Posted on 01/24/2023 1:38:10 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Mayor Eric Adams strode into Cipriani Wall Street, packed with the city’s civic and business elite, to tout a highly ambitious, thinly sketched plan to reinvigorate the city’s commercial districts. “We’re going to show the country why we are New York, and this new New York conversation is going to show how together we get all cylinders operating on the same engine to regain our economy, regain our city, and we leave no one behind,” he said. That plan would include more bus lanes, electric-vehicle charging stations, and converting official buildings to residential use. In recent weeks, he announced an even more aspirational goal to build 500,000 housing units over the next decade.
This would be a signature achievement for an administration that has, one year in, yet to find a legacy-defining policy to pursue, the equivalent of Bill de Blasio’s universal prekindergarten.
Yet a worsening crisis threatens these bold plans: There just aren’t enough people at the public agencies charged with running the city. The city comptroller’s office released a report in December that found the overall vacancy rate at municipal agencies is 8 percent, quadruple the 2 percent rate before COVID.
Certain pivotal agencies are struggling much more. The Department of Buildings has nearly 23 percent of its positions vacant. City Planning is at 22 percent. Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and Finance are each at 18 percent. Cyber Command, charged with protecting the city’s cybersecurity, is at 36 percent. Perhaps the most extreme case is the Department of Social Services’ Child Support Services division, which is almost half-empty. “There are empty desks and cubicles everywhere,” said one Department of Buildings employee who wished not to be named. “The morale is very low.” It doesn’t help the remaining employees that the mayor announced in November he’d be slashing some unfilled positions by as much as 50 percent.
Plenty of cities across America are grappling with similar shortages. City workers are lured away by private-sector salaries, especially those in specialized fields like law and engineering. Pandemic burnout has driven some younger employees out of the workforce altogether. The lure of a healthy pension 20 or 30 years down the line just isn’t enough to keep them coming to the office five days a week. (Federal employees can still work remotely, as can employees of other governments, like Connecticut’s.)
But what’s happening in New York is compounded by Adams himself. His firm line against hybrid and remote work for city employees, a continuation of de Blasio’s policy, is driving employees out. Salaries have been kept intentionally low for new hires and those transferring between the agencies and the City Council; applicants have been offered the very lowest salary possible on the pay scale.
A strict public-sector vaccine mandate that allows few exemptions — also a holdover from de Blasio’s tenure — continues to weed out the 10 percent of adults citywide who are not completely vaccinated. Younger city workers say they are also discouraged by the degree to which many agencies are helmed by patronage appointees, people who mostly owe their positions to their connections with the mayor rather than professional experience
They include the now-former Department of Buildings commissioner Eric Ulrich (who resigned after being investigated for illegal gambling and alleged mob ties) and the Department of Transportation commissioner, Ydanis Rodriguez, who doesn’t seem to have the level of agency management or transportation experience of former heads, according to some staffers.
At HPD, which develops and maintains the city’s affordable-housing stock, it seems likely that the shortage will hamstring the Adams administration’s attempts to develop the new housing that the city desperately needs. On a day-to-day level, a depleted case-manager workforce is struggling to get low-income people into available housing. “We don’t have the people to keep up with all the work that we have,” said one former HPD employee, whose division oversaw Section 8 vouchers for 100,000 people. (The employee left over low pay and the lack of a remote-work option.) A current HPD employee, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that case managers simply can’t keep up anymore.
On the case-processing side, the line staff, people are really fucking slammed by stuff. There are too many cases to process,” they said. “There’s a mountain that people have been digging themselves out of for a year or two with no end in sight.” It’s made worse by the fact that the starting salary for case managers is around $38,000, not much more than the city’s $15 minimum wage paid out over a year. If a case manager can’t help determine how much HPD will help with the rent, then landlords can raise the rent on tenants who should be qualifying for subsidies. “It’s mostly low-income people, immigrant families, and people with children who are affected by this,” the employee said. The consequences could be much bigger down the line; they also predicted that HPD could lose federal funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for its low performance.
At the City Law Department, attorneys are rapidly departing for the private sector, where salaries are much higher and remote work is tolerated. Head count has fallen by at least 22 percent. An attorney with the department said the biggest problem is that there are barely enough lawyers to comply with discovery requests and depositions when cases go to court. Failure to comply can lead to sanctions from the courts and lost income for the city. Because of this, more cases are settled rather than litigated in court. The affirmative litigation division has withered too: The government can’t bring as many cases against those who have damaged city property or broken contracts.
We are losing experienced lawyers and not attracting new ones because we are not able to compete right now,” the attorney said. “I’ve had colleagues from law school and other lawyers reach out, express interest, who always liked government law and might be interested in the work we’re doing. When they hear what the situation is really like and look at the pay and lack of flexibility, they’re not coming here.”
Adams, in an effort to address this gap, has announced a fellowship to bring in private lawyers to city agencies, with salaries paid by the outside firms. However, employees say that the fellowship isn’t going to stem the tide of departures or bring enough lawyers so the department can function at anything close to its pre-pandemic capacity.
