A top City Council lawyer rejected an Adams’ administration request that Councilman Lincoln Restler be investigated following his questioning of city officials last week, saying the complaint won’t be referred to the Council’s ethics committee.
In a letter responding to Adams’ City Hall Chief Counsel Lisa Zornberg, the City Council’s General Counsel Jason Otaño pointed to a City Charter provision that states Council members “shall not be questioned in any other place” for their “debate in the Council and any committee or subcommittee.”
“This maxim serves in part to prevent executive abuse and overreach,” Otaño noted.
His letter comes in response to a missive from Zornberg last week in which she accused Restler of defaming Adams’ administration officials by publicly mentioning one’s salary and through what Zornberg described as his “categorical assertions” that Adams’ top adviser Tim Pearson violated the law.
At the time, Restler responded that Zornberg was trying to create a distraction from separate accusations that Pearson sexually harassed a female NYPD sergeant while on the job. That woman, retired NYPD Sgt. Roxanne Ludemann, is suing Pearson and the city, claiming that Pearson touched her against her will and blocked her promotion after she rejected him.
Pearson and the city are being sued by retired Sgt. Michael Ferrari as well. Ferrari claims that after he backed up Ludemann’s accusations, NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey demoted him at Pearson’s prompting. The city Department of Investigation has expanded a probe into Pearson to include his role in NYPD personnel and promotional matters concerning the cops involved in those two lawsuits.
“The role of the City Council is to provide rigorous oversight of the Adams administration, and I am committed to continuing to do my job,” Restler said Wednesday.
Last week, he specified that it was Pearson’s alleged activity that he was attempting to get to the heart of.
But the mayor said Restler’s behavior crossed a line as he questioned a City Hall staffer.
“Because you are a Council person, [it] does not give you the authority to degrade people, use your power to be disrespectful,” Adams said Tuesday. “There should be a level of decorum that’s expected as you question.”
The staffer Adams referred to, Melody Ruiz, his chief Equal Employment Opportunity officer, was namechecked by Restler last week in his questioning whether the accusations against Pearson were handled appropriately.
In her letter to the Council last Friday, Zornberg said Restler “viciously went after” Ruiz, which left her “devastated.”
“Without cause or basis for the attack he unleashed, he called her out by name,” Zornberg claimed. “He cited her salary on the record; [and] he disparagingly referred to her as a ‘longtime former borough hall staffer’ to wrongly suggest that she ‘got a large pay raise’ in order protect ‘the mayor and his closest allies.’”
Zornberg also demanded that Council Speaker Adrienne Adams make a “prompt referral” of the matter to the Council’s Committee on Standards and Ethics.
In his response, Otaño said that Council Speaker Adams would not refer the matter to the Council’s Standards and Ethics Committee.
“It is the prerogative of a legislator to freely espouse his or her opinions on matters of public interest, particularly when they are the subject of a legislative oversight hearing,” Otaño wrote to Zornberg.
“If opinions communicated do not consist of hate speech, threats, incitement to violence, excessive disruption, or speech so shocking that it risks the reputation or integrity of the body, they are not appropriate for consideration as disorderly behavior subject to [Standard and Ethics Committee] action.”
