How To Squander $20k – State Renewed Lease With Slumlord Despite Assemblywoman’s Indictment

BAY RIDGE — Three state agencies squandered more than $20,000 on unused district office space after extending the lease of a Fed-embattled lawmaker who had already resigned.

The New York State Assembly extended a two-year lease for Pamela Harris’ district office more than four months after Feds indicted the Coney Island and Bay Ridge assemblywoman on 11 federal charges and after the embattled lawmaker had already resigned.

State agencies agreed to renew a two-year lease for $2,100 per month to a Southern Brooklyn landlord, for the period of April 1, 2018, to March 31, 2020.

Harris resigned Monday morning, April 2, 2018.

Coney Island Assemblywoman’s departure left her Bay Ridge satellite office at 8525 Third Ave. closed for the next 11 months until Mathylde Frontus reopened it on March 1, 2019.

Here’s how the costly bureaucratic snafu began, just two days after Feds announced a slew of charges against Harris.

On Wednesday, January 9, 2018, Feds charged Harris with eleven federal charges. The following Friday, according to documents obtained by Bklyner under a Freedom of Information Law request, the state assembly requested a lease extension for Harris’ Bay Ridge district office.

The landlord, Theodore Vallas, did not sign the new lease agreement until May 2 – exactly one month after Harris resigned. Vallas, made news late last year after State Sen. Andrew Gounardes accepted in-kind contributions from the landlord, who was listed on the New York City’s Public Advocate’s worst landlord’s list in 2018.

Two other state agencies oversee the process of approving leases for state lawmakers’ offices. Both the attorney general and the state comptroller’s offices gave their stamps of approval in late spring.

First, the attorney general’s office—under acting AG Barbara Underwood—approved the lease agreement for the assembly office of the since long resigned assemblywoman on May 24, 2018.

Then on June 5, the comptroller’s office—who is tasked with “using taxpayer’s money effectively”— also approved the two-year extension.

Neither the assembly nor the comptroller’s office responded to requests for comment.

The office space remained shuttered at the expense of taxpayers for nearly a year at the cost of $23,100. Assemblywoman Mathylde Frontus staffed the space four months after taking office in November. She, unlike other lawmakers, was given little choice in the matter of where her office should be or whom she’d be renting from.

UPDATE: NY State Comptroller’s office sent the following statement:

“The lease is between the State Assembly and the landlord, not the Assemblywoman and the landlord,” said Kate Gurnett, Press Secretary for State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. “The Assembly made a determination to keep the space for the district, not for the member.  The lease can be terminated at will by the Assembly. The new member is using the space for a district office.”