City Council Member Gentile (photo: William Alatriste)
Who knew what when? How sound is the chain of command at City Hall? Are top de Blasio officials’ decisions clearly communicated to agency commissioners? Was a former commissioner asked to leave her position? How much influence did a powerful city labor union wield in the decisions around the removal of deed restrictions on Rivington House, the Lower East Side nursing home facility that is set to become luxury condominiums?
Why hasn’t anyone been held accountable for what the administration has admitted was a major mistake?
These are some of the questions that came up at a City Council oversight hearing on the set of Rivington transactions that has become a black eye for the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio. Some of them - and many others - were answered to varying degrees of clarity, though some remain largely unanswered despite the six-hour hearing on Thursday at City Hall during which several top de Blasio officials testified.
In a sometimes contentious interrogation of administration officials, City Council members went over the nitty-gritty details of the deed changes at Rivington House, which was flipped by its short-term owner for a significant profit after a series of miscommunications among city officials and a few still mysterious conversations.
At the hearing, First Deputy Mayor Tony Shorris was the first to testify, before Corporation Counsel Zachary Carter, and Lisette Camilo, commissioner of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. Shorris took complete responsibility for the missteps that allowed DCAS to lift the deed restriction at Rivington, despite admitting that communication failures occurred at multiple occasions and by multiple parties. He said he had informed his top aides that only one of two deed restrictions on Rivington should be lifted, so that it would remain a healthcare facility, but that the decision was not communicated to the DCAS commissioner at the time, Stacey Cumberbatch.
Questions about communications, timelines, procedures, and policy were asked and answered. But while some of those responses were clear and unquestionable, some doubt remained about the administration’s efforts in lifting the deed restriction and its response after the controversial transaction came to light. Six of the top questions that remain incompletely answered:
When did First Deputy Mayor Shorris tell Mayor de Blasio about the Rivington transaction?
In his opening testimony, Shorris said he was informed by DCAS Commissioner Camilo in late February this year that Rivington House had been sold to a real estate developer. His immediate priority, he said, was to report the deal to the Department of Investigation. He directed Camilo to contact DOI, which she did, and also placed a call himself to DOI Commissioner Mark Peters. Of that time, Shorris said, “I spent the next few days trying to understand what transpired and then I informed the Mayor as news accounts were beginning to run -- the first time he heard anything about the matter.”
As per DOI’s report, Camilo requested the inquiry on March 1. The first big news report about Rivington came out March 22, when the Wall Street Journal revealed that Comptroller Scott Stringer was looking into the deed restriction removal. The mayor also insisted at a press conference on March 28 that he had only heard about Rivington “when it became public.”
City Hall has attempted to downplay this gap between when Shorris found out what had happened and spent a few days gathering information and de Blasio saying he only found out through news reports weeks later. De Blasio spokesperson Eric Phillips told the New York Post on Thursday, “The First Deputy Mayor has said all along that he informed the mayor in tandem with the mayor’s reading of the late-March news reports. That’s a fact. Today, Mr. Shorris remembered that time period being a few days after he called on DOI to investigate the matter, when in reality it was a couple of weeks.”
Did Shorris clearly say to his staff that he wanted Rivington to remain a healthcare facility?
Shorris met with a number of top administration officials -- including Commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development Vicki Been, Human Resources Administration Commissioner Steven Banks, Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen -- who presented him with various options for Rivington House, including converting it to affordable housing. Shorris, however, preferred that it remain a health care facility.
This decision, he told the City Council, was not directly communicated to other top officials. Rather, Shorris said he told his own staff and assumed that they would then have passed his instructions along, though he could provide no proof of the meeting where the decision was taken or explain why they failed to clearly inform DCAS of his decision. The two staff members who Shorris said would have known of his decision were Dom Williams, his chief of staff, and Sarah Samis, a senior policy advisor.
Has the communication and decision-making process under Shorris been changed?
Although Shorris conceded that on Rivington his decisions were not adequately relayed and that there were gaps in communication between him and other top officials, he offered little in the way of fixes that have been made in that regard. He staunchly defended the administration’s record and insisted that Rivington was an “episodic” failure that would be prevented by an overhaul of DCAS’ process for deed restrictions. He insisted that he could not personally follow up on the innumerable decisions he makes each day considering his portfolio of about 30 city agencies and his coordinating role over people who supervise the city’s 350,000 employees. Shorris wouldn’t say, when asked by Council Member Ben Kallos, whether he would offload any of the city agencies he personally oversees.
