The New York City Housing Authority chairwoman did not knowingly provide inaccurate testimony last fall that her staffers had received federal training for lead paint inspections, the mayor’s attorney said.
Shola Olatoye told the City Council that city staffers had been trained to check for lead paint in accordance with guidelines from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, but they were actually trained in house, according to Politico.
A January 25 letter to Council Speaker Corey Johnson from Paul Rodriguez, acting counsel to the mayor, confirmed that Olatoye’s statements were not true. But he maintained that the chairwoman believed she was providing accurate information during her testimony.
Olatoye returned to the Council Tuesday for a hearing about NYCHA’s heat and hot water outages this winter. Olatoye refused to answer Johnson’s question about who gave her the wrong information about HUD training and whether that person was disciplined.
Sources later told Politico it was NYCHA’s former senior vice president for operations Brian Clarke, who resigned in November.
Rodriguez’s letter also noted that NYCHA had resolved the issue and confirmed that workers with HUD training had conducted the agency’s lead paint inspections during the 2017 cycle. [Politico] – Eddie Small