New York City Council boss and mayoral hopeful Adrienne Adams helped funnel millions of dollars to her Queens church and its affiliated non-profits — part of the powerful political machine of her close ally, ex-Rep. Floyd Flake.
During her time as speaker for the past three years the Council has funneled more than $3 million in taxpayer dough to organizations affiliated with the Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral in Jamaica, led by Flake and his wife M. Elaine Flake. Adams has been a member of the church for decades and owes her political career to the pastor and his huge, 23,000-member flock.
By contrast, in the 2018 budget, the last year before Adams became councilwoman in Flake’s Southeast Queens turf, the church and its affiliates took in just $86,423, records show.
The money spigot first opened in the budgets for 2020 and 2021, when Adams sprayed $105,000 from her office’s pot of allotted funds into the Allen Community Senior Citizens Center network, where M. Elaine Flake is board chair, records show.
After seizing the speaker’s gavel in 2022 — at a ceremony where M. Elaine Flake gave the invocation — groups linked to the church began receiving unprecedented sums of taxpayer cash, records show.
The dough — $959,275 in 2023; $937,275 in 2024; and $1,180,775 this fiscal year — went to programs and building and equipment upgrades at senior centers, housing developments, women’s and youth groups linked to Greater Allen, records show.
Big winners were the Allen Senior Citizen Network, which Adams and her underlings in the Queens delegation awarded $907,800 in Council cash for assorted services and another $435,000 for new vehicles; and the Allen A.M.E. Housing Corp, which got $422,000 for an education initiative and $850,000 for building renovations.
Watchdogs noted cash out of the Council pots gets ladled out based on connections, not merit — and that Adams wields enormous influence over both the cash flows and her colleagues. Attempts at reforming the system have been mostly half-measures, they said.
“Funding can get awarded to people based on relationships, not because they provide the best services,” warned Rachael Fauss, senior policy advisor at the good government group Reinvent Albany. “The speaker has huge power over the discretionary funding process.”
The Flakes certainly haven’t taken a vow of poverty. Tax returns for the Allen A.M.E. Housing Corp report Flake’s wife’s compensation as $252,327 in connection with her role as president in 2022, the same year the Allen Community Senior Citizens Center put her payday as board chair at $336,297.
Federal filings show Elaine Flake is also board chair at the Council-funded Allen Women’s Resource Center, which lists the same $336, 297 compensation, while documents submitted by the Allen A.M.E. Neighborhood Preservation and Development Corp. — also a beneficiary of taxpayer funds — report a $279,983 base salary plus a $76,799 bonus.
It’s unclear whether these compensation amounts overlap, or exactly how Elaine Flake gets paid, or through what entity, since each group reports she receives her compensation from a “related organization.”
Flake’s son Harold also drew a $100,000 annual paycheck from Allen A.M.E. Housing Corp in 2022.
Greater Allen A.M.E. and its nonprofits did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Adams showed her devotion to the Flakes in other ways too, sponsoring a bill in 2020 to rename the strip of Merrick Boulevard the cathedral sits on “Rev. Floyd H. Flake Way,” and in 2024 to declare the first Sunday in June “Flake Legacy Day” to honor the “spiritual, educational, civic, and economic contributions” of the duo, who beat a federal embezzlement and tax evasion rap in 1991.
Adams first emerged politically with a failed state Senate bid that got the power couple’s backing, and they helped propel her to City Hall in 2017. In an interview with NY1, Adams noted she even sent her children to the church’s Christian school.
She is the latest in a long line of pols the Flakes and Greater Allen have helped usher into power. Others include disgraced former State Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, and Rep. Greg Meeks (D-Queens), who was named in 2011 by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as one of the most corrupt members of Congress.
Meeks has broken with the church’s political organization to back ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo over Adams for mayor.
Following the failed federal case against the Flakes, the former congressman and his church coughed up almost $1 million in 1994 to settle a civil suit the Justice Department brought over the alleged misuse of D.C. funds allocated for senior housing, although neither Flake nor Greater Allen admitted wrongdoing.
The powerful pastor drew scrutiny again in 2010 when it surfaced he had a stake in the company the state contracted to operate slots at Aqueduct Race Track, prompting an investigation into a possible political quid pro quo.
Flake ultimately pulled out of the arrangement, while all parties denied anything inappropriate had occurred.
Adams — who is polling around 4% in the Democratic primary – insisted there were no politics behind the funding decisions.
“Speaker Adams and other Queens Council members have allocated funding for Allen-affiliated programs that serve domestic violence victims, seniors, and youth in the neighborhoods of Southeast Queens,” a spokesman said. “Anything else or innuendo that suggests otherwise is irresponsible and without merit.”