“Overall, I would’ve liked to hear some management plan that would address the lack of communications that resulted in this outcome,” said Council Member Vincent Gentile, in a Friday phone interview with Gotham Gazette. Gentile chairs the Council’s Oversight and Investigations committee which held the joint hearing with the Committee on Governmental Operations chaired by Kallos.
Gentile said it was “still hard to fathom” that Shorris was unaware of the Rivington controversy till February 2016, since just two months earlier, the community was up in arms about the deal and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and the local Council member, Margaret Chin, had publicly raised the issue. “That’s a bit incredulous for me to accept,” Gentile said.
For Gentile, the problems of Rivington go beyond deed restrictions and speak to issues in how the administration determines policy. “I was hoping to get more discussion on who’s responsible in determining what is in the best interest of the city,” he said, referring to the city’s failure to gauge the best use of Rivington.
Why doesn’t Shorris or his staff review weekly agency memos?
In his first few months on the job, Shorris reviewed weekly memos from city agencies to monitor implementation of the administration’s policies. In the investigations into Rivington, it emerged that memos that included information about the deed restriction removal had been sent to Shorris but he had failed to read them. After getting a better feel for city agencies, their leaders, and their machinations, Shorris said, he felt less need to read the memos he continued to require, moving to a more episodic review.
Even in hindsight, he said, those memos would not have set off alarms for him since they did not overtly say that Rivington would become luxury housing and that the transaction would have likely gone through.
Shorris continues to receive these memos from agencies and said that he reviews “some of them from time to time” and that his staff reviews them as well, but they are progress updates rather than decision memos. He did not say whether he had put in a system in place to ensure a more thorough review of these memos or a clear way in which agency commissioners should flag essential items. He expects calls or emails in such cases, he said.
Why did former DCAS Commissioner Stacey Cumberbatch sign off on Rivington and why exactly did she leave DCAS?
One of the key decision makers in the Rivington deal was Cumberbatch, former head of DCAS. Cumberbatch left her position at DCAS in December 2015 and took a position at the city’s municipal health care system, New York City Health + Hospitals. She has since retired. The offices of the Attorney General and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which are both still investigating Rivington, asked the Council to only call current city employees to testify, which precluded Cumberbatch.
This meant that a number of questions that likely could only have been answered by Cumberbatch were instead posed to her successor, Lisette Camilo. There was little explanation for why Cumberbatch signed off on the Rivington deal or about the communication between her staff and Shorris’ people.
Also unclear is the process by which Cumberbatch left DCAS. Shorris said on Thursday that he had to sign off on her departure and move to Health + Hospitals, and that he did so when Cumberbatch presented the opportunity to him. As he was pressed by Council members, he made a clear effort to only repeat that line, rather than answer whether he had encouraged her to look elsewhere first.
Why was there no communication with Council Member Margaret Chin and Borough President Gale Brewer?
“All of us were shocked,” Chin told Gotham Gazette on Friday, looking back at when it emerged that Rivington was to be sold to a luxury housing developer. Chin and Brewer had fought for Rivington, which was going bankrupt under nursing home provider VillageCare, to remain a nursing home and had celebrated when it was taken over by another provider, the Allure Group.
“We didn’t even know there was a hearing,” she said, referring to a public hearing before the sale which was advertised by DCAS for one day only, without naming Rivington and with the wrong address. When asked if she got the answers to these questions from the administration, Chin said, “No. It turns out, they didn’t know either.”
Now she’s waiting for the next steps forward. “There are still unanswered questions about Rivington as well as the new facility,” she said. The de Blasio administration has put forward plans for a new senior affordable housing and health care facility in the community, which will be paid for in part by the $16 million the city received for lifting the Rivington deed restrictions. But Chin also hasn’t given up on Rivington and said the administration should use all its energy and options to get the property back, including eminent domain if need be.
Chin also wants to know what role state authorities had to play, since they are in charge of regulating Medicare and nursing homes, and who will be held responsible and how, once all investigations are complete. “What changes are going to happen internally, that’s something they should communicate to the public and to all of us,” she said.
