New Yorkers cry foul, question ‘Mayors Against Illegal Guns’ use of city resources

Bloomberg
Photo Credit: Examiner

A conservative blogger has uncovered potentially explosive information that may cause big ethical and legal problems for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his gun control group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

Blogger John Ekdahl from the conservative website Ace of Spades HQ recently discovered that the group’s website is registered to the city of New York and hosted on the city’s government servers.

BuzzFeed confirmed this information, which now begs the question is the mayor allowed to use government resources to fund groups that promote his personal political agenda?

According to BuzzFeed, it’s possible the website is costing the city “roughly $1,000 a month to maintain.”

On Friday, Ekdahl shared his preliminary findings:

[Mayors Against Illegal Guns] registrant name is “NYC DoITT”, which is the New York City Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications.

According to [Sunlight Foundation], Mayors Against Illegal Guns appears to be a 501(c)(4).

Bloomberg’s group, a social welfare organization set up under section 501(c)4 of the tax code, is the first to comply with a U.S. District Court ruling requiring such organizations, which normally keep their donors secret, to disclose them if they run issue ads that mention federal candidates. The case, Van Hollen v. Federal Election Commission, was settled March 30, 2012.
The action fund arm of MAIG is a 501(c)(3).

Even if MAIG is reimbursing the city for these services, questions would still remain. Like, would New York City offer these same services to NYCTeaParty4Eva.org? Section 1072(p) of the city’s charter on information technology appears to give the Mayor a little leeway, but I can’t imagine it would cover his personal nonprofit groups.

p. to perform such other responsibilities with respect to information technology and telecommunications matters, including responsibilities delegated elsewhere by the charter, as the mayor shall direct.

Ekdahl took to Twitter over the past few days to share what his investigation uncovered to date.

Twitchy collected the following:

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According to Weasel Zippers:

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Ekdahl said he pushed the story out to the mainstream media. With over 900 city Mayors involved in Bloomberg’s group, it will be interesting to see who picks it up and what more is uncovered.

Read more from Ace of Spades HQ and BuzzFeed.

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