This Agency Fights Corruption. New York City Leaders Have Weakened It.

New York Times

06-04-2025

In recent months, New York City's government has been rocked by corruption scandals at a pace not seen in nearly a century.
Yet over the past few years, New York's leaders have presided over a gradual weakening of the city's No. 1 corruption-fighting agency, the Department of Investigation, records and interviews show.
As caseloads have risen, they have stood by while dozens of positions within the department have gone unfilled, allowing the agency to lose more than a quarter of its employees over the past six years.
And they have funded the department unevenly, allocating fewer dollars for salaries for investigators, auditors and other personnel in the department's current budget than it received during a high-water mark in 2019.
In recent months, the agency has been so strapped for funds that it has tapped millions of dollars forfeited by people convicted of crimes to cover basic operating costs.
This has occurred not because the department has failed to ask for more funding. Last fall, its commissioner, Jocelyn Strauber, sought permission from the city's Office of Management and Budget to hire 23 staff members at a cost of $1.4 million.
The City Council supported the request, but the budget office rejected it. Soon after, Gale Brewer, the chairwoman of the Council's Oversight and Investigations Committee, said in a letter to city budget leaders that because of staffing issues the department had experienced significant disruptions whenever employees went on vacation. In January, the budget office said it would pay for 10 additional hires.
In a statement, Ms. Strauber said that the department's 'staffing challenges' had led to delays in issuing reports and sometimes caused investigators and other workers to juggle complex inquiries.
'Over the last three years, we have asked them to take on more work and more responsibility, often for no additional compensation,' she said, 'and every time they have stepped up and have served the city admirably under very challenging conditions.'
The pressures on the department have only increased under the administration of Mayor Eric Adams. Hiring constraints implemented by Mr. Adams have made it more difficult for the agency to add staffing. And corruption inquiries involving the mayor and members of his administration have contributed heavily to the increased workload.
Last year, Mr. Adams became the first sitting mayor in the city's modern history to be indicted on federal corruption charges. His chief adviser was also charged in state court with taking part in a separate bribery scheme. And a close aide was charged with witness tampering and destroying evidence in the investigation into the mayor.
A dozen other aides — including Mr. Adams's schools chancellor, first deputy mayor, deputy mayor for public safety and two successive police commissioners — have resigned after having their devices seized or homes searched in state or federal corruption inquiries.
The Department of Investigation worked with the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors to build the case against the mayor, and it has played an important role in the other inquiries.
But after Mr. Adams assiduously courted the Trump administration, the president's Justice Department took the extraordinary step of asking the judge in the mayor's case to dismiss the charges.
On Wednesday, the judge, Dale E. Ho, granted the request, capping a saga that had seen federal prosecutors clash bitterly with Justice Department officials. Some of the prosecutors resigned in protest over what they described as a corrupt deal to secure Mr. Adams's cooperation with President Trump's immigration agenda.
The situation has focused renewed attention on the Department of Investigation, which is also empowered to build cases against public officials in state courts. (There has been no indication that New York prosecutors might seek to file state charges against Mr. Adams.)
The move to drop the Adams case has also led to calls by some New York officials, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, to insulate the department from potential interference by the mayor and other city officials.
Under its current structure, the department's commissioner serves at the pleasure of the mayor, and at times that has created a complicated dynamic.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's commissioner was a close friend whose agency regularly briefed Mr. Giuliani on investigations and sometimes investigated news leaks and sought political intelligence.
Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Rose Gill Hearn became the city's longest serving investigation commissioner, with a reputation for focusing on low- and midlevel city employees and contractors.
And during the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio, two successive commissioners oversaw an agency that issued a series of reports criticizing the mayor himself, including for his use of a security detail for trips during his failed presidential campaign and to move his daughter to Gracie Mansion.
After clashing with his first commissioner, Mark G. Peters, Mr. de Blasio fired him, citing a report by an independent investigator that said Mr. Peters had abused his power and mistreated subordinates. Mr. Peters disputed the findings and said the mayor had forced him out to stop him from completing inquiries that might have reflected poorly on Mr. de Blasio — a claim the former mayor has denied.
'Government integrity is absolutely dependent on a robust inspector general system,' Mr. Peters said in an interview, 'and you can't have that system without sufficient staffing.'
