Council Member Brewer on 9/11 Article 78 proceeding, records, and investigation timeline

And then also, are you still working on NYPD monitors?

Is that something you're still looking for a new head, or has that been?

We are in the process of hiring an IG for the NYPD.

The position has been posted.

We have been reviewing resumes that we have received, and we will begin the interviewing process shortly on that.

Great.

Congratulations.

So obviously we passed a resolution in the city council to have 9-11 information available to the public.

We couldn't find any other way except this wonderful opportunity for DOI to do the work.

And I said from the very beginning, no matter what we do, we need you and your team, the people you're going to hire, hopefully with this $4 million or $4.5 million, to do the work.

Because the only agency they came through, as you know, was the Department of Environmental Protection.

And those boxes, I went through some of them.

There was some information there, but not exactly what we were looking for.

But I appreciate that that happened.

And I happen to know that those boxes only came about because the commissioner at the time said, find them.

They were lost.

They couldn't put them together.

And originally people said they couldn't find them.

Well, this Article 78 is very interesting.

To the credit of the 9-11 Health Watch, they went to court.

And they won on Article 78 because, and I have great respect for the head of the law department, C.

Banks, but his FOIL people said they had no boxes.

Well, we know that there are boxes.

We know, for instance, that in the archives of a very special reporter who was a friend of all of ours in Texas, we found a letter that was a memo that was sent to Bob Harding.

So we know there are boxes.

We know there's information.

And for whatever reason, the folks at the law department can't find anything, which I don't believe.

So my understanding is that the city of New York rarely loses an Article 78 proceeding.

In fact, I don't even know there's a prior example of losing one, at least recently in Article 78.

But an order of discovery against the city of New York, in addition, regarding an Article 78, is very, very unusual.

So I'd love you to comment to see if I'm correct that perhaps the only way to get this information is to do the kind of work that I hope you would be able to do if you get the funding.

I just was wondering if you could comment on the Article 78 and the discovery and the fact that this is the only way to get this information.

So I'm not prepared to comment on the Article 78 proceeding, but I will say that as part of its efforts to be prepared to conduct the

9-11 toxins investigation once the funding is secured, that DOI

made inquiries of various city agencies that one would expect to have the type of records that would be relevant to the investigation, received responses from those agencies.

And so...

is aware of where the relevant records should be located.

And once we have the funding to begin the investigation, the process of fully accessing those records, some of which may be in systems that require technological

issues to be addressed because they're old systems, but to compile that information and start to go through it and start to investigate the matter that you all have asked us to.

We are ready to get that started, and all we are waiting for is the funding.

Do you have any sense from the company or from past experience how long it might take to do this work?

So I think the initial plan, had we been funded, when the council mandated us to conduct this investigation, was to complete it within two years.

I think that is the timeline we're looking at, since almost a year of that has gone by now without getting the funding.

I think we will need...

Two years from when we get the funding, but that is the goal and I think it's achievable.

Okay.