Gioia Seeks Audit of DOT for Costly Unoccupied Rental
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The Chairman of the City Council Committee on Oversight and Investigations, Council Member Eric Gioia, is seeking to audit the Department of Transportation for spending millions of dollars to rent an office it has not yet occupied.
The move follows on a report in today’s edition of The New York Sun showing that the DOT is spending at least $11.8 million to rent space for a new headquarters at 55 Water St that it will not move into until April 2009. The department signed a 20-year lease on the building in 2006, according to Mr. Gioia’s office.
“No one would pay for a house they don’t live in or an office they don’t work in, but because it is someone else’s money the government seems to play by a different standard,” Mr. Gioia, a Queens Democrat, said in a statement. “When the DOT signed their 20-year lease in 2006 it was announced that they’d start moving in at the end of 2007 and now it won’t be till at least 2009. It’s difficult to picture what ‘issues’ could cause such a long — and costly — delay. New York City taxpayers deserve answers.”
In today’s report, a DOT spokesman credited various unrelated design, technical, and logistical issues tied to centralizing the department’s operations with slowing the move to the six floors on Water Street it intends to occupy. The spokesman also argued that the move would save money in the long term.
But Council Member John Liu, also a Democrat of Queens, said DOT is, “flushing $12 million down the drain.”