A NYCHA fire-safety plumber supervisor earned $465,034 in FY2025 — logging 2,558 overtime hours, the most of any city employee — while his name appeared on permits for more than 70 private plumbing jobs. His 2019 outside-work waiver lapsed after a 2024 promotion, and both the Department of Buildings and the Department of Investigation are now probing the arrangement.

A plumber supervisor in the New York City Housing Authority's fire safety division earned $465,034 during fiscal year 2025 — logging 2,558 hours of overtime, the highest total of any city employee — while his name appeared on permits tied to more than 70 private plumbing jobs, the New York Times reported July 7.

Jakub Markowski, a licensed master plumber assigned to NYCHA, ran the private work through two companies: Super Plumbers Corp. NYC and Dynamic Blue Water Mechanical. The outside projects were concentrated in neighborhoods including the Upper East Side and Brooklyn Heights — a significant geographic remove from the public housing developments where his city hours were logged.

Markowski's FY2025 compensation is confirmed independently in the city's Citywide Payroll Dataset: 2,558.25 overtime hours, $331,814.26 in overtime pay, and $118,054.99 in regular wages — a combined $465,034. The payroll record lists him as an active NYCHA Supervisor Plumber with a Queens work location, on staff since May 2016.

Markowski obtained a city waiver in 2019 that allowed him to operate a private business alongside his NYCHA job. But when he was promoted to a supervisory role in 2024, the authority says he did not secure a new waiver — putting the authorization for all subsequent outside work in question. Under city rules, the promotion to supervisor triggers a fresh disclosure and approval process.

The Department of Buildings is now investigating whether the private jobs violated licensing rules. One focus, the Times reported, is Markowski's association with Robert Tarnawa, who is connected to one of the two companies but does not hold a master plumber's license. City law requires that licensed plumbing work be performed by or under the direct supervision of a licensed master plumber — a standard the arrangement may not have met.

NYCHA referred questions about its own review to the city's Department of Investigation. The DOI declined to comment, citing an active matter.

The probe lands at a difficult moment for the authority. Federal prosecutors charged dozens of NYCHA employees in a bribery and extortion case in 2024, and the authority had previously fired at least 18 workers following a separate overtime fraud investigation. The Markowski case adds another file to an emerging pattern: NYCHA's workforce oversight has repeatedly struggled to catch what the payroll data eventually makes plain.