Painted into a corner

The more outsiders scratch beneath the surface layer of the New York City Housing Authority’s lead paint crisis, the worse, and worse, and worse the authority looks. Tuesday it was the City Council’s turn to probe an ever-growing inventory of omissions and missteps and mysteries, equipped with Daily News stories detailing NYCHA’s systematic failure to follow city and federal laws requiring annual lead-paint inspections and repairs where contamination risks are found.

In apartments where children live. Small ones. Six of whom have likely been poisoned since the authority summarily ceased inspections in 2012, before resuming last year as if no one would notice the lapse.

Yet NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye had no good answers for the Council about why it took an infuriating six months after former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara asked for her authority’s leadpaint records in late 2015 to figure out that those annual inspections hadn’t been happening, contrary to what the authority certified to the feds.

Or about why, having testified to the Council in March 2016 that the inspections were taking place, she didn’t go back to correct the record after learning not long after that she had misspoken. “In hindsight, our communication could have been much better” doesn’t begin to address the lapse.

Or about why, to comply with New York City’s lead paint law, NYCHA last year tested 4,200 apartments home to children under 6 where lead paint had not been ruled out, but has since doubled the number of lead-suspect apartments to 8,900.

Or about the qualifications of the NYCHA staff assigned to eyeball those apartments for signs of hazardously crumbling lead paint and staff assigned to very, very carefully clean it up: Nonexistent before last year, the Daily News found, contrary to what the law demands.

In the very best light, Olatoye stepped in to clean up an epic bureaucratic failure initiated by predecessors — but metastasized under her distracted watch.

Let the feds and the monitor who can’t come a moment too soon fill huge gaps in the official story of what went terribly wrong. If Shola Olatoye won’t lead on lead, someone else must.