The City Council’s finance chair wants to solve the mystery of how many of Mayor Eric Adams’ hires are funded by agency budget lines — fearing it may “exacerbate” hiring issues at pivotal city agencies.
The letter, sent Feb. 18 by Councilmember Justin Brannan (D-Brooklyn) and shared with THE CITY, asks budget director Jacques Jiha for a full breakdown of how many salary lines are “borrowed” at city agencies to pay for jobs at City Hall.
“This has only served to exacerbate personnel issues with many agencies — already skeletal from several rounds of PEGs and hiring freezes — having no choice but to carry millions in budget lines on loan to City Hall,” he wrote.
Agencies are allocated a certain number of budget lines in their expense budget for staff, broken out by positions, titles, salaries, and other expenses. Department insiders told THE CITY they were not happy with the idea of paying for staffers for the mayor’s office.
Brannan, who is running for city comptroller, told THE CITY that the Department of Buildings, for example, is carrying around $2 million in salary lines for City Hall staffers. The department has seen 25% of its budgeted workforce eliminated since 2022, the New York Post reported last year.
Budget director Jacques Jiha attends a City Hall budget press conference, Nov. 20, 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
It’s unclear how many of these jobs at mayoral offices or working at City Hall are paid through city agency budgets.
Brannan in his letter said he’d like an answer before hearings for the next fiscal year 2026 budget negotiations start March 5.
“This is an old budget trick being abused at a time when some agencies are still skeletal and struggling with hiring freezes,” he told THE CITY.
Concerned staffers in the Adams administration reached out to him as whistleblowers on the practice, he said.
“I have become increasingly concerned that agencies cannot hire for open positions concerned with public safety and revenue collection because they are carrying millions in salary lines lent to City Hall,” Brannan said.
A spokesperson for Adams, Liz Garcia, said they would review the letter.
A spokesperson for the buildings department, Andrew Rudansky, said the staffers are part of the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, which enforces regulations on Airbnb and other rental platforms.
“In an effort to maintain public safety, DOB has contributed a contingent of inspectors and investigators to the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, which handles investigations into illegal short term rental issues and are critical in protecting New Yorkers from unlawful activities,” Rudansky, said in a statement, noting it’s around $2.3 million annually.
‘Misstep’ Highlights Practice
An example of the practice recently came to light after Jasmine Ray, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Sports, Recreation and Wellness, in early February wrote a now-deleted post on Instagram stating that she, in her official capacity, supported President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender athletes, which runs counter to the city’s policies regarding youth sports.
In exposing the post, Gothamist noted that her $161,000 annual salary is paid for by the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation.
Ray later told the outlet in an email that invoking her title was “inappropriate” and that she had deleted the post under the guidance of the mayor’s chief of staff. She told THE CITY in an Instagram message that the post was “definitely a misstep!”
“I take full responsibility for the error in judgment,” she wrote, saying that she was “committed to maintaining the separation between my personal beliefs and my professional responsibilities.”
Her biography on the mayor’s sports office website yields a 404 page not found, which Ray told THE CITY would be flagged.
One Parks staffer, who asked THE CITY to withhold their name out of fear of retribution, said that already cash-strapped agency shouldn’t be spending on an employee that doesn’t even work for them.
“The Parks Department budget is so thin, spending dollars on something that doesn’t directly benefit the agency is disappointing,” they said.
In another headline-making instance of City Hall siphoning dollars away from agency budgets, a former top aide to Adams, Timothy Pearson, was paid through the Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit organization that functions as a quasi-government agency, even though he did not work for the EDC.
He was paid $242,600 a year but stepped down last fall after his home was raided by federal authorities. His arrangement with the EDC allowed him to continue collecting his $124,000 NYPD pension.
The retired NYPD inspector and longtime friend of Adams was named in four separate sexual harassment lawsuits and was also the subject of a Department of Investigation probe following a melee he was involved in at a migrant shelter.
DOI released its findings last week, finding Pearson violated city rules. The report confirmed reporting by THE CITY in 2023 that Pearson instigated a physical altercation with security guards after refusing to show his ID. He shoved both a male and female guard, with some witnesses saying he put his hands around the female guard’s neck.
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