Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz is taking taxpayers for a very long ride — 16 hours a day, to be precise.
In an unusual arrangement, the ebullient beep has placed his three drivers on staggered, 16-hour shifts so someone will always be available to wheel him around town between 8 a.m. and midnight, seven days a week.
Aides say that’s necessary because Markowitz is “on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.”
“The drivers are with the borough president or working at Borough Hall until the borough president’s day is over — often after 10 p.m.,” explained spokesman Jon Paul Lupo. “Then they are required to be on call until their shift is over.”
Once the beep packs it in and there’s nothing more doing at Borough Hall, the driver on duty is allowed to go home. Of course, he keeps getting paid until midnight.
Taxpayers pick up the tab of $177,372 a year, not including overtime.
It’s all within the city’s lax rules, since the Conflicts of Interest Board has decided that elected officials with government vehicles can do just about anything they want with them.
One late-night stint last month took Markowitz and driver Robert Macko to the Blue Water Grill in Union Square during Restaurant Week.
Lupo described the dinner as an “official meeting,” since the beep was discussing his annual Seaside concert series with talent booker Toby Ludwig, who’s also a Markowitz campaign contributor.
A second Markowitz driver, Altay Karabay, supplements his $64,896 salary by selling ads for Bandshell magazine, the program distributed at the Seaside concerts.
Lupo said Karabay doesn’t need clearance to hold a second job, since Bandshell receives no money from the city. But Seaside does, and it’s housed in the same office as Bandshell and shares the same phone number.
Dick Dadey, of Citizens Union, said the deal smells.
“It’s a legal distinction without much of an ethical difference,” he declared.
The only other borough president with three staffers assigned to driving duties is Ruben Diaz Jr. in The Bronx. But an aide said he could think of only once, the annual Bronx charity ball, when a driver may have worked until midnight.
Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro doesn’t even have a driver.