Stanley Brezenoff, Interim Chair of the troubled Housing Authority, voiced concerns Oct. 10 about the Federal monitor who will oversee the agency having too much control over day-to-day management.

In June, Mayor de Blasio agreed to a consent decree with the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office that will require the city to spend $2 billion on public housing over a five-year period and places the agency under the watch of a Federal monitor in order to end the investigation of HA’s non-compliance with lead-paint laws.

The U.S. Attorney’s office has extended the deadline for the appointment of a monitor: applications will be considered “on a rolling basis” until the consent decree is approved by U.S. District Judge William Pauley, who is overseeing the case. Judge Pauley has voiced concern that the consent decree would not be enough to improve the squalid conditions.

Though Mr. Brezenoff believed the monitor should have oversight of the agency’s compliance with Federal laws, “I have some trouble with the proposed monitorship because it’s much more actively constructed where there’s more of a management role,” he said at a Citizens Budget Commission breakfast at the Yale Club in Manhattan. “I think it’s a prescription for difficulty, if not disaster.”