Trusted Cuomo adviser key candidate for chancellor job
Pushed for top SUNY post, ESC’S Jim Malatras draws praise — and talk of temper
When State University of New York Chancellor Kristina M. Johnson announced in June she would be stepping down for another opportunity before the start of the fall semester, voices close to the governor floated the name of Jim Malatras, president of SUNY’S Empire State College, as the only candidate qualified to lead the sprawling 64-campus public university system.
Word at the state Capitol was that Johnson — a nationally renowned business executive, academic and engineer who had previously worked for the Obama administration — “didn’t work
well” with New York politicians.
That is not a problem you’ll find on Malatras’ resume. Seen as one of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s most trusted advisers, the 42-year-old has spent half his life in state government and currently chairs the governor’s advisory council tasked with reimagining education in the face of COVID-19. The possibility that he might take over the SUNY system was widely perceived as a bid to expand Cuomo’s sphere of influence.
Malatras comes across as affable and charismatic — as one political insider put it, “he’s a schmoozer.” In conversation, the Delmar resident often references his wife and young son, who was a frequent visitor to the Capitol’s second floor when Malatras worked as one of Cuomo’s top staffers. They also have a daughter.
People who have worked under Malatras describe him as is a tough manager with high expectations and an ambitious vision. But his top-down approach and short temper allegedly drove out several longtime employees during his two-year stint at the Rockefeller Institute of Government and at least one top finance official in his current role at Empire State College.
The SUNY system is facing immediate existential challenges brought on by the pandemic. Larry Schwartz, another Cuomo confidant, last month told the Times Union that the system’s Board of Trustees should forgo the usual nationwide search and just appoint Malatras, a “jack of all trades” who’s adept at navigating state government.
“I think it will be shortsighted and a waste of time to do a nationwide search when there are many issues that need to be resolved now to move SUNY forward,” Schwartz said in June, just days after Johnson announced she would leave to become president of Ohio State University. “I’ve watched a lot of chancellors come and go, I don’t think SUNY has come close to reaching its full potential.”
United University Professions, the labor union that represents faculty and staff on SUNY campuses, has passed a resolution calling for a nationwide search and for the board to make every effort to ensure the next chancellor comes from an under-represented community of color. (In its seven-decade history, SUNY has had 19 chancellors: 16 white men, two white women and Clifton Wharton Jr., the lone African-american to serve in the post.)
“The reality is there will always be political give and take,” UUP President Frederick E. Kowal said. “... Certainly, the chancellor has to have really good political skills in Albany, but we believe an independent chancellor and independent SUNY is critical to its longtime success.”
Malatras says he is committed to his current position at SUNY Empire, where he is working to “make education more accessible, affordable and relevant to the workforce.”
“I’m humbled to even hear my name mentioned in the discussion of the SUNY Chancellor search, but my focus remains on SUNY Empire and our ongoing efforts to create new educational opportunities for students of all ages across the state, nation, and globe,” he said in an email last week.
Malatras holds a doctorate in political science from the state University at Albany and is respected for his public policy work, but his college administration experience is limited.
During a one-year break in his tenure in Cuomo’s administration — which otherwise ran from 2007 through 2017 — Malatras worked as a top aide to former SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher, Johnson’s predecessor. Before joining Cuomo during his tenure as attorney general, Malatras was legislative director for Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a famously hard-charging
Westchester Democrat who died in April.
Malatras said he considers himself a “pracademic” — an academicpractitioner — and doesn’t believe there should be a hard line between academia and policymaking.
“I’ve always thought it was important to combine both of those things. Even when I worked in the Legislature, I was getting my PH.D. at the time,” Malatras said. “How do you apply public policy concepts and political science concepts in real time?”
Malatas left Zimpher’s service in 2014 to become Cuomo’s director of state operations, a position that put him up against the governor’s opponents. Several who have had runins with Malatras — most who spoke on condition of anonymity — said his temper could be volcanic.
In 2015, Malatras clashed with teachers unions and parent activists over Cuomo’s support for the Common Core curriculum and his desire to link students’ standardized test scores to teacher evaluations. After a statewide opt-out movement took hold, Cuomo sought to appease the activists through the creation of a task force to consider what had gone wrong with Common Core rollout. Malatras was named as the panel’s leader.
When Jeanette Deutermann, founder of Long Island’s opt-out campaign, criticized members of the task force, she received an irate phone call.
“The governor was trying to put the olive branch out and (Malatras) proceeded to tell me off,” Deutermann said. “I’d never talked to this guy in my life, (and) he’s literally yelling at me saying, ‘Who do you think you are? You don’t even know who these people are.’ He showed zero respect for me.”
In February 2017, Malatras was hired as president of the Rockefeller Institute of Government, a newly created role at the Albany think tank that functions as SUNY’S public policy research arm. He became president of SUNY Empire State
College in May 2019. Both jobs came with annual salaries of nearly $300,000 a year, more than doubling his state government pay. Thomas Gais, the institute’s longtime director, made $188,000 a year.
The arm-twisting tactics regularly deployed by Cuomo’s inner circle were not well-received at the Rockefeller Institute. More than half of the 22 researchers and support staff on the institute’s payroll between 2017 and 2019 appear to have either left or had their pay significantly reduced, according to data obtained from See Through NY.
Donald Boyd, the institute’s former director of fiscal studies, left in 2017. While he never directly experienced Malatras’ anger, he heard accounts of profanity-laden tirades.
The Rockefeller Institute “was slow to change; (Malatras) didn’t tolerate slow movement . ... He brought people into his office, he used the F-word, he slammed doors,” Boyd said. “If what people told me was correct, it’s a
totally inappropriate way to treat employees.”
