Mayor Adams Yet to Name a Fire Commissioner
Acting FDNY Commissioner Kavanagh with Mayor Adams (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
Over nine months into his tenure, Mayor Eric Adams has yet to appoint a permanent commissioner for the New York City Fire Department, leaving Acting Commissioner Laura Kavanagh in the high-profile role dealing with some of the city’s most pressing emergencies and emergency services.
It is highly unusual for a mayor to take this long to name a commissioner for any city agency, much less a uniformed department with an established chain of command and life-saving responsibilities. FDNY commissioner is the last high-profile agency position that remains in limbo, even as the department has faced major emergencies this year.
Kavanagh, the first woman to lead the department, has a wide base of support, from City Council members to labor union officials, who say she has performed well in the role. Adams has praised Kavanagh in public appearances together, but the Democratic mayor has given no indication of when he might name a permanent fire commissioner.
“A decision is long from being overdue,” said Andrew Ansbro, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association (UFA), the union that represents the city’s rank-and-file firefighters. “The current acting commissioner has done an excellent job in the absence of having a permanent title.”
Sources say it is a curious delay that both undermines Kavanagh’s standing and presents a missed opportunity for the mayor to not only provide more stability to the fire department and solidify a competent, reform-minded commissioner, but also to name the FDNY’s first-ever female commissioner at a time when the department is attempting to diversify and Adams has taken pride in naming the first woman to lead the NYPD as well as five female deputy mayors.
Prior to taking over as acting commissioner in February, Kavanagh served as first deputy commissioner at FDNY for four years. She took over the department after the retirement of Commissioner Daniel Nigro, an appointee of former Mayor Bill de Blasio. “Commissioner Nigro leaves big shoes to fill and Acting Commissioner Laura Kavanaugh is up to the task,” Adams tweeted on February 16, the day Nigro retired. “She's a born leader who will guide this department with distinction.”
And she was thrown into the deep end almost immediately, dealing with the aftermath of the Twin Parks fire in the Bronx in January, which took the lives of 17 people, including eight children. That was soon followed by the death of a firefighter in February and the death of another firefighter in April as he responded to a house fire in Brooklyn. Through those intervening months, Kavanagh and the department faced intense scrutiny from the City Council and even from Congress over fire safety in housing.
While many would expect a new mayor to name their own fire commissioner at some point in the first several months of an administration, like with virtually all other agencies and offices, Adams has not, leading to questions about why he would let Kavanagh continue with the uncertainty of the acting title. Some say it has hurt her authority and undercut her ability to get more done, including in hiring an executive team.
In February, Adams spokesperson Fabien Levy told the New York Post that the mayor was conducting a “thorough review” of candidates for FDNY commissioner. “He’s already conducted 20 rounds of interviews and narrowed down his list to three individuals,” Levy said at the time. “As with all other appointments in the administration, Mayor Adams will pick the best person for the job.”
The mayor’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
As Ansbro of the UFA noted, Kavanagh has done the job without a first deputy commissioner of her own and with several top vacancies unfilled. “She's basically done it alone without that aide and also there's a lot of other appointments that have gone unfilled with the department,” he said, adding that the union supports her for the permanent position. “The department needs this question answered. They need some stability.”
UFA was one signer of a July 14 letter to Mayor Adams obtained by Gotham Gazette wherein several union leaders urged him to make Kavanagh’s appointment as commissioner permanent.
“[Acting Commissioner Kavanagh] has proven to be a reliable, battle-tested leader, fully capable of running one of New York’s most vital and complex agencies,” reads the letter. It was signed by Ansbro; Oren Barzilay, president of Uniformed EMTs, Paramedics, and Fire Inspectors, Local 2507, which falls under DC37; Vincent Variale, president of Uniformed EMS Officers Union, Local 3621; Faye Smyth, president of Uniformed Fire Alarm Dispatchers Benevolent Association; and Henry Garrido, executive director of DC37, the largest municipal labor union.
The union leaders wrote that Kavanagh’s work for the department has been “exceptional” and that “her permanent appointment is not only a just reward for that service, but also a great benefit to the citizens [of] New York City.”
“Therefore, it is our firm belief that her historic appointment as the next FDNY Commissioner would enhance public safety, elevate your administration’s public standing, and exemplify your mayoral legacy,” they said.
A knowledgeable source in the Adams administration, who did not wish to be named in order to speak freely, said that the administration originally seemed to be focused on possibly naming an old ally of the mayor, who was in the NYPD for two decades before winning elected office, either with FDNY or NYPD experience, or a more traditional fire chief from outside the city, all of whom were likely white men. While no potential appointment panned out, the mayor has also been impressed with Kavanagh’s performance, the source said.
“It's definitely unusual that it's gone on this long,” Ansbro said. “I think if he were affording her a grace period to see whether she could sink or swim, I would say without question, she can swim.”
