Metro

City Hall stingy on aide’s charity hours

They’re not being very charitable.

City Hall aides yesterday declined to reveal how many hours Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris devotes to the $1.6 billion Bloomberg Family Foundation while on the taxpayer dime, insisting that a 2-year-old retroactive Conflicts of Interest Board ruling cleared her.

But that guidance opinion from the city’s ethics panel was in 2008 — a time when Harris claims to have put in just 15 minutes a week at Mayor Bloomberg’s private charity, according to the foundation’s tax returns.

“The conflicts board had already ruled that she could undertake these volunteer charitable activities for which she receives no compensation,” said City Hall spokesman Jason Post.

“These efforts have had absolutely no impact on her ability to fulfill her duties as first deputy mayor,” he said.

As The Post reported yesterday, Harris, who receives a $246,000 yearly taxpayer-funded salary, spent a good portion of a day last week at the foundation’s Upper East Side headquarters while on city time.

Harris, along with two City Hall aides, were chauffeured in a city-owned Buick Lucerne to the foundation’s $45 million Beaux Arts six-story mansion at 25 E. 78th St.

Also spotted coming and going from the foundation during the workday were Deputy Mayor for Education Dennis Walcott and Press Secretary Stu Loeser.

A high-ranking official further griped to The Post that Harris is “never at City Hall” and “her chair is always empty.”

James Anderson, a spokesman for the Bloomberg Family Foundation, which is in the midst of a global anti-tobacco initiative, said he couldn’t comment on Harris’ weekly workload.

Good-government groups have questioned whether Harris can devote herself to helping run the city if she’s also involved in the day-to-day operations of the charity committed to national and international causes.

Harris, who is married to a Bloomberg appointee to the MTA board, Mark Lebow, helped Hizzoner establish the charity in 2007.

She didn’t seek a guidance opinion from the Conflicts of Interest Board until 2008 — long after she already started volunteering for the foundation.

The board advised in January 2008 that she could work for the foundation on a voluntary basis and make “incidental use” of city resources, such as phones or Internet.

There was no discussion of how many hours per week she could devote to the mayor’s philanthropic efforts.

Last March, Harris, 54, was named CEO and chairman of the foundation, but never bothered to seek a new guidance opinion even though her responsibilities expanded dramatically.

chuck.bennett@nypost.com