To the highest bidder
It’s the strangest thing, just how many wheelers and dealers are confessing to crossing the law after contributing large sums to Mayor de Blasio’s pet political causes. As if there might be something wrong — gosh, really? — with a mayor demanding cash shoveled in his direction tens of thousands of dollars at a time when campaign laws say $4,950 is the max.
Now add three more to a rogue’s gallery that includes a restaurateur who pleaded guilty to bribing de Blasio and then testified that he’d rustled up tens of thousands in donations, and a real estate investor who passed along nearly $200,000 to the mayor’s causes, then confessed to fraud in connection with a police corruption case.
Monday, the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics found that de Blasio personally hit up top lobbyist Jim Capalino for contributions to his nonprofit Campaign for One New York in 2015. Even though under state lobbying rules, a resulting donation would amount to an illegal gift to the mayor.
That’s after de Blasio in 2014 similarly hit up Steve Nislick, a wealthy crusader to ban carriage horses under the banner of the group NYCLASS.
All that even though the man we here begrudingly call Hizzoner got clear instructions from the city Conflicts of Interest Board not to personally demand funds from anyone with business before the city.
Boy did Capalino have business: Mere months before de Blasio demanded a donation, the lobbyist had persuaded City Hall to take steps to lift deed restrictions to help a client sell a former nursing home on Rivington St. for top dollar, paving way for its conversion to condos.
Capalino obliged not only with his own $10,000 but then brought in another $90,000 from lobbying clients — who then got an exclusive breakfast meeting with the mayor.
Nislick and NYCLASS partner Wendy Neu ended up contributing $75,000 in all to the Campaign for One New York — while de Blasio championed their anti-carriage crusade.
In light of these obscenely unseemly dealings, Capalino agrees to pay $40,000; NYCLASS $10,000 for failing to properly register its lobbying activities with the state. The mayor skates yet again. Responsibility now falls on the Conflicts of Interest Board, which must pursue new evidence de Blasio disregarded the board’s advice to avoid fundraising from favor-seekers.
Someone, please, hold the man who put the “for sale” sign on City Hall accountable.