Accusing Bill de Blasio of concocting a “chilling vision of an imperial mayoralty,” the city Conflicts of Interest Board has asked a state judge to throw out the former mayor’s challenge to the six-figure bill it leveled against him for the travel costs he charged to city taxpayers in his quixotic campaign for president.

In June the board ordered de Blasio to pay a $155,000 fine and cough up $319,000 to reimburse the city for the travel, lodging and meal expenses of the NYPD detail that accompanied him on 31 campaign trips from Iowa to South Carolina before he bowed out of the race in September 2019.

He sued the board, arguing that the order was “beyond the Board’s authority…to regulate the mayor’s political activities while in office,” claiming it infringed on first amendment rights that “afford the person elected mayor autonomy over how to lead the City.”

“If a mayor decides that a presidential bid is consistent with, and even supportive of, his role as mayor, that is his decision to make, free from impediments,” his suit states. “It is certainly not for the Board to question a mayor’s judgment of how to conduct that singular role.”

On Friday the board’s lawyers asked acting Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Shahabuddeen Ally to dismiss de Blasio’s lawsuit, asserting that the mayor was essentially claiming the ethics rules that apply to rank-and-file city workers didn’t apply to him, and labeling his argument as an anti-democratic dodge to shield himself from accountability.

“This chilling vision of an imperial mayoralty is just plain wrong — and offered with scant reference to any legal authority,” wrote Emily Reisbaum of Clarick Gueron Reisbaum, the firm hired by the board, also known as COIB, to fight the suit. “COIB’s insistence that New Yorkers should not be forced to pay de Blasio’s campaign expenses in violation of the City’s charter was not unconstitutional — it was democracy at work.”

End Run?

The police detail face-off began in May 2019 when de Blasio’s in-house counsel queried the board on whether the city was obligated to pay for his cop entourage’s expenses if they accompanied him on a presidential run. COIB responded that the city had to pay the salaries and overtime of the cops on the trip, but that the campaign was responsible for all other out-of-town expenses incurred by the detail.

The next day de Blasio announced his run and proceeded to ignore COIB’s advice, running up hundreds of thousands of dollars paid out of the NYPD’s budget as he flew across country for the next five months vying for the Democratic presidential nomination. After THE CITY wrote about the cost to taxpayers in July 2019, the board asked the Department of Investigation (DOI) to look into the issue.

Later that month, DOI scheduled interviews with de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, to discuss the use of the detail. But a week before the interviews were to take place and more than two years after the board had warned him he was responsible for the details’ expenses, de Blasio suddenly filed a letter asking COIB to reconsider its initial advice.

The board labeled his move a transparent effort to dodge its ruling. “The timing of this request reveals that it was not a good faith attempt to question the board’s interpretation of the law,” Jeff Tremblay, COIB’s director of enforcement, stated before the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings after de Blasio challenged COIB’s findings. “Instead it enabled the mayor to say that there was still an ‘open question’ regarding the board’s advice when he was interviewed by DOI one week later.”

In October 2021 in the final months of de Blasio’s tenure at City Hall, DOI Commissioner Margaret Garnett issued a blistering report that quantified the cost of security to taxpayers for the long-shot campaign. Seven months later, the board notified de Blasio that it planned to impose penalties and demand restitution.

De Blasio challenged that notice, arguing that because the NYPD had determined the size of the detail needed, the city was on the hook for the costs, including travel lodging and meals COIB had objected to. 

A non-public hearing took place before OATH Judge Kevin Casey in December 2022, during which Tremblay presented how serious the board felt the issue was, according to a transcript.

“It is absolutely imperative to the future of the Conflicts of Interest Board that this court reject this argument,” Tremblay stated. “There is a grave danger to the board’s authority if any public servant who doesn’t like the board’s interpretation of the conflicts of interest law is able to secretly overrule the board’s determination by substituting his counsel’s judgment for the board’s.”

Tremblay argued that de Blasio’s contention that the rules don’t apply to him would “mean that there is one rule for the rank and file of city government and another much more permissive rule for the most powerful person in that government.”

In a ruling filed under seal, Judge Casey upheld COIB’s findings, and in June the board issued a public order demanding that de Blasio reimburse the city for the detail’s costs and imposing a hefty $155,000 penalty — the biggest in the board’s history.

De Blasio’s lawyer, Andrew Celli of Emery Celli, has until mid-December to respond to the board’s motion that his challenge be thrown out.

On Tuesday THE CITY asked de Blasio through Celli to comment but received no response.