City Comptroller Scott Stringer on Wednesday pushed the de Blasio administration to “come clean” on the scope of the lead paint scandal at the city’s public housing developments — and called for an overhaul of NYCHA’s management structure.
Stringer, who has launched a probe of the crisis that was botched by City Hall, NYCHA and the Department of Health, said the stream of revelations that catapulted the number of impacted kids from 19 to more than 840 must end.
“This is just a running disaster, and we see it almost with every revelation,” he told Fox 5’s “Good Day New York.”
“The city should just come clean and tell us the truth about how many children, where it’s coming from, and what we can do as a city to make things better,” he added. “The NYCHA residents deserve nothing less.”
City Hall and NYCHA have insisted for months that just 19 kids living in public housing apartments had registered elevated lead levels from 2010 to 2016.
This week, officials admitted that as many as 820 additional kids had high lead levels in their blood between 2012 and 2016 under more conservative federal guidelines.
Since the city implemented the new federal standards in January, an additional 40 kids have tested with high lead levels.
City Hall has said it won’t release figures for the number of kids impacted in 2017 until September.
Stringer said his probe would include a hard look at why the different city agencies weren’t properly coordinating with one another for years.
“If you find elevated lead levels for a child, well then are you talking to the agency that perhaps could find where that lead is coming from?” he told Fox 5. “I’m going in, we’re going to leave no stone unturned until we get to the bottom of this.”
Stringer added that the NYCHA management structure needs to be overhauled because the chair of the agency doesn’t have the necessary authority.
He also criticized the agency for not filling key positions, including current vacancies of the chief financial officer and general counsel.
NYCHA is now under a federal monitorship after the agency falsely asserted for years that it had been conducting annual inspections of apartments for lead hazards, as required.
The agency also botched the cleanup that started in 2016 by using uncertified workers to conduct the inspections and abatement. NYCHA officials and Mayor Bill de Blasio kept the public in the dark about the lapse in inspections for more than a year.
“The Comptroller seems to be reacting to a headlines instead of concrete public health evidence. We act and report on every child. The CDC guidance is clear, and the Health Department has always followed it. The reason we are now going above and beyond these guidelines is because the City has had dramatic success in reducing childhood lead exposure,” said City Hall spokeswoman Olivia Lapeyrolerie.
