Correcting the Mayor

Now Mayor de Blasio’s own former campaign treasurer is calling out City Hall’s low ethical standards. Yes, Mark Peters now heads the city Department of Investigation, so he’s only doing his job. Still, it should’ve stung Friday when he slammed the mayor for his dismissive reaction to a blistering DOI report on the city Correction Department.

Peters’ agency found “systemic” misuse of city vehicles by Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte and 20 other top officials, in clear violation of city rules, costing taxpayers thousands of dollars.

Ponte used the car to visit his family in Maine — so often that he was out of state for 90 days last year, including 35 workdays. (That’s seven full weeks.) Other officials used vehicles for shopping trips and casino jaunts.

But de Blasio said he couldn’t care less. First his spokesman put out a statement saying the mayor preferred to focus on reforms Ponte has enacted, “not the number of times the commissioner visited his family on weekends.”

Then de Blasio himself claimed Ponte was guilty only of having been given bad advice about city rules.

Wrong, said Peters: “Our investigation conclusively demonstrated” that Ponte and the others received no such advice. In fact, said the DOI chief, a senior staffer had previously been fined for such behavior.

Added Peters: “There can be no defense of this behavior, and City Hall harms government integrity by even trying.” Wow!

The mayor apparently doesn’t care that Ponte & Co. claimed they were entitled to use their vehicles because they’re on 24hour call — yet admitted that none of them ever responded to a single emergency while roaming around in their city cars.

Ponte alone was away for 27 inmate-on-inmate stabbings, three slashings of correction officers and an escaped prisoner — not to mention his ongoing overhaul of the department.

If the mayor is this blasé about his commissioner being hundreds of miles away for a quarter of the year — on the taxpayers’ dime, to boot — then New York has a serious problem.

We’re glad to see at least one person at City Hall is willing to call him out on it.