Former Mayor Bill de Blasio has agreed to pay the city $329,794 for improperly using city police as his security detail during his short-lived 2019 presidential campaign, a watchdog agency announced Wednesday. The settlement ends a court battle between de Blasio and the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board, which had ordered the ex-mayor to pay a steeper $474,000 penalty in 2023.
The agreed-upon sum includes the $319,794 that it cost city taxpayers to send the NYPD on 31 out-of-city trips during de Blasio’s four-month run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, plus a $10,000 fine. De Blasio has already paid $100,000 of the penalty and will pay the rest in quarterly installments of $14,360 over the next four years, the Conflicts of Interest Board said.
“I acknowledge that, by having the city pay for the travel expenses incurred as a result of my security detail traveling with my wife and me during my presidential campaign, and by failing to reimburse the city for these expenses, I acted in conflict with my official duties,” de Blasio wrote as part of the official settlement. “I made a mistake and I deeply regret it.”
The board told de Blasio’s lawyer in May 2019 that he could not legally use his NYPD security detail on out-of-state campaign trips, after the mayor had inquired about the possibility. One day after getting that guidance, de Blasio announced his campaign and used the detail anyway.
COIB started proceedings against de Blasio in 2022 — the first such case ever brought against a former mayor — and ordered him the following year to pay the $319,794 along with a $155,000 fine. De Blasio immediately sued in state court, and a judge rejected his complaint this past January, but de Blasio filed papers to appeal the ruling. In the settlement, which de Blasio signed May 9, he agreed to withdraw his legal case in exchange for the board significantly lowering the fine — which came in response to protests by de Blasio’s lawyers that “his financial situation does not enable him to pay” the full amount.
De Blasio acknowledged his mistake in a post on X Wednesday morning, adding, “Now it’s time to move forward.” Reached by text message, he declined to comment further.
A 2021 probe by another city watchdog already concluded that de Blasio had misused the NYPD during his campaign — and also by getting police to help his daughter move apartments and drive his son to and from college. But de Blasio’s attorneys previously said he would appeal any ruling that he owed the city money and defended his use of the detail as a response to “unprecedented threats of political violence.”
COIB held a trial in December 2022, taking witness testimony and relying on an interview de Blasio and his wife Chirlane McCray gave in 2021 for the initial probe by the Department of Investigation.
Since leaving office at the end of 2021, de Blasio has worked as a visiting lecturer at New York University, Harvard University’s Institute of Politics and the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy.
