NYC’s First Lady Is A Tax Boondoggle

The Miss-Appropriation of city funding, Chirlane McCray de Blasio

City Hall, Downtown Manhattan, New York

Mayor de Blasio is in quite a pickle. He hasn’t been able to get aid from the state and because congress couldn’t agree to a goddamn stimulus, the Blaz can’t get federal funding despite all his pathetic begging and pleading and probably compounded by his asinine decision to paint Black Lives Matter in front of the President’s luxury tower. So the city’s budget ax is going to come down on a lot of administration departments and city services.

Except for one…

THE CITY

First Lady Chirlane McCray is employing a shadow staff of at least six full-time workers who don’t appear on her official roster — with their salaries paid by other city agencies or their roles obscured within the wider office of her husband, Mayor Bill de Blasio, government sources say and records show.

McCray, who is mulling a run for Brooklyn borough president, volunteers her time and is not employed by the city government. But she has built up a portfolio of work that includes a billion-dollar endeavor to improve the city’s mental health services, known as ThriveNYC.

Her staff now stands at 14, sources say — at a time that the mayor is raising the specter of laying off up to 22,000 municipal workers in October because of a pandemic-driven budget gap.

Asked for a list of her current staff members, McCray’s office last month provided the names of eight full-time employees who together collect roughly $1.1 million in salaries through the office of the mayor.

But according to current and former employees in the Mayor’s Office, as well as public records, McCray’s staff count has actually been 15 throughout much of 2020, with a collective payroll that’s closer to $2 million. A recent departure brought the staff ranks down to 14.

That count excludes other city and nonprofit employees who support McCray on specific projects that she oversees — including private fundraising on behalf of the city government, managing the Gracie Mansion mayoral residence and spearheading ThriveNYC.

The six current off-roster workers include Felicia Lee, a $140,000-a-year communications advisor employed since April 2018, whose salary is paid by the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The salary of a $130,000 director of policy, Grace Choi, hired in January 2019, is paid by the city Department of Social Services, according to city government sources and public records.

McCray’s 2019 public schedule shows both Lee and Choi regularly attended meetings with her — including a January 2019 “Team Lunch” at La Masa restaurant in The Bronx.

Yet officials in McCray’s office did not name those two staffers among the eight full-time employees.

McCray’s social media manager, who has been working for her for two years, also was not listed on the staff roster provided to THE CITY. Public records show she is on the payroll of the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.

The sources and records show McCray also hired a $70,000 videographer in February, whose name was not on the list of staff members provided to THE CITY by her office.

The videographer, whose work for McCray includes a “Baking with the First Lady” clip that was posted during the height of the pandemic in early April, is listed as a Department of Health employee in city records.

Yesiree, de Blasio’s co-mayor wife’s own cosplay administration will evade getting touched while over 22,000 other city workers not in Chirlie’s little circle will get lawnmowered. What’s interesting is how Chirlie’s redundancy angels are set up in de Blasio’s administration in various city service departments where cuts are certain to go down, which are all associated with their particular skill sets and even brazenly with the NYC first lady’s videographer as a DOH worker, the way her husband is doing this is pure gangster shit like putting mafia soldiers on no-show building contractor payrolls or even a less ethical version of musical chairs.

There shouldn’t be a shadow of a doubt anymore about this shadow government. The Blaz has assembled a political campaign team in city hall for his damn wife just like he ran an illicit 501 c 4 PAC Campaign For One New York fund in there that was feigned to support progressive policies like Pre-K and affordable housing while it was mostly exploited to dole out services favorably to his real estate donors. And is shamelessly doing this despite the still existential threat from and economic uncertainty induced from COVID-19 and found a way to exploit the pandemic to integrate it with Chirlie’s boondoggle Thrive program, which has turned out to be a bigger slush fund.

And what about ThriveNYC? It’s now going on 2 billion dollars in money spent squandered and it has not produced any results on it’s efficacy and efficiency in providing mental health for New Yorkers who truly need it because ThriveNYC doesn’t even target the people who could use mental health aid, which are the homeless, people with mental afflictions, victims of domestic violence and abuses while incarcerated in prisons. In it’s first 3 years of it’s existence all it produced were banal ads reaching out to people with work anxiety and a hotline number that barely got an answer from people.

But First Lady de Blasio has been a frivolous spending festering boil in city hall for quite a while, because her idiot husband basically turn her role into an defacto/proxy administrative government office. Not only is she the boss of the ThriveNYC boondoggle, but the Blaz also appointed her as chairwoman of the Mayor’s Fund To Advance New York City, the 25-year-old city government instituted “non-profit” entity where massive donations from real estate developers with business for the city plus other rich, powerful and even famous citizens of New York contribute and also sit on the board with her. (Remember that the Blaz was soliciting cash for CONY while this sanctioned slush fund already existed.). And if you think it’s a conflict of interest to disqualify her, wrong, because the first lady is a volunteer servant and not a paid employee, which is how the Conflicts of Interest Board approved her. Which made her the ultimate “agent of the city”

The thing with Chirlie is that like her stupid husband, they spend like gambling addicts with money that doesn’t belong to them like the city’s largesse, thinking that the more they piss away expecting another jackpot. But since NYC’s first lady has been watching piles and piles of money go in and out of city hall from her “volunteer” position, she’s obviously feels entitled to it herself thinks she can put her greedy hands in the city largesse till and spend a few billions that no one would notice.

She is in many ways the Blaz’s nepotism parasite hire version of what Jared Kushner is to President Trump, given many duties and responsibilities but absolutely unskilled at how to do them. Although in Chirlie’s case, she’s been very adept on how to weaponize her position and ruse as a volunteer to promote herself as Jared utilizes his position to obscenely enrich his wife, stepfather’s and his own family’s fortunes with the policies he steers for the nation.

As for accountability for Chirlie’s ThriveNYC profligacy, good luck getting answers or even documentation about their costs and how it vaporized. The thing with ThriveNYC is that it’s like a startup tech company, all hype ad gloss and filled with people who don’t have a clue what they are doing pushing a product that has no substance while wasting and pissing tons of investment money. When the product is a bureaucracy and that money invested by taxpayers.

But now with the city going broke and services being cut leading to dilapidated park space and garbage piling on the streets to go along with the rise in crime and scarcity of real affordable housing and homelessness during this new depression, NYC’s first lady continues to be a money devouring parasite in City Hall and pussy-whipped de Blasio will not and will find ways not to mention how he’s sacrificing his employees to finance his fucking wife’s delusional political ambitions and still useless ThriveNYC program which is nothing but a patronage mill and hangout for Chirlane’s sorority friends.

Another thing about Chirlie is that her presence is pronounced and induced in City Hall because the de Blasio is a fucking idiot who has absolutely no idea how to govern and apparently he’s dependent on her for ideas, which is why he’s contrived this political posse for her and splayed them out in different departments. Because the Blaz knows that Chirlie is his meal ticket to still remain a somewhat relevant politician in New York City and having her as the Brooklyn Borough President, which is just a rubber stamp redundancy position itself, will enable them to continue to enjoy the bennies and perks that comes with, which will translate well with their Park Slope home property values. There’s no way this Brooklyn power couple is going to let a pandemic cockblock that.

It’s time defund and maybe cancel Chirlane before this city gets even more broke.