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Former DOI Commissioner Mark Peters was fired on Friday.
By Michael V. Cusenza
In a controversial and unprecedented move, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday fired City Department of Investigations Commissioner Mark Peters.
It’s the first time in Gotham history that a mayor has given the pink slip to the City’s inspector general.
“What we’ve found is that the underlying problem was unprecedented,” de Blasio said on Monday on “Inside City Hall” on Spectrum News NY 1. “We’ve never had a DOI commissioner who had whistleblower complaints against him. The DOI commissioner is supposed to be the paragon of integrity in city government. So when three whistleblower complaints came forward, directed at the DOI commissioner personally, literally no one could find a precedent for what to do in that situation.”
Hizzoner went on to say that “abusive behavior toward employees, towards agencies had become the norm” for Peters.
“This is extreme stuff you wouldn’t expect from any commissioner, particularly not a DOI commissioner,” de Blasio added.
Peters fired back at City Hall in a scathing letter to the City Council, claiming that the mayor got rid of him because he wouldn’t march to de Blasio’s orders and keep damaging reports from ever seeing the light of day.
“These incidents demonstrate a pattern in which the mayor and his senior staff believe that I owe a duty of loyalty to the mayor rather than to the city as a whole and that my actions, in exposing waste, fraud or abuse in city agencies . . . are improper and justify retribution,” Peters wrote, according to a New York Post report.
De Blasio meanwhile has nominated Margaret Garnett to serve as the next DOI commissioner. Garnett currently serves as executive deputy attorney general for Criminal Justice in the Office of the State Attorney General.
De Blasio has caught plenty of heat for the decision to can Peters.
“Now more than ever we need the Public Advocate to be a check on the mayor. We need someone who is truly independent and willing to stand up to the mayor’s abuse of power,” Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Ozone Park) tweeted.