A spokeswoman for Mayor Adams, Liz Garcia, said that the department's budget was higher today than it was when he took office.
'The Adams administration remains committed to supporting the important work that the New York City Department of Investigation does to ensure accountability and transparency in government,' Ms. Garcia said.
The administration has worked with the department to address retention issues and adjust the pay scale for investigators.
After Mr. Adams became mayor, he selected Ms. Strauber — a former federal prosecutor with the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York — to burnish his public safety and anti-corruption credentials, according to a person familiar with his thinking at the time.
Less than three years later, she stood beside Damian Williams, then the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, as the charges against Mr. Adams were announced — a move that was seen by some in his orbit as a personal slight, the person said.
In February, Ms. Hochul proposed changes to the law that would bar the mayor from firing the investigation commissioner without the approval of the state inspector general.
At a recent preliminary budget hearing, Ms. Strauber told City Council members that her agency had not been the target of retaliation during her tenure.
'At the same time,' she added, 'our budgetary needs do not seem to be a key priority for this administration.'
Stretched Thin
The Department of Investigation, formerly known as the Office of the Commissioner of Accounts, is one of the oldest law enforcement agencies in the United States. It was created in 1873 after the fall of the Tammany Hall boss William M. Tweed, who had mastered the art of enriching himself with city funds.
Over the years, the agency has regularly rooted out corruption schemes, fraud and abuse in the Police Department, city jails and other agencies.
Under Mayor de Blasio, the agency had a staff of more than 550 investigators, lawyers, auditors and other employees. It issued a series of hard-nosed reports that exposed failures of the city's Housing Authority and a highly critical report on the Police Department's sex crimes unit.
In the 2017 fiscal year alone, the agency made over 800 arrests — the highest in nearly a decade.
Then Mr. Adams became mayor. His administration instituted a hiring freeze, citing the rising costs of the migrant crisis, slowing tax revenues and the ending of federal pandemic aid. When the freeze was lifted, he imposed restrictions on hiring across all city departments, requiring two employees to leave their jobs for every one hired into a vacant position.
The budget constraints affected hiring citywide, and agencies have also struggled to recruit and retain employees since the coronavirus pandemic upended life in New York. But the restrictions have hit the Department of Investigation especially hard, records and interviews show.
In the most recent fiscal year, the department received nearly as many corruption complaints — 14,600 — as it got when its staffing was at a high point under Mr. de Blasio.
Fewer cases have been referred for criminal prosecution or civil and administrative action. Arrests are down, too, by 58 percent from 2017, according to management reports filed by the mayor's office. Department officials say that is not necessarily a reflection of staffing shortages.
The department has also been hampered in its hiring because it offers lower pay compared with what investigators and lawyers might make in the private sector — or even at other public agencies.
'It was common for us to lose talented young investigators,' said Margaret M. Garnett, who served as the department's commissioner for the last three years of the de Blasio administration. 'They can go to the frauds department at American Express and triple their salary. It is hard to tell someone making $60,000 a year at 27 that they shouldn't take a job paying them $150,000 a year.'
Now the department has about 70 administrative and operations employees and more than 330 investigators spread across 10 squads.
More than half of the investigators are on loan from other agencies, such as the Department of Correction or the Housing Authority. It is a staffing practice that has allowed the office to take on more cases and employ investigators with firsthand knowledge of the institutions they are investigating.
At times, however, the arrangement has presented problems. In 2023, The New York Times found that at least two investigators on loan from the Correction Department had been tasked with rooting out sick-leave fraud while abusing sick-leave policies themselves.
Limited room for upward mobility has also made hiring and retaining qualified people a challenge, current and former officials have said.
When Ms. Garnett led the office under the de Blasio administration, she wanted to address the agency's staffing issues in part by hiring retired city police detectives, she said.
But state laws restrict such practices, in order to keep city employees from drawing a pension while also earning a city salary. Agencies who want to hire city retirees have to obtain a waiver from the Civil Service Commission, and even then there are constraints on how much the retired employee can earn.
The waivers are approved for two years at a time and granted only to fill vacancies temporarily and under certain conditions.
Ms. Garnett said the Department of Investigation would likely benefit from bringing on retired detectives with practical experience investigating crimes to fill some of the agency's positions.
Instead, she said, it has often been forced to bring on candidates with no experience at all.