Meanwhile, Kavanagh has taken several steps to improve FDNY diversity that have been broadly hailed, though the department does continue to struggle on that front in its ranks. Just this week, she named a new Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Kwame Cooper, a former chief officer from the Los Angeles City Fire Department. In July, she appointed Malcolm Moore as Chief of Special Operations, the first Black man to hold the role. And in her previous role as first deputy commissioner, Kavanagh overhauled recruitment practices to attract more underrepresented minorities, including women, into the department.
“As she's taking on the acting role, she's brought a semblance of continuity and stability to a department through an administration change,” Ansbro said. “And things have been going smoothly. I feel she's earned her spot and it's about time that the appointment is made. If the mayor is looking to go in another direction, it's time to make that decision.”
One of Adams’ first acts when he came into office in January was to restructure city government, particularly by consolidating most public safety agencies – including the Fire Department – under the newly-created Deputy Mayor for Public Safety, a position he gave to Phil Banks, a former long-time police department official and Adams ally. Adams has said throughout his tenure and during last year’s mayoral campaign that public safety is paramount and that he would bring a new style of decisive executive leadership to the role of mayor.
“Being the Commissioner of the FDNY is one of the most important positions in the entire city, because it deals with the safety of the public,” said City Council Member Joann Ariola, a Queens Republican who chairs the Council’s Committee on Fire and Emergency Management. “Acting Commissioner Kavanagh has been leading the Department since the start of the Adams administration, so we are certain that we will be seeing an announcement about a permanent commissioner imminently.”
***
by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
Ben Max contributed to this story.
Max Politics Podcast: Getting New York Out of Its Housing Crisis
Housing on the way (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
September 23, 2022 - Max Politics Podcast: Getting New York Out of Its Housing Crisis
Moses Gates, Vice President for Housing and Neighborhood Planning at the Regional Plan Association, joined the show to discuss New York City's housing crisis, what policies are key to addressing it, the unique political moment we're in, and how to find more consensus on this contentious issue.
Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts at Max Politics.
Read more: Max Politics Podcast: Getting New York Out of Its Housing Crisis
Redistricting Commission Votes Down Latest City Council Draft Map
Districting Commission Chair Dennis Walcott (photo: New York City Council)
In an 8-7 vote, the New York City Districting Commission on Thursday rejected its latest proposal to redraw the city’s 51 Council districts, sending the electoral map back to the drawing board.
After months of analysis and more than 9,000 submissions from the public, the 15-member commission could not find consensus on redefining City Council district lines to accommodate population shifts shown in the 2020 Census. Those included an increase in the city’s population of 630,000 residents since the 2010 count and many other demographic shifts.
Commission members who voted against the proposal cited varying reasons for their votes, including concerns about divisions of communities of interest to diminished political power for certain regions and neighborhoods. Those who voted in favor pointed to how the new map addressed major concerns about the preliminary July proposal, making changes that the commission’s executive director, Dr. John Flateau, explained ahead of the vote. The new map required nine yes votes to be sent to the Council but fell short.
If the map had been approved, it would have been sent to the City Council for its assessment. Instead, the Commission will now reconsider the revised proposal as it seeks to address the concerns of dissenting commissioners.
The Commission is made up of 15 members – seven appointed by Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat; five appointed by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, a Queens Democrat; and three chosen by City Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli, a Republican of Staten Island.
The no votes came from Borelli’s three appointees: Marc Wurzel, Kevin Hanratty, and Darrin Porcher; mayoral appointees Maria Mateo, Joshua Schneps, Lisa Sorin, and Kai-Ki Wong; and Michael Schnall, an appointee of the speaker. The vote made it apparent that Borelli’s and Mayor Adams’ appointees have continued to be largely in lockstep during the process. That was the case even as commission chair Dennis Walcott, an appointee of the mayor, was among the yes votes.
“My commissioners were never going to accept a job half-done,” Borelli said in a text message on Thursday. Borelli has been adamant throughout the process that Staten Island's three Council districts should all remain island-only. “The latest drawings still left significant issues on the table, and although they are going back to the drawing board, at least it's with a better idea of what needs to be done,” he said.
The latest map was a revised version of an earlier proposal released in July, which was met with significant opposition from various quarters. The initial proposal had kept the three Council districts on Staten Island largely unchanged and without any crossover into another borough, an anchoring decision that impacted how many other districts were drawn. But the latest map extended the Mid-Island district into Brooklyn and also undid many other contentious boundaries from the preliminary map passed in July.
Schnall said he found the final process “a little unsettling and frankly, unfair,” as he voted against the proposed map. “A few individuals undid some of the work of the many, often at the last minutes of a mapping session, which got finalized in these maps,” he said.
Schnall criticized what he called the “dilution” of political power in the Bronx from the redrawing of District 8, already a Bronx-Manhattan crossover district, which shifted more toward the East Harlem side in the latest map, as well as the inclusion of a Brooklyn neighborhood in the middle Staten Island district. As a Staten Island resident, he seemed to take particular issue with that latter decision.
“I resent the fact that Staten Island has been blamed for all the troubles identified in the first draft…This Brooklyn addition dilutes Staten Island's political power and sets the borough back 10 years in the progress we've made to establish ourselves and chart our own future as a borough,” he said. The new map he objected to included what was said to be about 16,000 Brooklynites in the largely Staten Island 50th Council District.
