New York Post Deputy mayor’s Rivington timeline doesn’t match de Blasio’s by Yoav Gonen and Michael Gartland

New York Post
Deputy mayor’s Rivington timeline doesn’t match de Blasio’s
Yoav Gonen and Michael Gartland
09/30/2016

First Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris on Thursday said he told Mayor de Blasio about the Rivington nursing-home fiasco in early March — contradicting Hizzoner’s own account that he learned about it weeks later from a newspaper story.

Testifying before the City Council, Shorris said he first learned of the botched deal in late February and by March 1 had asked Department of Investigation Commissioner Mark Peters to launch a probe into how the city allowed the non-profit home to be sold for luxury housing.

Pressed on the timeline after 2¹/₂ hours of testimony, Shorris said he had informed the mayor of the troubling situation within three days of his call to Peters.

“So I was spending a day or two, three days — I can’t remember the exact time — to garner the facts, because when I brief the mayor I like to have a comprehensive set of information to give him,” Shorris told reporters.

But the mayor has said he didn’t learn about the mess until The Wall Street Journal reported on March 22 that Comptroller Scott Stringer was investigating the land deal — which netted the buyer of the nursing home a $72 million windfall when it flipped the property in February.

At a March 28 press conference at NYPD headquarters, de Blasio said he became aware that the nursing home had been sold “when it became public.”

“I’m not happy about the fact that I didn’t hear about it in advance, before it became public,” he said at the time.

City Councilmember Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan), chair of the Committee on Governmental Operations, said the hearing elicited a number of contradictions from prior accounts from City Hall.

“This is one of the few conversations that is happening under oath, and I think that the facts that have been reported are different than what was testified here today,” he told The Post.

“It’s hard to believe the lack of knowledge when there’s so much e-mail and other documentation that shows that the administration was aware of it at City Hall as early as December [2015], if not before that.”

City Hall officials later walked back Shorris’ timeline, saying his review of the deal lasted several weeks — not days — before he told the mayor.

“The First Deputy Mayor has said all along that he informed the mayor in tandem with the mayor’s reading of the late-March news reports. That’s a fact,” said mayoral spokesman Eric Phillips.

“Today, Mr. Shorris remembered that time period being a few days after he called on DOI to investigate the matter, when in reality it was a couple of weeks.”

DOI found that top City Hall officials knew or should have known about the deal, where the city got $16.1 million in exchange for lifting two restrictions on the property’s uses.

Stringer found mismanagement and miscommunication at City Hall, but no misconduct.

City Hall officials later walked back Shorris’ timeline, saying his review of the deal lasted several weeks — not days — before he told the mayor.

“The First Deputy Mayor has said all along that he informed the mayor in tandem with the mayor’s reading of the late-March news reports. That’s a fact,” said mayoral spokesman Eric Phillips.

“Today, Mr. Shorris remembered that time period being a few days after he called on DOI to investigate the matter, when in reality it was a couple of weeks.”

DOI found that top City Hall officials knew or should have known about the deal, where the city got $16.1 million in exchange for lifting two restrictions on the property’s uses.

Stringer found mismanagement and miscommunication at City Hall, but no misconduct.

Issue: 
Good Government