ALBANY — On May 27, 2015, Bronx Assemblyman Michael Blake introduced a bill pushed by Airbnb, the multi-billion-dollar short-term rental platform. The measure had been a top Airbnb legislative priority in Albany that year.

While little noticed at the time, public records released in the months and years that followed raise questions about a potentially major conflict of interest between Blake's legislative act – introducing a bill — and a source of his private income.

In the month prior to the introduction of Blake's bill, Airbnb paid $189,000 to a prominent political consulting firm, Hilltop Public Solutions, to assist in its lobbying in New York. Hilltop's efforts included helping organize grassroots support for the legislation that Blake introduced.

Publicly unknown at the time was that Blake, a political consultant with prominence in national Democratic politics, was being paid by Hilltop as a political consultant. In other words: In 2015, Blake was being paid by Hilltop; Airbnb was paying Hilltop; and Blake introduced legislation Airbnb had been pushing.

Blake's financial disclosure form for 2015 reveals that Hilltop — formally identified by its corporate name, S&B Public Solutions — paid Blake between $5,000 and $20,000 to work for "out of state" clients. But Blake insists he never worked for Airbnb.

"It has the appearance of a conflict of interest," said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, a leading good government group. "The basis on which all of this took place, we don't know. But no legislator should be in this situation."

The Hilltop official that Airbnb retained in New York was Bill Hyers, then a partner in the firm's New York City office. Hyers had gained prominence as an architect of Bill de Blasio's election as New York City mayor in 2013.

Hyers is also a good friend of Blake, and was an early and generous financial supporter of his campaigns. More recently, he served as a well-paid Blake campaign consultant.

In response to questions from the Times Union, Hyers refused to say whether he'd ever discussed matters related to Airbnb with Blake — including the bill the Assemblyman introduced in 2015, and which Hilltop helped push in the weeks prior.

"This is a stupid rabbit hole (I'm) not going down for the umpteenth time," Hyers said in an email.

Krysten Copeland, a spokeswoman for Blake's current congressional campaign, said in a statement that he "never worked with Airbnb during his time with Hilltop, rather he worked on political campaigns in Maryland and Iowa" in 2015. "Further, Mr. Blake has never worked as a lobbyist during his time with Hilltop or any other organization. Any bills that Mr. Blake introduces are of his own volition and for the betterment of the people of the state of New York."

Blake insisted he never discussed Airbnb with Hyers before the bill's introduction.

An Airbnb spokesman, Christopher Nulty, said that Bolton-St. Johns, a top lobbying firm also working for the company, had been responsible for pushing for introduction of the legislation that Blake introduced.

"Michael Blake has never done any work on behalf of Airbnb," Nulty said.

According to the company, Airbnb didn't know in 2015 that Blake was doing consulting work for Hilltop, and only found out from later media reports.

The company maintains it is unaware of any 2015 conversations between Hyers and Blake about the legislation.

Hilltop, based in Washington D.C., is one of the breed of "strategic communications" firms that work on lawmakers' campaigns and develop close relationships with them, but whose employees rarely register as having done lobbying.

Bolton-St. Johns' public filings listed only one specific bill of interest during the the 2015 legislative session: the one introduced by Blake.

The bill would have allowed Airbnb to collect "occupancy tax" from Airbnb renters – thus lifting the collection burden off its "hosts" – before passing the money on to state government.

Given that Blake was a freshman member of the Assembly with relatively meager legislative influence, he was a somewhat unusual pick to carry the significant legislation for Airbnb.

Airbnb declined to explain why Blake was chosen to carry the legislation, as did a Bolton-St. Johns representative.

Blake claimed that he introduced the occupancy tax bill "without influence from outside sources." In other words, Blake asserts that he independently came up with the obscure taxation idea, which Airbnb happened to have been pushing in the weeks beforehand.

Blake's relationship with Hilltop first drew scrutiny seven months after he introduced the Airbnb-backed bill.

In December 2015, Hilltop issued a press release stating that Blake was accepting a position as a partner in the consulting company. The press release stated that Blake would join Hilltop's New York City office, which was led at the time by Hyers.

The press release neglected to mention that Blake was an elected member of the state Assembly.

Amid criticism over the potential conflicts of interest — Lerner at the time called Blake's behavior "brazen and disturbing" — the lawmaker reversed course two days later and said he would not take the Hilltop partnership.