Walcott acknowledged Schnall’s concerns but defended the work of the commission and how it unfolded as he voted for the new maps. “I think the challenge is making sure that we don't undermine all the hard work and allow the process to unfold to the next step because I think the commission has done an excellent job in meeting its responsibility and its due diligence,” he said.
But Wurzel echoed Schnall’s criticisms in his own vote against the proposal. “It's ironic that as soon as we as a commission walked away from having three districts on Staten Island, more problems developed, some inevitable and some self-inflicted,” he said of problems with the map he voted against on Thursday.
He also took issue with proposed lines in other boroughs. “We've twisted, divided and cannibalized several communities in a handful of competitive, fair-fight districts in Queens and Brooklyn,” he said, in an apparent reference to a perceived lack of Republican-Democratic competition in parts of the new map.
Other commissioners who supported the new proposal pointed out that they had listened to feedback on the preliminary maps and corrected perceived deficiencies, reuniting several communities of interest that had been split in the earlier proposal.
Mateo voted no on the proposal, raising concerns about the dilution of Dominican voting power in Districts 2 and 7 in Manhattan. She said it is important for the commission to hear more from Latino New Yorkers as it continues its work.
Several of the commissioners said the districting process was inherently flawed because of a state law that only allows a 5% deviation in population between the most and least populated districts. The commission also had to adhere to criteria set by the U.S. Constitution, the federal Voting Rights Act, and the City Charter.
Following the vote, Dr. Lisa Handley, an expert retained by the commission to conduct a racial voting bloc analysis of the map, testified on the considerations that went into the latest proposed maps. “[T]he plan that you drew passed Voting Rights Act muster, in my opinion,” she said. “I'm not sure what's going to happen now.”
Handley told the commissioners that the proposed maps maintained the number of Black and Hispanic opportunity districts in the city while adding one new Asian opportunity district, accounting for the increase in Asian Americans, the fastest growing population in the city. “You would have been successfully sued had you not done that,” she said.
For his part, Mayor Adams appears content with the commission continuing its work as dictated by Thursday's vote. “The Commission heard public testimony from different communities across the city who were concerned about the dilution of their voting power and the risk of diminished representation in city government," said mayoral spokesperson Fabien Levy, in a statement to Gotham Gazette. "We applaud the independent redistricting commission for their willingness to continue their great work and address these concerns now, while the public process continues to move forward.”
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, on the other hand, expressed dissatisfaction with the vote. "I am disappointed that the Council and public will not have the formal opportunity to review the new maps that the Districting Commission proposed and rejected," she said in a statement. "The public engaged in the redistricting process at record levels over the last several months, providing input and testimony regarding safety measures and protections for historically marginalized communities of color and communities of interest, as mandated by the Voting Rights Act and New York City Charter. The Commission appeared to have taken this seriously in its revisions, with new maps deemed to be in compliance with the Voting Rights Act. Yet, the public has not been able to access these newly proposed maps."
"I urge the Commission to make these maps fully available to the public, so there is complete transparency on the newly proposed districts and how they addressed public concerns. It is also critical for there to be a clear timeline of the next steps and public process," she added.
With the final approval of the maps now delayed, activists are hoping that their concerns about the proposed maps will be taken into consideration.
“In these newly proposed maps, the Commission clearly heard the concerns of some but not all New Yorkers. In particular, in South Brooklyn’s Council Districts the proposed lines are an improvement from the previous version and reflect the city’s Asian and Latino population growth and feedback from residents,” said Murad Awawdeh, executive director of New York Immigration Coalition, in a statement. “Yet, we cannot ignore that immigrant communities continue to be split, including in Southeast Queens and in the Northwest Bronx, meaning additional changes need to be made to ensure community members have a chance at fair representation. By not moving the proposed maps to a vote by the NYC Council, we hope the Commission will use the time to work to ensure that more New Yorkers are heard in this process.”
The commission will now work on a new map of Council districts, which it must pass to present to the current Council for approval or rejection with notes. If the Council approves the map, it goes into effect for next year’s elections, where all 51 Council seats are on the ballot. If it rejects the maps, the commission must take its feedback into account, hold additional public hearings, and then pass a final map without any outside approval needed. The deadline when the final maps are due is December 7.
With little time left till that deadline, Citizens Union, a good government group, urged the Commission to quickly resolve any lingering issues so that the maps can be scrutinized by the public. "Today’s vote demonstrates the need for transparency throughout the process," said Betsy Gotbaum, CU's executive director, in a statement. "Opening the Commission’s deliberations to the public would have allowed all commissioners to weigh in on the issues that led to today's surprise vote. The Commission should hold its next deliberations in public to prompt healthy dialogue between commissioners. This act will reduce the potential power of outside influence on the process."
Walcott said the Commission will “reconvene to discuss our next steps” in the process. “Then we will go through the process of addressing any of the concerns because we still have a responsibility to submit these plans to the City Council for their review,” he said.
***
by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
Note - this article has been updated.
|
Tweet |
