide housing for more than 100 seniors, while Rivington held 219 beds.\
From the
Observer:
It was a fitting ending for a City Council hearing that was, at its heart, about failures to communicate: another miscommunication.
After two-and-a-half hours of questioning Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris about the city’s decision to lift a deed restriction on Rivington House, which paved the way for the AIDS hospice to be sold for profit to luxury condo developers, his testimony ended with the City Council accusing the mayor’s office of misleading them about Shorris’ schedule.
“The administration misled the Council and the Speakers Office into believing that First Deputy Mayor Shorris’ availability for the hearing this morning would be limited because of events related to the U.S Conference of Mayors in Oklahoma City. This turned out to be false,” Eric Koch, a spokesman for Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. “At a hearing which focused on government honesty and transparency this is particularly shocking and unacceptable.”
The miscommunication today played out in “real-time,” as City Councilman Ben Kallos, the chairman of the committee on governmental operations put it, when, during the hearing, he asked Shorris why he had to leave—”for the record.”
“I have appointments scheduled,” Shorris responded.
