Maybe Mayor de Blasio’s spokesman is right: There’s “zero” connection between the sweetheart deal the teachers union won from the city and $350,000 its parent union donated to Mayor Bill’s Super PAC.
Maybe it’s also just a coincidence, as Crain’s reported, that the donation from the American Federation of Teachers to the Campaign for One New York came less than a month before the mayor agreed to a nine-year-contract with its New York local whose health “savings” are vague but whose retroactive pay is all too real.
StudentsFirstNY has called for an investigation.
In a letter to the chairman of the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board, the organization says “New Yorkers deserve to know whether it is a conflict of interest for Mayor de Blasio to take large Super PAC contributions from a union with whom he is negotiating a new contract.”
We agree. But even better would be for de Blasio’s lobbying group to return money it obtained under such dubious circumstances. As Common Cause puts it, the deal makes it look as if public policy “is up for sale to the highest bidder.”
AFT President Randi Weingarten insists the donation is related solely to the mayor’s pet project of universal pre-K. Maybe so, but nothing about this passes the smell test.
And that stink will continue until Bill de Blasio does the right thing — and tells his lobbying group to give the money back.