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
New York City Hall
What to watch for this week in New York politics:
As the week begins the country is anticipating the lone Vice Presidential debate of the 2016 race to the White House, which will take place between Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican Mike Pence on Tuesday evening. And, the second of three Presidential debates scheduled is set for Sunday evening.
In New York, the week begins fairly quietly due to the Rosh Hashanah holiday, though at noon at 1 Police Plaza Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner O’Neill will host a press conference to discuss crime statistics.
A new advocacy walk from New York City to Albany continues as the week begins - per Alliance for Quality Education, which is organizing the effort: "Students, parents, educators, elected officials and advocates from across the state gathered at Tweed [on Sunday] to kick-off a 150 mile walk from New York City to Albany. The “Ed Walk for CFE” is supported by 85 organizations and commemorates the historic school funding case with a simple demand: the time is now for the New York governor and legislature to finally pay up. This October marks the 10-year anniversary of the final Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) trial that decided that New York State was violating the constitutional rights of millions of NY students by deliberately underfunding public schools in Black, Latino, and low-income communities. Yet a decade has passed and these communities are still owed nearly $4 billion in funding, so communities from across the state are walking. Walkers and supporters are demanding Governor Cuomo and the NYS legislature make a commitment to a 2-year full phase-in of CFE funds during Cuomo’s last 2 years of this term. Recent reports show widespread inequity within New York State, as 71% of senate districts are owed more than $50 million."
As always, there's a great deal happening all over the city, with many events to be aware of - see our day-by-day rundown below.
***Do you have events or topics for us to include in an upcoming Week Ahead in New York Politics?
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The run of the week in detail:
Monday
Monday Rosh Hashanah continues and there are relatively few political events scheduled.
Mayor de Blasio is holding the aforementioned noon press conference on crime stats.
On Monday Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul will lead two events in Buffalo, at 10 a.m. she will convene a forum to discuss implementation of laws to combat heroin and opioid abuse and addiction in Western New York. At 1 p.m., she will host a "women's leadership roundtable with members of the Amherst Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Women's Business Owners."
On Monday at 11 a.m. in Sunnyside, Queens, "Majority Leader Jimmy Van Bramer, Queens Parks Commissioner Dorothy Lewandowski, Community Board 2, and residents will hold a press conference to announce that the City Council has secured funding to purchase and renovate the former Phipps playground in Sunnyside, and turn it into a public park."
On Monday at 6:30 p.m., Public Advocate Letitia James will speak at the Consulate General of India New York's International Day of Non-Violence.
Tuesday
On Tuesday at 10 a.m., Breast Cancer Awareness Month will be kicked off by Staten Island Borough President James Oddo and Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul, at an event on Staten Island with breast cancer screenings and “announcements about efforts to raise awareness and increase screening.”
At 11 a.m. Tuesday, "Tired of Waiting, Community to Rally for Safety Improvements on 111th Street" at City Hall, led by City Council Member Julissa Ferreras-Copeland, who will be joined by "concerned mothers and families of Corona and Jackson Heights; Community Board 4 members and transportation safety advocates."
The City Planning Commission will hold its next review session at 1 p.m. on Tuesday.
On Tuesday at 1 p.m. in the Bronx, "Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. will join the American Planning Association (APA) as the organization names The Bronx’s Arthur Avenue as one of the Great Streets of America, as part of the organization’s annual list of Great Places in America in celebration of National Planning Month."
The Vice Presidential Debate will be held at 9 p.m. Tuesday at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia and moderated by Elaine Quijano of CBS News.
Wednesday
The Sixth Annual MWBE Forum will be held on Wednesday and Thursday by New York state government at the Empire State Plaza Convention Center in Albany.
At 8 a.m. Wednesday, “City & State’s new Borough 50 Series will recognize Manhattan’s top 50 community leaders at a breakfast.” This event will focus on community leaders and not government officials.
At 8 a.m. Wednesday, the NYC Charter School Center will hold “Recent National Labor Relations Board Decision: What Does it Mean for NYC Charter Schools?” Participants will discuss the impact of the NLRB deciding “that charter school labor disputes with their employees’ unions fell under federal labor law and NLRB jurisdiction and were not subject to the state labor law and the New York State’s Public Employment Relations Board (PERB).”
At 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, the New York City Food Policy Center will hold a “Food as Medicine Breakfast Seminar.”
