Good New Year’s Eve morning! The clock is inching inexorably closer to Bill de Blasio’s swearing-in as New York’s next mayor, which will take place without many of his new appointees in position — and, in the first round, without the press…
For the first time since organized firefighting began in New York more than 350 years ago, a woman
might be put in charge of the city’s firefighters.
Our Ginger Adams Otis exclusively reports
that de Blasio’s list of top candidates to run the FDNY includes three women. Picking any of them would “represent seismic change for a department which has long faced criticism its ranks do not reflect the city’s diversity.” If the pick is retired Capt. Brenda Berkman, she’d be the first openly gay fire commissioner in city history; if lawyer Mylan Denerstein gets the job, she’d be the first African-American woman commissioner.
First, though, de Blasio’s got to actually take the oath: Surrounded by family, he’ll officially be sworn in by state AG Eric Schneiderman as the city’s 109th mayor in a private, post-midnight New Year’s ceremony at home, the same modest Park Slope brownstone where he announced his long shot bid for City Hall a year earlier. And despite repeated guarantees that his inauguration would feature “unprecedented access,”
,
it’s closed press
. The event will be livestreamed, however, and pictures will go up on Flickr.
Update:
Your Daily News team will
also
provide
liveblog and streaming coverage
of the main event — de Blasio’s ceremonial swearing-in on the City Hall steps
by former President Bill Clinton
— on New Year’s Day. Details to follow…
Stay tuned…
(Plus: Speaking of WJC,
that in administering the oath for de Blasio, the former commander-in-chief is really “cementing a longstanding relationship that
could be a boon for Hillary Clinton
if she runs for president.”)
De Blasio has made some top cabinet picks, including Monday’s formal announcement of Carmen Fariña as schools chancellor (
), but still,
, the incoming mayor “is on track for t
he slowest creation
of a New York City government in a generation. He has appointed fewer than a dozen top deputies and commissioners, falling behind the pace set by every predecessor since at least as far back as David N. Dinkins, the last Democrat to hold the office.”
Our Juan Gonzalez is
hopeful about the Fariña pick
,
: “A real educator in charge of our public schools for a change — what a revolutionary idea from our mayor-elect! In naming Carmen Fariña — a veteran teacher and principal and the daughter of Spanish immigrants — as the next chancellor of New York City public schools, Bill de Blasio has officially ended the era of beating up on teachers and public school parents.”
Outta there:
John Rhea, the much-maligned NYCHA chairman, resigned Monday, ending a rocky four-year tenure that saw living conditions deteriorate dramatically for public housing residents. Sources
that Rhea submitted his resignation to Mayor Bloomberg, who in 2009 appointed him to run the authority despite the Wall Street financial adviser’s lack of public housing experience. Sources told The News that Rhea has designated Kyle Kimball, the departing city Economic Development Corp. director, to be temporary chairman.
And ICYMI, here, via John Kenny of
, is footage of de Blasio’s previous presser announcing Zachary Carter as
the city’s next Corp. Counsel
:
The mayor-elect is still on the stump for a major political player he doesn’t actually pick — City Council speaker.
de Blasio hit a breakfast for his preferred contender, Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, at City Hall (appropriate) restaurant on Monday,
talking her up for as long as 25 minutes
— and promising to have a less contentious relationship with lawmakers than Bloomberg.
And while de Blasio rode to a monumental victory with promises of doing pretty much nothing The Bloomberg Way, that — for now — won’t start with busting up the famed City Hall bullpen: Sources
that city employees have
not been instructed to dismantle the open-air office
or to draw up plans to replace it. As a result, de Blasio will move into the nerve center of city government as-is, occupying the space that has become symbolic of the mayor he says he does not want to emulate.
As for Bloomberg, he’s scheduled to depart City Hall at 4:45 p.m. Tuesday
for the last time as mayor
, having not
quite
delivered on all of the many promises he made when he first ran in 2001. If he had,
, New York might be a place with “Mandatory school uniforms. Subway tunnels wired for phone service. An education complex on Governors Island,” not to mention “a mayor who hand delivers school supplies if necessary.”
On the crimefighting upside: New York City
saw the fewest murders since record-keeping began
in 1963, with just 333 homicides in 2013 as of Monday,
our Edgar Sandoval and Tina Moore report
. That’s a 20.1% plunge from last year, when there were 417, just when it seemed like the number couldn’t fall any further. The number of shootings overall dropped 19.5% — from 1,367 in 2012 to 1,100 in 2013.
Outgoing NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly
thanked the force for its hard work
via video,
. “Specifically, Kelly touted the department’s success in foiling 16 terror plots against the city and credited them for building bridges with the community.”
