When Mayor de Blasio was doling out political appointments to big campaign donors, sometimes it was best to look the other way.
Companies owned by two big contributors de Blasio appointed to VIP slots had serious integrity issues before the mayor rewarded them for their money-raising, a Daily News review has found.
One co-owned a company the city had declared lacked “good character, honesty and integrity,” while the other owed the city $1.2 million in lease payments and fees.
Not a problem. The mayor appointed both to several advisory boards.
The two showed up on an internal spreadsheet of top donors, lobbyists and other New York power players up for mayoral appointments to unpaid boards and commissions revealed by the Daily News Monday.
The list of 97 candidates included 14 who used a legal loophole to bundle campaign cash for de Blasio above donation restrictions, and four who wrote big checks to the mayor’s controversial fund, the Campaign for One New York.
De Blasio’s fund-raising tactics are now under investigation by federal and state prosecutors. His office declined to answer questions about the spreadsheet of donor appointees.
Businesswoman Gina Argento made the list after raising $97,780 for the mayor through bundled checks from friends and employees of her firm, Broadway Stage.
And in January 2014, she was first in line to write checks totaling $50,000 for the Campaign for One New York, the fund de Blasio set up to support his causes.
Most of Argento’s checks to de Blasio started arriving Oct. 1, 2013 — a month before he was elected and not long after the city Business Integrity Commission found a firm she co-owned, Luna Lighting Inc., “lacks good character, honesty and integrity.”
In May 2013, the commission rejected Luna’s request for a waste hauling license on two grounds: Luna had paid an $18,000 fine after admitting it repeatedly illegally hauled construction debris and ignored city demands to pay off a $620,000 IRS tax lien.
A little over a year later, de Blasio put Argento on his Fund for the Advancement of New York City, a nonprofit run by his wife, Chirlane McCray, that raises private funds for city programs.
And he put her on his committee to try to lure the Democratic National Convention to Brooklyn, and the city’s Workforce Investment Board, which advises the city on workforce issues and oversaw a $65.5 million budget in 2014.
It’s unclear whether Argento paid the back taxes. She did not return repeat calls seeking comment.
On Tuesday, mayoral spokesman Peter Kadushan declined to address the integrity panel’s license rejection, stating only that Argento was put on the Workforce Board “because of her experience in the film and television industry and years as a small-business owner who has created local jobs.”
Then there’s donor Harendra Singh, a restaurateur who raised $21,425 for de Blasio’s 2013 campaign from friends and family.
Singh made the spreadsheet in early 2014 as a candidate for appointment to the Mayor’s Fund advisory board and the DNC committee. But the spreadsheet noted an unspecified “vetting issue” with the phrase “r/flags.”
Perhaps the “issue” was this: A May 30, 2014, city audit found one of Singh’s restaurants, Water’s Edge on city-owned land in Queens, owed the city $1.2 million in back rent and late fees.
A month later in June 2014, Singh was appointed to the Mayor’s Fund and the DNC committee. He stayed on the fund’s board even after the city sued him in February 2015.
Then in September, Singh was indicted by the feds on a number of charges, including $1 million in Hurricane Sandy fraud related to Water’s Edge. Days later, he was removed from the board of the Mayor’s Fund. The mayor declined to discuss his appointment, and Singh’s lawyer, Anthony La Pinta, also declined comment. Singh did not return calls for comment.
Singh is a restaurateur who’d bundled $10,425 for de Blasio and raised another $11,000 from his family for the mayor’s 2013 campaign.
