Gov. Kathy Hochul is letting an oversight bill targeting the city’s Administration of Children’s Services languish on her desk — as the starvation death of an autistic Bronx teen resurrected outrage over the troubled child-welfare agency.
The legislation requiring ACS officials to cough up records to the city’s Department of Investigation still awaits Hochul’s signature or veto even after state lawmakers approved it in June.
Aghast DOI officials — including current Commissioner Nadia Shihat — have raised alarms over roughly 20 deaths of children under ACS’ purview that unfolded during the past decade.
The officials contend ACS bureaucrats have stonewalled forking over records on the deaths — and maintain the legislation is the best way to get the agency to open up, a DOI spokesperson said.
“The legislation that is awaiting the Governor’s signature would provide DOI access to records essential to conducting rigorous and independent investigations, including in critical matters where a child or juvenile involved with ACS has died,” the spokesperson said.
“Due to existing state law, DOI cannot view the full picture of ACS’s actions in certain cases, including those where ACS does not substantiate allegations of abuse.”
The actions — or potential inaction — by ACS caseworkers in the case of 16-year-old Adonis Jarvis remains murky.
Jarvis, who was autistic, allegedly starved to death in a squalid Bronx apartment — weighing just 59 pounds when he died in March, prosecutors said. His severely malnourished twin brother miraculously survived.
The twins’ mother, Geneva Jarvis, 36, and grandmother Denise Jarvis, 62, were charged with murder this week.
Sources revealed that the family was on ACS officials’ radar for more than a decade until they closed the case in 2024.
Building superintendent Denis Rivera said around that time he saw city workers remove bag after bag of trash from the apartment.
“Even the sanitation department had to send a special truck for that,” he said. “After that, they didn’t show up.”
But when The Post toured the apartment Thursday, it looked like a hoarder hellhole — with stacks of putrid garbage, an unusable bathroom and a kitchen filled with trash.
Geneva Jarvis removed the kids from a Bronx public school in January because it didn’t have a paraprofessional and she struggled carrying her sons down the stairs, sources said.
Department of Education officials said they made extensive efforts to engage and support the family over an extended period of time.
“The loss of this young person is heartbreaking, and we grieve this tremendous loss along with their community,” a DOE spokesperson said.
The mom and grandmother both pleaded not guilty and are being held in Rikers Island without bail.
The governor has until the end of the year to take action on the ACS oversight bill.
Beyond DOI watchdogs, the members of the Reinvent Albany good government group support the bill.
They argued that “totally inconsistent and illogical” current state law keeps the DOI from identifying problems with ACS investigations.
“The sooner the governor looks at legislation to ensure the safety of New Yorkers the better,” said Rachel Fauss, senior policy adviser at Reinvent Albany.
“She should sign as soon as possible.”
Other officials who’ve dealt with ACS called for more drastic action.
“Of course the feds should take over ACS,” said a law-enforcement source who worked on several cases in which children died after they were given back to parents.
“The first thing they should do is arrest the people in charge who allow these children to suffer and then die.”
ACS officials didn’t return a request for comment.
Hochul’s representatives said the state’s Office of Children and Family Services is investigating the death of Adonis Jarvis.
“This was a terrible tragedy and the Governor believes these perpetrators must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” a spokesperson for the governor said. “The Governor will review the legislation.”
Additional reporting by Larry Celona and Matthew Fischetti
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