News Clips

“This is really not acceptable conduct by any government agency,” said Susan Lerner, the head of watchdog group Common Cause New York. “The data is subject to FOIL, there is no excuse for playing games.” “Certainly the spirit of the law has been violated,” she added. “This sort of game-playing should not be countenanced.”

Representatives for Blake and Airbnb denied any connection between Blake’s consulting work and his support of the Airbnb bill, and Blake was paid by Hilltop for work with out-of-state clients. Even so, Susan Lerner of the good government group Common Cause New York told the Times Union that the situation has “the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

"It has the appearance of a conflict of interest," said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, a leading good government group. "The basis on which all of this took place, we don't know. But no legislator should be in this situation."

But nonpartisan groups like Common Cause NY say they have long recognized that Independence has survived and prospered for a quarter century through its name. Executive Director Susan Lerner said Dixon is proving no exception. “She is not an independent, she is a member of the Independence Party endorsed by Republicans,” Lerner said. “This seems to be misleading the voters.”

Good government groups assailed the move. “The Mayor seems hell-bent on providing donors with a backdoor to his administration, repeatedly undermining his own moral authority as the leader of this city,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of government watchdog group Common Cause’s New York chapter.

As of the last public accounting, 70 percent of the mayor’s 6,700 donors were tied to the city’s powerful Hotel Trades Council that has benefited from de Blasio’s battle against Airbnb. De Blasio also ordered his Planning Department to study mandatory permitting for all new hotels across the city that would give the HTC tremendous leverage to require unionized labor in the hotels. Good-government advocate Susan Lerner said the order, “at a minimum, creates the appearance of impropriety and illegality.”