The next City Planning Commission public meeting will be held at 10 a.m. Wednesday.
At the City Council on Wednesday:
On Wednesday at 11 a.m. in Albany, "Supporters and experts will announce a new statewide campaign to Stop the Cuomo Tax and end his costly bailout of nuclear power. The campaign is led by Food and Water Watch and the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG)."
At 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, the Brooklyn Historical Society will hold “Block by Block: Exploring Brooklyn with Pat Kiernan and Bill Helmreich.”
At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, BRIC will hold “Cops and Community: Innovations Around Policing.” This event is expected to “bring together community leaders, activists, police and scholars to create a new blueprint for finding solutions to the violence, tension and mistrust that exists between cops and the community.” Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams will deliver opening remarks, and BRIC TV Senior Correspondent Brian Vines will moderate the discussion. David Kennedy (Professor at John Jay Center for Criminal Justice), Samuel Sinyangwe (Data Scientist at Campaign Zero), Carmen Dixon (Police Reform Organizer at NAACP Legal Defense Fund), Mariame Kaba (Open Society Foundations Soros Justice Fellow), and Graham Weatherspoon (Retired NYPD Detective) will be the panelists for this discussion.
Thursday
At the City Council on Thursday:
Thursday is “NYC Purple Day.” This is a day where “community advocates, city agencies, public officials and survivors will raise awareness about domestic violence and the resources and services available throughout the City of New York.” City Council Member Andy King and the Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence will participate in an annual outreach event for “NYC Purple Day” at 8 a.m. at the Baychester Avenue Station for the 5 Train.
At 5:30 p.m. Thursday, the College of Saint Rose in Albany will hold “Bribery or Just Access to Elected Officials: Tawdry Tales of Ferraris, Rolexes and Ball Gowns.” U.S. District Attorney Preet Bharara will speak.
At 6 p.m. Thursday, former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn will speak at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), discussing “the 2016 presidential race, the 2013 NYC mayor's race and her current work as President and CEO of Win, the largest nonprofit serving homeless women and their families in New York City.”
Friday and the weekend
Former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton will speak at 8:15 a.m. Friday at New York Law School as the CityLaw Breakfast Series continues.
At the City Council on Friday, the Committee on Aging will meet at 1 p.m. to discuss “a Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to providing legal counsel for senior citizens subject to eviction, ejectment or foreclosure proceedings.”
On Sunday evening, The Indo-American Arts Council will host U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who will speak at 6:30 p.m. at the closing night of the Third Annual IAAC Literary Festival. Bharara will speak on the question, “Is corruption endemic to politics?”
The second of three Presidential Debates will be held at 9 p.m. on Sunday. This debate will be hosted by Washington University in St. Louis, and it will be co-moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper and ABC’s Martha Raddatz.
And, Monday October 10 is Columbus Day. We will bring you our next Week Ahead that night instead of Sunday the 9th.
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Have events or topics for us to include in an upcoming Week Ahead in New York Politics? E-mail Gotham Gazette executive editor Ben Max any time: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (please use "For Week Ahead" as email subject).
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by Brendan Birth and Ben Max
@GothamGazette
First Deputy Mayor Shorris testifies (photo: William Alatriste)
Over the course of a Thursday oversight hearing lasting more than six hours, top officials from the de Blasio administration attempted to explain to the City Council all the missteps that led to a Lower East Side AIDS hospice being sold to a luxury condominium developer with virtually no public benefit.
Council Member Ben Kallos, chair of the governmental operations committee, said early in the hearing, “Something went very wrong here and we must address issues of mismanagement, indecision, communication failures, the role of outside influence, and what we can salvage from this mess to improve things moving forward.”
The sale of the facility, known as Rivington House, has dogged the administration for months after news broke that the property owner was able to make a massive profit from the deal, facilitated by a deed change approved by the city’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services. Two city entities have investigated the deal and troubling released reports, while the offices of both Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara have ongoing investigations.
Before DCAS removed two deed restrictions on the property, the home was limited to use as a nonprofit health care facility. The city Department of Investigation and City Comptroller Scott Stringer separately investigated the transaction and found multiple systemic failures and miscommunication involving top agency officials and deputy mayors. Neither report found any malfeasance, however, and did not fault Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has maintained throughout that he was unaware of the deal until afterward. The DOI and comptroller reports did, however, paint a picture of dysfunction and mismanagement at City Hall that First Deputy Mayor Tony Shorris was tasked with explaining in front of the City Council on Thursday.
