Prober under pressure
Say City Hall told DOI to ease up on Blaz pals
In the spring of 2017, the city Department of Investigation released a stinging report revealing how Mayor de Blasio’s jails’ commissioner, Joseph Ponte, had repeatedly and inappropriately used his city-owned vehicle for personal travel to his home in Maine.
But before that report landed, however, City Hall had pressured Department of Investigation Commissioner Mark Peters to lay off Ponte, whom de Blasio had recruited to reform the deeply troubled jails at Rikers Island, sources familiar with the matter told the Daily News.
That behind-the-scenes lobbying from the mayor’s office – which the sources say also occurred regarding an Investigation Department probe of the city Housing Authority — represents an unusual level of intervention into the activities of the investigative agency, which has for decades been seen as an independent watchdog immune to mayoral meddling.
And it precedes what is seen as a growing showdown between Peters and his former benefactor, de Blasio, who appointed him shortly after his arrival at City Hall in 2014 — and who in the last several months has considered firing. On Friday, de Blasio’s press secretary, Eric Phillips, declined to answer questions about City Hall’s interactions with DOI before the Ponte and NYCHA reports.
But in an interview with The News, Peters acknowledged the mayor’s office has expressed “displeasure” with him over some of his agency’s reports, but he declined to discuss whether the mayor’s office pressured him to change any findings.
Sources familiar with the matter, for example, say the mayor’s office also pressured Peters to change the wording of a November report detailing how then-NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye falsely certified the authority was in compliance on lead paint inspections when she knew it was not.
“It’s no secret that City Hall was unhappy about our NYCHA report and in the months that followed (its release), I was made aware of that,” he said. “I’m not going to get into what City Hall said to me about NYCHA before (the report) was issued.”
He deflected answering whether City Hall pressured DOI to change its report on Ponte before it was made public.
“I understand that whenever DOI issues a systemic report, that presents challenges for the people running the city. But DOI’s job is to do investigations and present its findings without regard to the views of outside entities,” he said.
The relationship between Peters and de Blasio has changed radically from early 2014 when the mayor appointed Peters as his chief watchdog. At the time, critics worried that Peters – for a time a candidate to be de Blasio’s campaign treasurer – wouldn’t be independent enough.
Those worries have disappeared, in the wake of numerous DOI reports that’ve been critical of the mayor. The rift between the two widened last year — and is growing, sources familiar with the relationship told The News.
Peters publicly complained last year that de Blasio’s top lawyer, Corporation Counsel Zachary Carter, had redacted information from documents DOI was seeking in its investigation of a Lower East Side nursing home deed restriction deal. And de Blasio stuck by both Ponte and Olatoye after DOI’s damaging findings, implicitly criticizing the reports as much ado about nothing.
But the deteriorating relationship hit rock bottom last spring when the New York Times revealed Peters had made a power move to fold the Special Commissioner of Investigation for the city’s school system into DOI – a move that resulted in SCI Commissioner Anastasia Coleman resigning and filing a whistleblower complaint alleging Peters had forced her out for contending his move exceeded his authority.
At the time, Corporation Counsel Carter compiled a secret dossier on Peters that started with the Coleman conflict.
A former federal prosecutor, James McGovern, was brought in to examine the SCI mess and early this month declared Peters had, in fact, gone beyond his authority. Coleman was brought back as SCI commissioner outside of DOI’s umbrella, and Peters publicly released a brief mea culpa to her.
Following McGovern’s report, City Hall requested that DOI turn over its entire file on SCI. On Oct. 16 Peters balked, implying in a letter to First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan the release would create a conflict because DOI is probing the mayor’s office.