City Council Should Suspend Lawmaker Over Ethics Scandals: Panel

"NEW YORK — City Council Member Andy King should be suspended for myriad ethics violations, a council commitee said Tuesday as it excoriated the Bronx lawmaker for obstructing its investigation of his misbehavior.

The Standards and Ethics Committee also recommended that the council slap King with a fine, remove his committee assignments and put a monitor in his office for the rest of his term after the probe found he harassed staffers and maintained conflicts of interest for his and his wife's benefit.

King, a Democrat, refused to cooperate with the panel's probe and put the squeeze on those who did as the investigation uncovered "problem after problem" in his troubled office, said Council Member Steven Matteo, the ethics committee's chair.

"The truth is, were it not for Council Member King’s behavior during the pendency of this investigation, we would probably not be discussing sanctions of the magnitude contained in our recommendations," Matteo, a Staten Island Republican, said Tuesday.

The panel's recommendations marked the culmination of a seven-month process that ended with the committee finding King committed harassment, retaliation, disorderly conduct and conflicts-of-interest violations.

The ethics committee will release its full report on King's misconduct Wednesday after it is sent to the full council, which is expected to meet on the lawmaker's punishment next week, Matteo said.

King's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

King, who was first elected in November 2012, was forced to undergo sensitivity training in 2018 after the committee found he sexually harassed a staffer.

In the more recent case, the ethics panel found he threatened his staff in an apparent effort keep them quiet about his misdeeds and let a supervisor make repeated violent threats against underlings, according to Matteo.

For instance, King held a meeting at his home in 2017 where he identified the person who accused him of sexual harassment and "disparaged" the person in front of his entire staff, Matteo said.

He also punished and intimidated several staffers who talked to the committee this year or whom King thought had cooperated with the probe, Matteo said. He forced one out of his office and tried to fire another, according to Matteo.

"(A) third must have clearly gotten the message because even a subpoena wasn’t enough to compel that staffer’s cooperation," Matteo said. "In addition he attempted to fire another staffer who had witnessed much of this conduct and who ultimately testified at our hearing."

King didn't appear for interviews during the committee's investigation — which was led by former federal prosecutor Carrie Cohen — except for a "brief conversation" in which he defended his staffer who made violent threats, Matteo said.

The lawmaker also didn't show up at his formal hearing before the committee — which featured testimony from "credible and damning" witnesses — and his lawyers only appeared to object to the proceedings before leaving, according to Matteo.

The lawyers argued King didn't have enough time to defend himself even though the original charges were filed more than three weeks before the hearing started, Matteo said. (Additional charges were approved about a week before the hearing.)

"While the committee would have been inclined under normal circumstances to consider a reasonable adjournment, we were not going to give Council Member King more time to hurt staffers who had done nothing more than carry out their obligations to the council to cooperate," Matteo said.

Matteo did not reveal details about King's conflicts of interest, but he said the committee's report will outline all of the panel's findings.