Freeze gets a shrug at top
Agency set rules for hiring during crisis; Cuomo ignored them
As New York’s budget deficit ballooned this spring, state budget director Robert Mujica sought to dramatically slow spending by imposing a “strict” freeze on all hiring by state agencies.
In his April directive, Mujica laid out clear rules for agencies wishing to break the freeze: They needed to receive approval from the Division of Budget by showing why the position could not be filled internally and explaining how the new employee was “essential to protect health and safety” amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet by August, Gov. Andrew M.
Cuomo’s office had hired four veterans of Democratic presidential campaigns at a combined taxpayer cost of $567,000 in annual salaries.
In doing so, the Executive Chamber largely ignored the formal process that Mujica had laid out, according to records obtained by the Times Union through a Freedom of Information Law request.
In the case of two well-paid speechwriters hired by Cuomo’s
office, the formal written approval from the DOB didn’t come until more than three weeks after they had come on board. A key promotion was made in Cuomo’s office without any waiver approval at all, despite another Mujica mandate.
And in memos to Mujica’s office that were supposed to justify why each exemption to the freeze was necessary, Cuomo’s office offered little of the information required. Instead, the Executive Chamber turned in identical, one-sentence boilerplate for each proposed hire.
Despite those deficiencies, the DOB has routinely approved Cuomo’s hiring requests.
Over the summer, Cuomo’s office placed an ad seeking to hire an individual to promote “the accomplishments of New York State to the public.” On Aug. 7. the governor announced the hiring of Stephen Silverman, who had previously worked as a consultant for the Clinton Foundation, where he focused on “amplifying the achievements” of former President Bill Clinton. Silverman had also advised Michael Bloomberg’s 2020 presidential campaign.
On Aug. 17, Silverman joined the state payroll as a $150,000-a-year employee in the governor’s office. In late August, the Times Union published an article questioning Silverman’s hiring, and filed an open records request seeking the waiver allowing it. But his hiring wasn’t formally approved by Mujica’s Division of Budget until Sept. 9.
That’s despite the fact that in April, Mujica had stated that new agency hiring was not allowed
unless “authorized by the DOB.”
In addition, Mujica’s directive stated that agencies could not add new employees unless the reason for each hiring was “individually justified” in paperwork submitted to the budget office.
“Agencies must provide compelling justification to support these requests and discuss the consequences of non-approval,” Mujica wrote.
But the justifications Cuomo’s office submitted to DOB seeking to hire Silverman and the three other operatives contained only a single 20word sentence, which was identical in all four memos: “Filling this position is essential to the administrative operations of the Executive Chamber and
the core mission of the agency.”
The paperwork from Cuomo’s office provided no information to DOB about why the positions were necessary to “protect public health and safety,” Mujica’s stated standard.
If Cuomo’s office had described the full natures of the positions in writing, it might have been apparent they were not truly necessary.
The paperwork from Cuomo’s office listed the “titles” of the proposed hires, though those bore little resemblance to their actual duties. When Cuomo announced Silverman’s hiring, he was identified as the governor’s new “senior communications adviser for speechwriting and strategic messaging.” But in the pa
perwork submitted to DOB, Silverman is listed as an “administrative assistant.”
Mujica’s April memo stated that agency waiver requests were required to “demonstrate” that the proposed hire’s work could not be done by “existing staff.” The paperwork submitted by Cuomo’s office contained nothing on that topic.
Yet despite all these deficiencies, all four Cuomo requests to hire the political consultants were approved.
A Division of Budget spokesman, Freeman Klopott, justified the hires by saying that communications specialists are especially necessary during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There’s no question that clear communication with the public has played a critical role in New York’s response to the pandemic,” he said.
Kloppott said staffing changes in Cuomo’s office had required the administration to move nimbly to fill key posts. At times, hires and their required waivers were “approved verbally” by the DOB, Klopott said.
“Sometimes the paperwork just takes time to catch up,” Kloppott said.
Klopott declined to say, however, if that meant the budget office had verbally approved the hiring of Silverman and another speechwriter, Daniel Kadishon, before they joined the state payroll Aug. 17. As with Silverman, Kadishon’s hiring wasn’t formally approved in writing by DOB until Sept. 9.
