Mayor Bill de Blasio used taxpayer resources to push his national political agenda — at one point even asking his staff to come up with a governmental excuse to justify a political trip to Washington, DC, emails show.
In September 2015, Hizzoner was trying to build a coalition of labor and elected officials to support his Progressive Agenda — spending many hours each week peddling his income inequality platform to potential officials.
De Blasio was scheduled to meet with hoped-for supporters in the nation’s capital on Sept. 24, 2015, when he realized a few days before the trip that he didn’t have any city-related justification for the taxpayer-paid jaunt.
“We need at least one good hit to build the trip around. One important govt mtg or one speaking opportunity or presser,” he wrote in an email to staffers and outside consultants.
“Something weighty that relates to my immediate governmental duties. The rest can be [The Progressive Agenda]-related mtgs.”
When his staffers couldn’t conjure up a government event in time, the trip was delayed a day until a meeting of national mayors could be used to cover the political trip.
The scam was first reported by PoliticoNY.
The emails show that City Hall’s research arm was also tapped to help build support for the mayor’s political platform — at de Blasio’s request.
On July 24, 2015, mayoral chief of staff Tom Snyder connected Hilltop Public Solutions staffer Hayley Prim — who had worked for the de Blasio administration through April 2015 before handling The Progressive Agenda account — with City Hall’s head of research, Mahen Gunaratna.
“Hi Mahen – the mayor has asked that you and Hayley Prim coordinate on some research needs related to [The Progressive Agenda] policy. Hayley will be contacting you,” Snyder wrote.
The research needs would include creating dossiers on 70 mayors across the country whom de Blasio hoped to convince to sign on to his platform.
On Sept. 3, 2015, Prim emailed Gunaratna about compiling five dossiers per week, which were to include areas of overlap between the mayors’ policies and The Progressive Agenda.
“Hi Mahen! I wanted to see if I could engage you some more on putting together profiles on Mayors that we want to target for TPA. The 5 that you did before were perfect, and super helpful, and we have now tiered out our priority list, around early states, largest dem cities, etc,” she wrote. “Do you have the bandwidth to help with this if I gave you 5 mayors per week…? Not sure if you still have interns, enough staff to spend some time on this. Let me know!”
Mahen responded, “Think so – always happy to help.”
He later added, “This may take some time, but we’ll get working on it.”
The top priorities on the list were the mayors of Boston, San Jose, San Antonio, Boulder and Birmingham, Ala.
Hizzoner’s bid to raise his national profile with The Progressive Agenda flopped spectacularly when a presidential candidates forum he hoped to host in Iowa in December 2015 was canceled for lack of interest.
The entire operation was shut down in early 2016 after word came that de Blasio’s fundraising for other political initiatives was under federal investigation.
City Hall officials didn’t respond when asked why taxpayer resources had been used for a political endeavor.