New York City Mayor Eric Adams is such a hater of rats that he once called a press conference to demonstrate a contraption to drown them in poison. Now Adams is contesting a $300 fine issued by his own management for an infestation of rats at a building he owns in Brooklyn.
Adams received a citation from the city’s health department on May 10 after a health inspector saw “fresh rat droppings” at his home on Lafayette Avenue in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.
The New York Times reports that Adams called a city administrative court hearing Tuesday to contest the $300 fine, which was imposed on him after first ignoring the citation.
Adams told the hearing officer that he had spent nearly $7,000 fighting rats on the property and had even used the rat-drowning device he pioneered in 2019 when he was Brooklyn borough president, the Times said.
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Adams noted that city laws are designed to penalize homeowners for failing to take steps to prevent and control rodents, according to the Times. “I took those steps,” she said, “and I will continue to do so.”
The hearing officer with the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, known as OATH, said it would render a verdict within 30 days.
After Adams failed to respond to the initial rat summons, he was found to have violated by default.
The Times reported that Adams had Rahul Agarwal, a deputy senior attorney in the mayor’s office, file a motion to quash on the mayor’s behalf on September 8. In the motion, Agarwal said Adams was not made aware of the subpoena until September 1 because he now lives at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s residence in Manhattan.
A rat walks across a subway platform in Times Square in New York on January 27, 2015. New York City Mayor Eric Adams faces a fine after a building he owns was infested with rats.
(AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
This week’s administrative hearing was scheduled after Agarwal requested a postponement of an earlier meeting date on behalf of Adams, according to the Times.
The leader of a government watchdog group criticized the involvement of a city lawyer in the matter.
“City resources should be used for city business, not for the personal business of the mayor or any other elected official,” said Betsy Gotbaum, executive director of Citizens Union. “The mayor should not be tasking any City employee with helping him resolve what is clearly a private legal form.”
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A spokesman for Adams said the mayor had not done anything inappropriate. “He spent thousands of dollars to remediate an infestation at his Brooklyn residence earlier this year, and was happy to appear before OATH today to make a statement,” the mayor’s press secretary, Fabien Levy, said in a statement Tuesday.
The administrative hearing came a week after Adams, a Democrat who has been mayor since earlier this year, posted a job listing for a director of rodent mitigation, also known as a rat czar. The ideal candidate is “highly motivated and somewhat bloodthirsty, determined to pursue all solutions from various angles, including improving operational efficiency, data collection, technological innovation, waste management, and wholesale slaughter.” “, According to the announcement.
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Levy said Adams “has made no secret of the fact that he hates rats, whether they run the streets or terrorize building occupants.”
