Outing the secret agents
Hand them over, Mr. Mayor — every last email to or from your administration and the media consulting firm BerlinRosen, as you must under the Freedom of Information Law. So ordered Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Joan Lobis on Thursday, not that there was the remote possibility of any other outcome, given the absurdity of the mayor’s defense.
Namely, that de Blasio confidante Jonathan Rosen, co-founder and principal of the highly connected consultancy, was an “agent of the city,” his emails therefore shielded from release to reporters.
In the months following de Blasio’s January 2014 inauguration, Rosen’s firm was paid not by the city but by the de Blasio-affiliated nonprofit Campaign for One New York, and by campaign committees working with the mayor to elect a Democratic majority to the state Senate. It simultaneously represented clients, like real estate developers, with big projects under consideration by City Hall.
Reporters, pursuing communications between Rosen and de Blasio and their respective teams to shine light on potential conflicts, invoked state law designed to advance the public’s right to know about the workings of its government.
That Freedom of Information Law has narrow exceptions intended to protect delicate internal administration deliberations and the like.
By deeming Rosen — a consultant and adviser — an “agent of the city,” De Blasio sought to turn those exceptions into loopholes large enough to drive much of his mayoralty through.
To bury still more emails, de Blasio stuck the “agents” designation on four other advisers as well. This scrap of legal nonsense was borrowed cheaply from Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who tried to hide correspondence involving his schools chancellor candidate Cathie Black. (It failed in court for Mayor Mike, too.)
The only thing de Blasio won here is time, of which he will now seek still more, intending to file for appeal. Anything but to allow potentially embarrassing missives in the public eye while running for reelection.
At a high price, for the judge ordered the city to pay the plaintiffs’ lawyers’ fees, so meritless did she find the mayor’s obstruction.
Chutzpah atop it all: The city’s lawyers insisted that blocking the emails’ release was necessary as a matter of public interest.
We look forward to finding out what grave calamity will now befall the city with the uncaging of the “agents” emails — and won’t be surprised if the only damage ends up being to de Blasio himself.