Mujica’s directive in April said nothing about DOB verbally approving hires, but did say that agencies were “required to provide a written justification” for “requested” hires.
Klopott declined to comment on the dearth of information in the Cuomo waiver requests, and why they were still approved.
While the Cuomo hirings are only a blip in an $8 billion budget deficit this year, they come at a time when Cuomo is requiring sacrifice from others. State workers were denied promised raises, and state agencies have been directed to slash
spending. Cash-starved local governments and school districts have seen their payments cut, and nonprofits serving society’s most vulnerable have been denied state funds.
The hirings also raise questions of a double standard. Asked if agency hiring requests beyond the Executive Chamber’s were being treated with the same leniency, Klopott said DOB was in “constant discussions with all of the agencies regarding staffing needs.”
Mujica, a former top aide for state Senate Republicans, was appointed by Cuomo in 2016 and has accumulated unusually broad powers for a budget director. He has regularly appeared beside Cuomo during daily COVID-19 news briefings. The hiring freeze and other measures have decreased state spending by more than $4 billion so far this year, and Mujica has emphasized an attitude of fiscal vigilance.
“One dollar spent in one place is $1 not spent somewhere else,” he said in a May interview with City & State magazine. “Resources are finite.”
But E.J. Mcmahon, research director at the fiscally conservative Empire Center for Public Policy, said in August that the Division of Budget has little independence from Cuomo’s office.
“This is a case of the governor just doing what he wants,” Mcmahon said of Cuomo hirings. “The message is, ‘Do as we say, not as we do.’”
Over the summer, Cuomo’s office also placed an ad on Linkedin seeking a new speechwriter. The ad placement came ahead of Cuomo’s primetime speech at the Democratic National Convention.
In August, the Division of Budget refused to tell the Times Union if a speechwriter had indeed been retained.
And in response to the Times Union’s open records request, DOB last week did not include any record of such a hiring — until the Times Union pointed out the improper omission of Kadishon.
Indeed, according to state payroll records provided by Comptroller Tom Dinapoli’s office, Kadishon was hired on Aug. 17 as a $130,000-a-year “special assistant” in Cuomo’s office.
According to his Linkedin profile, however, Kadishon is a “senior speechwriter” in Cuomo’s office. He previously worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 speechwriting team and spent nearly five years working for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The two other political operatives hired this year by Cuomo, Laura Montross and Marquita Sanders, were approved in writing by DOB before they joined the state payroll.
Montross is Cuomo’s new “deputy communications director for policy and issue advocacy,” but is listed in payroll records as a $117,000-a-year “administrative assistant.” Most recently, Montross worked as a director of women’s outreach for Bloomberg’s 2020 Democratic presidential campaign.
Before that, Montross worked for three years as a principal at Kivvit, the political consulting firm founded by a close Cuomo advisor, Maggie Moran, who served as Cuomo’s 2018 campaign manager.
Sanders most recently worked for U.S. Sen. Cory Booker’s unsuccessful presidential campaign, where she was director of scheduling and the “advance” work necessary to prepare for the New Jersey Democrat’s political events. Before that, she worked in the Obama administration.
Sanders is now Cuomo’s assistant secretary for scheduling and operations, earning $170,000 a year, according to payroll records that identify her as “deputy secretary to the governor.”
Meanwhile, after Cuomo’s communications director Dani Lever recently left for a job at Facebook, Cuomo’s senior deputy communications director, Peter Ajemian, was promoted in August to fill Lever’s position.
As with new hires, Mujica’s April memo stated that internal promotions also require a waiver approval by DOB.
But in response to the Times Union’s open records request, DOB failed to include a copy of any waiver allowing for Ajemian’s promotion.
Several months after the promotion, DOB spokesman Klopott said the waiver paperwork approving it is “being processed.”
While not publicly announced by Cuomo, the administration in May hired Matthew Mcmorrow as his statewide director of LGBTQ affairs. Mcmorrow works in Cuomo’s office, according to his Linkedin profile, but his $115,000-a-year salary is being paid by the Department of State, where he is listed in payroll records as a “citizens services representative.”
The Department of State’s waiver request to DOB was even briefer that the line used in the four other applications: “Waiver needed to fulfill mission of Governor’s Regional Representative Program.”
Once again — and with no written justification for breaking the hiring freeze — the Division of Budget signed off.