Hochul lets bill forcing embattled ACS to turn over records languish as another child dies in Bronx hellhole

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 spe...