NYC City Hall adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin has yet to be repaid for loan given to staffer in potential ethical dilemma

A City Hall staffer borrowed money from Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Mayor Adams’ chief adviser, prior to her appointment and has yet to pay it back, according to a financial disclosure form that could raise ethical concerns for the top mayoral aide.

The annual disclosure, submitted by Lewis-Martin with the Conflicts of Interest Board, shows that City Hall special assistant Dawn Baskerville owes her between $1,000 and $5,000 for a “personal loan” issued in 2014.

“It was a loan to a friend, who may repay me whenever she is financially able,” Lewis-Martin wrote on the form, which the Daily News obtained via a public information request.

But Lewis-Martin did not mention in the disclosure that her relation to Baskerville extends beyond friendship.

Baskerville’s LinkedIn profile and city records show that she landed a job in December 2015 as a special assistant to Lewis-Martin, who was at the time the top deputy to then-Brooklyn Borough President Adams.

In April 2019, Baskerville was promoted to serve as Brooklyn Borough Hall’s deputy communications director, a job she held until she got her current gig at City Hall. Each promotion came with a pay bump, city records show.

Adams spokesman Fabien Levy on Tuesday declined to specify the exact dollar amount of the loan, but said Lewis-Martin issued it to help out an “old friend“ who was in a “difficult financial position.”

Levy also confirmed the debt to Lewis-Martin has remained outstanding throughout Baskerville’s time in city government.

”None of the loan has been repaid at this time, which is why Ingrid continues to list it on her financial disclosures. There were no subsequent loans once this individual was hired at Borough Hall,” Levy said. “It’s disappointing that a kind act, with zero repercussions for the public, is being used against two public servants.”

Carolyn Miller, executive director of the Conflicts of Interest Board, declined to say if the panel is scrutinizing Lewis-Martin’s loan to Baskerville, telling The News that the City Charter prohibits her from “disclosing whether a public servant is or is not the subject of an investigation.”

Still, a recent Conflicts of Interest Board ruling suggests the loan could pose a conflict of interest.

The ruling, issued this January, found that Jessica Tisch, Adams’ sanitation commissioner, violated a city ethics law and was fined $2,000 after loaning a friend $75,000 for law school in 2013 before hiring that same friend for a job under her supervision at the NYPD while the debt remained unpaid.

Lewis-Martin, who has for years been one of Adams’ most trusted political confidantes, declined to comment via Levy on whether she sought guidance from the board about the matter.

Rachel Fauss, a senior researcher with government watchdog group Reinvent Albany said: “The Tisch ruling is the established precedent, so in terms of superiors hiring people when they’re owed money, the same standard seems like it should apply here.”