Mayor: City Will Punish Bribe-Takers

The city will come down hard on Department of Buildings employees who violate the law, but natural incentives for buildings inspectors to accept bribes could make the fight against corruption an uphill climb, Mayor Bloomberg said.

"Sadly, when you have inspectors that don't get paid a lot, perhaps, and dealing with jobs where the inspection process and results of it could have bad economic consequences for them, the temptation to give and the temptation to receive bribes sometimes is more than it should be," Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday at a press conference in the Bronx. "I think it is a very big problem, but I don't think it is very prevalent."

The mayor praised a former buildings commissioner, Patricia Lancaster, and the commissioner of the Department of Investigation, Rose Gill Hearn, for their efforts to address the issue and said the city would "have no tolerance" for those who violated the law.

Following a series of construction accidents, including two fatal crane collapses, investigations of the Department of Buildings have yielded two arrests.

The city's chief crane inspector, James Delayo, 60, was arrested last week and is accused of accepting bribes from a crane company in exchange for letting its cranes pass inspection, and of falsely certifying crane operators as qualified to operate the machines.