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By: Benyamin Davidsons
Mayor Eric Adams appeared in a video promoting the upcoming Smart City Expo USA, released by the conference in April. Also, his administration poured $250,000 in city funds to sponsor the conference. As reported by Crain’s NY, the conference’s organizer recently worked for and has close ties with Frank Carone, Adams’ political fixer and former chief of staff.
The Smart City Expo USA is slated to be held on May 22 to 23 in Lower Manhattan. The conference has proudly booked Adams and over a dozen other top city officials as speakers. The tech expo had originally been scheduled for October 2023, but had been cancelled by organizers just four days before its start date. The delay was publicly blamed on heavy rainfall, but five sources told Crain’s NY Business that the postponement was actually due to a lack of corporate sponsorships and poor ticket sales. Apparently, Mayor Adam’s administration stepped in to give the expo a boost. Mayor Adams promoted the revived Expo as an opportunity to explore ways of addressing climate change and public safety. “As the tech mayor, I am committed to pushing our city forward,”
Adams said in the video message, which first posted in April on the conference’s YouTube page. He did not, however, publicly note his administration’s financial support for the event, nor mention the organizer’s ties to his chief of staff.
Per Crain’s, Aarti Tandon has been the CEO of the for-profit company that runs the Smart City Expo USA since 2019. Last year, Tandon worked for Carone’s lobbying and consulting firm, named Oaktree Solutions. She left Oaktree solutions last year, but remains on amicable terms with Carone. Carone and one of his current employees, Matthew Quinonez, were both copied on an outreach email that Tandon had sent out last year to prospective speakers and sponsors.
Some critics are saying the Adams administration’s $250,000 commitment is unusually generous for a city sponsorship of a privately produced event. “It is a concern when the city is directly subsidizing events for vendors whose goal is to sell stuff to the city,” said John Kaehny, executive director of the watchdog group Reinvent Albany. “That’s taxpayer money, and you have to say, what is the point of that expenditure given that the city is already hosting?”
The Adams administration initially committed the one-time $250,000 “sponsorship contribution” to last year’s event through a June 2023 vote by the board of the Economic Development Corp., whose members are appointed by the mayor. Those funds are being used to fund this year’s expo, Office of Technology and Innovation spokesman Legendre told Crain’s in an email.
The mayor’s office and EDC declined to answer Crain’s queries about how the administration became involved in the conference and whether Carone had pushed the sponsorship. They pointed to a statement by the Office of Technology and Innovation. “As we continue to build New York City’s tech sector and our future-focused sectors, like green economy and life sciences, the city has proudly supported a broad range of economic development efforts, including events like the Smart City Expo, which attract visitors from around the world,” wrote spokesman Ray Legendre. “We look forward to welcoming attendees to help bolster our city’s economy and advance innovation to improve life for New Yorkers.”
Tandon declined to comment on her affiliation with Oaktree, and Carone told Crain’s that he “was never involved in it in any iteration, ever.”