At a joint hearing of the City Council’s Committees on Governmental Operations and Oversight and Investigations, Council members finally had a chance to ask the administration about its glaring mistakes, problems with deed restriction removal procedures, and proposals to reform the process by which the city allows deed changes.
Largely setting aside the deceptive conduct of one key player in the transaction, Joel Landau of the Allure Group, the hearing went into the minutiae of the city’s process in the Rivington deal and also looked at the broader picture of management in the administration, coming away with little new information, but extended discussion about who was to blame and how to fix the system. There was also discussion of, but little closure on, whose head would be on the chopping block.
Council Member Vincent Gentile, chair of oversight and investigations, in his opening statement said assigning responsibility for the Rivington deal “is a little like playing the game of ‘whack-a-mole.’ Just when you think you’ve hit that line of responsibility, it shifts and seems to move someplace else.” He faulted all the city agencies and officials involved in the lifting of the deed restriction -- DCAS, the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services, the Law Department, Shorris, and other deputy mayors. “It is almost as if each of these entities were all passengers on the same bus that was headed straight for lifting the deed restrictions but ignoring the stop signs,” he said, adding that he still wants to know who was “driving the bus.”
First to testify, and perhaps most importantly, was Shorris, de blasio’s second-in-command who featured prominently in the comptroller’s report on Rivington House. Shorris was composed and apologetic, and took sole responsibility for the snafu, refusing to scapegoat anyone within his staff or at agencies under his purview for the widespread miscommunication in the process and disastrous outcome. Throughout his testimony, he drove home the point that Rivington was simply an isolated case that didn’t reflect the overall administration which has been a successful and efficiently run operation.
“I want to state from the outset,” Shorris said, “that I recognize that what happened here was not the right outcome for the community and taxpayers, nor was it consistent with the policy goals and values of the de Blasio administration.”
“We execute on our policy goals in the administration extremely effectively,” Shorris said later in his testimony. “The record I think demonstrates that in agency after agency. Doesn’t mean there are not cases where we have made a mistake. This was a case where we made a mistake.”
Shorris admitted that the administration, and he himself, had made multiple errors on Rivington. He was sent weekly reports from agency heads and he only reviewed a sampling, missing the references to Rivington House. He conceded that he believed the property was going to continue to be a nursing home and had communicated that preference to his staff, which failed to effectively relay that message to DCAS. He also said that no one, within his staff or at DCAS, flagged for him that the property may be converted to luxury housing. But, he emphasized that all those slip ups were limited to Rivington. It's an assertion that Mayor de Blasio has also made, crediting Shorris with excellent management overall.
Shorris said he had two goals following the Rivington failure -- to attempt to rectify the issue and to prevent such issues in the future -- and laid out the city’s progress since the deal happened.
As part of the solution, the de Blasio administration announced on Thursday that it is investing the $16 million it received for lifting the deed restrictions (and likely more) into building affordable senior housing to replace most of the beds lost at Rivington House. The second effort involves a larger evaluation of the process by which deed restrictions are lifted. The administration is currently soliciting public review on new rules proposals, which include increased community outreach.
He also promised that in the future, the city would most often consider amending deed restrictions instead of lifting them altogether and the people applying for deed changes would have to provide affirmation of the purported use for a site, which could be legally enforceable. The city has also established an internal review committee, which includes the Office of Management and Budget and the Law Department, to assess any application for a deed change. Once the Rivington scandal was brought to light, de Blasio quickly moved to freeze other deed restriction appeals and then ensure that City Hall would have final say on any moving forward.
As with most of the Council members at Thursday’s hearing, Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito demanded more clarity on how the administration lost focus on an issue that has ramifications for affordable housing across the city, which is a top mayoral priority. “You say that you were very clear about your priority,” she said to Shorris, “yet it was not implemented…That sounds like some level of mismanagement.”
Shorris fell back on a similar refrain throughout. The city’s policy for deed restrictions, he stressed, was a narrow, financial-based, “mechanistic” policy and process that did not apply the administration’s values. “It was a failure on our part…to introduce our values into that process,” he said.
