Top City Officials Report Assets, Liabilities

The city comptroller carries thousands of dollars in credit card debt, the speaker of the City Council owns a four-bedroom home in Ocean Grove, N.J., that cost at least half a million dollars, and the public advocate is the city’s second-most-wealthy top public official, coming in behind Mayor Bloomberg, a multibillionaire.Financial information about the city’s top four officeholders was disclosed yesterday by the Conflicts of Interest Board, giving New Yorkers insight into the investments, properties, and debt owed by their elected officials.Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum appears to have made an effort to shield the public from the details of her investment portfolio after last year’s filing resulted in published reports that focused on her investments in oil companies, a company that manufactures cigarettes, and pharmaceutical companies.Unlike last year’s report, the most recent one named only one company in which Ms. Gotbaum holds stock — Research In Motion, a wireless communications company — and states that she has invested her money in mutual fund and stock portfolios managed by Bertstein, a global wealth management firm.A spokeswoman for Ms. Gotbaum, Sarah Krauss, said the public advocate asked the Conflicts of Interest Board if she could change the way she listed her holdings, and it agreed that she did not have to list the individual securities. Ms. Krauss said she couldn’t comment on why that request had been made.Ms. Gotbaum also appeared to have shed some assets. In 2007, her assets totaled between $470,000 and $1.3 million, according to the new report. The previous year, she reported assets of between $699,000 and $2.4 million. It’s possible that her assets haven’t changed and that the range only fluctuated because her holdings were not listed individually in 2007, as they had been the year before.Comptroller William Thompson Jr., a likely candidate for mayor, owes between $5,000 and $35,000 on his American Express credit card, and owes North Fork Bank between $5,000 and $35,000, his filing states.He added a new source of income to his portfolio: from a tenant who rented space in his home and paid him between $5,000 and $35,000 last year.A spokesman for Mr. Thompson, Jeff Simmons, said the tenant was the comptroller’s first ex-wife, who paid him to rent part of a brownstone in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Mr. Simmons also said the credit card debt and amount Mr. Thompson owes the bank were close to $5,000 last year, and earlier this year dipped below the $5,000 mark.City officials are not required to report the exact amount of income they earn from an outside job or have in assets, but rather can report a range of value, the highest of which is a category that includes everything totaling more than $500,000.State legislators also fill out financial disclosure reports, but when the filings are made public the range amounts are redacted. Advocacy groups are calling on the state to overhaul its practice of self-regulation when it comes to ethics rules so that, at the very least, state lawmakers are held to the same standard as city officials when it comes to financial disclosure requirements.Mr. Bloomberg, who is worth about $20 billion, released his financial disclosure report and tax returns for 2007 on his own last month.

Top City Officials Report Assets, Liabilities

Top City Officials Report Assets, Liabilities

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