Mayor Adams’ new ‘lead czar’ is ex-NYCHA aide who repped agency boss accused of lying about lead inspections

Jasmine Blake, a former spokeswoman for a onetime NYCHA boss accused of lying about lead inspections, was tapped Tuesday to spearhead the Adams administration’s efforts to root out the toxic heavy metal from residential buildings across the city.

Blake, who served as a top press aide at NYCHA between 2017 and 2019, will in her new post be tasked with coordinating lead abatement and reporting efforts across the city government’s housing-focused agencies, Mayor Adams’ office said in a statement issued after her appointment was first reported by the Daily News.

Lead is mostly found in certain types of paint. Ingesting chips of it or inhaling the dust it creates can cause a range of severe long-term health complications, including cognitive issues, with children under age 6 being at especially high risk.

Blake is already the chief of staff to Jessica Katz, Adams’ chief housing officer. She will continue in that role alongside picking up the new abatement job, in which she will helm the Adams administration’s crackdown on lead paint in both public and private residential buildings, according to Adams’ office.

Her newly created post is formally called “citywide lead compliance officer.”

However, three sources told The News they’ve been informed Blake will effectively serve as the city’s “lead czar,” a job ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio tapped former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia for in 2018 following a string of damning revelations about the heavy metal being detected in NYCHA complexes.

Since taking office last year, Adams has had a penchant for appointing “czars” for a variety of initiatives, including rat mitigation.

“Under this new position, we will be able to improve interagency communication, strengthen our lead-related programs, and monitor compliance with city, state and federal laws to better protect all New Yorkers,” Blake said in a statement about her new gig.

While at NYCHA, Blake was a top spokeswoman for Shola Olatoye, the public Housing Authority’s chairwoman and chief executive.

In January 2018, the Department of Investigation concluded Olatoye had falsely said in sworn testimony before the City Council that 4,200 NYCHA workers had received special training on inspecting public housing apartments for lead paint. In fact, the Department of Investigation found more than 85% of those NYCHA staffers never received such training.

In a statement pushing back on the watchdog agency’s finding at the time, Blake said Olayote “was truthful and relied on the facts provided to her. She was told staff had been trained.”

A few months later, Olatoye resigned from NYCHA amid outrage over her alleged lies. Blake — who has never been accused of any wrongdoing — left NYCHA about a year after Olatoye.

Since 2012, NYCHA has admitted multiple times to falsely certifying it completed required lead paint inspections and cleanups.

As first reported by The News in 2018, while unlicensed NYCHA workers conducted inspections, hundreds of children under 6 who lived in the city’s public housing complexes between 2012 and 2016 tested positive for levels of lead in their bloodstreams that exceeded 5 micrograms per deciliter — a rate that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control say can cause health issues.

In a Council hearing later Tuesday, Bronx Councilwoman Pierina Sanchez called Blake a “brilliant public servant,” but said she’s concerned that her appointment comes against the backdrop of the city government’s history of “falsifying documents” and “lying to the public” about lead abatement.

“In this context, there is a lot of mistrust, and Jasmine Blake, who has been appointed as the new lead czar, was a part of that previous administration, and so the first question is: How will the administration be able to gain the public’s trust in the context of this announcement?” Sanchez asked at the hearing.

Department of Housing Preservation and Development Deputy Commissioner for Enforcement AnnMarie Santiago, whose agency plays a role in the city’s lead abatement efforts, dismissed the notion that Blake’s appointment would undermine public trust.

“The appointment of a lead czar, I think, will move us forward to continue the previous administration’s focus on lead,” Santiago told Sanchez. “You’ve referenced some scandals that have happened — we don’t need a scandal for us to keep going. I think we are fully, 100% behind this mission.”

In response to the damning findings in 2018, the de Blasio administration ramped up lead inspections at NYCHA complexes. The city also expanded screening of private apartment buildings for the hazardous metal.

Alongside the appointment of Blake, Adams’ administration released a new report showing that the number of New York City children under age 6 who tested positive for dangerous levels of lead in their bloodstreams dropped from 37,344 in 2000 to 2,557 in 2021, de Blasio’s last year in office. The report does not include rates for testing conducted since Adams took office on Jan. 1, 2022.

The report also states that, while the data show improvement over time, there is “no safe blood lead level,” and “no treatment to reverse any harm caused by an elevated blood lead level.”

In Tuesday’s hearing, Queens Councilwoman Lynn Schulman, who heads the chamber’s Health Committee, said any child testing positive for elevated blood lead levels is a failure by the city.

“The only acceptable number of lead paint exposures is zero,” she said.

With Michael Gartland