Public-advocate hopeful Mark Green has years-old financial ties to his real-estate mogul brother, raising questions about potential conflicts of interest if he wins back his old job this fall, experts told The Post.
The public advocate appoints a member to the City Planning Commission and a trustee to the city’s pension system, NYCERS, raising serious questions that should be brought to the Conflicts of Interest Board if Green is elected, said one government watchdog.
“If I were Mark, I would think long and hard about it. Even if it’s OK under the Charter, there’s still an appearance issue — the appearance is not good,” said Gene Russianoff, a senior attorney at the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Green adviser Anne Strahle said he “has always been independent of his brother” in his past stints as public advocate.
If he’s elected, Strahle also said Green would seek a COIB advisory opinion, “if that’s what it has to be.”
She said properties belonging to Green’s brother’s company, SL Green Realty Corp., are mostly commercial, so they would have little to do with the Planning Commission, which primarily deals with zoning issues.
“Mark Green has a very unique situation,” said Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-Brooklyn), who has endorsed Green rival Bill de Blasio, adding it was fair to “ask the question about how independent Mark can be about the real-estate industry.”
Strahle wouldn’t comment about Clarke’s statement, but said Green got a COIB opinion when he was public advocate in the 1990s. At the time, he inherited his City Planning appointee, Amanda Burden, and later reappointed her.
Green’s brother, Stephen, is also the vice chairman of the Executive Committee of the Real Estate Board of New York, which is the city’s most powerful real-estate trade group.
Green received salaries between $100,000 and $250,000 apiece last year from two companies tied to his brother.