The Two City Halls
Seriously, is that it? Is Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte really going to face no discipline for using his city car for unsanctioned trips to Maine beyond paying the city back $1,789 for gas and tolls?
It sure looks that way — especially since Mayor de Blasio is doubling down on his defense of Ponte, who logged 18,500 miles on trips to Maine over 90 days.
That’s one-fourth of an entire year and included 35 weekdays — on 29 of which he claimed to have been on the job.
Lucky for Ponte he’s not lower down on the city food chain, or he might be facing some serious payback — maybe even getting fired.
Tuesday’s Post reported that two Department of Environmental Protection workers lost their jobs for using city vehicles to run personal errands last year.
And the city Conflicts of Interest Board, in a pointed series of tweets, cited four recent cases of workers at three agencies who were fined, suspended and/or put on probation for abusing city vehicles — one after only a single violation.
The tweetstorm ended with the message: “so yeah, don’t use a City vehicle for a non-City purpose.”
Which is precisely what Ponte and over a dozen of his top subordinates did, says the Department of Investigation — which added, in response to the mayor: “There can be no defense of this behavior.”
But defending it what see-no-evil Bill de Blasio is doing — citing his “absolute faith” in Ponte, defending the money he spent as chump change compared to the city’s $84 billion budget and insisting his commissioner is entitled to some “downtime.”
Downtime? Ponte claimed he was on 24/7 call, yet he remained in the wilds of Maine and refused to respond to a single department emergency — of which there were many during his extended stays up north.
That certainly isn’t being on non-stop call, nor do most people get to count their “downtime” as full workdays. It’s the outright theft of taxpayers’ money — and it should cost Commissioner Ponte his job.
If it doesn’t, it will mean Bill de Blasio is right about there being two New Yorks: one for his inner circle and another for every other city employee.