Ex-NYC Mayor de Blasio still on the hook for $475K fine over misused public funds, judge rules
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Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio must pay a $475,000 fine levied against him for misusing public funds on a police security detail during his failed White House bid, a judge ruled this week, dismissing the ex-mayor’s legal challenge as “perplexing” and “entirely baseless.”.
The decision blocks de Blasio’s latest effort to erase the hefty fine issued against him by the city’s ethics board in 2023. In his motion for dismissal, de Blasio argued the board provided him with murky guidance around the use of public funds for security purposes, then overstepped its authority in imposing the fine.
Judge Shahabuddeen Ally roundly rejected those arguments in an 80-page ruling issued Monday, finding the mayor was “expressly and specifically” informed that the city would not bear security travel costs for the cross-country campaign, but elected to bring his police detail anyway.
“(His) position essentially eliminates his own agency in the choices he made,” the judge wrote, adding that there was no merit to “the remarkable contention that he is somehow not subject to the City’s conflicts-of-interest laws.”. The ruling leaves de Blasio on the hook for a $320,000 in airfare and other travel costs incurred by his security detail during the four-month campaign, which he launched in 2019 while serving his second term as mayor. He will also have to pay a fine of $5,000 for each of the security detail’s 31 out-of-state trips, amounting to $155,000.
