LAWYERING UP, LAWYERING DOWN: Three city employees are getting legal representation funded by the government amid the multiple criminal investigations right now — but the Law Department won’t say who they are. The employees are being asked to respond to confidential subpoenas, so their names will remain “undisclosed so as to not impede ongoing investigations,” acting Corporation Counsel Muriel Goode-Trufant wrote in a letter Wednesday. She was responding to a request for more transparency on legal representation from City Council Oversight Chair Gale Brewer, first reported in Playbook. The three employees are actually represented by the law firm Yankwitt LLP, which the city retained at a rate of up to $600 per hour. Yankwitt declined to confirm, or comment. The city sometimes hires outside firms, rather than having city lawyers do the work themselves. But one of those arrangements is ending, Goode-Trufant added. Spiro, who is now representing Adams in his federal bribery case, is withdrawing from Adams’ sexual assault lawsuit, the Daily News first reported. Spiro wrote in a court filing that the Conflicts of Interest Board “raised concerns” about his firm representing Adams in both cases — paid for by the city in one case, and Adams himself in the other. The Law Department will keep representing Adams in the Adult Survivors Act complaint, a spokesperson said. — Jeff Coltin
MILKING THE CLOCK: Employees of the New York City Sheriff’s Office are grossly inflating their salaries through unchecked overtime, costing taxpayers almost $5,000,000 more than budgeted for 2024, according to city Comptroller Brad Lander.
This comes from a letter Lander sent the Department of Finance, which oversees the Sheriff’s Office, in which he noted that so far this year, the sheriff’s office has outspent its overtime budget by 542 percent. In 2023, the ten highest paid employees of the agency earned a collective $1,010,739 in overtime pay. Lander’s letter comes just days after POLITICO first reported the city’s Department of Investigation is probing the sheriff. “The Sheriff’s Office does not set realistic overtime budgets and does not limit overtime spending to adopted budget amounts,” Lander wrote, adding that the agency “does not properly manage and modify the budget on an ongoing basis during the fiscal year.” The sheriff’s office requested an additional $835,000 for its existing $897,064 overtime budget in 2023. But at the time it made the request, the office had already exceeded its annual overtime budget by $2.1 million. By the end of 2023, overtime spending jumped to more than $6 million dollars — a 570 percent increase. Reached by phone, Sheriff Anthony Miranda told POLITICO that the figures in Lander’s letter seemed wrong, but he did not elaborate further than that. “As New York City has grappled with the proliferation of illegal smoke shops, a rise in unlawful ‘ghost vehicles,’ a global pandemic, and more, the Sheriff’s Office has met the moment by deploying all necessary resources to protect public safety,” said City Hall spokesperson Liz Garcia. She added that, “the Sheriff’s Office and the Department of Finance will continue to work with the Office of Management and Budget regarding budgeted overtime.” Ingrid Simonovic, president of the union that represents sheriff's employees, said the additional overtime “should come as no surprise.” “We are now working tours on the weekend as part of the requirements of Operation Padlock,” Simonovic told POLITICO, referring to the sheriff’s crackdown on unlicensed cannabis shops across the city. “Instead of hiring more deputies, Sheriff Miranda hired 11 managers, who serve no real purpose, instead of focusing on hiring essential personnel who could do the day-to-day work.” On December 9, 2023, 127 employees of the sheriff’s office reported for mandatory training, billing the city more than $60,000 in a single day for a collective 1,117 hours worked — an average of nine overtime hours per employee. Last week, city investigators searched the sheriff’s office facility in Queens after “receiving a report from the Department of Finance about unvouchered cash at that location,” according to a spokesperson for DOI. News of the search came the same day prosecutors with the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment against Mayor Eric Adams. —Timmy Facciola | 
