Mayor Eric Adams and his top deputies on Tuesday doubled down on denying city officials used a list of prioritized projects to help well-connected developers bypass a deep backlog of fire safety inspections, despite documents and emails reported by Gothamist.
Adams is facing scrutiny over his administration’s use of the priority list to favor firms with access to City Hall after the list emerged as part of a federal probe into his campaign fundraising tactics. As Gothamist reported Sunday, officials from the mayor’s office ordered fire inspectors to expedite work at the 50 Hudson Yards office complex owned by The Related Companies last year, even when that meant canceling appointments scheduled months in advance for two schools and various apartment buildings.
Neither Adams nor his campaign have been accused of wrongdoing in the ongoing federal investigation. On Tuesday, he attributed the reporting on the priority list to “disgruntled” fire officials — a likely reference to a group of demoted fire chiefs who described the document in a lawsuit claiming they were sidelined after speaking out about VIP treatment for “friends” of City Hall, among other issues.
“There appears to be a very angry individual trying to send these emails all over the city,” Adams told reporters during his weekly press conference.
The mayor said he is committed to speeding up bureaucratic processes across the board — not on behalf of big developers and corporations — and pointed to his administration’s attempts to fill empty office buildings.
“It is a constant navigation of the landscape to move the pieces so that we can effectively have what is our holistic approach to recovering our economy,” he said, noting the city faces a “crisis in office spaces.”
Jim Walden, an attorney representing the fire chiefs in their lawsuit, has accused City Hall of lying about blatant favoritism on behalf of developers. His clients said the list was originally intended to speed up…
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