The charter review commission convened by the City Council will recommend tightened oversight of city government leases, following reports that an appointee of Mayor Eric Adams steered a lease to the billionaire owner of a Wall Street office building who’d donated generously to the mayor’s legal defense fund.
The commission is set to release its preliminary recommendations for a wide variety of reforms to the city charter on Friday. In December the Council set up a charter review board, known as the Commission to Strengthen Local Democracy, in response to Adams creating his own commission, which has recommended changes to the charter that would curb the Council’s powers over development.
The process by which city government spends billions of dollars contracting with private landlords to lease office space for city agencies came into question late last year after THE CITY reported on the selection of an office tower at 14 Wall St. as the new headquarters for the city Department for the Aging, an agency that currently occupies a city-owned building.
That lease deal was supervised by Jesse Hamilton, an official at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) who is a pal of the mayor’s, while the tower is owned by Alexander Rovt, a billionaire who months earlier raised $15,000 for the mayor’s legal defense fund. Politico reported that Hamilton personally intervened to cut off a pending lease for the aging agency and instead steer the deal to Rovt.
At a subsequent Council oversight hearing led by Councilmember Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn), Hamilton was a no-show but DCAS officials conceded that they’d initially picked another site at 250 Broadway and made a “best and final offer” before Hamilton interceded and the negotiations switched to 14 Wall St.
The city Department of Investigation (DOI) subsequently launched a probe that is still ongoing.
The current City Charter assigns the City Planning Commission to do initial review and approval of leases, with the City Council ultimately having the power to intervene.
The charter commission now proposes to assign lease reviews to the city comptroller, an elected fiscal watchdog independent of City Hall.
The reform language would require the city agency arranging the lease — most often DCAS — to provide details on the cost benefits of proposed leases and provide a list of alternative sites that were considered.
On Thursday Restler praised the Council’s proposed charter changes, stating, “It’s clear that we need more rigorous and independent oversight of lease agreements involving the city of New York. These are very substantial financial transactions and we need to ensure that taxpayer money is being spent in optimal ways.”
He noted the investigation of Hamilton’s role in the proposed 14 Wall St. lease, stating, “There have been too many instances in the Adams administration of shady dealings. This proposal would help ensure that lease transactions are above board.”
The proposed lease remains on hold. The 14 Wall St. dealings all happened behind closed doors because the process by which the city chooses which landlords win lucrative leases is handled privately.
“This is our attempt to place the responsibility in the appropriate office and also making sure that office has the appropriate information,” said Danielle Castaldi-Micca, executive director of the council’s commission. “We think the comptroller’s office may be a more appropriate place to review what are essentially contracts.”
She did not directly link the proposed change to the 14 Wall St. affair, but noted, “I’ve been in government a long time, our commissioners have been in government or government adjacent for a long time. Sometimes there are illustrative examples.”
The recommended reforms to be released Friday are preliminary. A series of public hearings starting June 16 and ending July 1 will then take place, followed by a final report later this summer.
The Council could get this proposed reform on the November ballot, but if not, it will likely be put before voters next year — after the mayoral election.
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