Shoulda told of lead woes
Bill on NYCHA: We kinda let ’em know
UPON FURTHER reflection, Mayor de Blasio said Monday maybe he should have mentioned that the city had failed for years to perform required lead paint inspections when he learned about it more than a year ago.
“I think that’s a fair point, and, in retrospect, I wish we had,” de Blasio said, offering his first in-person comments on the growing lead paint scandal at the city Housing Authority.
On Sunday the Daily News revealed that the mayor has known for the past 18 months that NYCHA was not completing thousands of required lead paint inspections but kept that information from the public and NYCHA’s 400,000 tenants.
He called this lapse “unacceptable” for the first time last week — and only after the city Department of Investigation dropped a report revealing that NYCHA had been falsely certifying its lead paint inspections were up to snuff.
While admitting some regrets Monday, he continued to downplay and misrepresent what happened, claiming that tenants were “notified” about the issue back in May 2016, shortly after he learned about it.
“Having heard that the situation was being addressed and that tenants were being notified, and action was being taken, that’s what mattered to me, that’s what really mattered physically, materially to people’s lives,” he said.
In fact, tenants were not notified that NYCHA had not been complying with lead paint inspection requirements for years and that thousands of apartments had not been checked for years. Tenants were simply provided a form letter stating that because they had children under 6, their apartments were to be inspected.
De Blasio seemed to mock the idea of actually telling them what was going on, stating, “I don’t think going back and saying, ‘Hey, you need to know that back in 2012, something was done wrong in the previous administration and it’s only been caught (now).’ Now I don’t think that necessarily helps anyone."
De Blasio learned of the missed inspections back in April 2016, just a few weeks after he’d proclaimed at a press conference that NYCHA had an “aggressive” lead paint inspection regimen.
Since the Department of Investigation report landed, a growing chorus of critics has demanded that his appointee to run NYCHA, Chairwoman Shola Olatoye, step down and that an independent monitor oversee the troubled agency going forward.
The mayor did not explain why he waited until after the Investigation Department report came out to force the resignation of two senior managers and demote a third involved in the debacle.
“When it was time to take those personnel actions, we took them,” he said.
De Blasio said he would appoint Edna Wells Handy, the legal counsel to NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill, to the newly created position at NYCHA — chief compliance officer.
THE NEWS SAYS:
FRESH OFF a vacation and in the midst of a lead paint scandal, Mayor de Blasio defended plans to jet off to Iowa for a speech about his agenda next month. “I’ve had this conversation with you for a year or two. This is who I am. This is what I’m going to do,” he said. “When there is something that I think is important, I will do my best to do it.” And right now, what’s important is flipping the U.S. House and Senate to Democratic control — though that’s decidedly outside his jurisdiction. “I will do my best to help because I think it's mission critical for New York City,” he said. De Blasio announced the trip Monday — the same day he finally took questions on why the city failed, for years, to follow its own laws and federal rules requiring lead paint inspections of public housing apartments. When the news broke last week, de Blasio was on vacation in Connecticut. De Blasio outlined his reason for heading to Iowa, where he’ll headline a holiday dinner held by a group called Progress Iowa, in a post on the blogging platform Medium.