New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has acknowledged state law and city regulations were violated when the public and the news media were barred from a meeting held at a Brooklyn public school where the mayor met with Cablevision technicians locked in a battle with their employer over unionizing, according to
The New York Times.
"By definition, we were in a public building. Media should have been allowed," de Blasio said, addressing a joint report issued by the commissioner of the Department of Investigation and the special commissioner of investigation for the city schools.
"That was a mistake by my team, and a mistake we won’t make again."
On July 14, de Blasio aides ejected New York Post reporters who were at the meeting, according to the Times, saying that the union "wrongly suspected they worked for Cablevision."
At the meeting with the Communications Workers of America, de Blasio told Cablevision technicians that he supported their efforts to unionize, according to
the Post.
"Regardless of their affiliation, these persons were members of the public, and should not have been barred from the school," the report states.
While the report characterized the ban as "inadvertent," it also stated that it would constitute "a violation of the City Charter if the meeting was political in nature."
"Political events are banned from being held in schools, and the report said the mayor’s meeting with union workers might have qualified as a political meeting, but that investigators could not be sure," the Times reported.
"Though they asked the mayor's office for recordings or written accounts of what was said there, 'none was received.'"
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