Rudy Giuliani tapped the budgets of obscure city agencies to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel expenses in 1999 and 2000 when he was secretly dating future wife Judith Nathan in Southampton, according to a sensational report yesterday.
Giuliani’s visits to the Hamptons cost taxpayers at least $3,000 a day in NYPD salaries and overnight motel lodging, The Post first reported in 2000.
The latest bit of odd accounting was uncovered when auditors for City Comptroller Bill Thompson spotted a $34,000 expense for out-of-city travel at the Loft Board. It was mysteriously marked “prepayment for FY [Fiscal Year] 2001.”
The board’s director insisted the tab wasn’t run up at the tiny agency, which regulates lofts entirely within the five boroughs.
When the auditors asked for an explanation, City Hall balked, Thompson said in a Jan. 24, 2002, confidential letter to Mayor Bloomberg, then in his fourth week on the job.
“We could not confirm whether those charges represented legitimate travel expenses for these offices,” Thompson wrote.
Auditors kept digging and turned up $143,867 in nonlocal travel at 12 small mayoral agencies in fiscal 2000, including $10,054 attributed to the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities.
That was on top of the $165,985 in “nonlocal travel” billed directly to the Mayor’s Office.
The auditors also found an astonishing $400,000 tab in “nonlocal travel” in fiscal 2001 at the administrative office of the Assigned Counsel Plan, which assigns lawyers to destitute criminal suspects.
Overall, Thompson reported that nonlocal-travel expenses surged from $245,896 in fiscal 2000 to $618,014 in fiscal 2001 – a 151 percent increase.
Giuliani was asked about the report at last night’s GOP debate.
“I had 24-hour security for the eight years that I was mayor,” he said, noting he faced death threats.
“And they took care of me, and they put in their records, and they handled them in the way they handled them. I had nothing to do with the handling of their records, and they were handled, as far as I know, perfectly appropriately.”
Anthony Carbonetti, senior advisor to Giuliani’s presidential campaign and a former chief-of-staff in his administration, defended the expenditures. “These are legitimate Police Department expenses,” he said.
But asked why they were paid by agencies other than the NYPD, he said, “I don’t have an answer to that yet.”
Giuliani asked his former deputy mayor, Joe Lhota, to investigate the handling of the expenses, campaign officials said last night.
One campaign source pointed out that the bills covered all travel by Giuliani and his family, including then-wife Donna Hanover, not just those to the Hamptons.
Privately, some Giuliani aides believe officials within the Bloomberg administration had a hand in leaking the damaging details.
After receiving Thompson’s letter, Bloomberg referred the matter to the Department of Investigation, said mayoral spokesman Stu Loeser. More than five years later, nothing has happened.
The Politico.com Web site reported that American Express bills and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show numerous receipts from hotels and gas stations on Long Island, where Giuliani secretly began visiting Nathan’s Southampton condo in summer 1999 as his marriage to Hanover was crumbling.