The City Council overwhelmingly voted Monday to censure embattled Bronx pol Andy King, following revelations he retaliated against whistleblowers, abused his staff and misused city resources.
The Council voted 44-1 to suspend the Democrat for a month without pay, fine him $15,000 and pull his committee assignments. There were two abstentions.
The vote came just a week after the Council’s ethics watchdog published its blistering 48-page report.
“The violations outlined in the report are appalling, particularly coming from an elected official who is duty-bound to serve the public,” said Council Speaker Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan), who called King’s behavior “intolerable and unacceptable” and “odious.”
Additionally, King’s office will be placed under the control of an independent monitor for the remainder of his term in response to allegations he harassed his staff and allowed one of his supervisors to bully a subordinate.
King fired back with a lawsuit Monday morning, claiming the City Council’s ethics watchdog violated his right to due process and asking a Manhattan court to block the Monday afternoon vote.
Judge Arthur Engoron nixed King’s request but allowed his case to move forward.
Just a few blocks away, The Bronx councilman reiterated those claims to his colleagues from the floor of the Council chamber.
“I just think I’m not being treated fairly, it’s not right what’s happening here,” King said, as he sat at his desk, wearing a sherbert-colored shirt and bow tie — in a 14 minute-long rambling speech. “I don’t want people making emotional decisions when due process has been violated.”
“I have been — and I will always be — a kind and loving soul and that’s where I stand,” he added.
Johnson and the ethics panel chairman, Steve Matteo (R-Staten Island), were pressed over why they did not seek King’s expulsion and defended the punishment package as the harshest leveled in recent memory.
“These sanctions address the will of the voters of the 12th District while also addressing some of the most egregious conduct the Council has ever seen,” Matteo said.
An attempt by Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Queens) to expel King failed by a vote of 34-12.
The Sunnyside pol said he only decided to formally call for King’s removal after hearing his remarks.
“The absolute lack of remorse, the absolute lack of even understanding that anything had been done wrong,” Van Bramer said. “That, to me, is even more of the pattern of behavior that brought us to this point out in the first place.
Van Bramer’s expulsion push was backed by two of his likely opponents in the Queens borough president race — Councilmen Donovan Richards and Costa Constantinides.
The Council’s Monday vote came a week after the Committee on Standards and Ethics released its damning investigation.
The panel’s nearly eight-month-long ethics probe found King self-dealt, harassed his staff, fostered a hostile work environment and repeatedly attempted to retaliate against whistleblowers.
The Bronx pol’s years-long pattern of bad behavior included shocking revelations he used city resources:
- To help plan his step-daughter’s Virgin Islands wedding;
- Allowed his wife — Neva Shillingford-King, an executive SEIU Local 1199 — to use his Council staff to do for at her labor union;
- Attempted to fire staffers who testified before the ethics committee about his actions.
Additionally, the ethics panel found evidence he violated the Council’s harassment policy by comparing a 2015 photograph of then-Council members Corey Johnson and Rosie Mendez dancing at New York’s gay pride parade to “child pornography.”
Both Johnson — who now leads the Council — and Mayor Bill de Blasio called on King to resign in the aftermath of the ethics report’s publication.
“This is the most egregious thing I have ever seen in my six years on the City Council,” Johnson said Wednesday.
It’s the second time in recent years that King landed in the crosshairs of the Council’s ethics committee.
The panel ordered the lawmaker to take sensitivity training in 2018 after the panel determined he sexually harassed a female staffer.
Additional reporting by Rich Calder and Priscilla DeGregory