WHO’S THE REAL PUPPET?
Blaz downplays it, but there were hundreds of meetings between him, staff & lobbyists
Mayor de Blasio, who met Big Bird at street renaming for “Sesame Street” on Wednesday, had many meetings with lobbyists who hoped to pull his strings, records show.
Lobbyists have their own birdbrained Muppets at City Hall.
Despite Mayor de Blasio’s claim to never cozy up to lobbyists, top city officials meet regularly with dozens of the same “hired guns” that Hizzoner claims he wants to avoid.
In all, de Blasio’s deputy mayors, commissioners and high-ranking aides had at least 358 meetings and talks with both commercial and in-house lobbyists in just 11 months, according to a Daily News analysis of public records.
They spoke with 332 different lobbyists during that time, between March 1, 2018, and Jan. 31 of this year.
Of those, 130 were what de Blasio now calls “classic” or “third-party” lobbyists. Known as commercial lobbyists, they’re hired by numerous clients to push policies, as opposed to those working “in-house” who lobby on behalf of their own employers or organizations.
“Third-party lobbyists are the classic lobbyists that people have so much concern about who, you know, provide their services to different companies, different interests,” de Blasio said on NY1 on Monday. “They’re for hire, if you will – hired guns.”
The “hired guns” whom top de Blasio officials met with include six lobbyists working for the mayor’s generous fundraiser and friend James Capalino, five with Suri Kasirer’s firm and four employed by “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda’s dad, Luis Miranda of the MirRam Group. Kasirer is a longtime pal of the mayor who has raised millions of dollars on his behalf
Top city officials also took meetings with longtime de Blasio pal and former Clinton White House aide Harold Ickes and another friend of the mayor’s, Sid Davidoff, a prominent lobbyist who worked for former Mayor John Lindsay.
Another six of the lobbyists are with Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP, a law firm that represented the mayor during a probe into his fundraising, which cost city taxpayers $2.6 million.
The knotty ethical issues that arise out of these meetings have good-government groups wondering who’s pulling the strings.
“It’s problematic for any candidate who relies on legal services of a firm related to an investigation when the firm has business before the government,” said Alex Camarda of Reinvent Albany.
In-house lobbyists who got meetings with top city officials include Kathryn Wylde of the Partnership for New York City, former de Blasio 2013 transition co-chairwoman and antipoverty organization head Jennifer Jones-Austin, Real Estate Board of New York President John Banks and United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew.
According to the mayor, those in-house lobbyists are less problematic.
“A lot of labor union presiCamarda. dents have decided the law requires them to sign up as lobbyists, but the only interest they’re representing is their own labor union and their own members,” de Blasio explained on NY1. “Those folks I’ll meet with. But I don’t meet with the classic lobbyist.”
City law actually defines lobbyists as anyone who attempts to influence officials and lawmakers on rules, regulations, contracts, land use, permits and more — whether or not they’re retained or employed by their clients.
The mayor’s lobbyist logic is “nonsensical,” according to “It doesn’t matter if you hire a firm or you represent yourself, your position on an issue is no more valid or invalid,” he said.
De Blasio made the distinction to justify his false claim last week that he hasn’t spoken to lobbyists “for years.”
The mayor talked with lobbyists on eight occasions in 2018, and at least an additional 78 times his first four years in office, according to a public database.
De Blasio began cutting back his personal contact with lobbyists in 2016 after facing multiple investigations into his fund-raising practices, including whether the city was favorable to donors and others with business before the city. Eventually federal and state prosecutors said they wouldn’t charge de Blasio or his aides.
Though the mayor’s interactions with lobbyists have remained relatively infrequent in the years since, his top officials often still take meetings with them.
Of the 358 lobbyist contacts that de Blasio officials reported between March 2018 and January, 95 of the discussions centered on real estate, easily making it the most common topic, according to a
Daily News analysis. The second-most-discussed topic was social services with 53 talks, followed by 34 centered on labor and 23 on the taxi and for-hire vehicle industry.
De Blasio’s former deputy mayor for housing and development, Alicia Glen, took 20 meetings with lobbyists during the 11-month period, the most of any other official. Intergovernmental Affairs Director Emma Wolfe, Landmarks Preservation Commissioner Sarah Carroll and Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks tied for second place with 19 meetings each.
During his 2013 campaign for mayor, de Blasio promised to force his top officials to “publicly disclose meetings with registered lobbyists” monthly. He finally began disclosing the talks last year after his first term was roiled by scandals involving lobbyists – one in particular.
Capalino and his deeppocketed clients gave $100,000 to a nonprofit de Blasio created to support his agenda, earning them a sitdown with the mayor in September 2015, according to the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics. The meeting was left off de Blasio’s list of lobbyist meetings. Last year, Capalino agreed to pay a $40,000 settlement with the state ethics watchdog.
Capalino was the lobbyist who pressed top de Blasio officials into supporting a controversial luxury condo project at the old Long Island College Hospital site in Brooklyn.
Capalino also pushed City Hall into lifting deed restrictions at the Rivington House nursing home on the lower East Side. The city was paid just $16.1 million to lift those restrictions by the Allure Group, which then sold the property to a luxury condo developer for a $72 million profit. “That was a clear conflict because what he was doing was influencing a situation in the city that had very serious financial consequences,” Betsy Gotbaum, former public advocate and head of the goodgovernment group Citizens Union, said of the Rivington project. But Gotbaum admitted regularly meeting with lobbyists herself — even those she considers friends.
“It’s a hard line to walk,” Gotbaum said.
Lobbying activity has skyrocketed during de Blasio’s administration. Compensation for lobbyists increased 63.6% since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s last year in office, from $62.7 million in 2013 to a record $102.6 million last year, according to records filed with the city clerk’s office.
The mayor’s office patted itself on the back for reporting its hand-in-glove relationship with special interests.
“As part of our commitment to transparency, we voluntarily report all meetings that involve lobbyists and are the first administration to do so. All official decisions are based solely on the merits,” de Blasio spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein.