In the Department of Investigation’s report, City Councilman Dan Halloran is quoted telling one sanitation worker who may have knowledge of a worker slowdown, that “if you don’t want to talk, I will find a disgruntled worker who is ready to retire who is.”
The quote undermines the credibility of how Halloran, a Republican from northeast Queens, came across insider information about sanitation workers who, out of anger with City Hall, intentionally botched the December 2010 snow removal.
Halloran has said it was workers who came to him with questions about why standard protocol wasn’t followed when the snow began to fall. The DOI investigators spoke to some of the people Halloran said were his sources. Those workers, though, did not tell investigators what Halloran had described.
Through a spokesman, Halloran declined to be interviewed about the matter, but did release a statement. In it, Halloran said, investigators were “unable to track employees and get the quality of testimony it would like to have. Disturbing questions remain about why plows went down streets with their blades up or sat unmoving for hours as the snow fell.”
When asked if the Councilman made the “disgruntled” remark attributed to him in the DOI report, a spokesman for Halloran said “of course not.”
