What Adams owes NYC: The mayor should be wholly transparent about dinners and club membership payments
As a general rule, we have no problem with Mayor Adams’ active nightlife. He’s allowed to hold court in informal settings with friends and advisers. And it’s perfectly fine for a mayor to have some fun after the sun goes down, so long as it doesn’t impair his ability to do everything else the second toughest job in America demands.
But when running up big tabs, it matters whether a mayor pays his own bills or gets comped — and who might be paying his bills, questions unsatisfactorily answered by the mayor and his staff in a recent New York Times story. Though since its publication, Adams has insisted “I pay every bill” and bristled at the notion that he has a responsibility to produce receipts for private dinners, claiming the press has “a rule for Eric and then a rule for everyone else,” that’s not so.
During the de Blasio administration, this page and others correctly obsessed about whether those with business before the city might be getting special treatment due to money funneled to the mayor’s nonprofit.
Adams isn’t required to release his receipts, but for the sake of transparency, he should. The scrutiny on entanglements should extend to Adams’ regular appearances at Zero Bond, a private members club costing $5,000 upfront and $4,000 per year. He’s not a member, and while City Hall says he visits as a guest, which is allowed, they won’t say of whom. It matters. If the man holding the door open is the club’s owner, Scott Sartiano — who Adams named to the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art — say so. A standing invite may well be fine so long as there’s full transparency on who’s giving the favor so we can monitor what they could be getting in return.
Adams chose as his chief of staff a connected lawyer and party insider who had dozens of clients with business before the city. Sunlight is the only way to reassure New Yorkers that the public’s interest is always coming first.
