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| Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, with her boss, at City Hall. Dec. 6, 2022. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY |
Remember one thing: it's always about money.
Betsy Combier
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Contributions That Exceed Legal Limits Poured Into Eric Adams’ Campaign
Many of the donations, from people who do business with the city, won’t be officially identified for weeks, allowing the mayor to inflate the size of his campaign haul before the money is refunded.
BY GREG B. SMITH, The City, July 19, 2024, 5:00 A.M.
Executives at three school bus companies with multimillion-dollar contracts, as well as a real estate developer who deals with city government, are all on the city’s official “doing business” list — and all of them gave more than the legal cap to Adams’ 2025 campaign.
Their donations are the latest among hundreds of instances in which individuals on the list gave more than the limit to Adams’ 2021 campaign and now his 2025 bid for re-election. Donors who exceeded the $400 cutoff have had the excess money refunded following Campaign Finance Board review — well after the campaign has touted its fundraising hauls in hotly competitive races.
All told, both campaigns have refunded some $260,000 in donations from “doing business” donors that were over the $400 limit — far more than any other candidate in New York City history.
This week, Adams reported raising over $1 million in the last six months, more than double his closest competitor.
Included in that haul were donations from executives at two affiliated school bus companies, Boro Transportation and Consolidated Transportation, who each gave $400 in 2020, then another $400 in this month. Both provide yellow bus service for New York City public schools under city contracts.
A top officer at a third school bus company, Ozone Park-based Hoyt Transportation, which has a $323 million DOE contract, gave both a $400 donation and a $2,100 donation to Adams’ campaign on the same day, July 8, records show.
The campaign accepted all of these checks without questioning them. (The Hoyt executive told THE CITY the $2,100 donation was actually from his wife and that it was misidentified by the Adams’ campaign.
Carolyn Daly, a spokesperson for the Boro and Consolidated executives, said the two executives “truly made an honest mistake by donating again and will request a refund in the morning. They do support Mayor Adams and feel he is running DOE/OPT very well and they have deep experience running school bus services for NYC.”
A similar scenario occurred with Harold Fetner, a real estate developer who is on the “doing business” list and gave the Adams campaign $2,100 on July 10 — $1,700 over the $400 cutoff. Barbara Wagner, a spokesperson for his firm, Fetner Properties, said after THE CITY pointed out the donation, Fetner asked the Adams’ campaign to refund the amount over the permitted $400 limit. She added that Fetner believes the “doing business” list record is “stale” and that he is working with the city clerk — who maintains city lobbying files — to “correct the record.”
In all, Adams’ 2021 campaign sent back 42% of the $440,000 in donations it collected from contributors on the doing business list. So far in the 2025 election, the rate of refunds is even higher, with 50% of the $144,000 collected returned.
The only other candidate for mayor who has come close is Bill de Blasio, who had a refund rate of 40% in 2017 and 38% in 2013, according to Campaign Finance Board records.
Adams and his representatives have consistently asserted that his campaigns make aggressive efforts to vet donations to ensure they are within the letter of the law.
In response to THE CITY’s questions Wednesday, Vito Pitta, counsel to the Adams’ campaign, defended the campaign’s review protocols. He also noted that placement on the city’s “doing business” list is limited to lobbyists for and employees of entities seeking favorable treatment from City Hall who are directly involved in or have oversight of the interactions with the city agency.
“Only people on the doing business list are limited in what they can give to campaigns, not every executive from their companies,” Pitta said. “Additionally, the doing business database may not always be up-to-date and often includes individuals who made contributions before they were subject to the limits. The campaign will of course refund any contributions over the limit — as it always has — and has 20 days to do so once receiving notification from the Campaign Finance Board.”
Rudy’s Reforms
The “doing business” list emerged from the corruption scandals of the Koch administration as a 1998 reform to the city charter under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani that “sought to remove the influence of special interests in the election process.” In addition to banning corporate contributions, the amendments gave the Campaign Finance Board the power to regulate donations from individuals involved in city business.
Today, lobbyists, top executives at city contractors and city contract bidders, and any entity seeking a city license or franchise agreement are required to be included on the Doing Business List maintained by the Mayor’s Office of Contracts (MOCS), as are “senior managers” who have “substantial discretion and oversight” in business transactions with the city.
Entities placed on the list also include real estate interests seeking zoning alterations or tax breaks or to lease city property or lease their properties to the city.
In his two campaigns for mayor, Adams routinely took money from real estate developers, lobbyists, social service executives and others on the list. A number of them ended up in top positions in his administration.
For his 2021 race, they included Sheena Wright, now his first deputy mayor, David Banks, now the city schools’ chancellor, and Andrew Kimball, who is now New York City Economics Development Corporation president, records show. All had their excess contributions refunded.
Also among donors who gave over the limit was James Molinaro, the former Staten Island borough president who now works for Pitta Bishop — the firm Adams pays to vet the contributions to his campaign. Molinaro gave $900 in the 2021 campaign, $500 above the limit.
