De Blasio Fought for 2 Years to Keep Ethics Warning Secret. Here’s Why.

When Bill de Blasio was first elected mayor of New York, he called two powerful real estate developers who had active projects in the city, and asked them to donate money to a nonprofit organization that he had created to advance his political agenda.

The request to help his nonprofit, the Campaign for One New York, violated the city’s ethics law, and a ban against asking for contributions from people who had business pending with the city. Within months of his solicitations, Mr. de Blasio was formally warned by the city’s Conflict of Interest Board — in a previously undisclosed letter — not to repeat the behavior.

But even after that warning, the mayor continued to hit up well-connected donors for money, according to documents that the city recently released after years of an extraordinary legal campaign by the de Blasio administration to keep the documents secret.

In February 2015, the mayor made a call to Jeffrey Levine, chairman of Douglaston Development, which had just won city approval for $12 million in financing for an affordable housing complex, and was given a parcel of city-owned land in the Bronx.

The next month, Mr. de Blasio called David Von Spreckelsen, president of Toll Brothers, an affordable housing developer. A stop-work order had recently been lifted on the developer’s hotel and condominium project in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Both men later received follow-up calls from the nonprofit’s fund-raiser, Ross Offinger, and each donated $25,000.

In April of that year, Mr. de Blasio spoke with James Capalino, a major city lobbyist with many clients doing city business, to ask for his support. The campaign’s fund-raiser made another follow-up call, and Mr. Capalino donated $10,000.

As the mayor nears the end of his eight-year tenure, and navigates a likely bid for governor next year, his pattern of questionable fund-raising tactics and ethics violations may cast a shadow on his legacy and his political future.

New details of Mr. de Blasio’s outreach to the donors were contained in a secret letter from the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board to the mayor. The letter, which includes a forceful reprimand of the mayor, was sent to Mr. de Blasio in 2018, but was only released this week.

“By soliciting these three donations from firms with business pending or about to be pending before executive agencies,” the letter said, “you not only disregarded the board’s repeated written advice, but created the very appearance of coercion and improper access to you and your staff that the board’s advice sought to help you avoid.”

It continued: “A public servant who engages in solicitations such as these, either directly or through a surrogate, acts in conflict with that public servant’s official duties, in violation” of the City Charter’s ethics code.

The city provided the letter to The New York Times this week, after the State Court of Appeals denied a final effort by the mayor’s office to keep the document secret. The city had, for more than two years, fought The Times’s efforts to obtain the document, denying an initial Freedom of Information request and then fighting a lawsuit filed by The Times.

“The calls the mayor was making at this time were to support affordable housing legislation and his effort to achieve universal pre-K for every child in New York City, which is now a national model,” the mayor’s spokeswoman, Danielle Filson, said in a written statement. “He has consistently acted in good faith and followed the process set out for him. The board closed these cases and determined no enforcement action was necessary.”

Ms. Filson also said that the mayor had made “appropriate disclaimers” during his fund-raising calls, apparently referring to a statement that he was required to make, telling potential donors that they would not benefit or be punished if they chose to give or not give money. The board’s 2018 letter, however, specifically admonished the mayor for “failing to provide any disclaimer to the donors.”

Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat elected in 2013, has been the subject of several investigations into his methods to raise money for the Campaign for One New York, and for a separate effort in 2014 to wrest control of the State Senate from the Republicans. Donors to the mayor’s political endeavors have included major unions and real estate developers, and many of them have business before the city.

The Campaign for One New York, now shuttered, was created by Mr. de Blasio and his supporters to push for universal prekindergarten; it was later used to support his political agenda.