Some of you may vaguely recall that time during the 2020 election cycle when former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio got it into his head that it might be a good idea for him to run for President. His delusions of grandeur clearly got the best of him because despite making his pitch all across the early primary states, I don’t think he ever reached much above one percent in the polls. His own party clearly didn’t have any interest in his candidacy and he eventually dropped out and returned to the Big Apple. But there are some people who clearly remember Bill’s Big Adventure and they would be the bean counters in Gotham. They recently concluded a review and found that de Blasio had run up some massive bills on the city’s tab while waging that campaign. And now he’s been hit with more than $600,000 in fines and mandatory compensation to the city. (Politico)

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio was hit with a historic fine Thursday by New York City’s Conflicts of Interest Board for using an NYPD security detail for his ill-fated presidential run in 2019.

The former mayor was ordered to pay $474,794 — a whopping sum that includes compensating the city for police officers’ travel expenses and a $155,000 fine, the largest ever issued by COIB.

“Although there is a City purpose in the City paying for an NYPD security detail for the City’s Mayor, including the security detail’s salary and overtime, there is no City purpose in paying for the extra expenses incurred by that NYPD security detail to travel at a distance from the City to accompany the Mayor or his family on trips for his campaign for President of the United States.”

The money in question almost all went to overtime pay and travel expenses for de Blasio’s NYPD security detail that accompanied him during all of his campaign trips. Questions had been raised about this at the time, with some reporters questioning why de Blasio hadn’t hired a private security detail for those trips or at least had the cops’ travel and overtime expenses paid by the campaign.

The city’s Conflict of Interest Board was quick to point out that they had “advised the Respondent” about the dubious nature of those expenses at the time. They further said that “Respondent disregarded the Board’s advice.”

This was fairly characteristic of Bill de Blasio’s tenure in New York City. He acted more like a king than a mayor. He always seemed to feel as if his actions were above question and he could pretty much use his office however he pleased. Back in 2020, he was all-in on defunding the police, emptying the jails, and refusing to prosecute looters during the BLM riots. He was also the mayor who ordered the city’s skating rinks to be shut down because they were operated by one of Donald Trump’s companies.

Hizzoner also took it upon himself to keep the city’s schools closed even after federal authorities issued guidance saying it was okay to reopen them. He made a habit of assigning his wife to multiple paid projects where she inevitably failed. And Bill was clearly well ahead of his time when he ordered hotels to start taking in homeless people in 2020, long before the current wave of illegal migrants began arriving. (The hotel experiment ended terribly and was canceled in short order.)

There wasn’t much about Bill de Blasio’s era as Mayor of the Big Apple that could be described as either successful or bringing some significant benefit to the city. And he always seemed to be running one sort of scam or another. But now, at least in terms of his abuse of his police detail, the chickens have come home to roost. Maybe he still has a half million from his presidential campaign lying around. But at least he’s gone, and the local groundhogs are probably sleeping better these days, even if Gotham’s human residents aren’t.