“This afternoon I accepted the resignation of Martha E. Stark as New York City’s Finance Commissioner.So ended the 7-year tenure of Mayor Bloomberg's Finance Commissioner, Martha Stark, an out lesbian who was the first African-American woman to serve as Commissioner of the New York City Finance Department.
On behalf of the nearly 8.4 million New Yorkers, I want to thank Martha for her years of service, and I want to recognize the many reforms that Finance developed and implemented under her leadership.
From our Earned Income Tax Credit mailing project, to the new clear and informative property tax bills, to the $400 rebate checks, Martha made the Finance Department - and our City - a better place.”
(Press release on NYC.Gov.)
The 48-year-old Stark, a tax attorney, earned $189,700 as Finance Commissioner, while holding an outside job at Tarragon Corp., a Manhattan-based real-estate developer, that paid her a total of $90,316 in cash and stock options in 2007.
No other city commissioner or department head is known to have a similar outside job.
According to the New York Post, Stark asserted that, in 2005, the city's Conflicts of Interest Board gave her conditional permission, via a confidential letter, to moonlight for Tarragon. The COIB letter refers to an opinion by the city's Law Department that Stark's work for Tarragon “would not conflict” with the City Charter’s “whole time” rule for commissioners.
The Mayor’s Office, questioned by the Post, said it didn't know about Tarragon.
Under pressure, Stark resigned the Tarragon job.
But then, further revelations: a parking judge married to an assistant commissioner, had been billing Finance for hours he didn't work -- to the tune of $8,645; Dara-Ottley Brown, Stark's former assistant commissioner and a player in the New York Yankees bond-valuation scandal, was discovered to be romantically involved with Stark; Stark's late brother's stepson, her half-brother and her niece were all hired by Finance; and the Tarragon thing "came to light".
The mayor said he'd have the COIB look into it. The COIB investigation resulted in Stark's resignation.
Ottley-Brown had been at Finance for 20 years when Stark was appointed commissioner. Ottley-Brown was making just $65,000 as a mid-level manager in 2003, but was pulling down a salary of $138,000 by the time she left Finance in 2006 to become one of three commissioners on the city Board of Standards and Appeals.
When Ottley-Brown filed for divorce in 2007, Finance hired her ex-husband as a graphic artist at a salary of $78,000 and gave the couple's daughter a job as an intern.
The ex-husband still works there.
More here and here from the New York Post.
More from the New York Times.
