City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said Thursday that there’s “nothing happening any time soon” on legal defense fund legislation that Mayor de Blasio is counting on to pay his criminal defense bills.
The mayor said he’s waiting for the Council to act on new regulations so he can raise money to pay off a $300,000 tab stemming from two probes of his fundraising practices that ended in March 2017.
The current limit on donations is $50 because of rules against elected officials accepting gifts of greater value than that, according to the city’s ethics panel.
“The mayor has asked me about it,” Johnson told reporters at City Hall. “I think it’s an issue that’s worthy of consideration, and I’m trying to figure out what the appropriate framework should be. We’re really I think at some preliminary stages where there have been conversations but there’s nothing happening anytime soon.”
Johnson said the issue of legal defense funds isn’t well-regulated by current law, which is why he’s open to addressing it.
The mayor has owed criminal defense firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel $300,000 since at least June 2017, when he announced he was shifting $2.6 million in legal bills related to his government work over to taxpayers.
But that still left the $300,000 in bills the mayor was personally liable for work that was political in nature.
The total legal tab to taxpayers resulting from various investigations of the mayor and his aides is $14.5 million.