Another donor who exceeded the $400 limit, with a $1,000 check, was Mark Caller of the Marcal Group — a developer now facing criminal charges for allegedly bribing Adams’ former Department of Buildings commissioner Eric Ulrich. (Caller and Ulrich have both pleaded not guilty and the charges are pending.)
“Doing business” violations are far from the only reason Adams’ mayoral campaigns have refunded contributions — totaling millions of dollars in donations.
The 2021 campaign refunded portions of more than 1,700 donations amounting to more than $2.2 million, records show. Through July 15, the 2025 campaign has returned portions of 245 donations totaling more than $324,000 of $4.3 million raised to date.
Some of those refunded checks were identified by prosecutors, THE CITY and other media outlets as illegal contributions funneled through straw donors. In February one of Adams’ former cop pals, Dwayne Montgomery, pleaded guilty to orchestrating a scheme to steer thousands of dollars in straw contributions to Adams’ 2021 campaign.
Less visibly, the doing business list and its quirks pose integrity challenges.
Good-government groups have long criticized the loopholes and lack of oversight they say compromise the list, noting that MOCS relies only on information the entities seeking City Hall’s assistance choose to provide. There is no evidence MOCS double-checks claims, thwarting accurate accounting of who should be on the list.
“There are some big big holes in the law,” said John Kaehny, executive director of the non-partisan government watchdog group Reinvent Albany. “They’re just not going to pick up these things at MOCS. The whole thing screams out for change and it needs to be regularly audited.”
Reinvent Albany has proposed expanding the definition of “doing business” entities to include, among others, clients of lobbyists — an expansion that would apply to hundreds of businesses operating in New York City.
Kaehny noted that campaigns trying to hit a number by a deadline — in Adams’ case $1 million by July 11 — have little incentive to look closely at donors. The rules put the burden for reviewing donations on the Campaign Finance Board, which sends a notice back to campaigns in 20 days red-flagging illegal donations for refunds.
Kaehny noted that as it stands, campaigns “don’t have to worry about vetting their contributors. They’re off the hook for that. That liability would be an important check. Of course the campaigns would be a lot more careful if they had responsibility for vetting the donations. It’s ridiculous that it’s just on CFB.”
Casino Bids
The doing business list itself suffers from omissions and inconsistencies.
Take SL Green’s Executive Vice President Steven Durels, who gave Adams’ 2025 campaign $2,100 earlier this month, at a time when SL Green had been lobbying City Hall for months to win support for its bid to open a casino in Times Square.
Durels is on the “doing business” list — but not for SL Green. He surfaces on the list instead as a “real property manager” under SLG Graybar, an SL Green subsidiary that has longstanding leases with the city.
Records also show senior managers at SL Green now involved in the lobbying of City Hall on the casino bid did not appear on the “doing business” list until after they’d made over-the-limit donations to Adams.
Brett Herschenfeld, an SL Green executive vice president and lobbyist for the firm, has donated $2,000 to Adams’ 2025 campaign — well above the $400 limit. But timing is everything.
Herschenfeld made two $1,000 donations in March 2022, at a time when he was not yet on the “doing business” list. Ten months later, in January 2023, records show SL Green reported Herschenfeld as targeting Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer for “direct lobbying” in SL Green’s efforts to win City Hall support for the casino bid.
The same thing occurred with Andrew Levine, SL Green’s general counsel, who gave $1,000 in March 2022 to Adams’ campaign. Ten months later, SL Green filed lobbyist records listing him as principal lobbyist in the push to get support for the casino endeavor.
Herschenfeld wasn’t put on the city’s “doing business” list until March of this year, 15 months after records show he began lobbying City Hall. This time, when Herschenfeld made a $400 donation to Adams two weeks ago, the campaign refunded his check.
Levine, meanwhile, is still listed as “principal lobbyist” for SL Green on the casino bid but has yet to appear on the “doing business” list.
In response to THE CITY’s questions, a spokesperson for SL Green said the firm “employees adhere to campaign finance guidelines. In the rare instances where contributions inadvertently exceed permitted amounts, refunds are issued.”
The Adams campaign has also sent back other contributions before the Campaign Finance Board weighs in.
That includes a $2,100 contribution SL Green CEO Marc Holliday made in May 2023, shortly after he was listed in state records as a lobbyist for SL Green on multiple issues, including pressing Deputy Mayor Torres-Springer on the casino proposal.
At the time, Holiday was not yet on the “doing business” list so it’s not clear what triggered the campaign to refund the donation.
That was not Holliday’s first contribution to Adams’ political ambitions. In the mayor’s first bid for City Hall, Holliday hosted an August 2021 fundraiser after Adams had won the primary but before he was elected, raising $30,900 from 41 donors —including several SL Green executives and their relatives.
That fundraiser later made headlines when records surfaced showing a high-end sushi restaurant SL Green was trying to open in their premiere Midtown office tower One Vanderbilt jumped the line for a fire department alarm inspection.
As THE CITY reported, shortly after the restaurant, JoJi, went on an internal “Deputy Mayor for Operations” list, fire inspectors showed up and signed off on the alarm system in time for it to open on Sept. 14, 2022 — the 25th anniversary of the founding of SL Green.
