With the first appointments to his administration Wednesday, Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has quickly silenced those who questioned his public-sector approach to governing. Those critics had argued that competence in government can only come with a private-sector pedigree and suggested that one can be a liberal or a administrator, but not both.
The appointment of Tony Shorris as first deputy mayor effectively rebuts those silly contentions.
In Shorris, the mayor-elect has attracted an experienced and respected manager — one whose career has been spent in government.
Shorris is familiar face in progressive political circles, but he is not an ideologue. And Shorris is comfortable in the boardrooms of the Partnership for New York City, but he understands that the city’s population is scattered across all five boroughs.
He has served at all levels of government, most prominently as the city’s finance commissioner and deputy budget director and most recently as the executive director of the Port Authority. I worked closely with Tony when he ran the Port, and while the nature of life and of the jobs we had meant that we didn’t always agree, what I saw up close then will serve the city very well now.
The Port is a microcosm of the city itself — large and occasionally unwieldy but tasked with the real-world but unglamorous work of transporting the workers, commuters, families and visitors who are the lifeblood of New York.
Running the Port requires the balancing act necessary to navigate the endlessly intertwined and sometimes competing interests — the city and state, New York and New Jersey, big dreams and budget realities, the demands of today and the need to plan and invest for the distant future, all while relentlessly pushing forward to build, maintain and expand an enormous transportation infrastructure.
Tony used to keep a framed portrait of legendary and long-serving Port Authority executive director Austin Tobin above his desk. I remember asking him why, especially since modern politics makes it impossible to fathom serving even half as long as Tobin’s 30 years at the helm. Tony’s response was that it reminded him of the need to think big and grandly and to take the long-view on behalf of the city and its residents, who deserve good government and great amenities and infrastructure.
That ethos should be comforting to those concerned by the departure of the big-idea Bloomberg administration.
Tony refused to meet with lobbyists while he was at the Port Authority. He had no problem getting together with their clients — the individuals and companies that did business with the Port, or at least wanted to. But he thought that it was important to promote transparency in government and to push back against the culture that suggests there are favored intermediaries that one must retain in order to successfully navigate government. That message is necessary now more than ever.
I don’t know that Tony will be able to maintain a no-lobbyists policy in City Hall, but it was instructive to see de Blasio use the same press conference to announce his appointment of political whiz Emma Wolfe as the city’s director of governmental affairs. Appointing his political id and his management ego at the same time confirms de Blasio’s deep understanding of the different aspects of the job ahead.
Fiorello LaGuardia famously said that “there is no Democratic or Republican way to pick up the garbage.” Mike Bloomberg might have instructed that what running the city demands is an ideology of excellence. That they were both so different in background and temperament and yet so effective in running the city reveals that there is no single way to do the job or one particular type of experience that prepares you for it.
It is de Blasio’s city now. He won a landslide victory and he has earned the right to govern as he campaigned. Given how brilliant and effective his campaign was, we’d all be fortunate indeed if that same level of discipline and success comes to define a de Blasio administration. With yesterday’s appointments, he is off to a very good start in that direction.
Schick is a partner at Dentons, a law firm. From 1999 to 2009, he served in New York State government as a deputy attorney general and as president of the Empire State Development Corp.