One Council member who seemed exasperated by Shorris’ testimony was David Greenfield, who wanted to know precisely who was to blame for Rivington. “There’s accountability and there’s blame, they’re two different things,” he said. “So you’re accountable, but I think it’s fair to say you’re not to blame. Is that correct?” Shorris yet again fell on his sword, and informed Greenfield that he was ultimately responsible and that no one on his staff had been disciplined in the aftermath of Rivington.
Things turned a bit more tense when controversy emerged over the length of Shorris’ testimony in front of the Council. From the start of the hearing, it was announced that it would be limited to two-and-a-half hours. Because of an apparent miscommunication between the City Council and the mayor's office, Kallos, who had agreed to the time restriction, thought Shorris was scheduled to leave town. As Shorris was wrapping up his testimony, it became clear to everyone in attendance that Shorris was not going to Oklahoma for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, but staying put as acting mayor with de Blasio on his way to the conference.
Shorris was confused about the confusion. Kallos briefly expressed outrage.
In a statement, City Council Communications Director Eric Koch said, “The administration misled the Council and the Speaker’s Office into believing that First Deputy Mayor Shorris’ availability for the hearing this morning would be limited because of events related to the U.S Conference of Mayors in Oklahoma City. This turned out to be false. At a hearing which focused on government honesty and transparency this is particularly shocking and unacceptable.”
Not long after, the mayor’s office put out its own statement, with de Blasio spokesperson Eric Phillips saying, “Ben Kallos said the administration said Tony Shorris would be going to Oklahoma. That’s false. The Administration has always been crystal clear that Tony Shorris’ time today was limited due to his role as acting Mayor in New York City during Mayor de Blasio’s short trip to Oklahoma. Mr. Shorris testified for two and one-half hours, answering dozens of questions on this matter. The Council owes Tony Shorris an apology.”
While that distraction from the essential matter at hand was brewing, the hearing resumed after a brief break.
Shorris was followed by Corporation Counsel Zachary Carter, who heads the city’s Law Department, and DCAS Commissioner Lisette Camilo, who took over two months before the Rivington deal became a public spectacle through a news report in the Wall Street Journal. Carter faced particularly tough questions about the Law Department’s apparent interference in the DOI’s probe into Rivington. DOI claimed in its report that the Law Department had failed to cooperate and had blocked access to necessary documents and electronic records of the administration.
Council Member Rory Lancman criticized Carter for trying to circumvent DOI’s legal authority as laid out by past mayoral executive orders that give it unrestricted access to documents as an investigative body. Carter repeatedly emphasized that the Law Department had been forthcoming and that any redaction of documents, as the DOI claimed, was standard practice for irrelevant information rather than a deliberate attempt to obstruct the investigation. Lancman was not pleased and released a statement to the press after his protracted exchange with Carter. “Instead of acknowledging the administration’s blatant overstepping of its boundaries by refusing to cooperate with the Department of Investigation, the administration doubled down on its wrongdoing,” Lancman said.
Camilo’s testimony was less controversial since her involvement in the deal was relatively minor. She was director of MOCS when the Rivington deal was approved by former DCAS Commissioner Stacey Cumberbatch, who left her post in December to take a position with New York City Health + Hospitals. Cumberbatch has since retired, according to Shorris. (Ahead of Thursday’s hearing, the US Attorney’s Office and the Attorney General requested that the Council only call current city employees to testify, so Cumberbatch was not present.)
It became evident during Shorris’ testimony that he or someone close to him had encouraged Cumberbatch to leave DCAS, but all Shorris would say was that he approved of her transfer to H+H when she found that opportunity.
Council members peppered Camilo with questions about the deed restriction process as it stands now and how the city aims to improve it. She echoed much of Shorris’ testimony, pointing out that a “flawed process” focused on revenue led to the Rivington deal. She promised an updated and more rigorous review process for deed restrictions in the future, one that would take into account public comment, prioritize community benefit, and formally seek opinions from multiple city agencies and stakeholders.
Camilo also expressed the administration’s support for a bill, introduced by Council Member Margaret Chin and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, which would require the city to maintain an online searchable database of properties with deed restrictions imposed by the city. Many of these properties were once city-owned. The bill also requires the city to provide notice to the Borough President, the local Council member, and community board any time a proposal is made to remove or modify a deed restrictions.
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette