MANHATTAN — Mayor Bill de Blasio claims he had nothing to do with the recent firing of the city official who lifted the deed restriction on Lower East Side nursing home Rivington House, despite its taking place within hours of his meeting with federal prosecutors.
The mayor on Wednesday declined to comment on the reason for the ousting of Department of Citywide Administrative Services Deputy Commissioner Ricardo Morales, except to say the decision fell to his underlings in that agency and that he believed his administration wanted "someone better" to fill Morales' shoes.
"That was a decision made by the relevant people in my administration," said the mayor at an unrelated press conference in Queens on Wednesday. "I didn't have anything to do with the timing or how they went about it."
De Blasio said he had known about the agency's plan to fire Morales but had not known how or when it would be done.
He would say only that DCAS leaders had made a "personnel decision" and that he believed they were seeking someone else for the role.
"I believe they thought that they needed someone better to do that job," he said, referring further inquires on the matter to the agency.
Morales in 2015 signed off on the lifting of a deed restriction on Rivington House that had kept the facility a nursing home — months later, the property was sold to a developer for a luxury condo conversion.
Morales was fired Friday evening, DCAS officials confirmed, at the same time Mayor de Blasio met with federal prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's office as part of an ongoing probe into whether City Hall favors had been swapped for donations.
The U.S. Attorney's office is looking into the circumstances surrounding the Rivington House fiasco, city officials have confirmed.
A DCAS spokeswoman insisted Morales' firing was completely unrelated to the meeting, instead attributing the decision to "leadership changes and some restructuring designed to improve our efficiency and performance."
When asked Wednesday about the meeting with feds, de Blasio said it was "perfectly fine" but declined to go into detail on what was discussed. He reiterated that his administration has done nothing wrong.
"I’m very comfortable that things were handled the right way but I’m not going to talk about the details of that discussion on Friday," he said.
An attorney for Morales, Guy Oksenhendler, could not immediately be reached for comment.
