Is Conflicts of Interest Board nom conflicted?
Council pols quiz pick on firm that did biz with city
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ nominee for the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board got a grilling from members of the City Council on Monday over concerns that a business she founded had its own possible conflict — or the appearance of one.
Williams’ nominee, Ifeoma Ike, served in former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office as co-manager of the city’s Young Men’s Initiative until October 2017.
Her résumé shows that two months before leaving the mayor’s office she helped found Think Rubix, a company that designs corporate training programs focused on diversity and conflict resolution.
According to city records, Think Rubix won a contract with the city Health Department just one month after she resigned from her City Hall post. All told, the company inked three contracts with the city between 2017 and 2019 for a total of $80,000.
Now, with the City Council in the process of reviewing Ike’s nomination, the timing of that contract award has Council members concerned she may not be the right person to serve on the Conflicts of Interest Board.
“There are disturbing facts about this appointee that have come to light that must be investigated, not the least of which is a for-profit business that Ms. Ike seems to have started while she was a city employee,” Councilman Bob Holden (D-Queens) told the Daily News. “The last thing the Council should do is appoint someone to the Conflicts of Interest Board who has flouted conflict-of-interest ethics for financial gain. I have a number of questions, but that is the most glaring.”
Another City Council member, who asked to remain anonymous, voiced similar concerns.
“She obviously seems to have a little bit of a judgment issue,” the Council member said. “It’s the Conflicts of Interest Board. It’s a little ironic.”
During her testimony to the Council’s Rules, Privileges and Elections Committee, Ike testified that she wasn’t working on any contracts for the company when she was employed as a municipal worker. However, she did not seek a waiver from Conflicts Board to become a company’s co-founder.
She suggested that, in retrospect, the situation probably could have been handled better.
“The conversation about whether, you know, there would be a contract or not did not occur while I was working for the city,” she said. “At that time, we were just excited to get Black people connected to mental health services. Currently, what I’m recognizing is that while very innocent in how we do that work, it’s problematic because it gives the appearance of some type of wrongdoing, or it gives an appearance of some type of ignoring the law.”
Ike added that at the time, she wasn’t “necessarily as clear about what could or could not be done.” She noted that she did not personally profit from the contracts.
It is still unclear whether she violated conflict-of-interest rules. One she does not appear to have broken is the one-year prohibition against former city employees appearing before the agency where they worked. According to the mayor’s office, Ike was on the Human Resources Administration payroll, not the Health Department’s.
Still, another Conflicts Board rule is a lifetime ban on former public servants being compensated for services rendered concerning “the particular matter he or she worked on personally and substantially while a public servant.” That may represent a sticking point for Ike as the contract Rubix secured involved work similar to what she was doing for the mayor’s office.
After working for de Blasio, Ike also served on Dianne Morales’ mayoral campaign last year, but switched to the campaign of Maya Wiley.
A year earlier, she raised eyebrows when she gathered with former and then-current staffers to Mayor Bill de Blasio to speak out against his handling of anti-police brutality protests. During one demonstration, she called out de Blasio for using his biracial family for political ends, while not pushing hard enough to enact reforms within the NYPD.
“Do you know how crazy it is to work for this city and then explain to your community how you can work for a man who pimps out his family ... to then have us vote for you?” she said at the time, in front of a cheering group of staffers. “The tale of two cities is not about rich and poor. The tale of two cities is police and the rest of us!”
Councilman Kalman Yeger (D-Brooklyn) suggested that statement will be a problem for him when casting a vote for Ike.
After reciting a dictionary definition of the word “pimp,” Yeger criticized her use of the term.
“They’re his children,” he said of the former mayor’s family. “His kids have gone through a lot in his eight years of being mayor.”