Malatras said he has never slammed a door in a management context. There was, he said, understandable tension around finances, which were nearly depleted when he arrived. In addition to getting its budget in order, Malatras said he tried to modernize the institute’s at times stodgy culture and elevate the work of female researchers who he believed had been sidelined.
Streamlining and reducing research and administrative salaries was a necessary part of that, he said, but it created enemies. “People were just unwilling to have those conversations,” Malatras said. “It’s not arm-twisting and maneuvering. Sometimes being blunt is okay . ... We are all adults.”
The Suny-funded institute is one of few nonpartisan, nationally relevant entities of its kind outside New York City and Washington, D.C. Some researchers worried that under Malatras’ leadership, the think tank would be perceived as less independent from the governor’s office.
Numerous studies published by the Rockefeller Institute during Malataras’ tenure were aligned with policies and initiatives of the Cuomo administration. Malatras said the objective was to make the institute’s work more relevant.
“A think tank can’t just be a think tank on things that no one talks about. It has to drive meaningful change,” he said. “I tried to elevate the things that we worked on. I wanted to examine things that were vexing actual policymakers — and not just state policymakers, but federal policymakers. The opioid crisis was not a natural thing for the institute, initially. They focused sometimes on esoteric federalism issues . ... Instead of talking of the theory of federalism, which they used to do, how about you do applied federalism?”
Under his leadership, the Rockefeller Institute produced significantly more research — 106 pieces in 2017. By his second year, he brought in $2 million in research grants, up from $460,000 raised in 2016 and $1.2 million in 2017, Malatras said. He launched the Nathan Fellowship, named for Richard Nathan, the institute’s former director for two decades, and an applied internship program to bring diverse faces and perspectives into the organization.
Heather Trela, who was promoted to chief of operations at the institute under Malatras, said the institution “needed things to be shaken up a little . ... I learned a tremendous amount from Jim.”
At Empire State College, Malatras took on more responsibility, overseeing 1,300 employees and 16,000 students across 35 locations.
In his first months at the Saratoga Spring headquarters, Malatras refreshed the online college’s brand and formed a plan to improve its standing and visibility in the SUNY system through key partnerships, colleagues say. He took the time to learn the organizational structure through virtual town halls.
SUNY Empire’s former vice president of administration, Joseph Garcia, sued the college for $1.5 million, claiming in court documents that Malatras undermined and harassed him because of his age and ethnicity before he was terminated. (The lawsuit was first reported in the Schenectady Daily Gazette.)
Garcia, a 63-year-old veteran with extensive financial experience, claims Malatras directed the college’s budget director to bypass Garcia’s authority and report directly to him. He said Malatras excluded him from budgetary matters and eventually stripped him of all his responsibilities, according to court documents filed in state Supreme Court in early June.
The suit claims Malatras castigated Garcia in public to justify his allegedly discriminatory behavior, and replaced him with a “younger, nonhispanic employee,” Beth Berlin, who was at the time acting state education commissioner.
A spokesman for Malatras said Garcia was terminated because of gross mismanagement of the college’s finances, and that the college doesn’t tolerate discrimination in any form.
“These are baseless accusations of a former employee who was let go for poor performance, ignoring ethics-related complaints, and neglect of official duties that resulted in the loss of tens of thousands in taxpayer and tuition dollars,” Kyle
Adams said.
Plenty of colleagues at SUNY Empire offered praise for Malatras. SUNY Empire’s UUP chapter president Pamela Malone said he has raised the college’s profile at a time when the demand for high-quality remote education has surged due to the global health crisis. “In the short term that
Jim has been there, he has done a good job,” she said.
Anastasia Pratt, chair of the College Senate, called him “absolutely approachable,” bringing an air of honesty and transparency to the executive level of the college through his virtual town halls.
“He is far and away the best academic leader under whom I’ve worked,” Pratt said.
Even those who have sparred with him over the years don’t necessarily see his hotheadedness as a sign of disrespect.
“Jim and I have argued at times,” said UUP’S Kowal, “and we’ve joked about it afterward. He’s passionate about his views on policy, as I am. It’s a natural way that things go.”
Even detractors acknowledge Malatras gets things done and performs well in a crisis — precisely the sort of description often directed at Cuomo. Many were relieved to see Malatras join the governor’s team during the administration’s daily COVID-19 press briefings.
With SUNY facing an overall enrollment decline for the 2020-21 academic year and projecting a $400 million operating revenue loss for the 2020 fiscal year, which ended June
30, one could argue that crisis management is just what SUNY needs.
Johnson’s final day as chancellor was July 15. Robert Megna, another former Cuomo official, has been appointed as the SUNY system’s interim president. The SUNY Board of Trustees has not announced a vote on whether to conduct a search for SUNY’S next leader.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, who was part of the SUNY chancellor search that ended with Johnson’s hiring, now serves with Malatras on the new education-redesign task force.
On the question of whether SUNY should mount a national search, Weingarten took a middle path: “The SUNY system is an amazing jewel of New York State and it needs to be a national search. But I would hope Jim Malatras is one of the people who gets considered.”
She praised Malatras’ work on the new education panel. “I thought he excelled . ... He listened, he acted, and he pushed back when necessary because he wanted to make sure that we got to what was right for kids and for educators,” she said. “... That kind of commitment to public service is really important.”
“A think tank can’t just be a think tank on things that no one talks about. It has to drive meaningful change. I tried to elevate the things that we worked on. I wanted to examine things that were vexing actual policymakers — and not just state policymakers, but federal policymakers.” — Jim Malatras, president of SUNY’S Empire State College
Rachel.silberstein@ timesunion.com - 518-4545449