Despite many people hoping that the arrival of Eric Adams as the new Mayor of New York City would usher in a new era of law and order, some disturbing patterns have been emerging at City Hall. The latest pair of incidents began with the recently appointed “senior adviser for strategic initiatives” at the Department of Social Services. Adams had only recently appointed Edu Hermelyn to the position but Hermelyn abruptly resigned on Friday. The driving force behind the resignation appeared to be the fact that reporters had inquired about the fact that Hermelyn appeared to be ineligible for the position because of his leadership role in the Brooklyn Democratic Party. And he wasn’t the only one to bow out of the Adams administration in recent days. (The City)
The husband of a top Brooklyn Democratic party leader resigned from his newly appointed position in the administration of Mayor Eric Adams on Friday — the same day THE CITY asked about rules that appear to prohibit his simultaneously maintaining a key political party role.
Edu Hermelyn, a district leader for the Brooklyn Democrats in Crown Heights, was only recently appointed as “senior advisor for strategic initiatives” at the Department of Social Services, City Limits reported.
He’s married to party leader Rodneyse Bichotte, who’s also a Brooklyn Assembly member. She was a staunch supporter of Adams in his campaign for mayor, and Hermelyn’s consulting firm earned more than $80,000 in fees on Adams’ mayoral campaign.
People in partisan party leadership roles are not supposed to be allowed to assume paid appointed offices in the municipal government. Compounding matters further was the fact that Hermelyn is married to a member of the borough assembly. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he also runs a political consulting firm that had been on Eric Adams’ payroll during the campaign.
It’s unlikely that this was a simple case of being unaware of the conflicts involved. Hermelyn had been cleared by the Conflicts of Interest Board prior to taking his position, so it would seem that the administration was aware of the apparent barrier to his employment. (Why the Board still cleared him remains a mystery.) Did the Mayor simply think that nobody would notice? That’s impossible to say, but as soon as it became obvious that the story was going to make it into the press, Hermelyn hit the bricks.
As I already mentioned, he wasn’t the only one to run into a controversial situation. A former City Council member named Mark Treyger was appointed to a position as director of intergovernmental affairs at the Department of Education. But it turned out that he too was a Democratic district leader in Brooklyn. Rather than losing his plush new gig, he decided to step down as district leader.
All of this is taking place after Adams was already called out for trying to hire his own brother to be the head of his security detail. The brother was eventually allowed to join the administration, but only after a review by the Conflict of Interest Board determined that he would only be able to be paid one dollar per year.
The point here is that the aforementioned Conflict of Interest Board has really been getting a workout since Adams took office. I realize that there’s always a certain amount of palm-greasing that goes on in politics, but this just smells like some serious Tammany Hall-level arrangements. Adams seemed to show up for his new job primed and ready to begin handing plush appointments to relatives and Democratic Party leaders around the city. Even some of the other Democrats who didn’t wind up on the gift list have been carping about it. He may not have completely crossed the line into lawlessness yet, but it’s definitely not a good look. And it’s not an ideal way to begin your tenure as mayor of one of the largest cities in the world.
