The Chief-Leader

A Federal Judge in Manhattan stated in a recent ruling that an email exchange between de Blasio administration officials indicated that Commissioner of Administrative Services Lisette Camillo falsely claimed that a fired whistleblower was terminated based on performance after her superiors ordered her to deny it had anything to do with his testimony to Federal prosecutors.

On March 13, 2017, less than three weeks after former Deputy Commissioner Ricardo Morales was fired, Ms. Camilo told a City Council hearing that his discharge had “nothing to do with Rivington,” referring to a longtime hospice for AIDS patients known as Rivington House that the previous year had been “flipped” at a $72-million profit to a developer after city officials revoked two deeds.

Lifting restrictions contained in those documents allowed the site to be used for purposes other than health care.

“I support the First Amendment right to organize anywhere, including right here in the City Council,” Mr. Kallos wrote. “Most jobs have their politics, but in the Council a worker’s job can literally be politics, bringing with it many unique challenges that having a union could help overcome.”

“Retirement should be for everybody, not just for people who work in offices here in Manhattan, and not just for people lucky enough to have a pension,” Onza Lynch, a Bronx commercial carter, said at a Sept. 23 rally to push legislation that would establish a universal retirement savings plan for private-sector employees across the city.

Mayor de Blasio, City Council Members I. Daneek Miller and Ben Kallos, and advocate groups including the American Association of Retired Persons spoke of the importance of retirement security at the City Hall event.

Councilman Ben Kallos, Chair of the Governmental Operations Committee, followed up on a slight uptick in provisional hiring discussed during a budget hearing two weeks earlier.

To comply with the 2007 Long Beach decision by the state Court of Appeals that limited provisional appointments to nine months, the Bloomberg administration created a five-year plan to reduce the number of provisionals by 8,600. That plan was extended in 2014, and Ms. Camilo said she anticipated another extension. “That was always the intention when we submitted the initial one,” she said, though she declined to speculate on how long the deferment would be.

There were 22,954 city employees who hadn’t taken civil-service exams at the time the plan began. They were reduced to 21,416 in December 2014, but rose to 23,052 in the most recent count. Though DCAS gave 290 exams over the past two years—a record high for the agency—the de Blasio administration continued to hire provisionals to meet pressing needs.

“The city is faced with a number of operational challenges that it must meet on a daily basis,” Ms. Camilo said. “The city continues to hire to address the fulfillment of mandates and new priorities.”

She said there was “substantial headway” in reaching its goal. Lists for the Administrative Manager and Administrative Staff Analyst, once they are published later this year, should substanially reduce the number of provisionals.

The time between a candidate taking a civil-service exam and a list being established has fallen by six months, according to the most recent statistics. Still, Ben Kallos, the Chair of the City Council’s Governmental Operations Committee is asking the Department of Citywide Administrative Services to adjust its goals to encourage even more progress in the future and to better diversify the city’s applicant pool.