Q&A
Randy Mastro provides example of opposing mayoral wishes as Corporation Counsel
5:38:07
·
3 min
Randy Mastro, the Corporation Counsel nominee, responds to a request for an example of when he would represent the City Council over the mayor. He provides two examples: refusing to change the line of succession during his time as chair of a charter revision commission, and a hypothetical scenario involving the Fulton Fish Market during the Bloomberg administration.
- Mastro emphasizes his commitment to independence from mayoral influence
- He cites a real-life example of refusing to change the line of succession at a mayor's request
- Mastro provides a detailed hypothetical involving the Fulton Fish Market and organized crime
Keith Powers
5:38:07
Okay.
5:38:07
We are gonna have council members, I think, filtering back in, but in the name of time and in respect for the public, I wanna continue to move our hearing along.
5:38:17
We wanted to jump back into council member questions.
5:38:20
Mister Matcher, I think you were asked the last at the at the end of the last series of questions to give an example of where you would have represented the council, I believe, over the mayor.
5:38:34
I believe you wanted to provide an answer to that question.
5:38:37
So we'll give you a quick brief opportunity to do that before we jump into counterpart questions.
Randy Mastro
5:38:45
I think I was asked for a situation where I wouldn't represent them there.
5:38:51
I gave an example in real life that when I chaired a charter revision commission, I refused to do what the mayor wanted, which was to change the line of succession during his term, and I outright refused to do that.
5:39:07
An example of a case again asking hypotheticals like that is very difficult.
5:39:13
But if I had been court counsel during the Bloomberg administration, I would not have represented the administration in a case that involved the Fulton Fish Market, where the law that the city council passed required that there be an independent unloader of fish in the market because that was one of the organized crime pathways for shutdowns in the market.
5:39:46
So we RFPed and hired a union shop of independent unloaders from a company called Larrow, and they were licensed to do that work.
5:39:57
And the Bloomberg administration made a decision to ignore the law that the city council passed and to cut a deal with the wholesalers at the Fulton Fish market to move up to Hunt's point and get rid of the unloaders.
5:40:12
The clean element in that market that was preventing organized crime from creeping back because those unloaders were the shake down, the end point for fish suppliers going to wholesalers.
5:40:24
And the Bloomberg administration just decided to ignore the law and get rid of that linchpin to breaking organized crime stranglehold over the Fulton Fish market.
5:40:35
I had to sue on behalf of Larrow.
5:40:39
We won that lawsuit, but it really was an indefensible case from the city.
5:40:43
And I would have told the mayor, corp counsel cannot represent you just because you want to do an economic development deal.
5:40:50
That's a concrete example, but I know you have a number of issues like that right now, and I pledge to you, I will study each of them and make it a priority to determine whether I think what this where corp council's office is right now is where I would be, and I will give it straight
Keith Powers
5:41:07
I can appreciate that.
5:41:09
Thank you for that example.
5:41:11
We'll now gonna hop back into customer questions.