De Blasio Hit With Record Fine for Misuse of NYC Resources

Laura Nahmias
·3 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was ordered to pay almost a half-million dollars by the city Conflicts of Interest Board for using taxpayer money for his security detail during his short-lived run for president in 2019.

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De Blasio, who served two terms through 2021, campaigned briefly as part of a presidential bid that saw him reach 1% in some polls before ultimately dropping out. During his travels, he used city funds to pay expenses for members of the New York Police Department who served as the security detail for his family.

They racked up $319,794.20 in travel costs, including airfare, car rentals, hotel stays and meals, said the COIB, which ordered him to repay the costs. The board also fined the former mayor $155,000 for the misuse of resources, the largest fine in its history, according to a statement Thursday, which said de Blasio “disregarded the board’s advice.”

De Blasio, 62, used city funds to pay the security details’ expenses despite receiving an explicit order from COIB on May 15, 2019, that such expenses weren’t allowed. The board told de Blasio that while the city could pay the costs of NYPD officers’ salaries and overtime while they were serving on the mayor’s detail, using city money to pay for the extra travel expenses for his presidential campaign constituted using “city resources for a non-city purpose.”

The board also said “using an official position for financial gain or ‘personal or private advantage’” was in violation of the city’s charter.

The day after receiving the opinion, May 16, 2019, de Blasio formally embarked on his presidential campaign.

Read more: NYC’s de Blasio ends presidential run after low poll numbers

An attorney for de Blasio said in a statement that the former mayor will file a lawsuit in response to the board’s decision, to stop it from taking effect.

“COIB’s action — which seeks to saddle elected officials with security costs that the city has properly borne for decades — is dangerous, beyond the scope of their powers, and illegal,” Andrew Celli, de Blasio’s attorney, said in the statement.

Earlier Fines

De Blasio’s fundraising and campaign practices have drawn scrutiny from regulators before. Last month, he was fined $53,100 by the Federal Elections Commission for improperly routing large sums of money to his presidential campaign from a pair of state and federal political action committees he had created.

In 2016 and 2017, he was the subject of dual probes by both the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the Southern District US Attorney’s Office for his fundraising practices.

The Manhattan DA examined whether de Blasio had tried to circumvent state election donation limits by routing donations to county committees. De Blasio was never charged, but former District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. admonished the mayor in a letter announcing the closure of the investigation, saying that the transactions “appear contrary to the intent and spirit of the laws that impose candidate contribution limits, laws which are meant to prevent ‘corruption and the appearance of corruption’ in the campaign financing process.”

The US Attorney’s Office scrutinized whether de Blasio had granted favors in exchange for donations to his political nonprofit and mayoral campaign but also ultimately decided not to bring charges. In a letter announcing the closure of the investigation, then-acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim said the office had decided not to charge the mayor despite finding multiple occasions on which de Blasio and his representatives sought donations from people who wanted “official favors from the city, after which the mayor made or directed inquiries to relevant city agencies on behalf of those donors.”

(Updates with details about de Blasio’s past fundraising practices starting in 10th paragraph)

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