“The reason that people always say you can’t have a good third term is they try to do the same thing with the same people, and it’s very difficult to walk in, look a commissioner in the eye and say, ‘You know you have done great things, you’ve worked hard, you’ve done everything we’ve asked you, but it’s time to go.’ But that is what you have to do.”
Remember those words of wisdom from candidate Michael Bloomberg? It was the home stretch of the campaign, two weeks before the end. The win seemed inevitable, but the mayor did not want to look like he was coasting. So standing there in a packed room of business executives that morning at Crain’s, he said the kind of thing that appeals to business executives, and also to weary, bored political reporters looking for a juicy story. Sure, there were four more years of Bloomberg coming. But it was going to be different. It was going to be better. Out would go burned-out commissioners whose life of endless ribbon-cuttings and agency reports had turned into a blur. In would come fresh blood, closer to the life on the ground in the city. Write that story, Bloomberg said.
Instead, there is reality: a month into Bloomberg term three, and the grand total of fired commissioners is zero. The grand total of new commissioners is five. There has been one high-profile change, with Nicholas Cassano taking over for Nicholas Scoppetta at FDNY. One commissioner—juvenile justice—left because his agency was merged into another. There has been one longstanding hole filled, with Cas Holloway taking over at DEP.
Corrections has a new woman in charge. So does DoIT and the Department of Probation.
But 15 out of 40? Not even close. Changes in the leadership at City Hall, a realignment of deputy mayors, like he did after winning his second term?
No dice. Bloomberg was right: there is a reason third terms are historically disasters, and it has a lot to do with stagnation and exhaustion among top aides. Without new energy and new ideas, administrations tend to coast. And for an administration that now has the unenviable task of keeping up its pace of trying to reinvent government with already fewer dollars to spend—and more cuts from Albany coming—Bloomberg will be in desperate need of new energy and new ideas.
Presumably, this is what the mayor had in mind when he said that morning, “You have to constantly poorly on those who served for the last eight years.”
The deputy commissioner rotation plan the mayor laid out at his inauguration had promise. Informed outside evaluation could undoubtedly help improve the performance and efficiency of city government. This is precisely the kind of experiences that could serve as the basis for true reviews: the kind that leads to changes at the top.
Unfortunately, though, it is increasingly beginning to seem that the rotation will be in place of following through on the bloodletting pledge. That would be bad for the future of the city, but it would be bad as well for a man who likes so much to brag about his adherence to campaign promises that he issues an annual report card and then routinely scolds the media for not giving it enough attention.
Should Ray Kelly go? Should Joel Klein? Should John Doherty? Thomas Farley? David Frankel? Rafael Cestero? Janette Sadik-Khan? Martha Hirst? Robert LiMandri? Nazli Parvizi?
Maybe none of them. Maybe all of them. Change is hard, and not necessarily always for the better. But years in government have a way of cosseting even good people from the realities of living in this city, and this city—and of 40 commissioners anytime soon, things are going to have to get moving, and some people whom no one was expecting to leave are going to have to be put out on the street.
“Let me make this commitment to you, as we begin this new team: We will continue demanding and achieving progress in every area—every day. We will continue going full-tilt—full-time,” Bloomberg said at his State of the City address delivered earlier this month at the Frank Sinatra High School in Astoria.
For a brief moment, he seemed to be on the verge of announcing something major, a new leadership structure around him to keep his administration’s trademark energy and dynamism going. But nothing followed and, in fact, “new team” was, according to the prepared text, just a flub. He was supposed to say “new term.” But without a new team in place, the only thing that will make this term new is chronology, which is far less than New York deserves.
The mayor should be commended for fostering an administration that remains attractive to high-ranking members even eight years later. They have done some good work over the years. They have done some bad work. But if they are going to do anything other than reinvigorate and have people that come up with new country even—is full of people with good ideas who the same work over the years to come, they need to be ideas and different approaches, and that doesn’t reflect could invigorate the next fours years. To get to 15 out shaken up, and quickly.
