Mayor de Blasio, who vowed to bring transparency to City Hall, repeatedly met with lobbyists but failed to disclose the sit-downs as promised, The Post has learned.
An analysis of hundreds of pages of de Blasio’s personal schedules found dozens of meetings and conference calls with lobbyists that were not included on a list of “lobbying meetings” posted on the city’s website.
Two meetings missing from the online list were with real-estate mogul Steve Nislick and Wendy Neu, leaders of the movement to ban carriage horses from Central Park.
The pair — who pumped at least $900,000 into de Blasio’s 2013 mayoral campaign and his progressive nonprofit, the Campaign for One New York — met with de Blasio at City Hall last Feb. 27, June 29 and Aug. 20, according to the lobbying list.
But Hizzoner also huddled with the pair for an hour at Gracie Mansion on Sept. 16, 2014, and had an earlier 45-minute conference call with them on April 15 of that year, according to the mayor’s schedules.
“The mayor promised to be the most transparent mayor in history, but he apparently doesn’t know what the word ‘transparent’ means,” said Geoffrey Croft of the watchdog group New York City Park Advocates.
Croft opposes the horse-carriage bill and says he has been repeatedly stonewalled by City Hall on requests for accessible public records.
“In fact, the entire horse-carriage issue has become the poster child for lack of transparency at City Hall,” he said.
De Blasio had promised to exceed disclosure requirements by voluntarily disclosing meetings with lobbyists on the city’s website.
But The Post’s analysis found at least two dozen meetings with lobbyists listed in his schedule that were omitted from the lobbying list.
De Blasio’s office didn’t explain the discrepancies, but insisted it was committed to transparency.
“The mayor’s voluntary disclosure of meetings with registered lobbyists shows his commitment to transparency, and we strive to disclose all such meetings,” a de Blasio spokesman said.
During the 2013 mayoral race, de Blasio released a similar voluntary list of meetings he had with lobbyists while he was the city’s public advocate.
He was later accused by opponent Bill Thompson of holding back many of the meetings — particularly those with lobbyists who also donated thousands of dollars to de Blasio’s campaign.
Peter Ward, who heads the Hotel Trades Council and is recording secretary of its parent union, UNITE HERE, successfully lobbied de Blasio in September 2014 to crack down on illegal hotel ads listed on Airbnb. However, the mayor’s schedule also showed him meeting Ward April 29 and May 2 of last year — sessions not listed in the lobbyist database.
Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, had four “lobbying meetings” with the mayor to push the union’s agenda, according to the latest lobbying list.
Not disclosed was another private sit-down, a conference call and a meet-up in March 2014 at the Red Rooster restaurant in Harlem that included Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
The AFT, which is the UFT’s parent group, donated $350,000 to de Blasio’s nonprofit in April 2014.
The mayor’s public schedules are also far from perfect.
James Capalino is listed in the voluntary lobbyist records as meeting with de Blasio three times since 2014, yet only one session – a March 2015 sit-down to discuss “Chinese tourism” — is documented in de Blasio’s daily schedules.
Moreover, at least seven individuals who don’t have any meetings noted in the mayor’s public schedule are documented as having met with him in the lobbying list.
For example, Vincent Pitta is listed in lobbying records as meeting with de Blasio about now-shuttered Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn and a city school-bus union on February 22, 2014, but that was a Saturday in which de Blasio’s public schedule doesn’t list him having any meetings.