De Blasio’s bill comes due: The former mayor must pay his big fine

We invited this week’s tribunal ruling, much than 1,500 days aft the extremity of Bill de Blasio’s embarrassing tally for president, that the past politician owes the City of New York — that’s you and you and you, the taxpayers — $475,000 for misusing nationalist funds connected a constabulary information item arsenic helium jetted astir the state successful pursuit of a governmental brass ringing that was ever evidently retired of reach. It’s ne'er excessively precocious for ethical comeuppance, adjacent years aft the fact.

In a confidential advisory sentiment dated May 15, 2019, the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board had told the then-mayor that taxpayers could screen salaries and overtime of officers, but not food, lodging and different costs. De Blasio past flatly ignored the guidance — prompting the Board to contented a hefty good connected June 15, 2023.

The chutzpah didn’t extremity there. De Blasio past went to tribunal that precise time to effort to get the effort to marque him wage up dismissed, claiming his usage of payer funds was based connected murky guidance by the morals board. That conscionable wasn’t true.

It isn’t often a judge’s written rhetoric reads arsenic a scoff, but that’s the lone mode to construe Acting Manhattan authorities Supreme Court Justice Shahabuddeen Ally’s 80-page ruling. Contra Big Bill, Ally said the politician was “expressly and specifically informed” that the metropolis could not ft the measure for his information costs. His ineligible challenge, said Ally, was “entirely baseless,” arsenic good arsenic “perplexing.” 

But wait, there’s more. De Blasio’s “position fundamentally eliminates his ain bureau successful the choices helium made,” helium wrote, adding that “the singular contention that helium is someway not taxable to the City’s conflicts-of-interest laws” is plainly meritless.

And so, the tab the erstwhile politician tried to pawn disconnected with astir arsenic overmuch grace arsenic the feline who inelegantly scampers to the bath conscionable earlier the edifice cheque is delivered is backmost successful beforehand of him: $319,794 (and 20 cents) successful airfare and different question costs, and $5,000 successful fines for each of 31, number ‘em, out-of-state trips. 

Readers whitethorn retrieve however the city’s Department of Investigation successful 2021 dinged de Blasio not lone for the statesmanlike campaign, but to assistance determination his girl from her Brooklyn flat to Gracie Mansion, arsenic good arsenic ferrying his lad Dante astir New York and to assemblage successful Connecticut.

“It’s fundamentally a concierge service,” said the commissioner backmost then, “primarily for Dante.”

There are of course, much superior offenses by nationalist officials. We don’t present assertion that de Blasio is the worst feline retired there. But that shouldn’t beryllium the question. The question should beryllium whether a politician of New York honors his work to support payer funds, oregon looks for opportunities to crook them to his idiosyncratic and governmental gain.

Some commentators suggest that the mayoralty of Bill de Blasio is already looking beauteous bully successful hindsight. We don’t quality that (at slightest earlier COVID hit) helium did a bully occupation reducing transgression portion dialing down the footprint of the NYPD, and gathering a cosmopolitan pre-K programme that hundreds of thousands of families trust on. But anyone trying to rehabilitate de Blasio’s representation has to reckon with his sanctimonious arrogance and idiosyncratic penchant to disregard rules erstwhile they hap to use to him. It conscionable wasn’t precise pretty.