NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye did not tell truth to City Council in sworn testimony about lead paint inspections

NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye did not tell the truth during her sworn testimony about lead paint inspections before the City Council last month, a letter from the Department of Investigation obtained by the Daily News charges.

While being questioned under oath at the Dec. 5 hearing, Olatoye specifically claimed that 4,200 apartments with children ages 6 and under had been inspected as required in 2016 by NYCHA workers with the proper certification by the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD).

Councilman Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx), then-chairman of the public housing committee, pressed Olatoye on the matter, asking, "So these 4,200 units were inspected by NYCHA employees who had the HUD certification?"

Olatoye responded, "The HUD certification training. Yes. That is correct."

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Following that hearing, DOI Commissioner Mark Peters had his investigators compare the list of NYCHA employees who did the 4,200 inspections to NYCHA’s list of all HUD-certified employees.

They found only 15 certified staffers and discovered that “none of the (lead paint) inspections were conducted by employees who NYCHA reported as having the HUD certification.”

To double check, DOI also contacted a random sampling of 86 workers listed by NYCHA as having completed the 4,200 inspections, and found that while a handful had received some form of low level training, 85% "denied ever receiving the HUD visual assessment course and certificate."

Housing Authority spokeswoman Jasmine Blake pushed back at the DOI letter, insisting, "The Chair was truthful and relied on the facts provided to her. She was told staff had been trained. We will evaluate DOI’s claimsto understand their assertions here.”

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NYCHA has admitted that since 2012, it has falsely certified multiple times that it had completed all required lead paint inspections and cleanups. That includes Olatoye herself making this bogus claim in 2016, while knowing that it wasn’t true.

NYCHA was also forced to admit that thousands of the lead paint inspections and cleanups that did take place were performed over several years by untrained workers who lacked the required certifications.

On Tuesday, NYCHA Inspector General Ralph Iannuzzi forwarded his findings about Olatoye’s testimony to Torres "for whatever action the Council deems appropriate."

Torres told The News, “There are only two explanations: Either she lied to the City Council or she left uncorrected a false statement to the City Council made under oath. In either case, there should be consequences.”

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Torres, who is now chairman of the Council’s Oversight and Investigation Committee, noted that during the hearing, he reminded Olatoye that she was under oath and instructed her to amend her statements if she discovered later that she'd made any errors.

Seven weeks later no such amendments have appeared. “Even if there was no intent to deceive at the time of the testimony, which is highly questionable, the decision to conceal the truth is the kind of concealment that should be held accountable legally,” Torres said.

It is a crime to lie to public officials, but a criminal prosecution requires proof that there was an intent to deceive.

Torres said he was preparing legislation to make it a crime to fail to correct erroneous testimony to the Council made under oath.

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An agency head who learns of a falsehood and immediately fails to disclose it would face a misdemeanor charge. An official would face a misdemeanor charge and a civil fine of $1,000 for lying to the Council under oath.

For more than a year both Olatoye and the mayor withheld from the public the fact that NYCHA was in non-compliance on lead paint oversight.

After DOI released a report in November detailing Olatoye’s role in the lead paint scandal, Public Advocate Letitia James and other elected officials called for Olatoye to step down.

James noted that in March 2016 Olatoye testified to the Council that NYCHA was in compliance on lead paint, but learned a month later it wasn’t and never corrected the record.

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"This is the second time that she's lied. It seems like every day we get another reminder of why we need changes at NYCHA,” James said.

During a press conference earlier Tuesday before The News disclosed the DOI letter, de Blasio once again defended Olatoye, stating he “absolutely” continued to have her back.

But he framed his support for her by attempting to shift blame to the prior administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“When you put that mistake which predates us up against the totality of what she's achieved, I continue to have great faith in her,” he said. “And the more important issue to me is how are we going to move forward with NYCHA. I think she's the best person to move us forward." 

With Erin Durkin