In 2024, 545 children in Onondaga County were found to have blood lead levels of at least 5 micrograms per deciliter. Ninety percent of them lived in the city of Syracuse.

Split that by race and the gap opens. Of the Black children tested in the county that year, 8.8 percent came back with elevated levels. Of the white children tested, 1.6 percent did. A Black child tested in Onondaga County was more than five times as likely to register lead poisoning as a white child tested in the same county in the same year.

Those figures come from Onondaga County’s own health data, and the state Attorney General’s office put them in the record on April 20, 2026, when it announced a civil settlement with Syracuse landlords Brian A. Murphy and Harry Murphy.

### What the settlement says

The agreement is an Assurance of Discontinuance, a civil resolution filed by the Attorney General’s Environmental Protection Bureau. It carries no criminal charge and no finding of criminal conduct. The Murphys did not go to court and were not accused of a crime.

The document runs 60 pages plus appendices, and it is more specific than the press release announcing it.

The Attorney General’s office opened its investigation in September 2023. It found that the Murphys had owned and managed at least 78 rental properties containing at least 153 individual rental units in Syracuse. County and city records put the construction dates of those buildings between 1830 and 1955, which means every one of them is presumed under city ordinance to contain lead-based paint.

Between March 2017 and August 2025, 23 of those properties were cited for chipping, peeling or deteriorating paint and other conditions conducive to lead poisoning by county health officials or Syracuse code enforcement. Across those 23 properties, inspectors wrote 117 interior and 213 exterior lead-based paint violations. That is 330 violations in eight and a half years.

In the same period, at least seven children recorded new or increased blood lead levels at or above 5 micrograms per deciliter while living in a Murphy property. Two of them lived in the same building. The seven children lived across six separate properties, and all six were found to have lead-based paint hazards.

The Murphys have since sold 55 of the properties. Harry Murphy now owns 21 rental properties containing 41 units and manages two more.

### The money

The settlement moves $115,000, structured in two parts.

The first is a $35,000 penalty, payable by certified check within 30 days, that funds a tenant relief fund for families of children who were lead poisoned while living in a Murphy property.

The second is $80,000. On paper it is a suspended penalty accruing 9 percent interest, stayed as long as the Murphys comply. In practice, the agreement directs that money into an escrow account as a Risk Assessment and Remediation Fund, to pay for inspections, risk assessments and the actual removal of hazards. If the Murphys fail to finish the work, the suspended penalty comes due, reduced by whatever they have already spent on qualifying expenses.

The agreement also builds in a credit that pushes total spending higher if Harry Murphy chases grant money. Lead-related grant funds can offset the $80,000 obligation by one dollar for every three received, capped at $26,666.66. A worked example in the document runs the math: $60,000 in grant funding earns a $20,000 credit, leaves $60,000 of his own money still owed, and produces $120,000 of remediation spending instead of $80,000.

Brian Murphy represented that as of April 20 he owns no residential rental property covered by the agreement and has no intention of acquiring any. His obligations end once both funds are paid. For five years, if he takes title to or agrees to manage any residential rental property anywhere in New York State, he has 30 days to notify the Attorney General and disclose the address.

### The addresses are public. We are not printing six of them.

Two appendices to the settlement list property addresses. Appendix A names every Syracuse rental property Harry Murphy or his companies have owned, roughly 78 entries, with asterisks marking the ones sold before October 27, 2025 and double asterisks marking the two he manages without owning. Appendix B names six properties that were cited for deteriorating paint and were still in Murphy hands as of that date. Those six are the priority properties the remediation schedule is built around.

CNY Signal is not reprinting the Appendix B list in this story. Six is also the number of properties where lead-poisoned children were living, and those two sets of six are not stated in the settlement to be the same six. Publishing one list next to that sentence would invite readers to conclude they know which families are involved. They would not, and the families have a right not to be guessed at. The full document is public and linked below for anyone who wants it.

### Four months in, the record is silent

The settlement set a clock running on April 20. Several deadlines have already passed.

