NYC Council member accuses Eric Adams aide of perjury ahead of City Hall oversight vote

The ongoing brawl between City Hall and the City Council heated up Thursday with a top aide to Mayor Eric Adams getting accused of perjury ahead of a controversial oversight vote. Council members handily passed — by a 46 to 4 margin — an “advice and consent bill” in a bid to give themselves the final say over nearly two dozen top mayoral appointments in what’s yet another bone of contention between Adams and his no-relation counterpart Speaker Adrienne Adams. But the veto-proof bipartisan vote was arguably overshadowed hours before when Council Member James Gennaro (D-Queens) — a self-described “simple geologist” — told a room full of reporters that Tiffany Raspberry, the mayor’s head of intergovernmental affairs, had perjured herself last week during a hearing on the hotly contested bill. Raspberry — during her impromptu, short remarks that ended with her storming out of Council Chambers in dramatic fashion — testified that the mayor had never tried to intervene in how Speaker Adams assigned committee seats. “I’m not a lawyer, I’m just a simple geologist,” Gennaro said in the Red Room Thursday afternoon. “I knew it to be factually inaccurate, and I said something on the record. “For her to declare that he (Eric Adams) would never do that when he has been all about that … it just shows the disingenuousness of their position,” he added. City Hall spokesperson Liz Garcia called the remarks “an egregious attack on Tiffany Raspberry’s character.” The proposed charter change, giving the lawmakers approval power over 20 top spots in the administration, will go on the ballot come November, unless the mayor’s office successfully thwarts the council’s plans. The speaker told reporters the approval process would eliminate conflicts of interest or ethical issues. “Which often happens now,” Adrienne Adams charged. The mayor could replace the Council’s question if his Charter Review Commission, which was announced just a day after the advice and consent bill was public, finish their assessment by Aug. 5. The commission is now sprinting to make the ballot deadline, starting this week with meetings in Queens and Staten Island. Both public meetings, which were held at 10 a.m., were marked by poor attendance and some misunderstanding by the few members of the public who testified about what the commission could do. The commission is slated to hold another meeting at New York Law School next Thursday. Additional reporting by Matt Troutman