‘When I Am Out of Town You’ll Have a Female Mayor’
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Next time Mayor Bloomberg goes out of town for the weekend, there may be a female mayor running City Hall.
During a news conference yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg confirmed what many in city government had expected: that his first deputy mayor of operations, Marc Shaw, was planning to step down and go to work in the private sector.
Mr. Bloomberg went on to say that his deputy mayor of administration, Patricia Harris, would be promoted to Mr. Shaw’s position, which means she’ll be in charge when Mr. Bloomberg is outside the five boroughs.
Ms. Harris, 50, has been called Mr. Bloomberg’s closest adviser. She managed the corporate communications department at Bloomberg LP, the press powerhouse the mayor founded in 1981, and oversees the mayor’s philanthropy operation.
According to a synopsis posted on the mayor’s official Web site, Ms. Harris started her career as an assistant to Edward Koch when he was in Congress, served as an assistant to the deputy mayor when Mr. Koch became mayor in 1979, and was named executive director of the city’s arts commission in 1980.
“When people say we’ve never had a woman mayor, when I’m out of town you will have a female mayor,” Mr. Bloomberg told reporters yesterday after kicking off a coat drive in Lower Manhattan. “I think she’s more than competent and she’s got an enormous amount of experience.”
Neither Ms. Harris nor Mr. Shaw was available for comment yesterday.
A spokesman for the mayor said he did not know exactly when Mr. Shaw, who oversees the city’s budget and services for 20 city agencies, would be leaving.
Mr. Shaw, the former head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, was Mayor Giuliani’s budget director and was recently appointed by Mr. Bloomberg to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. He is expected to keep his position on the LMDC board.
Ms. Harris is not expected to take over Mr. Shaw’s budgetary duties. Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday she would “continue to have the responsibilities of the areas she’s been supervising” – arts and cultural affairs – and “maybe pick up one or two more.”
Last year, Ms. Harris made news when she accused several arts executives of being disloyal to Mr. Bloomberg because they made donations to one of his political opponents, the speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller.
Yesterday’s news was the first official word on staff changes for Mr. Bloomberg’s second term.
The mayor said almost all of the commissioners and agency heads would stay on and that he would probably “reshuffle” some positions within City Hall before the end of the year.
“The administration will look pretty much like it has before, there’s a reason for that,” the mayor said. “I think they’ve done a spectacular job. I think we’ve spent the first four years learning and trying things and now we know more of what can be done and we’ve built credibility.”
A former deputy to Mr. Giuliani, Fran Reiter, said yesterday that first deputies historically have not overseen the budget.
Ms. Reiter said that Ms. Harris was “extremely smart” and “very capable.”
“She has a quality that is extremely important in a first deputy mayor: She is very close to the mayor. She has his trust and his confidence and that is extremely important,” Ms. Reiter said.
When she was serving in City Hall, Ms. Reiter said, she served as mayor for about six hours once when Mr. Giuliani and his first deputy, Peter Powers, went to Long Island for the afternoon.
She said Mr.Giuliani called her in her office to tell her that his lawyer was faxing over paperwork that would put her in charge of the city while he was gone.
“For the next six hours I wouldn’t move from my office,” Ms. Reiter joked. “So I hate to tell this mayor and Patti Harris, but she’s not going to be the first female mayor.”
Ms. Reiter, who was laughing, said that “nothing happened” while Mr. Giuliani was gone.