De Blasio’s early audition

In his first big government job, Bill de Blasio stepped into a sewage-filled mess at a huge Bronx public housing project.

The past may not be prologue. But if one harkens back to a virtually unknown period of his life, de Blasio exhibited a political savvy with both angry tenants and upscale business interests that might serve him pretty well as New York’s next mayor.

It came in the late 1990s when he was picked to run the Housing and Urban Development’s New York-New Jersey region by then-HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo.

As regional administrator, he controlled a small executive staff and didn’t make much actual policy. But he was an important messenger during a delicate and wrenching decline in Washington’s historic role in subsidizing housing and urban renewal nationwide.

It was during the Clinton administration and, after decades of federal largess, there were far fewer dollars to hand out.

Decades of tax breaks, shelters and other subsidies were petering out for private investors in low-income housing, including rich New Yorkers such as the Tisch family.

During his two years, de Blasio had a reputation within HUD for preferring the bigger picture. He would tend to leave to bureaucrats the often dry, complex specifics of mortgages, foreclosures, tax breaks, public housing governance and management contracts.

Those details seemed neither his immediate interest nor his strength, said former HUD subordinates in New York who declined to be identified. But they did not see that as a negative.

Instead, they view him in retrospect as an executive preferring to front the bigger picture, not micromanage, and leaving the often technical execution to subordinates.

“When his name popped up as a mayoral candidate in New York, I looked at my wife and said, ‘This guy is good,'” said William Apgar Jr. of Harvard University’s Kennedy School, who was at the time both a respected assistant secretary of housing and the boss of the Federal Housing Administration.

A vivid example of de Blasio’s HUD challenges was found at the Jose de Diego Beekman Houses in the Bronx. Beekman personified the tensions and, at times, outright anger he faced as a conduit of government policy.

Residents of the 1,200 unit, 38-building project were unhappy after years of poor management, crime, drug dealing, too many rats, insufficient heat in winter, raw sewage surfacing on ground floors and apartments in desperate need of repair.

De Blasio inherited a dilemma that ultimately would bring a new ownership structure, repairs and improved tenant trust.

Some changes were at least put in motion during his tenure, just before his November 1999 departure to run Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign. Most were settled upon and finalized much later.

The testy topics of many meetings at Beekman included ditching the existing management firm, devising a new ownership set-up, finding new investors and deciding whether to foreclose on the property (which would wipe out certain fat tax savings for investors).

But the changes, HUD decided, could not include tenant ownership and management of the complex. It simply didn’t have sufficient confidence in the tenants’ competence.

Many tenants realized that reality, some didn’t. Passions were intense.

By merely showing up at Beekman, de Blasio altered the overall dynamic. He helped to lessen inherent, growing suspicions about HUD, especially amid the dismaying decline of the neighborhood.

His presence was a striking change, said Arline Parks, a tenant activist. Previously, Beekman residents had to schlep to HUD’s lower Manhattan headquarters.

“People might not have liked what we were hearing from HUD. But he came out often and gave us attention and listened to us,” says Parks, a longtime resident of the project in Mott Haven.

He mediated tricky issues in often exasperation-filled meetings about the latest alternatives being mulled by HUD, the tenants and prospective investors.

For example, tenants were very nervous about the possibility HUD might ultimately break-up Beekman and auction off the properties in separate groupings. After all, the buildings were many millions of dollars in debt.

That didn’t happen. Neither did other anxiety-creating alternatives proposed by various parties, ranging from a combo outsider-tenant ownership to bailing out the then-existing landlord.

One big action HUD did take during de Blasio’s tenure was against the Boston area real estate firm that had been given the buildings, and plush financial guarantees, by HUD in the 1970s.

In May, 1999, HUD seized the buildings from the firm amid mounting evidence of poor management. HUD’s inspector general in Washington also alleged that the firm misappropriated $1.4 million to shore up unrelated loans and investments.

Its exit intensified pressure and stress over Beekman’s future. And de Blasio did not avoid the fray, even if resolution of the major problems would not come for years.

“He did not stay remote,” said Parks, who declined to say whether she’ll now support him for mayor.

“But lots of tenants gave him favorable reviews because they perceived him as truthful.”

There was much more happening at HUD citywide.

That included his involvement in the proposed creation of so-called federal urban empowerment zones, aimed at using tax credits and grants to help distressed areas.

The biggest involved Harlem, Washington Heights and the South Bronx. Hundreds of millions of dollars were theoretically at play.

Ultimately, the plans of the Clinton administration and Congress proved “way too ambitious and politically naive,” says Apgar. Not much actually happened in New York or elsewhere across the country.

But, at the time, the plans were a big, contentious deal and represented potentially huge change. Residents in some neighborhoods feared the proposals amounted to “‘slum clearance’ all over again,” said Apgar.

A multitude of specifics had to be hashed out among a diverse array of parties: the federal government, the Giuliani and Pataki administrations, local communities, nonprofits, community activists, private developers and a godfather of the whole federal program, Rep. Charles Rangel.

And while Rangel has no recollection of de Blasio, who ran his 1994 congressional campaign, in the HUD job – “I would only deal with the Secretary (of HUD), not small fry,” he told me -others remember him well.

“That called on political skills and he did a good job in managing the politics of it all,” recalled Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a wired group of city business leaders that was actively involved with HUD-related issues.

Apgar and Wylde both attended many meetings with de Blasio. Apgar flew into New York regularly and remembers him as adroit in juggling different constituencies.

“He had a good sense of people skills. He knew who had to be paid attention to but didn’t equate that with the biggest shots in town. He knew he had to pay attention to tenants, church groups and others, and was very even-handed.”

For sure, de Blasio was gone before many of these matters concluded, largely without much happening.

But, said Wylde, developers and investors who often faced off against various local groups were “equally happy with his performance. I think it shows the breadth of his political skills.”

Might it be a hint of things to come?