Money Rubs Off for City Aides Close to Mayor

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/nyregion/14salary.html?_r=1&oref=slogin




Money Rubs Off for City Aides Close to Mayor
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By DIANE CARDWELL and JO CRAVEN McGINTY
Published: December 14, 2007
Working for Michael R. Bloomberg, even in the public sector, can be rewarding.

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Big Jobs, Big Salaries Although Mr. Bloomberg has ordered an overall hiring freeze and has yet to agree to raises for the city’s largest municipal labor union, he has doled out generous pay increases to those who work directly for him, a review of payroll records shows.

The mayor, while holding raises for other city employees to about 4 percent per year, has given more than 200 members of his staff increases ranging from 10 percent to more than 100 percent, the records show. And 57 staffers have received a raise of at least 10 percent more than once.

In addition, the number of employees earning $100,000 or more has risen by 59 percent, to 105 from 66 in 2002, with the bulk of that increase coming in 2006, after the mayor won re-election.

It is not unusual for mayors to reward their loyal aides, especially as they near the twilight of their tenure. Mr. Bloomberg’s predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, gave generous raises throughout his term to his deputies. During his final summer in office, Mr. Giuliani handed out 8 percent raises to his deputy mayors, increasing their salaries to $168,700.

For Mr. Bloomberg, who founded the media and financial services giant Bloomberg L.P., the swelling salaries echo the pattern he established in the private sector of pulling together a loyal coterie of advisers and assistants and paying them handsomely.

Administration officials say Mr. Bloomberg needed to attract and retain top talent for an ambitious second term. And some government watchdogs said the generous pay may reflect the fact that many of his aides come from the private sector, where rich rewards for trusted managers are considered a matter of course.

The higher salaries have resulted in only a modest 4 percent overall increase in the mayor’s office payroll, in part because of staff reductions during the fiscal downturn in his first term.

Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire who financed his own campaigns, takes only $1 a year in salary and has emphasized his independence from the back-scratching culture of politics. Nonetheless, he has found ways to pay back the people who helped get him elected, filling top slots in his office with more than a dozen workers from his campaigns, some of whom started at Bloomberg LP.

Shea Fink, who worked on Mr. Bloomberg’s 2001 campaign, started at a $93,000 annual salary as assistant to the mayor, overseeing his schedule. She now earns $170,368, an 83 percent increase, though John Gallagher, a mayoral spokesman, said her responsibilities have significantly increased and she now serves as a senior adviser to the mayor.

Mr. Bloomberg also provided six-figure bonuses from his campaign account to his closest lieutenants after his mayoral runs in 2001 and 2005, generally distributing them just before the aides joined or returned to city government to avoid running afoul of conflict-of-interest regulations.

For example, Patricia E. Harris, who has been Mr. Bloomberg’s most trusted aide since his days running Bloomberg L.P., is the highest-paid employee in the mayor’s office, with an annual salary of $227,219. She received a 19 percent raise when she was promoted to first deputy mayor in 2005.

That increase came after she received a $350,000 bonus for less than three months’ work on his campaign.

Two of the mayor’s other deputies who followed Mr. Bloomberg from his private company, Kevin Sheekey and Edward Skyler, have also received large bumps in salary since joining the administration in 2002, of 31 percent and 21 percent respectively, to $196,574. In addition, Mr. Sheekey was given a $400,000 bonus after taking a hiatus from the administration to manage the 2005 campaign.

Francis Barry, who worked on the 2005 campaign, joined the administration in the legislative affairs division in 2002 at $45,000. After big increases in 2004 and 2006, Mr. Barry now earns $122,452 as a communications adviser and speechwriter, a 172 percent increase from his starting salary

And Gerardo Russo and Christopher Coffey, who took positions in the 2001 campaign, have doubled their city salaries since 2002. Mr. Russo, who began as a press aide earning $55,000, now earns $122,452 as an assistant to Mr. Skyler.

Mr. Coffey, who earned $52,000 as an advance aide in 2002, made $101,156 this year as a deputy commissioner in the community assistance unit.

Bloomberg administration officials say that many on the mayor’s staff would earn far more in the private sector.

Several aides took pay cuts from their Bloomberg jobs to work on the campaign and in the administration.

And many officials have left the mayor’s employ for higher-paying jobs over the years, including Marc V. Shaw, a former deputy mayor who now works at Extell Development Corporation, and James Whelan, chief of staff to Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff. Mr. Whelan is to join the Muss Development Company in January.

Mr. Gallagher, the mayoral spokesman, said, “It is still important for the mayor’s office to remain as competitive as possible in trying to attract the talented people who have driven the programs.”

Mr. Bloomberg’s second-term agenda included efforts to attack poverty, illegal gun trafficking and global warming, and he has brought new employees to his office to help lead those efforts.

Those include Veronica White, who oversees the antipoverty program, and Rohit Aggarwala, a McKinsey consultant who is shepherding the mayor’s environmental agenda, including congestion pricing. Both earn $159,720 annually.

One government watchdog group says that the pay raises have been unusually generous, but that they seemed consistent with the mayor’s general approach to management.

“Regular increases of 10 percent or more without much of a change in title or responsibility would seem to be a bit unreasonable, but the mayor has brought, with these salary increases, private-sector incentives to public-sector salaries,” said Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union.

Barbara Fife, who served as a deputy mayor under former Mayor David N. Dinkins, agreed. “Those sound high,” she said. “It’s been a long time since there were this many people whose basic experience was in the private sector rather than the public sector, and I think you’re getting that filter.”