Get me out of lead suit: Blaz

MAYOR DE BLASIO has said when it comes to NYCHA, “the buck stops at City Hall.”

But Monday, one of his lawyers said the city will likely seek to remove him from a lawsuit filed by public housing tenants over the city’s failures to perform required lead paint inspections.

The New York City Housing Authority has admitted that for years, it failed to perform annual inspections as mandated by local law and federal regulation, and that de Blasio knew about the issue for more than a year before telling tenants and the public.

Corey Stern, a lawyer for the tenants who had sued NYCHA over the alleged negligence, added the mayor and several top City Hall officials to the suit as defendants Friday.

During a conference in Manhattan Federal Court on Monday, city lawyer Mark Muschenheim informed Judge William Pauley the city will likely try to have de Blasio removed from the suit, claiming that NYCHA is somehow separate from City Hall. The mayor appoints the Housing Authority’s chief and all its board members, though it is largely funded by federal dollars.

Pauley immediately questioned the credibility of that logic, reading a quote included in the tenants’ lawsuit in which de Blasio said in 2014, “The buck stops at City Hall from now on when it comes to NYCHA . . . because I consider myself ultimately responsible for what we do at NYCHA.”

“How can you possibly think that Mayor de Blasio is not a proper party with a statement like that from a government official?” an incredulous Pauley asked.

Muschenheim hesitated, than appeared to imply that the mayor didn’t really mean what he said. “There are statements that are made in the political process,” Muschenheim said.

“By the mayor's own statement, he’s at the helm of the ship, isn’t he?” Pauley responded. “How do you think you’re going to get around that — unless he’s going to retract it and say that he never meant that?”