Corruption or just incompetence? It’s too soon to say just what explains Team de Blasio’s OK of the Rivington House flip that allowed a developer to close a nursing home and score a $72 million profit.
The only thing that’s perfectly clear is City Hall isn’t coming clean.
On Monday, Mayor de Blasio said he doesn’t “think” a Post exposé on the affair is “accurate.” He cited no specifics — lucky for him, since on Tuesday both Politico and The Wall Street Journal confirmed key elements of The Post’s story.
What we do know is that City Hall was aware of the problem — and tried to fix it — before the news broke.
And we know city managers at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, or DCAS, agreed to lift the deed restriction that preserved the nursing home — for a mere $16.1 million fee.
More: They went ahead even after The Allure Group repeatedly warned that so high a fee would leave it unable to keep the health-care facility going.
Yet the mayor now insists Allure “lied” about its intentions.
It seems City Hall awoke to the problem after the mayor moved Stacey Cumberbatch out as head of DCAS in January, apparently having realized she wasn’t up to the job.
In February, James Patchett — chief of staff to Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen — suddenly started trying to undo the Rivington House deal. Too late: Allure had already sold.
The mayor insists he heard nothing about it until the Journal broke the story in March. If so, his subordinates must fear to send bad news up the line — another big management problem.
Yet the mayor’s pointing fingers at The Post and at Allure’s “lies” — and not at the bungling by people he himself hired.
Will de Blasio ever admit anything is his own fault?