Mayor Adams’ inaugural arm allegedly accepted $15,600 in ‘prohibited donations,’ but dodges fines for now

Lawyers for the city Campaign Finance Board argued Wednesday that Mayor Adams’ inaugural committee should face hefty fines for accepting more than $15,000 in “prohibited donations” from individuals with business before the municipal government.

But the inaugural committee will evade financial penalties — for now — after its lawyer, Ardian Tagani, convinced the board’s chairman during a hearing to push back a vote on the matter in order to allow Adams’ team to submit additional information as part of its defense.

The chairman, Fredrick Schaefer, did not grant Tagani’s request without saying he considers the allegations “troubling,” though.

“We have done this on occasion before, accepting information at the 11th hour. We don’t like to do it,” Schaefer said at the hearing held at the board’s offices in downtown Manhattan. “We have rules about this, and we really wish to see both candidates and [inaugural committees] abide … But this is a case of significance and of public interest that induces us to accept this late offer of information.”

The additional info includes 57 checks that Adams’ lawyers said the committee was not previously privy to.

As a result of the new details, a vote on the proposed penalties against the Adams committee will take place at another board meeting in the coming weeks, Schaefer said.

In addition to the “prohibited donations” allegation, Adams’ committee stands accused of failing to close down the fund once he became mayor, and dodging requests for documentation from the board. Lawyers for the board did not divulge the dollar figure of their proposed penalties at Wednesday’s hearing, but, between the three alleged violations, Adams’ committee could be fined tens of thousands of dollars, according to a source familiar with the matter.

At issue in the main allegation is $15,600 in donations that five individuals gave to Adams’ inaugural committee in the weeks after his November 2021 election, according to Campaign Finance Board lawyers.

Those five Adams donors are all listed in the city’s “Doing Business” database, which keeps tabs on individuals who bid on city contracts or otherwise engage in business with municipal agencies.

Individuals in that database are barred by law from donating money to mayoral inaugural committees, which are used by candidates for expenses after their election but before they’re sworn in. That law is meant to prevent “pay-to-play” politics in city government.

Tagani argued that “while prevention of actual or perceived corruption is an admirable goal,” the proceeds from the five donors in question “don’t rise to that level.”

The reason for that, he said, is that the Adams committee ultimately returned the $15,600 to those five donors, meaning the cash was “effectively never used.”

Campaign Finance Board general counsel Bethany Perski pushed back on Tagani’s defense. She argued Adams’ committee should still be subject to penalties because it did not return the donations in question as quickly as the law requires upon being notified by the board.

Tagani blamed the reimbursement delay on a committee staffer in charge of donation refunds who was in the midst of separating from a partner at the time.

“[The staffer] had an extraordinary personal burden,” the lawyer said.

The Adams committee ended up returning more than $800,000 of the roughly $2 million it raised after the mayor had to cancel his Jan. 1, 2022 inauguration ceremony due to COVID-19 concerns.

Given the committee’s overall reimbursement compliance, Tagani called the board’s recommended penalties “entirely excessive” and said the levy should at most be $1,250.

Perski said Tagani’s claim about the unnamed staffer doesn’t hold water because the committee is obligated to “employ any necessary staff that they need for compliance.” She also disputed the Adams attorney’s push for a lower fine.

“There’s absolutely no support in the law or behind the law for reducing penalties,” she said. “To do so would really be anathema to contribution limits.”

It’s not entirely unusual for elected officials in the city to be slapped with campaign finance fines. Ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio was ordered to cough up more than $40,000 in penalties for improper spending during his 2013 campaign, and the board voted in January to fine Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso nearly $7,000 for issues involving his inaugural committee.