Harry Murphy had five days to open the escrow account and 10 days to fund it with $80,000. He had 30 days to pay the $35,000 and 30 days to engage a certified risk assessor for the six priority properties. All of those dates fell in April and May.

An independent monitor oversees the work. Under the agreement, the monitor files a written quarterly report to Harry Murphy, the Attorney General, Onondaga County and the City of Syracuse, due no later than the 21st day of the month following each three-month period. The first one came due on July 21, 2026, and the monitor is required to keep filing for at least four full quarters.

Those reports go to four parties. The public is not one of them. As of August 18, 2026, no compliance filing, monitor report, risk assessment or clearance report from this settlement appears on the Attorney General’s website, the county’s lead pages or the city’s. CNY Signal has not contacted the monitor or the Attorney General’s office and makes no claim about what those parties would say. What can be reported is what the public record shows, and the public record shows nothing since April 20.

The remaining schedule is long. Once the Attorney General approves each lead control plan, interior hazards must be fixed within 45 days at any residence where a child six or under lives, and within 90 days everywhere else. Exteriors get 120 and 180 days on the same split. Every lead control project must be finished within 18 months of April 20, which puts the outside date in October 2027. Starting on the first anniversary, and for four consecutive years, a third-party EPA-certified inspector must inspect each priority property annually, with copies of every report going to the Attorney General, the city, the county and each tenant of an inspected unit within seven days.

### The bigger number

The settlement is one landlord family. The problem it sits inside is the housing stock.

Eighty-one percent of Syracuse housing was built before 1970, the year New York banned lead-based paint. Eighty-nine percent predates the 1978 federal ban. Forty-four percent was built before 1940, when heavily leaded paint was standard on interior and exterior surfaces. Those figures come from Census American Community Survey data cited in the settlement.

The city has had a tool since 2020. The Syracuse Common Council enacted the Lead Abatement and Control Ordinance, Chapter 54 of the city’s Revised General Ordinances, which took effect October 1, 2020 and presumes all paint on pre-1978 residential buildings to be lead-based. State regulation requires children to be screened at 12 and 24 months and at each well-child visit or annually up to age six, with every result reported to state and local health departments. That reporting requirement is why the 545 figure exists at all.

It is also why the disparity is not an estimate. The 8.8 percent and the 1.6 percent are counts of children who were tested, in one county, in one year.

This is at least the fourth Syracuse lead enforcement action the Attorney General’s office has taken since 2022. It shut down landlord John Kiggins and Endzone Properties in June 2022 after 18 children were poisoned in Endzone properties. It settled with William D’Angelo for $310,000 in February 2024 over 22 rental properties, and with Todd Hobbs for $175,000 in March 2024.

Four actions in four years, and the county’s own 2024 count was 545 children.

### Sources

– New York Attorney General, “Attorney General James Secures Settlement with Syracuse Landlords Over Lead Hazards and Unsafe Housing Conditions,” April 20, 2026: https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2026/attorney-general-james-secures-settlement-syracuse-landlords-over-lead-hazards
– New York v. Brian and Harry Murphy, Assurance of Discontinuance, 2026 (full 86-page PDF including appendices): https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/settlements-agreements/new-york-v-brian-and-harry-murphy-assurance-of-discontinuance-2026.pdf
– Onondaga County Health Department, Childhood Lead Testing by Race and Geography, 2024, and Prevalence of Childhood Lead Poisoning by Race and Geography, 2024: https://onondaga.gov/health-lead/place-and-race-data/
– Onondaga County Health Department, Trends in Childhood Lead Testing Results, Syracuse and Onondaga County excluding Syracuse, 2015 to 2024: https://onondaga.gov/health-lead/local-trends/
– Onondaga County Health Department, lead initiatives: https://onondaga.gov/health-lead/initiatives/
– U.S. Census Bureau, Year Structure Built, 2017-2021 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, Table B25034, as cited at footnote 25 of the Assurance of Discontinuance: https://data.census.gov/table?q=b2503+syracuse&tid=ACSDT5Y2021.B25034
– New York State Department of Health, lead rental registry program: https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/lead/lead_rental_registry/