CM Krishnan questions OMB on DOI funding and 9/11 toxins investigation

Thank you so much, Chair Lee and Speaker Menon.

Just a few quick questions.

Good to see you as a budget director and the LMB team.

The Department of Investigation has a detailed history of rooting out corruption, especially in the last administration.

The last administration also slashed their budget, too, year after year.

But its mission is both one of independence and also very sacred for the work of city government.

What we heard from the...

Plenary budget hearings and executive budget hearings is that once you take out the fundamental payments they have to make, rent and things like that, they're only left with $175,000 in public funds for their budget, which is very, very little.

And it forces them to have to look to their asset forfeiture funds to really supplement and boost their core operations, which is also drying up too.

So I know we've talked about this before too.

How is OMB thinking about increasing DOIs funding to make sure they have the resources they need for their mission?

Sure.

So thank you, Councilmember, and for your advocacy here.

I know that, so I've met with the Commissioner on a couple of occasions and her team, and we've gone through their budget in great detail.

So I've seen, and I've seen the actual trajectory of their asset forfeiture funds and how they're being used to cover sort of your basic day-to-day.

And we know that the past is true, that they've had significant sort of reductions in their budget over the last several years.

And so we are committed as an administration to rooting out corruption, waste, fraud, abuse, wherever it exists across government.

We look forward to having the conversations with you and with the council on making sure that we have a well-resourced DOI.

I'm confident that we can get there in this adopted budget.

Great.

I'm glad to hear that and look forward to the continued conversation.

And similarly, there's a $4 million need that DOI has to be able to do the investment.

into publish the report on the knowledge that the Giuliani administration, Bloomberg administration had of toxins in the air on 9-11.

So how are we looking at that?

Is OMB able to commit to putting that $4 million in this budget?

We also look forward to having those conversations with the council in the next few weeks and fully recognizing that that is sort of

separate from, separate but related, clearly, but separate from their day-to-day needs and what they need for their PS and OTPS budget.

Glad to hear it.