This Agency Fights Corruption. New York City Leaders Have Weakened It.

The Department of Investigation, tasked with stamping out corruption in city government, has lost more than a quarter of its employees since 2019.

In recent months, New York City’s government has been rocked by corruption scandals at a pace not seen in nearly a century.

Yet over the past few years, New York’s leaders have presided over a gradual weakening of the city’s No. 1 corruption-fighting agency, the Department of Investigation, records and interviews show.

As caseloads have risen, they have stood by while dozens of positions within the department have gone unfilled, allowing the agency to lose more than a quarter of its employees over the past six years.

And they have funded the department unevenly, allocating fewer dollars for salaries for investigators, auditors and other personnel in the department’s current budget than it received during a high-water mark in 2019.

In recent months, the agency has been so strapped for funds that it has tapped millions of dollars forfeited by people convicted of crimes to cover basic operating costs.

This has occurred not because the department has failed to ask for more funding. Last fall, its commissioner, Jocelyn Strauber, sought permission from the city’s Office of Management and Budget to hire 23 staff members at a cost of $1.4 million.