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Nice try.
City Comptroller John Liu was telling a tall tale when he claimed to have a letter from city ethics officials allowing his campaign manager to oversee operations at the Comptroller’s Office.
The only document Liu could produce yesterday was a memo signed by his general counsel, which does not clear Chung Seto — the architect of Liu’s political climb — to run the Comptroller’s Office.
The six-page memo purports to set conditions for Seto to “donate her labor and services” because “the parties desire to work together to further their mutual and individual aims.”
City ethics laws require that elected officials keep their political operations completely separate from their government offices, unless the arrangement is approved by the Conflicts of Interest Board.
Susan Lerner, an attorney and executive director of the watchdog group Common Cause New York, said, “This is a clear, blatant attempt to circumvent the city’s ethics law. You can’t exempt yourself by contract from the ethics law or any other law.”
Officials at the Conflicts of Interest Board declined to comment on the arrangement between Liu and Seto — or say whether they would investigate her role at the Comptroller’s Office.
But even under the terms of the April 1, 2010, memo, Seto’s work at the city agency far exceeded the role she was approved for.
The half-baked permission slip dictated that she“will have no supervisory role or authority as to the Comptroller’s Office staff.”
The Post reported yesterday that dozens of e-mails obtained through a Freedom of Information request showed Seto had a hand in running the Comptroller’s Office even though she was Liu’s political consultant.
The e-mails made clear that Seto was handling everything from redecorating the office to referring financial advisers to staffers in charge of the pension systems that Liu was elected to oversee.
George Arzt, a spokesman for Seto and Liu, initially insisted he would be able to provide a written “advisory opinion” from the Conflicts of Interest Board blessing the arrangement.
Yesterday, Arzt backtracked, saying board officials spoke to people at the Comptroller’s Office by phone.
“I don’t know if they signed off on it, but certainly the two offices talked. I don’t know what proof you can have of a telephone conversation,” said Arzt.
Veteran city officials and government observers say they’ve never seen anything like the agreement between Seto and Liu’s office.
“This does not pass the smell test,” said SUNY New Paltz political science professor Gerald Benjamin. “Either it’s bad judgment or worse.”