At that point, Blake had already had been working as a consultant for Hilltop for at least two years, according to financial disclosure forms first reported on by Politico in February.

For a state assemblyman, Blake has an unusually high profile in national political circles: He was an early campaign adviser to President Barack Obama, landed a position in the White House, and is now a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Blake ran for Assembly in 2014 as a reformer and won the seat previously held by Eric Stevenson, who was booted from office after being convicted of accepting $22,000 in bribes.

"This collective aura of corruption that has been happening — enough is enough," Blake told the Daily News when launching his bid.

Blake is now a leading candidate in the 2020 congressional race to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Jose Serrano.

Hyers, meanwhile, was one of the handful of advisors de Blasio unsuccessfully attempted to designate as "agents of the city," whose emails with de Blasio should be kept secret. After a judge ordered their release, the communications showed how Hilltop often hired former de Blasio staffers, who then set up meeting with City Hall on behalf of clients — typically without registering as lobbyists.

In July 2014, multiple media outlets reported that Airbnb had retained Hyers.

Hyers told the Times Union he'd known Blake "very well" going back to the days when Blake worked for Obama. Hyers himself worked for Obama's 2012 re-election bid.

When Blake first ran for Assembly in 2014, his very first donation was $1,000 from Hyers. "Proud to have been the first donor!" Hyers tweeted in July of that year.

"You are the man my brother," Blake replied. "Thank you for being with me from DAY ONE. I will call only slightly less LOL."

Indeed, even after Blake assumed public office in January 2015, he continued to do consulting work for Hilltop. Hyers said the work did not pose a conflict of interest.

Blake "never worked for Hilltop, he was a subcontractor for a few payments many years ago on one project for a political campaign in Bermuda," Hyers said. "That's it. There is no special here or there on any of this other stuff, Hilltop has a ton of partners doing a ton of stuff all over the place, and one subcontractor on one project doesn't have anything to do with another."

According to Blake's own financial disclosure forms, however, his work for Hilltop was more extensive than Hyers describes.

In 2014, Blake reported making between $5,000 and $20,000 working as a consultant for Hilltop on a campaign in Ghana. In 2015, he reported income in the same range working for Hilltop for the "out of state" campaigns — Maryland and Iowa, according to Blake's campaign spokeswoman.

Following Blake's abortive attempt to become a Hilltop partner in late 2015, he did not report income from the firm in his 2016 or 2017 disclosure forms.

Both years, however, Blake reported making between $20,000 and $50,000 doing "communications strategy" for the One Bermuda Alliance, a political party in that country. During the same period, Hyers and other Hilltop employees were working for the One Bermuda Alliance.

Meanwhile, Hyers' work for Airbnb also brought him into proximity to Blake.

On May 12, 2015, dozens of Airbnb "hosts" took a trip to the state Capitol. The Airbnb hosts planned to talk to lawmakers about passing a law, which would help the Airbnb "community" to "pay $65 million more in taxes" per year, according to a company press release. The Airbnb supporters wanted the Legislature to pass the bill allowing Airbnb to "collect and remit hotel and tourist taxes" in New York "on behalf of hosts."

Hilltop helped organize the Airbnb hosts' lobbying trip to Albany, Airbnb confirmed.

On May 12 — the day of the trip — Airbnb paid Hilltop more than $82,000 for "public relations/grassroots," according to the company's lobbying disclosure. Two weeks earlier, Airbnb paid Hilltop $102,000 for the same purposes.

Two days after the lobby day, Long Island state Sen. Phil Boyle, a Republican, introduced the legislation Airbnb was seeking. Two weeks later, Blake introduced the Assembly version.

While Boyle's bill made some limited progress in the state Senate in 2016, Blake's stalled in the Assembly, never gaining a single co-sponsor. In March 2016, the legislation officially died when Blake rescinded his support.

Indeed, Blake appeared to grow less friendly to Airbnb, voting in 2016 to pass significant legislation cracking down on the company.

Hyers has since left Hilltop and started his own firm. He no longer works for Airbnb. But Blake and Hyers have remained close.

Last November, Blake and Hyers were spotted together in Puerto Rico, attending the annual Somos political conference.

And when Blake ran unsuccessfully for New York City public advocate this year, a Hyers company, Win Creative, was paid by more than $460,000 for television ads and consulting by the campaign.

"As public advocate, I will continue to work tirelessly," Blake said during the campaign, "to ensure that all New Yorkers can have faith that their government is working for their benefit."