Some of Bloomberg’s unfinished business may yet come to pass, and he green-lighted a raft of 22 measures at
a (somewhat smoky) Blue Room ceremony
(
pictured
) Monday. Scorecard: Hizzoner,
, thus brought his total to 883 bills signed in his 12 years in office. Over three terms, Bloomberg also vetoed 68 bills, and 65 of the vetoes have been overridden by the City Council.
Also vetoed:
WNY Assemblyman Dennis Gabryszak’s ability to have interns work in his office until sexual harassment claims against him are investigated,
. Representing the other end of the state, Manhattan Assemblyman Micah Kellner was
as chair of the Libraries Committee and banned from holding any other leadership job after it was found
he made inappropriate comments to employees
in 2009 and 2011. Speaker Sheldon Silver forbade Kellner from employing interns, froze his staff allocations and required him to attend “immediate and comprehensive sexual harassment training.”
And the city Board of Elections has a lot of work to do, including fixing
that little problem of letting dead people vote
,
: “Investigators posing as deceased voters were allowed to cast ballots in 39 instances on Election Day, according to a scathing report on the city’s Board of Elections released Monday. In some cases, investigators as young as 24 posed as voters who would have been in their 80s or 90s had they been alive, the Department of Investigation report found. The report also documented nearly two dozen additional instances where investigators posing as convicted felons or non-city residents were allowed to vote.”
From our Glenn Blain in Albany:
Tuesday not only marks the end of 2013, but also
the demise of New York’s $7.25 hourly minimum wage
. Under a deal struck by Gov. Cuomo and state lawmakers in March, the wage will increase 75 cents to $8 at midnight. It will rise again to $8.75 at the end of 2014 and to $9 by the end of 2015. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, however,
is already looking to speed things up
. On Monday he proposed raising the wage to $9 by the end of 2014 and linking future increases to the rate of inflation. Silver’s proposal, however, was promptly shot down by Senate Republicans. “We have no interest in revisiting the issue at this time,” said a spokeswoman for Senate GOP leader Dean Skelos.
From our James Warren in Washington:
* We assumed that Supreme Court rules forbid both televising oral arguments before the court and allowing justices to take part in the Times Square ball drop.
But nooooooooo!
Sonia Sotomayor either has a fun streak or is truly desperate for companionship since she can now go right into a Wikipedia item as the first Supreme Court justice to help lead the ball drop. That presumably means she gets to spend quality time with Anderson Cooper, which may be further proof she’s desperate for companionship.
* There will be the year’s final set of unavoidably unrevealing pool reports from the media “covering” Obama in Hawaii. This tends to mean either hanging at a McDonald’s or Starbucks and
being told what you’re not allowed to see
. On Monday it meant not covering any of the Obama family’s hike with, the print pool report indicated, “unnamed friends” (presumably they do have names; they were simply unidentified by the White House). But if you’ve got the choice between that and getting some drunk’s elbow jammed into your jaw in Times Square while looking for a ball-dropping federal judge, Hawaii is clearly preferable.
From our Bramhall’s World:
Leaders’ Lineup:
President Obama
is in Hawaii.
Gov. Cuomo
is in New York City.
Mayor Bloomberg
9:00 AM: Hosts 13th and Final Annual Interfaith Breakfast, The New York Public Library, Celeste Bartos Forum, 42nd Street and Fifth Ave., Manhattan.
Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio
1:00 PM: Hosts Press Conference to Make Announcement, 31 Chambers Street, Manhattan.
Tuning In:
AM 970, 6 a.m.: Doug Schoen, pollster, analyst and author of “The End of Authority: How a Loss of Legitimacy and Broken Trust are Endangering our Future” on Bloomberg’s legacy, Republican factionalism and why people don’t trust government.
WNYC 93.9 FM, 10 a.m.: Beth Fertig, WNYC contributing editor for education and Schoolbook.org on the appointment of Camen Farina and takes calls from parents and teachers; Mattathias Schwartz, New Yorker contributor, looks at a US DEA-assisted raid in Honduras that went fatally wrong and what it says about the ongoing war on drugs throughout the hemisphere; Cristian Salazar, editor of Gotham Gazette, on community boards; Kate Hinds, WNYC transportation reporter, on getting around on New Year’s Eve.
NY1 News, 7 pm: Deputy Mayors Linda Gibbs, Howard Wolfson, and Cas Holloway.
PS: Happy Birthday, Pop!
2014: It’s gonna cost you. Consider yourself warned…
IMAGES: JEFFERSON SIEGEL/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS; MICHAEL P. FARRELL/ALBANY TIMES UNION
News tips, schedules or suggestions? Email me at ckatz@nydailynews.com — and follow @DNDailyPolitics, @CelesteKatzNYC and our NYDN political team on Twitter!
