But, his emails!
Mayor de Blasio frequently used a personal email address while conducting city business, the Department of Investigation found while investigating whether he’d done favors for Harendra Singh, a donor who owed millions in back rent, taxes and repairs on a Queens restaurant on city property.
A search of City Hall computers, laptops and emails for “specific and relevant search terms” turned up 1,850 instances of de Blasio’s personal email address, according to a DOI memo obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request.
Using personal email addresses meant “risking the loss of material that may be subject to FOIL and other legal document retention requirements,” Inspector General Chin Ho Cheng wrote in a letter to Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication Commissioner Anne Roest.
De Blasio wasn’t alone in using a personal email address — the search also turns up many instances of close aide Emma Wolfe, Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris, Shorris’ chief of staff Dominic Williams and special counsel Henry Berger using personal accounts.
“It’s been made clear to City Hall employees that we’re to use government email for government work. Employees who didn’t do that, should do that,” de Blasio spokesman Eric Phillips said. “We remind employees of that frequently and we’ll continue to do that. This report documents activity some time ago.”
The findings were part of a “closing memorandum” noting the end of DOI’s investigation into de Blasio’s dealings with Singh, first reported by the New York Times. De Blasio and his staff were not charged.
But the DOI memo detailed a pattern of City Hall acting on Singh’s behalf in ways that were “unprecedented” as he sought to extend his lease with the Department of Citywide Administrative Services on his riverfront restaurant, Water’s Edge.
City Hall told DCAS staff that Singh was “a friend of the mayor,” according to the memo, and they were instructed to “resolve this matter.”
De Blasio even called then-commissioner Stacey Cumberbatch about the issue personally — “the first and only time that the mayor ever called her directly,” DCAS staffers told investigators.
A spokesman said the mayor had talked with her in other instances.
“Whether or not he called her or she called him, they’ve spoken on the phone other times,” Phillips said, “and he’s certainly talked to her in person on any number of occasions.”
City Hall eventually ordered DCAS to remove deputy commissioner Ricardo Morales from the negotiations, the memo found, making it Cumberbatch’s job to renew the lease — an escalation DCAS staff told investigators was “unprecedented.”
Singh scored a meeting at City Hall in July of 2015 with Wolfe, Cumberbatch and Singh’s lobbyist, Neal Kwatra — who in March the memo says had allegedly fumed to DCAS employees, “Clearly you didn’t get the message from City Hall.” DCAS staff said such a high-level meeting, at City Hall, over a lease renegotiation, was also “unprecedented,” the memo said.
Singh was charged with unrelated fraud over Hurricane Sandy recovery money just two months after the meeting.
Phillips insisted none of that amounted to special treatment.
“This administration makes decisions based on the facts and nothing else,” he said.
Singh hosted fund-raisers for de Blasio in 2011 during his public advocate campaign and in 2013 for his mayoral bid at the restaurant, “for below-market fees,” the memos aid. He also pitched in to the mayor’s Campaign for One New York.
A 2014 DCAS audit found he’d underpaid his rent on Water’s Edge by $747,178 between 2010 and 2013. He was also on the hook for $3.66 million to repair a nearby pier, according to the memo, which was dropped to $3.1 million in 2015.
DCAS wouldn’t renew the lease until there was a plan in place to pay off the debt. In late July 2015, he offered to pay back $1.1 million in rent and $2 million for the pier.