Even agencies that don’t rely on specialized workers are struggling. At the Department of Cultural Affairs, program officers who process grant applications for cultural and art nonprofits are disappearing. One of the remaining officers has a caseload of 160 to 170 organizations, when the officer typically had a little more than half that number before Adams was mayor. This has translated to monthslong delays that employees only expect to worsen in 2023. “There’s no motivation here to be the best worker you can be,” said one Cultural Affairs employee.
Eager employees who want to make their mark in city government — to be a part of something big or memorable — see a stark difference between de Blasio, who was derided in the press but promised progressive governance on a large scale, and Adams, who has shown much less interest in expanding early child care or strengthening the city’s social safety net.
“It’s really hard to recruit really skilled people,” said one high-ranking agency employee. “People are willing to come into government if there is a vision and goal everyone is working toward. What are you working toward? You couple that with inflexibility with work-from-home, it’s a deal-breaker.” When the administration does make headlines for its big ideas — the ones that Adams announced at Cipriani, for example — agency employees wonder how they’ll be executed with diminished and demoralized staff.
Comptroller Brad Lander says Adams should embrace remote work to make the city more competitive. But he said the mayor can go even further to prioritize recruiting. He pointed to Michelle Wu, Boston’s mayor, who has designated a chief talent officer to draw city workers and fill vacancies. Adams has a rat czar, so why not a hiring czar? “Some cities and states have been aggressive in trying to address this, and New York has not,” Lander said. “Maybe the opposite.”
However, Adams’s spokespeople say there is no problem. “Mayor Adams has built a diverse and highly talented team that is laser-focused on delivering results and getting stuff done for New Yorkers,” said Fabien Levy, a spokesman for Adams. “The city has faced no operational impact to services with the vacancies that exist, but we are recruiting aggressively for every vacant position.”
While it’s true that there are still more than 200,000 municipal employees and no immediate danger of the kind of mass exodus that would bring government itself to a halt, the bigger risk is what happens later down the line. Lander, for example, wonders whether the lack of personnel at Cyber Command will expose the city to a devastating hack. Or if a building could collapse, one day, that was never properly inspected.
And what about Adams’s ambitious agenda? The former employee at HPD says leadership is still trying to rally the remaining workforce behind grander goals. But the shortage of employees has made it near impossible to push for them.
“No one buys it anymore. No one cares. They’re not saying what we want: a little more pay and remote work,” the employee said. “If leadership is not listening, what’s the point?”
You can live like a king for $38K in NYC. Not.
Aren’t the illegal aliens suppose to be an economic boom anywhere they go?
Well, yes, you say one wrong thing, and they are liable to line you up against a wall, amiright?
What is with liberals and “having a conversation”? All that means is that they’ll talk about something but they won’t do anything about it except double down on the same old mistakes. “We need to have a conversation about your getting stabbed on the subway. Your bleeding all over the platform is impacting the quality of life here.”
People eventually get tired of being fleeced by panhandlers, derelicts, criminals and politicians. But I repeat myself.
When they pay low wages and require that you live within the city limits that the low wages can’t afford, of course there would be no applicants for the positions.
“City workers are lured away by private-sector salaries,...”
Lol. No business owner with any sense would hire a govt employee. Unless they need a tax write off. For that matter most govt positions are not comparable to the private sector. They may call a govt employee a whatsit but they are entirely incompetent to do the whatsit job in the private sector. It’s xan old trick to call a trash collector and sanitary engineer to justify a ridiculous higher salary for sitting at a desk and surfing pron all day long.
Easy solution: hire illegal immigrants. Problem solved.
In my professional field, it seems like half the senior leaders at various city and state government offices in New York City have left their jobs in the last two years. I get calls all the time from recruiters looking to fill those positions, and they sound completely demoralized when I tell them I wouldn’t work in NYC under any circumstances.
It sounds like just the kind of place talented people would run from.
Not all of these things require government. Notice there are zero American cities that have all four of the above items. That’s what conversation buys you.
“The Department of Buildings has nearly 23 percent of its positions vacant. City Planning is at 22 percent. Housing Preservation and Development (HPD)...”
Time for the private sector to step up and increase the size of bribes paid to city inspectors.
What the heck is that? A much more correct characterization would be that so many people got used to staying home and not working that they either couldn't stand the idea of re-engaging with co-workers or flat lost any discipline for daily work whatsoever.
Can’t wait for their bankruptcy
I’ve got a relative who works for NY City Health Dept.
You’ve got to be a true leftist ideologue to believe in the mission and to make a career of it (which they are).
Liberal idea of “a conversation” is them telling you everything wrong is your fault while calling you a racist and sexist for holding them accountable for their idiotic policy
BS....
I want to see the chart....
What chart you ask?
THE chart... the org chart, long version...
My guess, and knowing government, is a case of “ too many chiefs and not enough indians.
Make half of the chiefs become Indians, and....
Surprise!!!!
Not only will you have enough personnel, but will probably save a buck or two
These people are amazingly stupid. No one is going to come to their new “improvements” either. It’s the taxes, crime and filth, you idiots!
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