Councilman Andy King, D-Bronx, seems committed to finding out: A 48-page report issued by the City Council’s ethics committee offered a portrait of a politician on tilt.
Investigators found evidence that King violated New York City’s anti-harassment policy and used council funds to plan a retreat in the Virgin Islands at the same time as the wedding of his wife’s daughter.
King not only refused to cooperate with the investigations into his conduct, but he also actively sought to thwart them by threatening and firing members of his staff who he believed were cooperating, the committee found.
“This is the most egregious thing I have ever seen in my six years in the City Council,” Corey Johnson, the council speaker, said. “Retaliation, a culture of fear, potential misappropriation of council resources, all of these things and not cooperating with the City Council all along, which shows total disregard for our process.”
By a 44-1 vote, the council agreed Monday to suspend King for 30 days without pay, fine him $15,000 and appoint a monitor to oversee his office for the remainder of his term. The penalties take effect immediately.
A motion to expel King for his actions was introduced by Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, D-Queens, but was defeated by a vote of 34-12.
King sat quietly as his colleagues criticized his behavior, then delivered a rambling 15-minute monologue, explaining that he was unfairly being “crucified” by council members as “the worst person on the planet” and an “oppressor” of his staff.
“Because people say things sometimes doesn’t necessarily make it true,” King said.
The only thing he was guilty of, King told reporters as he left City Hall after the vote, was being “too nice.”
The inquiry into King’s conduct is not the first ethics investigation he has faced. In 2018, King was ordered to undergo sensitivity and ethics training after a sexual harassment claim was lodged against him by a female staff member.
Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, a good-government group, said King’s conduct should be examined by criminal authorities.
“I hope there would an independent investigation by criminal authorities to determine whether there was criminal activity or not,” Lerner said, adding that King’s conduct justified expulsion from the City Council.
“The council does not believe he has the ability to behave appropriately, so to ask the taxpayers to pay for a babysitter is inappropriate,” Lerner continued. “If I as a taxpayer would pay for anything, it’s a new election.”
No one has been expelled from the City Council, which requires a two-thirds vote, since the 1989 City Charter revision. Johnson and Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, have called for King to resign.
“How can you resign?” Pamela Hayes, King’s lawyer, said at a news conference Saturday. “The charges are unjust.”
Johnson, who this year hired Carrie H. Cohen, a former federal prosecutor and assistant state attorney general, to serve as the council’s special prosecutor, said that the ethics committee had referred its finding to the “appropriate” outside agencies. He declined to specify which ones.
King and Hayes had tried in court to seek a delay for the council’s vote, but the request for a temporary restraining order was denied, according to council staff members; they said that both sides were to return to court in December.
King is not the only council member to face public discipline for actions during Johnson’s tenure. The most notable case involved Rubén Díaz Sr., a Bronx councilman who resisted calls to resign after making homophobic remarks. Others were disciplined for sexual harassment and for saying that “Palestine does not exist.”
But King’s misconduct over the past two years is the most serious to be considered in recent years.
In 2017, King arranged for reimbursements for staff members to attend an annual retreat that he and his wife, Neva Shillingford-King, hosted on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands for the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus and labor leaders, according to the council report.
The wedding of Shillingford-King’s daughter was part of the official retreat itinerary, and King also allowed his staff to do work to promote Shillingford-King, an executive vice president at Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, and improperly gave her authority over his staff, the report says.
She did not respond to requests for comment.
Two of King’s staff members said he also authorized one-time council payments to staff members who “claimed to have insufficient funds,” so they could pay for airfare, food and lodging costs related to the retreat. One such staff member told investigators of a $1,500 payment.
King also showed a pattern of harassment and retaliation against his staff members, the ethics committee found.
On separate occasions, King held two meetings at his home where he demanded to know which staff members were cooperating with the various investigations he was facing. When some staff members admitted that they had spoken with investigators, King retaliated, the report says.
In July, he sent one staff member home and ordered that individual to wait for a call before returning to work. The staff member, whose email access was terminated, waited at home for five weeks, “too fearful of losing their job to speak to anyone” from King’s office or from the council’s legal and human resources staff, according to the report.
In August, when the ethics committee voted to open a disciplinary matter against King, he sent another staff member home and terminated that person’s email access. In September, King tried to fire the two employees, claiming that the purpose was “staff reorganization.”
Investigators also found that King had violated city harassment policies at a staff meeting when he referred to a photo from the Pride March that a staff member had posted on Twitter, likening it to “child pornography.”
The ethics committee chairman, Councilman Steven Matteo, R-Staten Island, said before the vote that the proposed discipline for King’s actions might not have been as severe if he had cooperated with the investigation, even in an attempt to defend himself.
Instead, King made a “mockery” of the process, Matteo said at a hearing last week.
Van Bramer, who introduced the motion to expel King, said King’s remarks about gay people were just as bad as his treatment of his staff.
“I believe Andy King is unfit to serve in the City Council and believe he should resign,” said Van Bramer, who is gay. “I also believe that what is included in this report is worthy of expulsion.”
Chloe Rivera, a policy analyst for the City Council, identified herself in an op-ed in The Daily News on Monday as the woman who filed the sexual harassment complaint that resulted in the disciplining of King last year. She said she was disappointed with the outcome.
“The sanctions don’t address the root of the problem, and that’s power dynamics,” Rivera said.
This article originally appeared in
.